Zubrin’s stooge, the Yeti seemed fixated on my comments about Newcomb, not Zubrin’s stupid statements, so I moved this post here so. I am sure the Yeti Stooge will follow. Let’s look at this guy’s Zubrin’s Ethanol Economy.

First, the feasibility of replacing the U.S. consumption of foreign with ethanol. U.S. Gasoline consumption is 384.7 miilion gallons a day. (http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html). That is equal to 140.4 billion gallons a year.

Last year the U.S. produced 9 billion bushels of corn. About 2.6 gallons of ethanol are produced from a bushel. If 100% of the corn crop was used for Ethanol you would 25 billion gallons for the entire year. And since ethanol only has about half the energy of a gallon of gasoline it means you would have enough ethanol for 33 days of driving from the entire U.S. corn crop. To produce enough corn to meet the U.S. driving needs you would need to produce 280 billion gallons of ethanol requiring 105.5 bushels of corn. At the average yield of 135 bushels an acre this would require 782 million acres or 1.2 million square miles, 1/3 of the land area of the U.S. or TWICE as much agriculture land currently available in the U.S.

But wait, Zubrin’s fantasy gets better. This doesn’t consider the energy inputs to ethanol. You need energy to plant the field, irrigate them, harvest them, distill the ethanol from the corn, transport it to the fuel pumps. And then don’t forget the petroleum based fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides need for corn, all of which require energy from the grid to produce. All together these add up to 1.74 gallons of gasoline (or the equivalent energy) for each gallon of Ethanol produced. Note that there are few options for replacing the petroleum based fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides need for corn, something which makes DuPont smile.

Patzekl et. Al do an excellent job of adding up these energy inputs in their PEER REVIEWED paper unlike Zubrin’s paper.

Tad W. Patzek1, S.-M. Anti1, R. Campos1, K. W. ha1, J. Lee1, B. Li1, J. Padnick1 and S.-A. Yee1(2005). Ethanol From Corn: Clean Renewable Fuel for the Future, or Drain on Our Resources and Pockets?
Environment, Development and Sustainability 3 (September) 319-336.

Located here. http://www.energyjustice.net/ethanol/PatzekEthanolPaper.pdf

Yeti be warned its an techincal article from a peer reviewed journal so it may be hard for you to understand since youa re not an engineer.

Now in addition to the 1.74 gallons of petroleum you must also take into account the environment impacts of corn growing that much corn, namely the air pollution, soil contamination and water runoff from the petroleum based fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides used, both on the fields in their production.

Nor the problem of storing a year’s supply of ethanol (Corn is an annual crop you know). Image the storage of 280 billion gallons of ethanol. And then you are now at the mercy of weather. Or insects. Imagine the impact of another corn blight wiping out half the crop (fuel supply) in a single summer?

Really the ethanol boom will probably self-implode within a year or two as corn prices skyrocket.

Its already happening to Europe “palm oil” biofuel boom which has turned Indonesian into the third largest emitter of CO2 gases

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/02/03/2003347535

Once a dream fuel, palm oil may be an eco-nightmare
Cleaner than fossil fuels like coal, biofuel has generated enthusiasm from governments and energy companies alike, but many have overlooked the complexities of the product

By Elisabeth Rosenthal
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, AMSTERDAM
Saturday, Feb 03, 2007, Page 9

Now the electricity use for the distillation and irrigation will come from the same source that the energy will come from for Hydrogen Transformers, which is why the Yeti Stooge demanding to know where the HT power is coming from is a Red Herring unless you also take the factor into account for biofuel which he seems to give Zubrin a pass on.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/8dtab.pdf

As the DOE notes currently 2/3 comes from carbon sources. However the trend is already away from CO2 producing sources for future generation and towards wind, nuclear and clean coal which has the CO2 scrubbed out.

Also most electricity is produced from domestic sources, Zubrin’s supposed objective in going to his ethanol economy.

Now Hydrogen doesn’t required the infrastructure ethanol does. Zubrin example of trucks hauling it around like gasoline was a joke. Maybe that is how the aerospace industry handles it, but for the auto industry it will be HT producing where its needed, at hydrogen fueling stations, work sites and home. Yes, the oil industry hates this. Not to mention DuPont, ADM, etc.

Inputs to the commercialize HT will be water and electricity. As pointed out already 1/3 of the nation’s electricity is from non-carbon sources and that trend is increasing. More importantly from Zubrin’s stated goal of energy independence nearly 100% is from domestic sources. And its scaleable. We could double the domestic generation of energy from coal, wind and nuclear. Technology exists to scrub CO2 out of new coal plants if needed, the expansion of nuclear plants, wind farms and even bringing solar online will help to keep the mix the same. In the worst case the increased CO2 will just offset part of the savings from taking gasoline cars off the road. And it will still give us energy independence unlike ethanol. And its not impacted by weather cycles or insects or disease like biofuel.

Zubrin mentions something about making menthol from coal, the old coal gas the Germans tried to win WWII with. We won’t discuss the environment impact of that.

But Zubrin and Yeti Stooge don’t want to hear that. Then want to add to the ethanol hype. It will be full laughing in their faces when it implodes when the prices of corn soar beyond what they are now.

Yes, this article is a joke just like Zubrin and his Yeti Stooge and would never make it into a peer reviewed journal.

When and IF he ever gets his garbage into peer reviewed energy journals I will take him serious, but for now he just looks like a fool and stooge for the oil lobby.