ethanol is not an alternative fuel

please, just stop promoting ethanol derived from plant material as an alternative fuel to fossil fuels derived from petroleum, natural gas, or coal. the price of food is skyrocketing all over the world because of the booming ethanol fuel industry. the main food source for animals slaughtered to make meat is corn. soft drinks and many other foods are full of high fructose corn syrup. tortilla chips and corn chips are nothing but corn and salt. many breakfast cereals contain lots of corn, such as corn flakes, and many foods use corn oil. and corn is now being massively diverted to make ethanol to fuel cars as a replacement for gasoline. another major crop being diverted for this use is sugar cane. while sugar cane is not the most popular type of sugar used in manufactured food in the united states (since we have to import sugar cane but we produce enough corn to export plenty of it and make plenty of high fructose corn syrup), sugar cane is widely used around the rest of the world, and in the united states, people usually use sugar cane as a sweetener when cooking homemade foods. now, the amount of energy required to produce a gallon of ethanol out of corn is a lot more than what it takes to make a gallon of gasoline out of crude oil. corn, sugar cane, or any other crop has to be planted and harvested, and likewise, people have to search the planet for subterranean oil deposits, drill for oil, build pipelines, build refineries, and all that good stuff. but anyway, modern agriculture is done in a massive, mechanized way, using lots of machines and chemicals. there are fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and the crops themselves are genetically modified so the seeds cost more and you have to buy them from the monsanto corporation. monsanto dominates the corn market using its “roundup ready” system, where they sell genetically modified corn kernels to plant, along with their herbicide called roundup that kills all other plant life. they basically have a monopoly on genetically modified corn, which drives up the price. and of course, since it is not humans or animals but machines that do the work in large mechanized farms, the giant machines need plenty of fuel, which is either gasoline or electricity that is probably made from burning coal. and a huge amount of potable freshwater is also used in the irrigation systems for growing crops, leaving a lot less water for actual citizens to drink and use for other things such as showering or washing their hands or cooking with. then, of course, we have the process to convert corn into ethanol, after it is harvested, which uses up a lot more energy. and in the end, the result is that the ethanol fuel has less energy in it than the amount of energy it took to make the fuel in the first place. in other words, making ethanol as a so-called “alternative fuel” just makes the energy crisis worse, just makes gasoline and electricity cost more, and drives up the prices of food worldwide, causing many people in third-world countries to starve to death unless they get emergency food aid. now farmers in iowa, the state that holds the first primary or caucus in every united states presidential election, are big fans of making ethanol from corn as an alternative fuel, so all the candidates in both major political parties had to pander to the voters of iowa and agree with them about how turning corn into ethanol to be fuel for cars is an awesome idea. why is this dangerous? well, this pro-ethanol policy is making people all over the world starve to death, and there are riots over skyrocketing food prices, and people have been killed in these riots recently. the european union, which bans genetically modified food, does not use much high fructose corn syrup, because of the fact that most corn in the world is now genetically modified. instead, they use sugar cane. but unfortunately, that is another crop being converted into ethanol. and you know what else is dangerous about ethanol? ethanol is a type of alcohol. more specifically, ethanol is the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, that people drink to get drunk. think of all the people killed by drunk driving. there are many other chemicals classified as alcohols, most of which are deadly poison, such as methanol. alcohols can be identified because their chemical names end with the suffix -ol. anyway, widespread availability of ethanol as fuel could lead some people to start drinking pure ethanol as a cheaper alternative to beer, wine, or hard liquor. they would mostly either die from alcohol poisoning or kill people in drunk driving accidents. that is why, instead of using pure ethanol as fuel, the companies and the government have decided to use “e-85 ethanol”, which is 85% ethanol and 15% petroleum-derived gasoline. this would prevent people from drinking it to get drunk, because it would be deadly poison, since gasoline is deadly poison. you know, scientists who want to do experiments with ethanol almost always get ethanol that is mixed with another chemical that induces vomiting if you try to drink it (i think syrup of ipecac or something like that). you have to have a special top-level clearance as a super-scientist to be able to order 100% pure ethanol to use in experiments. i learned about that in chemistry class in college. anyway, ethanol used to be illegal in the united states, during prohibition, and we actually banned it via a constitutional amendment. this was repealed in the 1930s, and in following decades, other drugs were made illegal instead, but alcohol was kept legal. anyway, my point is, producing ethanol from crops uses up more fossil fuels than the amount of fossil fuels needed to make an equal amount of regular gasoline. it is a very long, expensive process, involving genetically