1216 This is old news, or was it buried?

In the late 1970s I was hired on soft money (USAID funds) to be the agricultural economics bibliographer at the Ohio State University Libraries. It was a fabulous job for reentry into the work world: my children were in school from 8:15 to 3 p.m., and this job was half time, so I worked about 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. I contributed to the retirement plan, and got full credit instead of half for my time there (which became critical in 2000 when adding everything up). I had complete freedom and great funding to build the collection on agricultural credit--mostly about third world countries. I went to a lot of the graduate student meetings and lunches, attended some college functions like the Farm Science Review, was included in most of the library faculty functions without being appointed to committees (temps don't need the professional credit), attended state and local professional meetings and the department supported my research and publication. I also got to co-teach a bibliographic instruction unit with one of the professors. Truly, a dream job for a librarian who needed to work part time and relearn the ropes after a decade out of service.

However, I'm quite sure I knew then from all the reading I did to stay current in agriculture what I've just seen on a blog--that the inputs for alternative fuel cost more and required more energy than the resulting product. Renewable crops eat up a huge amount of inputs. Midwestern farmers and the schools of agriculture really wanted crop fuels to make it, and so I was shocked to read this when I know the writing was on the blackboard even 30 years ago:

"Ethanol, touted as an alternative fuel of the future, may eat up far more energy during its creation than it winds up giving back, according to research by a UC Berkeley scientist that raises questions about the nation's move toward its widespread use.

A clean-burning fuel produced from renewable crops like corn and sugarcane, ethanol has long been a cornerstone of some national lawmakers' efforts to clear the air and curb dependence on foreign oil. California residents use close to a billion gallons of the alcohol-based fuel per year."

Hat tip to Considerettes who links to SFGate. The research is not without controversy apparently.