Ethanol-Basher Scores 100%...in Idiocy -- Anti-Ethanol Writers Must Go!

August 02, 2022

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by Marc J. Rauch (The Auto Channel) ... The focus of my presentations was to talk about the urgent need to educate consumers and consumer influencers about the benefits of ethanol fuel.

Almost simultaneous with my plane touching down in my home city, I learned about a new ethanol-bashing editorial that proved the importance of my mission in going to South Dakota. This latest anti-ethanol piece of garbage was published on a website called AmericanThinker.com. Titled "ETHANOL MUST GO!" the article was presumably written by a guy named Mac Madden.

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He got everything wrong. Maybe he got his name right, but given the lack of biographical information that's available about him on the Internet, perhaps he got his name wrong, too.

In the article, Mac Madden cites unfounded, absurd, grossly exaggerated information, that has all been rebutted.

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Madden begins by citing a Washington Times article, "Biden Administration Raises Amount Of Ethanol That Must Be Blended With Gas." Right away we can see that the Washington Times piece is red herring nonsense. Why do I say this? Because there was no "must" in Biden's E15 order, there was merely a waiver that E15 could be used in the Summertime, just as Donald Trump had ordered when he was in office.

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Madden then really starts his ethanol bashing with reference to what he says was a "study dating back to 2009" that was written by David Pimentel and Tad Padzek. Actually, the Pimentel-Patzek studies were written a few years earlier than 2009. All that Madden did was to cite a 2009 story published on the "Organic Consumers Association" website that referenced the Pimentel/Patzek study(s). This means he didn't take the time to read and understand what Pimentel and Patzek were saying (lying about), and that he never read the Pimentel-Patzek material for himself.

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The Pimentel and Patzek reports, which were funded by the oil industry, were significantly rebuked almost immediately by a number of entities. One of the leading entities was the Energy and Resources Group at Patzek's own school, UCBerkeley.

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"The assumptions made by the authors (Pimentel and Patzek) were not based on the best data, or were just a little bit too convenient, and had a strong impact on the results," Kammen ( Dan Kammen of the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley) said.”
(Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group is a collaborative community of core faculty, graduate students, hundreds of affiliated faculty and researchers across the campus, and over 600 alumni around the globe. For more information about ERG's rebuke of Pimentel-Patzek visit https://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/01/uc_berkeley_stu.html)

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Another rebuttal study, conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture, was presented in 2007 at UC Berkeley – what a coincidence - by Roger Conway, Office of Energy Policy and New Uses at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

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A third rebuttal study was written by Bruce Dale, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Michigan State University. Professor Dale found that the Pimentel-Patzek methodology is flawed, the measurements of BTU are irrelevant, and the net energy of ethanol is actually higher than gasoline (in other words, EROEI for ethanol is positive, while the EROEI of gasoline is more negative).

In 2005, Professor Bruce Dale participated in a C-SPAN televisied debate against David Pimentel and Tad Patzek. Speaking on Dale's side was John Sheehan, Senior Engineer, National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The debate was supposed to center on the issue of net energy balance. One of the most important points illuminated in the debate was that even if Pimentel-Patzek's finding that corn ethanol production results in a negative net energy equation that gasoline production is far worse and electric energy is horrendously bad compared to both ethanol and gasoline. After watching the video of the debate it's hard to believe that anyone has taken Pimentel-Patzek seriously, unless all other opposing information is kept from the viewer. The entire video can be watched by CLICKING HERE.

Another report critical of Pimentel-Patzek was published in 2006 by Justus Wesseler, an Agricultural Economist and Professor of Agricultural Economics and Rural Policy at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He called the Pimentel-Patzek work "flawed" and "misleading." Download the Wesseler rebuttal at https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v35y2007i2p1414-1416.html.

Also in 2006, the spring edition of "The New Atlantis" (Journal of Technology & Society) had this to say about Pimentel and Patzek’s studies: "Professors Pimentel and Patzek have published several studies on this subject, and these have been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked in the scientific literature, in government reports from the Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture, in congressional testimony, and elsewhere…Reputable scientists have publicly called the work of Pimentel and Patzek “shoddy,” “unconvincing,” and lacking in basic scientific transparency. The most recent dissection of their claims, appearing in the journal Science in January 2006, found that their results depended upon “some input data that are old and unrepresentative of current [ethanol-production] processes, or so poorly documented that their quality cannot be evaluated.” The complete editorial from The New Atlantis can be found by CLICKING HERE.

