[NMLUG] Why so many Linux distros?

[jfleck at inkstain.net (John Fleck)]

On 10/9/06, havoc <havoc@harrisdev.com> wrote:
>
> Another interesting feature of the huge ethanol industry is that ethanol
> product results in a net increase in emissions. It takes about 1.3
> gallons of petroleum fuels to produce one gallon of ethanol, and
> billions of taxpayer dollars. (http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8260)
>

There has been a great deal of back-and-forth in the scientific
literature on the energy in/energy out question for ethanol, with some
studies (especially those by Pimentel and Patzek, such as the one in
the ENN link you cite) showing that it takes more fossil fuels to make
ethanol than you get out in energy. Other studies have disagreed. Alex
Farrel at Berkely tried to pull them all together, compare the
methodologies, and come up with an apples to apples analysis. His
study, published in Science in January
(http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5760/506),
concluded that you do get more energy out than you put in.

No argument on the "billions of taxpayer dollars", though. :-)

But the bigger question with ethanol, and with biofuels in general, is
the staggering amount of acreage required to actually produce enough
biomass to offset a significant amount of fossil fuels. To the extent
that you can do it with waste materials left over from other
agricultural processes, it's great, but it only makes a small dent in
the problem. A dent worth making, to be sure. But to meet our
transportation fuel needs with biofuels in 2050 would require
conversion of half of all U.S. cropland to fuel production instead of
fuel, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense
Council (a biofuel supporter).

This is the underlying problem with all of the alternatives under
discussion. Our total consumption of gasoline is simply staggering,
which makes any alternative difficult to scale up.