email to TX gov Rick Perry on ethanol

Chicago Friday, August 15, 2008

Governor Rick Perry

Your Tuesday, August 12, 2008 Wall Street Journal OpEd "Texas Is Fed Up With Corn Ethanol" is refreshingly clear and understandable, in contrast to the usual blarney put out on the subject by the Washington Bureaucrats. Even those attributes are multiplied considering your direct knowledge and responsibility in the area.

I do wonder why we hear so rarely about attributes of the subject that influence it more than any other:

Biofuels come from only a 2-dimensional space, the surface of the earth, and only 1/3 of that not covered by salt water. And that is further limited by corn's inability to grow just anywhere. Oil on the other hand comes from a 3-dimensional space, all that's under the surface of the earth, and the entire surface, covered by water or not. The depth of that space is ultimately limited to 4,000 miles, but so far we've only tried the first eight miles, and that in only a very few locations.

Brilliant geoligists are constantly working to predict the best places to try, but I think even they would agree that the final, and absolute, proof of the existence of oil anywhere in that space is drilling a hole that results in oil coming out.

Of course, biofuels are said to be 'renewable.' But how often?Pretty much only annually, and corn especially, is effectivly less than even that, requiring rotation with other crops to avoid exhausting the ground. Oil is assumed to be 'exhaustable', but considering the number of places where we've proved it is or isn't compared to the places we've left to look, for all practical purposes it is as good as renewable.

Arnold H Nelson