Do you think we should ban all fosil fuels, and divert to ethanol? Would you keep the source to the Americas?

Answer 1

My answer would be yes...

Consumer demand for ethanol continues to help the industry set production records on a regular basis. In 2005 domestic production soared to 4.2 billion gallons, shattering the previous year's total production of 3.4 billion gallons by more than 20 percent.

Although ethanol has been around for hundreds of years and used in automobiles dating back to Henry Ford’s Model A, it has never generated as much attention as it has during the past decade. And continues to annually set production and consumption records.

There are now more than 94 ethanol plants in production in the United States producing over 4.2 billion gallons of ethanol. Plants in the planning stages or undergoing expansion exceed 30, and could add and additional 1.4 billion gallons of capacity bringing the total to nearly 5.7 billion gallons of capacity. As a result of the record-setting production levels in 2004, the domestic demand for ethanol now utilizes more than 1.5 billion bushels of corn or nearly 12 percent of the domestic corn crop.

Also..

A study completed by Argonne National Laboratory, Fuel-Cycle Fossil Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Fuel Ethanol Produced from U.S. Midwest Corn, found that corn-based ethanol results in 35 to 46 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and 50 to 60 percent reductions in fossil energy use.

Answer 2

If we banned all fossil fuels right now, what is your estimate of the number of people in the U.S. that would freeze to death this winter?

Think for a second!

We have no way to produce enough ethanol to heat our homes, much less do anything else (like power our cars). Given many years of building ethanol factories and converting lots and lots of land (I'm not sure what land we would take or how we would water it) to growing corn or whatever as raw material for the factories, we might be able to make enough ethanol eventually to power a significantly reduced standard of living.

And finally, if your concern is greenhouse gasses, ethanol burning makes about as much CO2 as fossil fuel burning.

There is nothing wrong with taking a stand on any of these energy issues but try to take an informed stand.

Answer 3

The problem is that even if Americans ban fossil fuels and use only ethanol, there still isint enough ethanol produced in the world to support the American population. The main source of ethanol is corn and even tough America is the worlds largest producer of corn, it is up to you what you use if for.

Answer 4

This is very risky without knowing all of the unintended consequences. For example, what type of pollutants would come from ethanol. Aldehydes are very nasty. Why ban fossil fuels? Just regulate and tax them so they last. There is no ideal fuel available yet. Perhaps the best is nuclear. I'm reminded of the story that more people have died in the back seat of Ted Kennedy's car than have died in the American nuclear power program.

Answer 5

We can integrate Ethanol until the use of fossil fuel kind of fade away and we got adapted to the new source of energy. But we cannot just wake up one day and Ban fossil fuel.

By the way, there are source of energy even better then Ethanol.

Have you ever heard of "Hydrogen"? You can use water to get hydrogen.

Answer 6

Not until new fuel systems can replace fossil fuels. Ethanol still takes more power to produce than it provides, AND they still use fossil fuels to get it. Eventually. If it happened now it would throw law-abiding people back into the stone age and the majority would ignore the bans.

Answer 7

What else will we use for heating our homes. Natural gas is cheap and plentiful. Ethanol will cause us to consume a hell of alot of corn, are there any fields left to make that much? Such a ban would put the world out of business.

Answer 8

No, because it is totally impractical. Even if we could convert starchy biomass to ethanol (and this cannot yet be done), we simply can't grow enough biomass to replace fossil fuels. This particularly applies to airplanes, where the lower energy content of ethanol (85,000 BTU/gallon) as opposed to jet fuel (120,000 BTU/gallon) would seriously impact aviation.

Answer 9

we shouldnt ban all fossil fuels..but we definetly should ween our lives off of it. it wont last forever and it definetly doesnt do any good for the environment. Ethanol is actually not the easiest way to go. i believe hydrogen is the best way to go..alot of people are against it because its flammable..but gasoline is also..and its easy to make..an electric current through water....(we dont need to grow corn to make it) makes hydrogen and oxygen..pretty natural stuff..electricity too is pretty good.but they havent mastered it enough.

Answer 10

no... we would have a hard time producing that much ethanol