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Re:Turning Soybeans into Diesel Fuel Is Costing Billions by eximius on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @06:22PM (#16173036)
If it takes one thousand gallons of gasoline to produce 10 thousand gallons of ethanol, then it could be a net win by requiring less gasoline production later or something.

But I have no clue how the numbers actually work out.

Re:Turning Soybeans into Diesel Fuel Is Costing Billions by jogjayr on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @06:27PM (#16173072)
The laws of thermodynamics alone lead me to suspect that that's probably not the case.
Re:Turning Soybeans into Diesel Fuel Is Costing Billions by dragonwriter on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @06:39PM (#16173150)
The energy input to crops that later become ethanol is the sun, not the gasoline burnt in the production process, so there is no necessary relationship inferrable by thermodynamics between fuel burnt and the energy content of crops or the resulting ethanol.

If there were, then human-powered farming would have been pointless as a food production method.

Re:Turning Soybeans into Diesel Fuel Is Costing Billions by nate_meurer on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @10:55PM (#16174571)
I assume you're speaking in theoretical terms, but it bears mentioning that in practice, fossil fuels are a critical input to the production of crops, to the extent that EROEI for corn ethanol remains stuck at around 1.
Re:Turning Soybeans into Diesel Fuel Is Costing Billions by jogjayr on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @09:00PM (#16174010)
I stand corrected.