#338 Korn Oil

Ethanol is the gasoline-like substance they make from corn. Now personally, having been fueled by corn for decades, I think this is a great idea. If I can get around on a diet of corn oil French fries, Sugar Pops and Doritos I don’t know why my car shouldn’t have the same privilege, and if the fuel in question is actually more of a corn alcohol, well hell, it was good enough for my moonshining ancestors why not me? The TV show My Mother the Car was an allegorically accurate comment on American culture. It was the personal automobile the really fueled the urbanization of America. And the interstate highway system government program, started by a republican I might add, that was the biggest federal tax subsidy and boon to both private enterprise and the American worker that ever lived. Building the nations highways helped lift America out of the normal postwar economic doldrums that had plunged us into depression after World War One.
In any event a similar expenditure needs to be expended now if we are to lose our addiction to foreign oil. But it won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap. But then again neither is methadone. Critics say that ethanol corn fuel is no good because it costs 29% more energy to make than you get out of it. In other words transporting it, refining it, building refineries, and setting up a distribution infrastructure, uses 29% more energy than you get out of it. What the gas lobby critics fail to mention is that gasoline from petroleum cost 23% more energy to produce than you get out of it. And Corn fuel has some hidden energy savings if you figure in the corn mash that’s left over after the first squeezings. It’s used for cattle feed and other industrial farming benefits. A bigger difference between corn and oil is that when you burn ordinary oil you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. You do when you burn corn oil too but its balanced out because when you grow corn you take tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Net net, there’s no extra carbo-loading to fatten up the green house effect. What? An energy resource that doesn’t add to global warming? Why if I was a smart government I’d start throwing some money behind this. A whole new distribution infrastructure has to be built. Oil pipelines can’t transport ethanol. Ethanol is ruined when it comes into contact with oil. Wasn’t there a big federal subsidy for certain oil pipelines a while back. I could be mistaken. In Brazil they’ve totally weaned themselves from foreign oil. All of their cars run on flex fuel which is 85% ethanol. And here’s the really ironic thing. Flex fuel engines were modeled after the first of their breed—the engine from the Ford Model T. Seems Ford originally designed his cars to run on ethanol. Oh Henry.
America, ya gotta love it.