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McCook Gazette
Letter to the Editor

Money for nothing

Monday, April 28, 2008

Dear Editor,

I am so tired of listening to the propaganda about ethanol, everything from "it will cause global warming" to "It will use up all our food."

Yes, I agree that if we were to use corn for the total ethanol production, (that) is not a very good idea. Corn would be something you would want to make alcohol to drink, not to fuel a nation. First of all, you must understand what making ethanol is; you are breaking down sugar chains.

Now Brazil makes it from sugar cane; any sugar product is the best. In Nebraska the best thing would be sugar beets, you get ethanol and sugar. The best thing to use because of availability is cellulose, there are many things that could be used. Our land fills could be cut by 75 percent; any paper, wood, leaves, brush, grasses, corn stalks, almost all of construction waste (can be used).

You do not have to change the ethanol plant to use cellulose, all that is done is the mash you use to make it is changed. The best thing about cellulose is it is mostly free now when you see the leaves fall from your tree.

You see a lot of work in store for you and the hassle of getting rid of them; think what it would be like knowing that they could go to fueling your car. Seventy-five percent of your landfill could go to cutting our dependency on oil.

Now we pay the oil companies 53 cents a gallon to blend ethanol with gas to make E85. All that is needed to blend E85 is to pour the gas into the ethanol.

That is all you have to do, no cooking no processing. That is like having to pay someone for making your Kool-Aid, after all you are blending it.

We could fuel our nation from waste and we could heat our home from sewage and feedlot waste; you make methanol from that.

Which you use just like natural gas, we could become totally independent from oil.

That is what the oil companies don't want, so I hear lies and propaganda from the news and people who don't know a thing about it.

All you have to do is research it and you will find that we are not being told the truth and are being charged money for nothing.

Feeling like a mushroom

Jerry Neiman,

McCook

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  • YES! there are people, out there, who can still reason! You are so right-on. Hmmm, 'Green' gas. Now that will preach. We still, I pray, have the best, and most creative, scientific minds in the world. We trully do need to start using them.

    Keep thinking Jerry, and it may prove contagious, in a positive way, of course.

    America went through this fuel problem in the 1970's, but went brain dead as soon as we could fill our 'tanks' again, without thinking. Shalom in Christ, Arley Steinhour

    -- Posted by Navyblue on Mon, Apr 28, 2008, at 4:41 PM

  • Recipients of Crop Subsidy Program from farms in Nebraska totaled $2,427,000,000 in from 2003-2005. Farm Businesses received a total of $664,673,000

    If we want to use ethanol, why not give these farms a contract to grow corn,etc. to make it from rather than pay them for not producing anything? This would leave the land designated for foodstuff crops as foodstuff crops, and provide jobs and help the economy, taxes and good will in general.

    -- Posted by johncmorris on Mon, Apr 28, 2008, at 5:54 PM

  • Ethanol is an economic boost for the farmers (which is a beneficial thing for a hardworking class of small business people who need and deserve a break), but will not solve our dependence on foreign oil nor is it friendly to the environment. Southwestern Nebraska is not blessed with an abundance of unobligated water resources. At the current price of over $100 per barrel of oil, the oil wells that have been idled may now be profitable to run. A former McCook oilman is now renewing leases for oil fields in eastern Colorado. The prosperous McCook economy of my childhood in the 70s was powered by agriculture and oil. Don't let the ethanol boom (and bust?) cloak a possible opportunity.

    -- Posted by Viking on Mon, Apr 28, 2008, at 10:51 PM
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