Hellbender, You're right, I am no scientist just a skeptical Missourian. I spent my life working in power plants, refineries, chemical plants, and auto plants etc. as a construction hand, foreman,for 25 years, and finally Supt. for the last 8 years. I got a pretty good idea of how things work.
I retired in the sticks and I have been watching this idea from several angles. There are a lot of folks in the area who thought that Ethanol was gonna be this big boost in Ag, and the other issues that have already been mentioned.
There were a few that were trying to tell the "truth" when the businessman/criminals were collecting the investment monies from the farmers around here.
When the anti-corn-ethanol folks say that energy to produce is below energy available from ethanol as a fuel, and the best that the pro-corn-ethanol folks can come up with is using one unit of energy to produce 1.34 energy unit worth of fuel, it doesn't take a forkin' doctorate to deduce that the truth is somewhere in between. Whaddaya think?
Also the best they have comeup with so far is still pretty poor 1 to 1.34. CTFO!
That is like the Arkies who were buying watermelons at home for a dollar, trucking them to K.C. and selling them for a dollar. They realized they weren't making any profit so they decided to buy a bigger truck. All they really needed was USDA to give them some money
In fairness ethanol might be a little more viable if there is a profitable use for the DDG. Tell us about that part, Ozark, I bet you know a lot more about that than I do.
Guess what, I don't believe that the climate change has much to do with human industry and I still feel like the steel shot deal was a scam too! (Just to give you an idea of the kind of person you are dealing with here}