Idiots, Ethanol and Pushy Politics

You probably figured that this would happen. Now that the government owns the auto manufacturers they want to decide what kind of car we drive.

Now that the federal government has gained control over the nation's Auto Industry, one U.S. senator contends, it's time to make some changes in the kinds of cars Americans drive and the kinds of fuel they use.

According to a Des Moines Register report, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, wants Congress to use "climate change" legislation to mandate that auto manufacturers fit all new cars to run on a blend of 85 percent ethanol.
"We own the automobile companies," Harkin said earlier this week. "Why not? I think that will be an easy one." ( Read: Will feds use new power to dictate what you drive?)

They think they are so smart and we so much lesser so need them to tell us what to buy. Perhaps, these ever so intellegent people, should read up on what they are pushing.

Want to Reduce Air Pollution? Don't Rely on Ethanol Necessarily

Fueling the automobile fleet primarily with ethanol rather than gasoline might increase air pollution, a new study finds.

Environmental engineer Mark Jacobson of Stanford University used a computer model to assess how the air pollution in the U.S. would react if vehicles remained primarily fueled by gasoline in 2020 or if the fleet transferred to a fuel that was a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, so-called E85. Under the latter scenario, levels of the cancer-causing agents benzene and butadiene dropped, whereas those of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde rose: In other words, it was a wash.

Because burning ethanol can potentially add more smog-forming pollution to the atmosphere, however, it can also exacerbate the ill effects of such air pollution. According to Jacobson, burning ethanol adds 22 percent more hydrocarbons to the atmosphere than does burning gasoline and this would lead to a nearly two parts per billion increase in tropospheric ozone. This surface ozone, which has been linked to inflamed lungs, impaired immune systems and heart disease by prior research, would in turn lead to a 4 percent increase in the number of ground level ozone-related deaths, or roughly 200 extra deaths a year. "Due to its ozone effects, future E85 may be a greater overall public health risk than gasoline," Jacobson writes in the study published in Environmental Science & Technology. "It can be concluded with confidence only that E85 is unlikely to improve air quality over future gasoline vehicles."

Or for a real twist in the environmental woes, how about this article:

'Green' Fuel May Damage The Bay

The study, whose sponsors included the U.S. government and an environmental group, predicted that farmers in the bay watershed will plant 500,000 or more new acres of corn in the next five years. Because fields of corn generally produce more polluted runoff than those of other crops, that's a problem.

"It's going in the opposite direction from where we want to go," said Jim Pease, a professor at Virginia Tech and one of the study's authors.

We can't expect Senator Harkin to actually read, can we? Seems he can pass a lot of other bills without reading them, why not one this dumb.

These people are as dumb as a box of rocks and yet we have put them in charge of our future. You better be ready to make those calls again. We are going to have to explain it to them, again.