cept for a diesel jetta.

ok, I'll type this out

Cause Du Jour

Thank you for the thoroughly enjoyable article on E85 in the Jan. '08 issue. You are to be lauded for refraining from the political environmental scaremongering from the far left and the denial from the far right. Biofuels are only the latest cause du jour that our nadless politicians use to appease the enviro-extremists among us and to extract lobbyist funds for their next re-election efforts (I call is criminal bribery). Energy independence from Middle East tyrants comes from only one decisive initiative - drill here at home for our own 20-plus trillion barrels of oil reserves, within and off our shores. Period.

It is well accepted that alcohols as racing fuels are superior to gasoline. So is nitro in any blend, and hydrazine. But none of those fuels is readily available, acceptable, or economically viable as everyday motor fuel. There is only one cheap, available, clean, and powerful liquid at our current state of scientific maturity: gasoline.

I have a flex-fuel vehicle that gets 32 mpg on gas but only 21 mpg on E85. Moreover, it runs poorly until warmed up a bit. Your admission that the Btu content (two-thirds) and volumes (almost double) of alcohol fuels required for the same power output are mostly correct. As for E85 costing $2.80 versus $3.15 for regular gas, that is the result of deep subsidies extracted from all of us taxpayers. Without those subsidies ethanol would retail for around $4.00 per gallon. At two-thirds mpg, that is about $5.25 per gallon. Economical? No to mention that the cost of corn has risen about 350 percent in the last 18 months. Some food prices have doubled, And at this level, plans for new ethanol distilleries are now on hold, with others cutting back production. Today's fat subsidies can't cover the losses at current corn prices. Yet our government still subsidizes sugar, a better biofuel stock.

The by-products of burning gas are known to us all: CO2, CO, water vapor (the most massive greenhouse gas), and NOx. All are currently treated by catalysts to a neraly imperceptible level per mile, reduced to about a hundredth of what my '58 Chevy emitted, and there are about 10 times more cars today. Do the math. Can you say clean air today? Biofuels also produce the same pollutant volumes per pound burned, plus the compound acetaldehyde, a respiratory irritant, a potential carcinogen, and the major contributor to photochemical smog. Here is some research data for you to digest. For the total production cycle to produce a gallon of liquid fuels, it takes 9 to 12 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol, versus 1 to 2 gallons to produce a gallon of gasoline. Ethanol requires 10 to 12 gallons of petroleum crude (or 1 ton of coal) per gallon in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, cultivation, transportation, distribution, and storage controls. Gasoline, on the other hand, comes directly from crude. As for by-products of production, there are 19 gallons of recoverable liquid fuels from a standard 54.5 gallon barrel of crude. We get plastics, fertilizers, pesticides, medicines, and a diverse lubricants spectrum from the remaining 35.5 gallons of petroleum. And the dregs left over we use to pave our roads. In fact, petroleum is nearly 100 percent usable in a wide variety of industries, with little to no waste products. Biofuel production by-products have little value beyond maybe animal feed additives or bulk toxic landfill mass.

Finally, for us humans to supplant all our global liquid fuel needs with biofuels would require the conversion of about 40 percent of the total global arable land area to corn and/or sugar cane, which would not leave enough land to feed humanity. Nor can our planet accept the drawdown of CO2 these plants would absorb in the quantity required. Remember, CO2, is a plant food, not a pollutant that the environmentalists would have you believe. And, at only 320 parts per million in our atmosphere (0.032 percent), the drawdown of this crucial gas would be as, or more, environmentally catastrophic to all life in our closed biosphere as humanity (allegedly) is increasing it too much. This is the "duh factor" of using biofuels as our primary motor fuel.

Only ever had on vehicle that got over 20 MPG and it was a rental. Hell, even a ford freestyle rental we had only got 19 (4Cyl) and our old F-250 diesel got 17-18 on the highway... go figure.

The only time I see real good gas mileage is in real small cars. ones I don't feel safe in

There are sooooooo soooooooo sooooooo many cars that do 20+mpg average. And they don't have to be small, my dad's intrepid does 31mpg with a mixed commute (highway biased). My neon does 26mpg with no downstream o2 sensor and while being driven hard. Our jeep liberty does over 24mpg and is mostly driven in suburbia. My brothers truck does better than 20mpg on the highway.

