Jello wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:

A prominent Muslim scholar in Saudi Arabia has warned that those using alcohol-based biofuels in their cars could be committing a sin.

What, my car is going to get drunk? Hey, I'm against ethanol because it doesn't work, sure, you can run a car on it, but you're pumping a gallon of gas into the tractor to make the gallon of gas out of the corn. That doesn't make a lot of sense. But this? This is heading into "My imaginary friend can beat up your imaginary friend" territory.

Based upon my limited experience with growing corn, I'm calling bullshit. You plow once, till once, fertilize, and corn grows itself. Grow beans with it and it doesn't leach the soil. You can get two corn crops in each year in Georgia and each stalk every six-twelve inches produces two ears on average. That comes out to an average of about 107 bushels per acre in Georgia on average. Let me tell you, you don't burn much fuel per acre to grow corn. The quantity of fuel burned per ear is miniscule. Each acre of corn on the national average gives you about 7110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol.

I'm growing corn, and you expect me to believe that it takes more than the gasoline equivalent of 328 gallons of ethanol to grow an acre of corn? I call citified bovine hippy bullshit on you, sir. Utter and complete bullshit. The more I learn about farming the more I learn that vegetarian hippies in cities know nothing about anything to do with agriculture, and most of their belief systems are based on false information.

It doesn't take much fuel to grow corn, and I find it hard to believe the overall fuel use is much either, if you distill and burn the ethanol near the corn farm.

I'll refer part of this one here. When all is said and done, and you're right about location mattering, three gallons of gas gets you 5 gallons of ethanol (roughly, maybe). Because you can't pipeline transport it, those numbers go up as you move away from the farms (you have to truck or rail it). While it may work some places, Georgia where you are, or Iowa where corn is king, it starts to get shakier in Minnesota (more of a soy state), and is a bust if you go to New England or the west coast. Now, if they get the cellulose systems working and can effectively break the cobs, you may get somewhere, but that's still in the future.

Try the citified hippy line on someone else. I spent enough time in the corn fields and on the pig farms of Iowa to know better.

RE: Saudi Muslim cleric warns that biofuels could be sinful | csmonitor.com