[MarkL]

And speaking of "bio-fuels" and "greenhouse gasses," has anybody ever brought up the very simple fact that ethanol produces less energy than gasoline when used in an internal combustion engine, so your mileage is reduced. Which means you need to burn MORE of it, increasing the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses than you would if you just burned gasoline alone.

Mark

[djxu456]

so what?
I would gladly fill-up every 200 miles, (instead of 300)

to cut the ragheads out of the deal

for the record, because of current pricing, E85 is not a good deal, however, that could change

[Free Vulcan]

Ethanol is dead, or at least dead man walking. Butanol will be the renewable fuel of the future, and it has a energy level much closer to gasoline, plus other positive properties.

With the new advances in battery technology, I think we need to move to battery cars, either by plug-in or fuel to a generator or fuel cell to charge the battery.

[Oberon]

And speaking of "bio-fuels" and "greenhouse gasses," has anybody ever brought up the very simple fact that ethanol produces less energy than gasoline when used in an internal combustion engine, so your mileage is reduced. Which means you need to burn MORE of it, increasing the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses than you would if you just burned gasoline alone.

The C02 that comes out is only the CO2 that the plant source sequestered the previous year. No net gain on the greenhouse gases, then.

[Mr. Lucky]

Actually, the ethanol has less carbon in it than the gasoline (which is why you have to burn more of it), but it burns more efficiently, so the difference in mileage isn’t as great as the difference in carbon (and, of course, the carbon in the ethanol is removed from the atmosphere by the growing corn while the carbon in fossil fuels is released into the atmosphere without any recovery.