Originally Posted By: kschachn
Also note that a lot of the oil is being moved by train, tell me again how this is safer than a pipeline?
My city has a refinery. I'm aware of the use of trains in that.
I never said it was safer. As it stands now, we move what we have with what we got, I guess.
Originally Posted By: turtlevette
I think ethanol proponents or even a reasonable neutral person stay away from these discussions because of the all out attack dog that come out thinking they'll lose their job as a roughneck or their oil stock will go down. Their anti ethanol arguments are not the most intelligent.
There certainly are valid arguments against ethanol. But there are valid arguments against gasoline, cars, eating meat, whatever you can imagine. In the end, flexibility is the answer. Ethanol isn't useless from an energy perspective. Neither is gasoline, natural gas, propane, the wind, the sun, coal, and nuclear power. But we're certainly not in the position to place all our eggs in one basket.
Even perfectly clean electricity with plenty of capacity that might make electric cars attractive has its issues. The distribution network goes down, and everything goes down with it. One big drought clobbers ethanol production for a season. Transportation problems cause issues with petroleum distribution.