When was the last time you did this?

Rocky

I hope you don't think I'm picking on you. I just want to be sure and educate people from both angles. They can make their own decision from there. That's why this country is so great ... we can all make our own choices.

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I have a friend that bought a 'Flex-Fuel' Ford Explorer and they drive from Central MO to Central IA every month to pick up their granddaughter for a long weekend...

He did a comparison using the same route and driving speed between the two points and found that with "Regular Unleaded (10% Ethanol) he was getting 21 mpg....When he switched to "E-85" fuel, his mileage dropped to 17 mpg...By the time he averaged his costs between the two, he was breaking even from a money standpoint...

From what I've been told, if you run E-85 long enough in the standard engine available today, you will eventually eat up the seals and gaskets in the engine, requiring a complete tear down and rebuild...Don't know for sure if that is true, but don't want to take that kind of chance..

One of the other problems with E-85 is that it supposedly can't be distributed through the pipeline system and must be trucked to the distribution points...How does this benefit those people that drive in the busy metropolitan areas on the East and West coasts???

I'm not an "Anti" when it comes to protecting our environment, but like Rocky, the math just doesn't match up to the theoretically anticipated results...And the cost of production of Corn Ethanol has an adverse effect on the rest of the economy...Even the Mexicans are complaining about the cost of producing Tortillas now...
 
You are missing the point entirely... My point above is, if we put every tillable acre, in the world, into Ethanol production, I don't care what you grow on it, be it corn, sugar cane, sugar beets, switch grass, whatever... we are 5.94 Billion acres short of tillable acreage to produce enough ethanol. We only have enough land to grow 1/3 of our annual fuel needs, if we use EVERY TILLABLE ACRE.

AND, that leaves no ground; zero, zip, nada... to grow food on Ricky.
 
Originally Posted By: Ricky BobbyRocky

I hope you don't think I'm picking on you. I just want to be sure and educate people from both angles. They can make their own decision from there. That's why this country is so great ... we can all make our own choices.

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I agree with you wholeheartedly there Ricky, but the government makes out ethanol to be "the answer" and it's not. Furthermore they subsize ethanol production using corn, and it is the least feasible crop used to make ethanol from. Sugar beets, sugar cane, switch grass, even algae and ground up forest weeds, all have better yields than corn does. The slight advantage in corn is that the waste product from the corn still has excellent feed value and can be used to feed livestock. Whereas that is iffy on the parts of the alternatives, so they can claim that the acreage used to produce the ethanol, is not lost entirely for food production.

For the record... Switch grass is 90% more effective than corn, as an ethanol fuel base. Do some reasearch on that Ricky.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2008/2008-01-08-091.html
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=ethanol%20production%20from%20switchgrass

I'm all for promoting a cleaner environment, but if we're goin to promote it, let's get away from the chemical company lobbying efforts in DC, (and yes they are very much involved, if you don't know how and where they come into play just ask), and get back to the reality of producing ethanol effectively.
 
All my yard implements developed the "corn cough" as I call it when most all the local stations switched to the new standard. There are a couple of stations locally that boast no ethanol, but they are not always convenient to me and cost more. The farmer I varmint hunt on hated the whole idea. He switched his beef cattle to an all grass program due to the increased price for seed corn. Said the whole E-85 B.S. was driving it up where he couldn't afford to grow corn and feed it to his cattle because all the eco-friendlies were turning it into less efficient fuel. I'd say making whiskey out of the corn would be a better use for the surplus than E-85. Both will give you the hiccups in one form or another, but the whiskey hiccups are more tolerable to me
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2011 saw an astronomical amount of water down the Mississippi River, as we all know. Since the dead zone referred therein is a result of high nitrate levels in Mississippi River effluent into the Gulf of Mexico, it is logical to assume that RECORD AMOUNTS of water down the river, for much of the summer in fact, had a substantial impact on the dead zone. Especially since the reservoirs on the Missouri were all at RECORD LEVELS as well, and there were record releases through late August. For the ethanol group to imply they had anything whatsoever to do with that is about like Barack Obama saying he has lived up to all of his 2008 campaign promises!
 


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