ethanol, the panacea?

on a TV near you
NBC: Dateline NBC but see this MSNBC piece .
CBS 60 minutes but see other CBS piece
ABC: World News Tonight and this
CNN: Presents segment on ethanol in We Were Warned (for more info)

But see the Wikipedia piece on fuel ethanol, and its external links, such as the 2004 scholarly article by Tad Patzek and Pimentel's research. Patzek writes:

In this paper, I will describe in some detail the unfavorable thermodynamics of the industrial production of ethanol from one particular food crop, corn. I will use the Second Law of thermodynamics to track what is happening to us as mere years pass, and the precious resources the sun and the earth have been making and storing for millions of years are being squandered in front of our eyes.

The focus of Patzek's article is corn, but he does briefly compare the net energy of corn to switchgrasses and sugarcane. For more on sugarcane, see this other Wikipedia article.

As heard on NPR

Today, Morning Edition presented a piece with Matthew Simmons* and Daniel Yergin, pessimist vs. optimist. On listening to it, who do you think is the realist? This piece is part of NPR's series, The Future of Fuel.

See the earlier series on Boston NPR, pre State of the Union 2006, Addicted to Oil. Thomas L. Friedman is featured in the first of the 4 shows. He mentions a project with Discovery Channel. [His film premiered at Silverdocs Film Festival and broadcast on Discovery Channel on June 24, 2006.]

*Simmons who was featured on CNN Presents, We Were Warned, suggests here that global oil consumption is analogous to a car running out of gas.