Word: corns
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...place of petroleum. Biofuel revolutionaries - like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla - see plant power as a way to break America's dependence on foreign oil, and produce auto fuel that doesn't kill the climate. Opponents dismiss biofuels - most of which are currently distilled from crops like corn and sugar cane - as a blind alley, one that drives up food prices without saving the earth...
...that last point of food versus fuel, the naysayers have so far had the upper hand. Corn - the main source of ethanol in the U.S. - isn't a very rich source of energy, and it's difficult to understand how a world that still has nearly a billion hungry people could dedicate a sizable chunk of its corn harvest to fuel. The 4.86 billion gallons of corn ethanol produced by the U.S. in 2006 has already had a measurable impact on grain prices, which are hovering at world highs...
...North and South Dakota grew switchgrass over five years, and kept track of how much fuel and fertilizer they used during the trials. Vogel and his colleagues showed that switchgrass yielded 540% more energy as a biofuel than the amount of energy used to grow, harvest and process it. (Corn ethanol yields just 25% more energy.) Greenhouse gas emissions from switchgrass fuel would be 94% lower than emissions from petroleum fuel - almost carbon neutral. Previous studies had come up with similar numbers in small-scale trials, but this was the first study on the level of a working farm...
Farmers don't have a lot of experience growing switchgrass for fuel, but Vogel points out that as the crop is more widely adopted on farms, we can expect the yield to grow - perhaps even double, as corn yields have over the past few decades. But there's still a long way to go before you'll be able to fill your tank with switchgrass. Getting energy out of the tough cellulose molecules in a stalk of switchgrass is much more difficult than distilling it from corn, or better, sugar cane. Both the Department of Energy (DoE) and private companies...
...negative attacks from Romney, both on television and in mailings. But in the end, entrance polls suggested that the attacks had failed to dent Huckabee's golden-boy image. But as he moves forward he may look back on his Iowa experience as a springtime walk through knee-high corn. By winning Iowa, he only temporarily defeated Romney, and in the process he gained new rivals, in John McCain and, perhaps, Rudy Giuliani. He is also sure to attract new scrutiny from the national political press, which has little influence among Iowa voters, but has already shown distain for Huckabee...