In my view lawnmowers, leaf and snow blowers, etc., should switch entirely to ethanol only operation, skipping even the intermediate step of flex fuel which would be uneconomical for such small engines.

Powerboats could and should be flex fueled at least, but preferably alcohol only.

Both steps would have to come once alcohol becomes more of a standard and widely available fuel for cars, which will happen only once we mandate that all new cars have flex fuel capability.

Once that happens though the environmental benefits will be significant.

On waterways used by recreational watercraft, it's common to find an iridescent scum dangerous to wildlife and obnoxious to swimmers.

Leaks from lawnmower engines, etc., are a threat to the water table and to air quality as well.

Alcohol fuels, if spilled, dissolve readily in water rather than remaining floating and concentrated, thus becoming so dissolved as to reduce their toxicity below worrisome levels (all fruits have natural methanol in them at harmless levels for instance). Alcohols also are readily biodegradable, breaking down within days if not hours into harmless components.

Finally it would be nice to pull the string on a lawn mower and not see gout of black smoke, soot, and particulate matter come flying out. Alcohols emit ZERO of that. Plus, also, unlike gasoline, zero sulfur. Not to mention not being carcinogens or mutagens.

Etc etc.

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Definitely some advantages to EtOH (including octane rating and cleanliness) if you can manage to make it in a manner that makes sense (ie not from food with a high energy input than output).

However, for the time being, it keeps destroying carbs on small motors etc even at 10% and at $400 a pop, that gets real old real fast.

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pditty, ethanol is NOT a threat to farmland or food, and does NOT take more energy/liquid fuel to create than the process results in.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-defense-of-biofuels

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This appears to be the case. The pumps will be ok. Cars are still at E10.

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EXACTLY!!!
everyones mileage has been affected. All that monetary sacrifice for a biofuel that is pointless. Ethanol will be a huge money sink until polliticians stop taking money from lobbiest for corn.

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Yorik, what matters more:

going the longest distance possible on a tank of fuel, regardless of the financial cost to your pocket book, to our economy, our environment, our national security, and the world situation?

Or getting more miles per more of your DOLLAR?

Or per death from petroleum pollution (the EPA says 40,000 die a year thanks to conventional smog alone, which alcohol fuels emit NONE of)?

Or per death from terrorism?

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Carney, your questions are pointless. Why not throw in miles per aborted babies while you're at it? That why people have such disrespect for environmentalists; they can't make a reasoned argument.

My point is simple. They forced E10 on us and it has no benefits (since I have to buy more of the blend anyway to go the same distance) and plenty of problems, including jacking up food prices as corn is diverted from food stuffs to fuel.

[begin sarcasm]
So which is more important? An undocumented reduction in smog or feeding people?

Oh wait. I forgot. Ethanol increases the price of high fructose corn syrup so food companies will look to other sweeteners, which should improve the health of the country.

So which is more important? Fuel economy or health?
[end sarcasm]

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Fuel economy doesn't matter nearly as much as WHAT fuel you're burning.

And if I recall I've carefully explained to you already, with facts, how ethanol does NOT raise the price of food.

I'm going to assume good faith and that you're intellectually honest rather than indifferent to facts, and thus presume you've forgotten or I didn't actually do it.

To recap, the biggest factor in the price rise in food recently was rising energy and fertilizer costs both tied directly to petroleum.

The case for ethanol causing higher food prices is based on the idea of corn being used for fuel instead of food, thus reducing the food supply, thus increasing food prices.

However despite the several fold increase in ethanol corn cultivation in the last several years, "food corn" has gone UP, not down. As have other staple crops such as soybeans.

The other meme about ethanol reducing food prices is the idea that it takes farmland out out food production and thus reduces food supplies.

But the supply of farmland isn't some fixed rigid number. Per acre crop yields are constantly rising; up 17% since 2002 alone, and Iowa today outproduces the entire nation of the 1940s.

Furthermore of the 1,600 million acres of arable land in the US, only 800 is farmland, and only 280 of that is actually cultivated. There's enormous room for expansion to accommodate ethanol production. Already we are, with only 17 million acres devoted to ethanol corn, supplying up to 10% of our nation's vehicle fuel.

Add to that methanol, which can be made cheaply from coal (which we have centuries worth of) and natural gas; and which can be made carbon-neutrally from any biomass including crop residues (such as the leftover parts of the corn plant, thus massively increasing the per acre alcohol fuel yield), weeds that need to cleared anyway like kudzu and water hyacinths, rice bran, "black liquor" from paper mills, trash, and even sewage.

Alcohol fuel, and ethanol specifically, are NOT threats to food.

In fact by helping keep oil prices lower than they would otherwise be even at their peak, they LOWER food prices. Plus if we give desperately poor Third World farmers a piece of the action they'll have a legitimate cash crop at last and thus be able to food themselves rather than starve and beg for handouts from outside our trade walls - ethanol helping FEED people.

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