I just read a nice, balanced (IMO) article on the viability of bioethanol and thought I’d pass it on.
http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/85/i01/html/8501gov1.html
There is an ulterior motive to my posting the article however, one thing (in relation to another thread) really bothered me:
[i]Does it take more energy to make ethanol than ethanol is worth?
David Pimentel says “yes.” One of the most consistent and oft-quoted ethanol critics, Pimentel is an entomologist and agricultural sciences professor at Cornell University. His criticisms go back to the 1960s, he says, when he was on a National Academy of Sciences panel that was examining the future of U.S. agriculture.
“I raised the issue of bioenergy, and all 11 other members said it wouldn’t be a problem,” he says. “I maintained I was correct and they were wrong.”
He first formally raised his concerns in a paper published in 1973, he says, and has criticized ethanol for fuel ever since. He’s been accused of being an antiethanol zealot and of being funded by the oil industry, which he angrily denies. Decades ago, at the urging of farm-state members of Congress, he was investigated by what was then the General Accounting Office, which, he says, concluded he was correct.
Pimentel is in a minority these days, but he is not alone in his views. He has become a sort of benchmark for ethanol supporters and opponents. Some of his objections are in part ethical-more than 2 billion of the world’s people are malnourished, and corn-based ethanol takes food from them, he argues.[/i]
I don’t agree with Pimentel, but I wouldn’t off-handedly insult his scientific integrity or diminish his work by calling him a shill. Nor would I claim that his data and assertions are bunk and that ethanol is a viable energy source because big oil manipulated some GW data (or big tobacco lied before Congress).