AS wonders in An Ethanol Breakthrough?
Ethanol is a stopgap, at best, IMHO. Hydrogen fuel cells ... yum. Energy efficient cars and homes and office buildings - yippee!
But ethanol has it's own horrible Hubbard's peak (you won't hear this in Iowa):
According to a major study just completed [a long time ago, now] by Camp Dresser & McKee, a Boston engineering firm, 5.1 million acres of irrigated land (an area the size of Massachusetts) in six Great Plains states will dry up by the year 2020. If current trends continue, Kansas will lose 1.6 million irrigated acres, Texas 1.2 million, Colorado 260,000, New Mexico 224,000, Oklahoma 330,000. Yet this drastic estimate, declares Herbert Grubb of the Texas department of water resources, is "20% too optimistic."
Everyone has their own estimates, but you get the picture. Finite oil resources swapped for finite water resources. Where's the joy in that?
