You could, hypothetically, use petroleum to harvest corn, then turn the corn to alcohol and use the alcohol to harvest the next batch of corn...so, logically, the idea of corn being used as a biofuel is not, in and of itself, undoable. We actually use the corn to make a petro-fuel/alcohol mix (often E-85), so as long as you're using less energy to harvest/process the corn than you get from the corn, it's a net gain
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1. Yeah, I read that too and I don't remember the numbers either. But it's something like 3 times as much corn-ahol to go as far as gasoline would take you? I'm all for things that will reduce our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels. It just amused me to learn that in all the hype about ethanol, no one tells you that you're still using a phenomenal amount of oil just to grow the stuff. So it's not the glorious Answer To Everything that some people want you to believe
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It's not the answer to everything, but that's not the reason why. If we ran out of petro tomorrow, we could use ethanol to make ethanol, and come out ahead...it's just that we can't grow enough of it meet current demand
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