There’s a new fractured history lesson on ethanol hitting the blogs.
“Stop the Ethanol Scam,” Roanoke Times March 20, 2011 is one. “Ethanol a Massive Waste” is another one. Both fail to take basic historical facts into account.
They say that the Nazis commandeered “the entire European potato crop in 1944 and turn(ed) it into ethanol to fuel V2 rockets.” So people starved in order to feed the German rocket program. The historical lesson, they say, is that we are “driving down much the same road with the current ethanol program in America.”
In the first place, when we think about the lessons of history, we ought to actually think.
Could the entire European potato crop have been turned into V2 rocket fuel? In fact, V2 rockets used several fuels, including about 900 gallons of ethanol each. The 3,000 rockets in the V2 program would have consumed about 2.7 million gallons overall, made from about 140,000 tons of potatoes. This was only a tiny fraction of the 40 million tons of potatoes harvested in Germany in 1944, which was a pretty bad year for potatoes, among many other things.
So the basic claim doesn’t make any sense at all.
More importantly, there are other lessons from the World War II era that illustrate a need to keep alternative sources of energy and strategic materials under domestic control.
For instance, in 1942, then-Senator Harry Truman’s investigating committee found that the US oil industry had been working with Germany’s I.G. Farben to deliberately block the development of synthetic rubber from petroleum.
The government reacted by demanding that the oil industry replace its leadership. While the oil industry floundered, heroic American farmers patched together an ethanol industry that provided the basic feedstock for non-petroleum rubber. By D-Day, three quarters of the tires on Allied jeeps and aircraft originally came from Midwestern corn fields. If we had waited for the oil industry, the liberation of Europe could have taken another year or more.
It’s true that the current corn ethanol fuel industry has problems. Many of the criticisms are appropriate and well meant. Others are not, and there isn’t space here to go into all of the debate here.
The most important point is that an emerging US biofuels industry is currently in the process of shifting away from corn to non-food sources like cellulose.
Before we close down this US-based biofuels industry, we need to consider the facts and think about the national interest. What’s the historical record? Just what has the modern oil industry done to liberate America from dependence on the world’s least stable sources of energy? Anything?
The emerging US biofuels industry will be sorely needed when another series of oil shocks hit home. At that moment, we will be reminded once again that those who don’t learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
If we are wise enough, we can remember those lessons now, while there is still time.
Bill Kovarik
I’M A MECHANIC. THIS FUEL HASN’T BEEN REFINED TO THE POINT THAT IT’S NOT COSTING THE PUBLIC IN DAMAGED ENGINES, CARBORATORS, INJECTORS AND LORD KNOWS WHAT ELCE. THE STUFF TURNS INTO A JELL LIKE MARMALAID AND CRATES WATER IN THE FUEL IF YOU DON’T KEEP A FULL TANK AND USE ADDITIVES THAT INCREASES THE COST OF FUEL OVER AND ABOVE THE HIGH PRICE AT THE PUMP. WHY ARN’T THE ADDITIVES PUT IN THE FUEL BEFORE ITS PUMPED? WHY CAN’T IT BE REFINED TO A POINT OF NOT CREATING THESE PROBLEMS?
PROFIT! LET THE PUBLIC SUFFER AND STAY IGNORANT BY NOT KNOWING HOW TO PREVENT THESE PROBLEMS. MOST PEOPLE I RUN INTO DAILY DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO USE ADDITIVES ON THE MARKET TO PROTECT THEIR VEHICLES. NOW THEY WANT TO INCREASE IT TO 15%.
WHAT IDIOTS AND GULLIBLE PEOPLE WE HAVE IN THIS WORLD.
Thanks for your comments. I wonder if your local dealers are putting in the required additives. The jelly like substances usually occur when gasoline gets old. Gasoline is supposed to have detergents (with or without ethanol) so that consumers dont have to use them. That’s especially important with fuel injection engines. Ethanol at 10 or 15 percent doesnt cause gasoline to jell — the gasoline itself is doing that. There are other mechanical problems associated with ethanol blends, such as elastomer swelling, but the auto companies say they have been solved. I’m guessing you don’t think so.
That “gell”, usually only ocurrs in carburettors made of zinc, I know, I’ve seen it. I’ve kept alcohol fuel in a steel fuel container for over a year without any corrosion at all, with only a small amount of redline additive. Compatibility issues are often like TV owners use to complain about radio amatuers transmitting next door casuing intereference, human nature means that the low standard manufactured cause of my equipment failure, is the *fault* of *your* product or activity! Aromatics introduced in gasoline at one stage used to cause quite a few fuel line problems in older cars, yet we still have gas, and now it’s all forgotten.
When fuel security becomes a crisis, who will be demanding bio-fuel to put into their cars, right now!?