In October 2009, ethanol guru David Blume traveled to Cornell University to conduct a workshop on Permaculture. While there he paid a call on David Pimentel and was able to video record the conversation. In the more than 20-minute long conversation Pimentel agrees and acknowledges that many of the conclusions that were drawn in earlier studies he conducted are now incorrect, or could be rendered incorrect given advances in farming and ethanol production – advances that already had been proven by the time of this conversation in 2009. You can watch this entire video by CLICKING HERE.

In 2011, Forrest Jehlik, Research Engineer, Argonne National Laboratory responded to what he felt are the 5 most prevalent myths about ethanol. He said that ethanol does not take more energy to make than it yields, “Argonne National Laboratory research has shown that corn ethanol delivers a positive energy balance of 8.8 megajoules per liter. The energy balance from second-generation biofuels using cellulosic sources is up to six times better…”

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Energy concluded a report on LIFECYCLE ENERGY BALANCE by stating "...corn-based ethanol shows a clear benefit over gasoline." You can read this report by CLICKING HERE.

In 2016, The U.S. Department of Agriculture released an updated (2015)report that verified corn ethanol's positive EROEI and stated that additional gains had been made since 2008. This report can be found by CLICKING HERE.

And in 2018, DOE issued another updated positive Energy Balance report. Read this report by CLICKING HERE.

Appropriately enough, Mac Madden closes out the segment of his attack on ethanol fuel his by citing the latest fallacious study vilifying ethanol: the "Tyler Lark" trash that was released this past February. I say this was "appropriate" because the Tyler Lark, et al., study is nothing more than a rehashing of the bogus studies released nearly two decades earlier by Pimentel and Patzek. About 4 weeks after Tyler Lark and his buddies released their study I wrote the third of my challenges to Tyler Lark, et al., in a report titled: SLAM! Shutting the File on the Tyler Lark Anti-Ethanol Study.

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The bottom line is that Mac Madden could have mentioned the rebuttals to the Pimentel-Patzek, and Tyler Lark study. Sure, he could have tried to soft-peddle the rebuttals, so as not to destroy his erroneous attack on ethanol, but he didn't.

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In closing: Gasoline is poison. Gasoline with tetraethyl lead and ethylene bromide is a greater poison. Gasoline with increased levels of benzene, toluene, and xylene is at least as poisonous as leaded gasoline. Ethanol-gasoline blends may be imperfect, but that's because it has gasoline in them. READ MORE

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Better Thoughts for American Thinkers About Ethanol Fuel (The Auto Channel)

Excerpt from The Auto Channel:

In order to help fund the Union efforts in the American Civil War, the government levied stiff taxes on alcohol production. Within two years, the taxes grew to $2.10 per gallon, making the retail price of alcohol at least $2.25 per gallon. This was roughly equivalent to one week's average pay. In addition to using alcohol (ethyl alcohol) for beverage purposes, it was used as a cooking and heating fuel. Consumer's were forced to start using a much less expensive fuel, kerosene, that was refined from petroleum oil. The government only taxed kerosene production at 10 cents per gallon, making kerosene about 25 cents per gallon. This put alcohol fuels at a great competitive disadvantage in the United States. Elsewhere in the world, alcohol remained price competitive and was favored for use in many countries, especially those with no known domestic crude oil resources.

The tax remained on alcohol production for 40 years. During this time the age of the automobile began, and the oil companies developed a new use for their product: gasoline, which was superior to their earlier kerosene fuel for engine purposes. Again, because of cost, vehicle owners used the much cheaper gasoline than ethanol. The exception to this rule in America were race car teams who knew they could get more power and speed from ethanol than gasoline. Their specialized use of the fuel made the cost difference irrelevant.

When the alcohol tax was removed in 1907 it made the price of ethanol fuel about equal to gasoline, and it opened the door to Henry Ford and other automakers to specifically use and recommend ethanol fuel.

