Buchwald dies and ethanol

Art Buchwald, Washington's columnist, died Wednesday at 81 years of age.

The colonel posted a piece entitled 'Redmond Jones, Ethanol, & The "WRONG" Editorial' on his blog. I'd like to take a moment and comment on the Ethanol statement. Scientists have been saying that even if we used all corn grown in America, the Ethanol output produced would only around 10% of the total fuel used. Politicians have been told that Ethanol is NOT a replacement for gas. It can be added to gas, at up to 85%, but cannot replace it entirely. To use E-85 you need a vehicle specially built to run the mixture. The cost to retrofit an older vehicle to run on E-85 is very costly. If an Ethanol crash happens it will be because of poor government planning, not lack of corn. Instead of backing Butanol development, which CAN replace gasoline enitrely, the government continues to go with Ethanol. Either product can be made with corn, and both cost about the same to make a gallon of finished product. Butanol can also be made with certain grasses or beets. The big thing, I think, is that with Butanol, you can run it 100% in an older vehicle with no modifications, and testing shows no adverse affects on new cars either. The icing on the cake is testing showed that Butanol also increased gas mileage by 15% over Ethanol, it burns hotter than Ethanol, and has lower emissions. Get ready kids about 4 years from now, if not sooner, you'll be hearing alot more about this real replacement fuel. It's just too bad research and development is going to be done in England instead of here. Oh yeah, Ethanol plants can be converted to make Butanol when the time comes.