Here's a post of mine from another forum regarding biofuels and the problems associated with them:
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The problem, as I see it, is going to be water. Corn needs to be irrigated, and it needs a LOT of water to be distilled into ethanol. If we were to switch over to all ethanol, we would be using a whole lot more water than we already do, and we're depleting the aquifers already. The Ogallala Aquifer under Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, etc is going to be gone in 30 years at the current pace.
Quote:
3.One bushel of corn yields about 2.8 gallons of ethanol.
Here's the problem though. In 2006, we grew 11.1 Billion bushels of corn, total. 11.1 X 2.8 = 31 billion gallons of ethanol fuel if we turned 100% of our corn crop into ethanol.
In 2005 we used 385 million US liquid gallons of gasoline each day. 385,000,000 X 365 = 140,525,000,000 That's 140 billion gallons of gasoline.
140 billion gallons minus 31 billion gallons still leaves us with a 109 billion (with a B ) gallon shortfall. Ethanol isn't going to solve our problems. It isn't even going to come close if we plan on eating any of our corn or feeding any of it to our livestock. Lets also remember that with more of our potential food being put into our gas tanks, food prices are going to climb.
[url=http://www.grains.org/page.ww?section=Barley,+Corn+&+Sorghum&name=Corn"]Corn info]Corn info[/url]
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_usage_and_pricing]gas info[/url]
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_usage_and_pricing]Gasoline info[/url]
[url=http://www.grains.org/page.ww?section=Barley,+Corn+&+Sorghum&name=Corn]Corn info[/url]
Edit: Can't get the damn links to work.
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