Great Response

This is the kind of response that every ethanol supporter out there should be writing.

It appears in “The Kansan.com” and was written by Dana Shifflett of Newton, who is apparently a wheat grower. I did not see the original editorial, but this writer makes excellent, well constructed points. Here are just a few – you need to read the whole thing and memorize it to fight back with some good facts.

Ethanol and the cost of food: Ethanol has increased the value of the crops we grow, but the cost of our crops is a very small portion — 4 percent to 6 percent, I believe, of the price you pay for food.

The majority of your money goes to the manufacturers and marketers. Rising energy costs mean higher transportation and manufacturing costs, and I believe that accounts for most of our recent food and consumer goods price hikes.

For perspective: In the summer of ‘99, I paid 68.9 cents for a gallon of gas at the Sam’s Club in west Wichita, and my wheat sold for $2.25 a bushel. Today, gas is roughly $2.80 — or four times as much — and the diesel that fuels our trucks, locomotives and barges is up a similar percentage. Wheat, at $6.55, is 2.9 times as much.

I don’t grow corn, but I think it’s up even less.

Fuel mileage: The writer claims E10 will cut your mileage by 7 percent to 8 percent. That is not my experience.

I keep logbooks for my vehicles, and I figure gas mileage and, since 1981, I’ve consistently found a 3 percent mileage improvement with E10 even though it has only 96.7 percent as much energy as straight gasoline.

I think I know why, but rather than make a long story longer, I’ll let those of you with a background in physics or mechanics consider the effect of ethanol’s higher latent heat of evaporation on an engine’s intake charge and compression stroke.

Read it all.

While you’re at it, check out this article from the New York Times and make sure to read all the comments. The article is very negative towards ethanol, but the comments are running about 50-50, although there is a massive amount of misinformation on both sides. This is the kind of article that ethanol supporters need to comment on.