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Tom Cranmer nixes ethanol in gasoline at EPA hearing

-- August 1, 2017 at Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC

FCTA's Tom Cranmer gave a 3-minute argument against ethanol in gasoline:

• Ethanol use in gasoline makes no scientific or economic sense.
• The only real justification is to drive up corn and soybean prices as a subsidy for farmers and provide votes for congressmen in farm states.

Drawbacks:

• U.S. consumers pay higher prices for food.
• Poor foreigners are further in poverty. High food prices lead to political instability and war.
• U.S. citizens are endangered by war from countries that blame the U.S. for high food prices.
• Ethanol is only 70% as energy efficient as gasoline. This requires more fuel consumption to make the same journey, and thus more pollution.
• Ethanol is corrosive to engines, resulting in more frequent breakdowns and costs to consumers.
• Ethanol requires major subsidies by the U.S. taxpayers.

The premises behind ethanol encouragement are wrong:

• Ethanol does not improve energy self-sufficiency. More energy is required to produce ethanol than to produce gasoline.
• The U.S. is capable of energy self-sufficiency.
• Fears of global warming are overblown. Every forecast has been wrong. In the 1970s the forecasts were for global cooling and a new glacial age.
• Over 31,000 scientists like me signed the Petition Project, affirming propaganda about man-made global warming is a hoax.
• Even if more warming occurs, the world benefits: More warming in Canada and Siberia will produce much larger crops.
• Carbon dioxide stimulates plants.
• Carbon dioxide production follows warming, not the other way around. Statements to the contrary are phony.
• During the time of dinosaurs, about 60 million years ago, carbon dioxide levels were ten times current levels. Plants and animals thrived.
• About two billion to 800 million years ago carbon dioxide levels were extremely high; however, cyanobacteria gradually converted the CO2 into oxygen through photosynthesis like plants do. This made the air oxygen rich to sustain life.
• The sun's fluctuations and the wobbles of the earth are the primary reasons for warming and cooling.
• In the last three million years the earth has had nearly 30 glacial advances and warming. Long Island was created by mile-thick glaciers bulldozing the rocks and dirt.
• Around the year 1100 there was a warming period with prosperity; afterward there was cooling with devastating effects on agriculture and people through starvation and disease. The earth is just recovering from the cooling period.

Conclusions:

• Requirements about the need for ethanol are based on phony premises about energy self-sufficiency and global warming.
• Ethanol use is detrimental to everyone except some farmers, politicians and bureaucrats in the EPA.

Thomas Lambert Cranmer: BA Yale in geology & engineering; MBA Columbia in economics. Worked world-wide on technical projects. Fellow at American Center for Democracy. First VP Fairfax County Taxpayers' Alliance. Fairfax County precinct captain at Seneca No. 329.