Corn flops as energy source

Corn is not a transitional technology. You don't use food to produce industrial energy. Solar cells, wind turbines, nuclear, fuel cells are all diverse technologies. Transition requires stability, or it will bring down systems and infrastructure that are complex integrated. Transition must be a node at at time until the diverse technologies transition nodes have the infrastructure to support and take over from carbon energy. Congress and the President did not do their homework on ethanol. It was a quick fix band aid to a bogus state of fear global warming issue, it doesn't matter what Obama calls it.

Corn-based ethanol is a non-starter: every gallon of ethanol produced results in a net energy loss. But: 11 acres of corn can feed approx 7 people for a year (David Pimental, Cornell University agriculture expert) So, hey world: you wanna eat? We'll give you bushels of corn for barrels of oil.

"One corn bushel yields 2.75 gallons of ethanol." That same bushel will produce 36 POUNDS of cornmeal!

Yeah about Pimentel, his "expertise" is in insects. He was a fellow at the Rachel Carson Institute. The study he did was one of the most intellectually dishonest pieces of merde to ever be written. Why don't you all just come out and say that it is mathmatically impossible to produce enough transportation fuel out of corn ethanol? Ethanol from virgin feedstock (grains, sugarcane, beets) is not smart nor sustainable. But it is a gateway in the sense that people are striving to produce ethanol cheaper and from lower cost feedstocks(ag waste, garbage, kudzu). Ethanol will never replace petroleum totally but it can extend the fuel produced by the domestic oil we are about to start drilling. "Thinning" gasoline by 20 to 30 percent will prolong our supplies long enough to figure out where the Nation will find a viable transfuel source. But yes, we need to get away from food as a fuel source.