A new study by scientists from the University of Minnesota is the latest research to attack corn ethanol. Although I have serious problems with the philosophical approach of the researchers, as shown in my note to them which I have copied below, they conclude that "the combined climate-change and health costs are $469 million for gasoline (and) $472–952 million for corn ethanol depending on biorefinery heat source (natural gas, corn stover, or coal) and technology..."

(They continue on to say that cellulosic ethanol (such as made in Brazil from sugar cane) is far superior to either.)

It's good to see another nail in the coffin of corn ethanol (though I suspect that a better analogy is a zombie that just won't die no matter what we do to it). But so much of the study is pathetic fawning at the altar of the cult of global warming that I felt compelled to send the lead authors the following note:

Gentlemen,

While I am pleased to see further evidence that corn ethanol as an energy source is little more than a hoax designed to increase subsidy payments to farmers, I have serious questions and concerns about your study:

Why do you seem to uncritically accept the idea that CO2 is a pollutant, when all recent data I've seen show that atmospheric CO2 concentrations lag, don't lead, temperature changes? In other words, much larger forces change the climate and those changes cause the release of more or less CO2 into the atmosphere.

Second, how can scientists even mention the "social cost of carbon" without laughing out loud?

Third, why would you use data from essentially rigged and highly flawed markets (and I use "market" loosely in this case) to attach a value to CO2 and then try to justify that tactic with references to sky-is-falling items like sea level rise, increased storm intensity, and crop losses, NONE OF WHICH HAS HAPPENED even during the years when the temperature was slightly rising?

Fourth, did you not consider that the anthropogenic "global warming" models based on human-caused emissions of CO2 do not leave any room for the possibility of the planet cooling...which it has done for a decade now? In other words, those models are fatally flawed and worthless, and research based on presuming them to be true is by extension flawed.

I wish just once a researcher would come out and say "We don't really believe this global warming garbage, but there's so much grant money available from environmentalist and anti-capitalist interest groups that we've written this anyway."

Again, I'm glad to see you show, as others have before, that corn ethanol is actually worse than gasoline for a variety of reasons. But your obvious membership in the cult of Algore nevertheless leaves me shaking my head in dismay. I remember when scientific research used to be much more free of political pandering and much more interested in getting the right answer rather than being part of a "consensus".

Sincerely,

Ross Kaminsky
Nederland, Colorado