As engine design and technology improved, it was found that low octane gasoline was insufficient to power high compression engines. This created a "knocking" or premature ignition problem that robbed vehicles of speed and power, and caused mechanical problems. The gasoline companies could refine a higher octane product, but the projected retail cost was considered way too excessive. The newly affordable ethanol, either alone or in blend with gasoline, tamed the knocking problem.

The need for speed and power in internal combustion engines became critical in the First World War. Ethanol-gasoline blends and costly alternatives were used to fuel the new flying machines, armored tanks, and other military vehicles.

When WWI ended, and America and the world was ready to get back to normal and "roar," the public wanted personal vehicles that could roar with them. They couldn't roar with slow, low compression engines. This created a big problem for oil/gasoline companies, particularly Standard Oil and its offshoot post-monopoly ordered spawns.

John Rockefeller took advantage of the alcohol abolition movement to donate enough money (translated to political bribes) to get the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the Volstead Act) passed. With the enactment of "Prohibition," it created the second great obstacle to alcohol engine fuels in America.

When the General Motors' scientists developed a patent for a gasoline with tetraethyl lead (TEL), Standard Oil and Dupont Chemical partnered with GM to produce, license and sell leaded-gasoline for use in all spark-ignited internal compression engines (gasoline-powered engines).

Although the General Motors' scientists remained in favor of ethanol as the "fuel of the future", it became apparent that their patent on the new formula could be worth billions of dollars in the coming years. With Pierre Dupont at the helm of GM, and as GM's largest shareholder, Dupont realized the move to their patent-protected fuel (away from public domain ethanol) would be a treasure-trove for his family, his GM holdings, and his chemical company.

Over the next 13 years, until Prohibition was repealed, General Motors solidified their position as the world's number one automaker, Dupont solidified their position as the world's number one chemical company, and Standard Oil with its spawn companies solidified their position as the world's number one oil conglomerate. The American Petroleum Institute was founded shortly after by Standard Oil/Rockefeller, and the invention of lies, myths and gross exaggerations against ethanol (and other competition) went into high gear. Sadly, due to greed and political bribery (not good old free market capitalism or product superiority), leaded gasoline became America's preeminent engine fuel.

The problem with tetraethyl lead (TEL) is that it's highly poisonous. Getting TEL on your skin or briefly breathing the fumes can cause mental illness and death. For this reason, TEL became known as "looney gas." Several people working at the Dupont factories that produced TEL did indeed become very ill, and some died. Ethanol, on the other hand, is not poisonous to the touch - people regularly use ethanol (ethyl-alcohol) to rub on their bodies, and moderate inhaling of ethanol fumes will not cause mental illness or death. Natural ethanol is the alcohol used in alcoholic beverages and food ingredients. Eventually, the public and health officials had enough of the damage caused to humans by TEL, and its use was significantly banned in America and other parts of the world, although not entirely. The replacement for TEL was another oil industry choice: Methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE). MTBE was found to also be poisonous to humans, and it passed into drinking water supplies. When MTBE was banned another solution was needed. Only two options existed, the increased use of "aromatics," which consists of poisonous substances including benzene, toluene, and xylene; or ethanol. Ethanol was less expensive, safer, and healthier to use, and so the oil industry chose to use ethanol. The government did not choose ethanol as the oxygenate additive, the oil industry chose to use it. The government merely mandated the use of a renewable fuel, not what that fuel had to consist of."

America could have saved the lives of millions of humans and animals the world over if they banned the use of leaded-gasoline in the 1920s and allowed the use of ethanol fuel, as was favored by top scientists and automakers of the time.

The problem that the oil industry faces now, since the advent of the Renewable Fuel Standard is that they are trying to push the ethanol-genie back in the bottle by using professors and other "credentialed" individuals to lie about ethanol, just as the tobacco industry used unscrupulous doctors to tell the public that tobacco smoking was not harmful.

The recent Tyler Lark, et al., study meant to denigrate E15 and forestall Joe Biden's waiver on its use, is nothing more than a rehashing of the extremely debunked, oil industry-sponsored reports released by David Pimentel and Tad Patzek almost 20 years ago.

All spark-ignited internal combustion engine vehicles on the road today, regardless of age or manufacture can safely, efficiently, and economically use ethanol-gasoline blends that are significantly higher than E10 and E15.

If E10, or E15, or E30, or E85 fuels are not perfect, it is because there is gasoline in the blends. READ MORE