modified crops, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, and machinery that plants and harvests the crops as well as irrigating them and spraying them with chemicals. and guess what? these chemicals all cause pollution in the local ecosystems surrounding the farms, ending up in the water supply, where they cause health problems for all sorts of life forms, from plants and animals to people like us. when you are drilling for oil, you are actually draining chemicals out of the ground, not putting them in. it is actually better for the environment, as long as there is not an oil spill or a leak in an oil pipeline. but because of peak oil, we really do need to pursue alternative sources of energy: wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, and of course nuclear. nuclear is the hardest of these energy sources to harness, but there is tremendous power contained within the nucleus of every atom, and this power can be unleashed with a nuclear power plant (or a nuclear bomb). of course, i am advocating nuclear power plants, not nuclear bombs. if we are able to build submarines with miniature nuclear power plants inside them, why can’t we use nuclear energy as a substitute for our current sources of electricity? and why can’t we have high-efficiency electric cars that run on electricity stored in batteries that get charged up by plugging them into any standard electrical outlet? the politicians are the ones blocking nuclear power and forcing ethanol as a so-called alternative fuel, because farmers want to make more money off selling crops to make ethanol, and nobody likes a nuclear power plant or nuclear waste in their backyard. people are afraid because of chernobyl and three mile island. well, why not look at it positively? if people are exposed to nuclear waste and somehow survive, they might evolve into a race of superior mutants. of course, radiation poisoning is more likely, but isn’t the idea of superior mutants a compelling one? imagine speeding up darwinian evolution through the introduction of mutations into many different species, creating higher amounts of biodiversity. mutants could be good for the environment, by increasing biodiversity and creating new species, reversing the trend of species dying out. of course all this talk about mutants is just silly talk, and exposure to radiation is very bad. i am just joking around about that. but seriously, if we had nuclear power plants that relied on nuclear fusion instead of nuclear fission, we could solve all our energy problems. the sun and most other stars generate their energy through nuclear fusion. where do you think sunlight comes from? our planet would have a surface too cold for life to survive if our sun were not engaged in massive amounts of nuclear fusion. meanwhile, we have only been able to make fission power plants, although we have made fusion nuclear bombs, namely hydrogen bombs also known as thermonuclear bombs. why doesn’t anyone try to use nuclear fusion as an electrical power source, rather than as a way to make a big explosion and kill lots of people? it is probably not that much harder, but the reason we came up with a fusion bomb before fusion power plants is that we are a warlike, militaristic species intent on killing each other. and the selfishness of our farmers in making ethanol instead of food is now causing starvation all around the world. this is really a sorry state of affairs. perhaps someday, after a nuclear war, a race of superior mutants will arise, and they will be a peaceful people, and will no longer have bloodlust and the desire to kill imprinted inside their dna. of course, that is just science fiction, and in reality, anyone exposed to the radiation from a nuclear war will die from it, not mutate into some superior being. but perhaps companies like monsanto that make genetically modified plant seeds are onto something, and maybe they could start genetically modifying animals and eventually move up to genetically engineering human beings. imagine a world where people are genetically engineered not to have any disease, where they can easily live for over a hundred years, all thanks to the fact that they are the products of genetic engineering. we have already been genetically engineering one species of animal for thousands of years: dogs, which originally descended from wolves. all the breeds of dogs are the result of selective breeding by their human masters over thousands of years, a rather low-tech and inefficient form of genetic engineering compared to the methods available today and used by companies such as monsanto. maybe people could be genetically engineered to have really good legs and feet and be able to walk/run/bicycle wherever they need to go, and not need cars anymore. maybe our energy crisis could be solved by hamsters running around in hamster wheels that are hooked up to electric generators. we could have hamster-powered cars! of course, we would need to genetically modify hamsters, perhaps giving them metabolisms as fast as hummingbirds so they run much faster. who knows? but ethanol is not a good idea. it has been scientifically proven to be a waste of energy to make ethanol for use as an alternative fuel. and perhaps the best energy source might be solar. if we put some solar panels really close to the sun, they would take in a lot more sunlight. so we could put them on the planet mercury, for instance. and then we would have really really long wires that would take the electricity from mercury back to earth. another energy source in our solar system is saturn’s moon titan, which has an atmosphere made out of the same hydrocarbons found in gasoline. on saturn’s moon titan, there are rivers and oceans of petroleum. it is a texas oilman’s heaven! we could build an extremely long oil pipeline to saturn’s moon