Sometimes it stinks to be an engineer. You understand things on a level that others do not, and that level makes things so crystal clear you get confused as to why others don't have the same view. One of those areas for me is ethanol in gasoline. It sounds wonderful on the surface. Ethanol is a cleaner burning fuel than gasoline. Burning one gallon of ethanol emits less pollution than burning a gallon of gasoline. It mixes well with gasoline and now (in most post 1999 vehicles) can burn in most cars, trucks, and SUVs (not lawnmowers or chain saws perhaps, but that's another matter). Burning cleaner means fewer emissions, less fuel for smog and air pollution, etc.

The reality of it though, ethanol is a bad additive. In the early 90s few cars could burn it very well. I know this because my 1991 model car got 10% less gas mileage when I used gas with 10% ethanol in it. My newer vehicles still get less mileage, but not in a linear one to one ratio. This is because ethanol is a less efficient fuel than gas--one of the reasons it wasn't chosen to fuel vehicles back in the beginning of last century (the other was cost, but don't go there). Most estimates put it between 33 and 50% less efficient, which means you burn 1 and a third to 1 and a half gallons of ethanol to get the same output of 1 gallon of gas. At least one gallon of other petroleum products is burned in the creation of a gallon of ethanol.

There are more cons to ethanol including the fact that it costs more for ethanol mixed gas even though we get less mileage, and the fact that ethanol made from corn drives up our food prices as well as eliminates a good amount of corn from our food supply.

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, by God alone. Works is not in that statement because it isn't our works that get us into Heaven. Works still does something good, they're needed and we should do them (hole in my analogy), in fact our salvation leads us to do works. But, we don't get there because of anything we do; it's all because of God's grace. Anytime we think it is our own effort that gets us in, we're believing the lie. Works are the ethanol of our salvation.

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And yes, I'm still on my story of last week. There's more than just that, but it's in there.