The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 380
few years, NASCAR, America's #1 motor sports association, only uses E15 in
their Sprint Cup Series and SuperTruck racing series. Ethanol fuels have also
been used in IndyCar racing, drag racing, and boat racing.
And Ms. Fix says we have ethanol-gasoline blended fuels "just because some
politician has a deal going with another one."
No, Lauren Fix, it's taken this long to get ethanol added to gasoline because
some politicians had a deal with the oil industry and General Motors to literally
ram poisonous leaded gasoline down our throats for seven decades. This was
the status quo until the evidence against tetra-ethyl lead was so overwhelming
that it was finally banned from everyday automobile fuel. The solution to replace
tetra-ethyl lead should have been ethanol, but Big Oil persuaded the politicians
to allow another poisonous ingredient, MTBE (which is made from petroleum
oil). After discovering that MTBE was also poison, it too was banned and ethanol was given its chance to re-emerge on the public scene. And since that time,
ethanol-gasoline blends have played a significant part in clearing the air in cities
like Los Angeles and New York.
At this point, I'm less than 5 minutes into the show. If I wasn't already bald I
would have pulled my hair out.
Now Ms. Pick asks Ms. Fix how much damage ethanol will do to modern passenger cars and trucks. Ms. Fix responds that it will cost thousands of dollars
because ethanol is very, very corrosive. Of course, no studies are cited to support the conclusion that ethanol will damage modern cars, and neither rocket
scientist brings up the fact that government and private studies by the most
prestigious laboratories have stated again and again that ethanol-gasoline
blends will not damage modern gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks.
The corrosive issue makes me laugh, not another spit-take laugh, but the kind
of laugh that Bugs Bunny makes when he chuckles about the stupidity of his
adversary and says, "What a maroon."
Yes, ethanol is a corrosive liquid, but so is gasoline. Solar rays are corrosive,
air is also corrosive, and of course, water is one of the most corrosive liquids
on Earth. The not-so-secret secret is to use materials that are resistant to the
substance you are dealing with.
Take water for instance: We can't live without it and we consume it as if it has
no corrosive characteristics whatsoever. We swim and bathe in water, including
the most corrosive of all water, salt water. It's not that the water we consume
