Wrote this for another message board and thought it'd go well here - Slowly, gas stations have been converting over the E10 fuels. Today, I was able to find just one Ozark gas station w/o the 10% Ethonal mix. The clerk tells me the owner is holding out as long as possible, but will be forced to use E10 fuels at the start of the new year. So. I looked it up. And, sure 'nuff - http://www.agprofessional.com/show_story.php?id=55147 The problem with Ethonal? Well, there are many. For starters, the crap takes fuel to create it. Lots of fuel. Since it starts off in the feilds, think tractors, harvestors, trucks to carry it, and finaly, the refining portion. Another problem? It's expensive. The ONLY reason it competes in price w/ gasoline, is because the government subsidizes it. That's right! As in pays money that we dont have, to make something we don't need. Yet another problem? Food and grain prices are ever increasing! Ask a farmer what he thinks of this! And of course, don't forget one of the biggest problems. Ethonal contains less energy than gasoline. Which means less fuel milage. Which means itll cost YOU more money at the pump. Why are we doing this? A feeble effort to get off foreign oil! Didn't Bush say he wanted to get us of forgein oil after 9/11? What happened to this promise? Huh? What has Bush done in the last 7 years to get us off forgein oil? Not a darn thing. Now the EPA is pushing this E10 crap, that is only costing us more money, and putting the government farther into debt! This is typical government. Being late with a wrong solution. I keep telling people NOT to buy the gas with the E10 blends. No one listens. Now we won't have a choice. On a final note. Keep conserving folks. I know its easy to waste cheap gas. But DONT!
WE have been using the ethanol 10% mix since the unleaded fuel began. They use it to make the octane rating higher without lead and to lean the mixture for winter driving - only it has been used year 'round here in Washington for a long time. The ethanol is cheaper than the chemicals it replaces as octane boosting additives so it doesn't increase the price of the fuel. It does take energy to produce alcohol from vegetation but there are other products that are produced as by-products that reduce the overall cost of the alcohol. Food corn is rarely used to produce alcohol... some farms have converted from food grade corn to the alcohol product but the increase in farm products is more correctly placed on the growing cost of fuel for machinery and transportation and not on the amount of corn used to make alcohol. The other products include fertilizer and high protein stock feeds. Both reduce the overall oil consumption and food costs.
Lobbyists are really steering it the whole alternative fuel thing wrong... "Big corn" is getting to be like big oil, I'm not even kidding. An example is the recent propaganda about corn syrup vs. sugar. The rest of the world uses cane sugar as a sweetener in everything, but we use high fructose corn syrup. It costs more to produce, it should be more expensive than sugar, but US sugar's prices are artificially high while corn prices are artificially low due to tariffs and subsidies. There are better ways to get ethanol than corn. There are plants that take less work and less land to grow and have more potential for energy, such as sugar cane, switchgrass, sugar beets... We don't have to plow over millions of acres of diminishing native prairie to do this. Why aren't the people who whine about mining and timber bitching about this too? And why is nobody talking about methanol? It's just as good, and we don't have to devote our food-producing infrastructure to creating it while there's a shortage in other parts of the world. Anything organic can be fermented. How about garbage? Food waste, paper, even sewage can be fermented into alcohol. I know that doing all that is not as easy as just growing more corn, but it wasn't that long ago that the whole ethanol thing was a staggering impossible thing to implement. Then the gov't put money into it because the corn industry's lobbyists made it happen, and now we're all using it. The sick thing is it's being played like this benefits Joe the Farmer instead of Ackbar the Terrorist, and that's bullsh!t. It benefits the conglomerates, banks and insurance companies we all love who really own the farms.
Big corn and farm welfare is what this is all about. In the last year - all stations around me now have 10%E in the regular and mid-grade. Premium is still no ethanol (for now). My 1999 Explorer 5.0L AWD has the trip computer. I was at 18-21mpg before ethanol and now have 16.5-19mpg ............. I did see on NBC the other night there is a company making ethanol from kudzu! Food should not be used as fuel ...... period
Ethanol is a huge cashcrop and you can factor in the pac money to boot . The american taxpayer got sold out on this years ago this is not new. ONe need only look at brazil and their use of sugarcane as a model. Switchgrass is even better and so much of this country is condusive to it's growth. Why isn't it used ask your tree huggin liberal friends who are now in power boys an girls.