titan at the same time as building solar panels on the planet mercury and connecting them to earth with really long wires. of course, in the short term, we will have to find energy sources here on the planet earth, since it is kind of hard to get to those other planets or their moons without using up a lot of energy. radioactive waste can actually be used as a power source, since it constantly emits energy, which can be used to power an electric generator. nasa has actually sent several space probes into the outer solar system, all of them relying on radioactive waste as a power source. the probes they sent to the inner solar system have almost all been solar-powered, and solar power seems to be a viable energy source all the way out to mars, as the mars rovers spirit and opportunity have shown. and maybe someday we will actually find an efficient way to make ethanol that does not use up more energy than you get out of it. but for now, ethanol is a very bad idea for using as an alternative source of energy. if we stopped using airplanes, buses, and 18-wheel trucks, and went back to using railroad trains for everything, that would save huge amounts of energy. and we could replace cars with horse-drawn carriages. for travel between continents, we could use steamboats. maybe retro is the way to go. did you know the united states still has a prohibition party, whose platform includes bringing back the prohibition of alcohol? maybe you should vote for them in november... if they even have a candidate. who cares? it’s not like your vote matters. in a country of over 300 million people, each individual is utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, unless they are wealthy, famous, and/or powerful. now if you like alcohol, maybe you could get a job at one of the new ethanol plants, and start embezzling ethanol and smuggling it away from work everyday, perhaps by hiding it in a keg under your shirt and pretending to be pregnant. if you are male, this would also require pretending to be female and dressing in drag, and playing the part convincingly. i highly recommend that everyone do this. then, after you smuggle the alcohol out of the ethanol plant, you can mix some of it into other beverages, attend political fundraisers/rallies, get the candidates drunk, have them spill all their dirtiest secrets to you, and then blackmail them into opposing ethanol and supporting nuclear power. then you will get laid off from your job at the ethanol plant after it closes, and you can get hired at a new nuclear power plant. and then, you can accidentally get exposed to some nuclear waste, and become a mutant with superpowers, a superhero who can defend the planet from threats of all kinds. your co-workers at the nuclear power plant can also get exposed to radiation, mutate, become superheroes, and then join you in an exclusive club of superheroes dedicated to protecting the innocent citizens of planet earth. sure, a few of you might decide to become supervillains instead of superheroes, but at least then you will be able to find an archnemesis to fight, and then have your exploits printed in comic books for little kids to read. then these kids would get inspired by the comic books and try to imitate you, and discover that they have magical powers, like harry potter. and soon the entire world would be full of chaos, as supernatural activity spreads all across the globe, and all of science is proven false. eventually mathematicians would discover the source of the problem: 1 + 1 = 3. apparently your superhero activities fighting supervillains would eventually result in a dimensional vortex sucking the entire galaxy into a parallel universe where the laws of physics, mathematics, and even logic are completely different, thus making magic not only possible but a reality of everyday life. and then instead of having horse-drawn carriages, people would have unicorn-drawn carriages. and the sky would be indigo instead of blue. and a few other things would be different as well. that is what happens when you are teleported into a bizarro parallel universe. or, instead of pursuing that completely insane course of action, we could just continue to make crops into ethanol and avoid making nuclear power plants, and just let half the world starve to death. the starvation would eliminate the problem of overpopulation. then we could just use up all the fossil fuels as fast as possible without developing any alternatives. eventually, we would have complete economic collapse, and resort to cannibalism to survive. all nation-states would cease to exist, and we would return to feudalism or perhaps become hunter-gatherer societies again. we would go back to living in caves, or living in trees in the jungle, or we might develop gills and go back to the ocean. of course, once all our modern technology is gone, we would be defenseless against the space aliens from planet x that would invade earth and conquer us all. but this is all wild speculation. in reality, none of these scenarios has any chance of happening. everything will be fine if we just stay the course and continue the policies of the bush administration. wow... why is it that when i start out trying to write something serious, it ends up turning into crazy science fiction? there is seriously something wrong with me. i guess i have a problem being serious for more than just a little while, and always end up being silly. maybe that is good though. i need some sleep. i am going to bed now. and that is actually true. i sure am a silly person though! a silly sleep-deprived person who can’t concentrate enough to stay serious when i am trying to write something serious, who ends up writing a bunch of nonsense. i really need to get some sleep now. good night. or day. or whatever it is in your time zone when you are reading this.