The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 458
In addition, 50 acres of corn does not equal one gallon of ethanol; one acre of
corn is enough to make more than 400 gallons of ethanol. He's off by a factor
of 2000.
Then, to further confuse the issue and the casual reader, Mr. Flobeck writes
about the amount of water required to grow corn in order to cement his doubletalk testimony. To use Flobeck's own words, he "neglects to consider" that the
vast majority of the water required to grow corn in the top corn-growing states
comes from rain. And he of course doesn't follow through on explaining that all
of the water used to grow corn (and all other crops) eventually evaporates and
falls again and again and again, ad infinitum. It is perhaps nature's most basic
cyclical process. The use and reuse of water is quite unlike the issue of petroleum oil depletion - oil taken from the ground and used in gasoline and diesel
fuel will never be available again for re-use.
Oh, by the way, if you try to get information about Jack Flobeck and his nonprofit
think tank for water research, Aqua Prima Center, you'll find no information. The
phone number provided for the organization is also used by the Woman's Club
of Colorado Springs, and it seems that Mr. Flobeck is in the business of selling
residential water purification systems. As I wrote above, it's a con man's shell
game. How and why he would be engaged in disseminating lies about ethanol
is beyond any reasonable conjecture.
On the professional ethanol opposition circuit are college professors, magazine
writers, talk show hosts, auto mechanics, and energy consultants. Their names
include David Pimentel, Tad Patzek, Robert Bryce, Jerry Taylor, Richard Rahn,
David Shepardson, Tim Searchinger, Barry Ritholtz, Jillian Kay Melchor, Jay
Leno, Dennis Prager, Lauren Fix, John Stossel, Michael Economedes, Ed Wallace, Kenneth Green, and George David Banks. In the interest of brevity, I left
some names off the list. Of these people with academic degrees, you could put
all the degrees together and they wouldn't be worth a plug nickel when it comes
to knowing anything about ethanol.
If you try to understand where most of their bad scientific information comes
from, you would find Pimentel and Patzek are the founts of contemporary disinformation.
Back in the mid part of the last decade, Professors Pimentel and Patzek were
paid to present a study that claimed ethanol was energy-negative (that it takes
more energy to make ethanol than it puts out). David Pimentel was at Cornell
University at the time, and Tad Patzek was at the University of California at
