Reading this discussion, it's pretty obvious that the issue will never be settled. That's the way it goes with political discussions, they are never settled because they are based on feelings, not fact. And that's the bottom line, ethanol is political, not scientific or economic.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and so far here in the USA the right to express it. Equal right to expression, however, does not lend equal validity to ideas expressed.
When the overwhelming scientific and economic evidence supports a given premise then we have to ask ourselves... Who is out of step, little Johnny or the Army.
I truly wish that corn to ethanol was saving the planet, was really GREEN, and was the best deal available since man began to walk upright. However I have no horse in the race. I have very little income from the oil industry (about a hundred $ a year), no income from raising corn, and no large direct effect on my income due to the current operations of the ethanol cabal.
We do suffer indirect effects due to the ethanol cabal. We pay for the myth through taxes. The planet (our only currently viable home) suffers more than if truly green processes (cellulosic butanol or ...) were funded such that the processes were commercialized and brought on-line.
I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist but it is fairly obvious that there is a de facto conspiracy in place and operating in corn to ethanol. It does not serve the best interests of the planet or its inhabitants.
Being anti-ethanol does not make one a Ludite, but on the contrary, if you want to replace corn to ethanol with a better more Earth friendly process that places you on the leading edge of change and modernization and not a reasonable target for comparisons to those of the whale oil persuasion decrying the new fangled petroleum based lamp oils. Quite the reverse is the actual case.
Pat