I know for a fact the viper does not get 20mpg, lol. And on the same note if you don't feel safe driving, do you live in a hostile driving environment (la/ nyc)... I have taken an omni glh down and in manhattan before (I was 19) and I felt safe driving the car. Now a cavalier on the other hand.. lol.

i hate people, especially people who want something for nothing.

i'm going to be purposely vague here, but a guy i know was going to buy the spare tickets i had and i was going to sell them to him for exactly what i paid, lets ignore that they're going for double face value right now. two of my friends offer to go so i sell them two of the cheap ones (i had to scalp a few for about 50% more than face value). i tell the guy this and he gets upset that i didn't offer him ALL the cheap ones and starts to act like i was cheating him. note...all along i promised him no specific number, just that i'd sell him whatever i had left after my friends got theirs. he's talking about how i put him in a bad position selling him half the tickets at face value and half at the increased rate (that i paid)

i told him they weren't for sale to him anymore, he can go on egay or craiglist and pay 2x face value. After he realized i was serious he apologized and said he was wrong. I said i knew that from the beginning but i still wasn't going to sell him the extra tickets, he can have one for face value and even that's more than i have to do.

if these tickets go for as much as all the others that i've seen, i may be buying those maggies :-D

This sucks.

I know my numbers are fucked for this problem, but it's one of those where everything else builds on what you've already done. So all my numbers are going to be off.

Hopefully I'll get some partial credit...

This sucks.

I know my numbers are fucked for this problem, but it's one of those where everything else builds on what you've already done. So all my numbers are going to be off.

Hopefully I'll get some partial credit...

Multiply by zero and add to the answer in the back of the book.

No answers in the back

www.cramster.com is a lifesaver.

Currently watching Death Proof and drinking a beer.

God I hope no one calls me tonight saying shit hit the fan.

I am NOT in the right mood to deal with anything rationally.

Top!

Currently watching Death Proof and drinking a beer.

currently sitting at work, craving a nice jack & coke.

time to go grab another beer and pray for sleep

Currently totally sober and cleaning up my apartment...

Eff the bio fuels. They all just need to come together and get the hydrogen thing done. IF everyone does it, it will be easy and less expensive not to mention the effect it will have on the environment, although I read that water vapor is a dangerous greenhouse gas? How the fudge is that possible?

Too much water vapor, and we'd be back to the kind of climate the dinosaurs lived in

Heck, too much oxygen in the atmosphere and a lot of life on the planet would be screwed...

I think with the current technology we have, biofuels can be done cheaply and would be a transition to whatever's on the horizon. I think corn-derived ethanol is a joke, but Brazil seems to be having good luck with sugar...

I'm a fan of both biodiesel and EV's because the level of technology is relatively low for a home builder, you can do either on the technology we have right now without much difficulty. I'd rather give corporations the finger now, instead of waiting potentially decades for a world-changing technology to finally become mainstream.

Ironically enough from what I read about bio-diesels is that they are still as efficient as diesel. E-85 on the other hand is a joke. My brother's truck uses it and we live in the northeast, and at 70 cents cheaper a gallon but with a 25-40% less gas mileage you don't really gain anything out of using it. On the same note, why can't we have the real smart car. I'm sticking with wanting an LS1 camaro as its capable of 28mpg on the highway, the american smart car gets like 32 mpg... see where I'm going with this. In all honesty there is nothing more frustrating to me than seeing people driving escalades and suburbans and hummers with only one person in the vehicle.

I refuse to drive anything that gets less than 20mpg unless it is carrying one or more passengers. Hell even our commercial van gets 22mpg on the highway @ 70mph and I think driving that unless at work is a waste.

Great thing about diesels is that they'll run on practically anything; peanut oil, veggie oil, corn oil, kerosene...

CHAINSAW FIIIIIIIIGHT

Good morning!

I hate those days that will be so lousy you call into work to get life taken care of. I need a vacation from work to deal with yesterdays day off.

I hope everyone else is well!

I got me a sweet PM in engarish from alisa for love this mornign here.

she wants me lol =P

CHAINSAW FIIIIIIIIGHT

Love 2 things about this

How chill she is except when yelling for him

How the guy with the machine gun shows up last minute out of basically nowhere

J

Best Chainsaw fight i've ever seen. Probably the only on too

I don't think waking up at 5:30 this morning helped me at all. I woke up randomly and decided to eat a bowl of Captain Crunch Berries! Now I'm tired as chit. It'll probably be an early night tonight.

Currently watching Death Proof and drinking a beer.

I got me a sweet PM in engarish from alisa for love this mornign here.

she wants me lol =P

dude, she wants my nuts, bro

192,000!!