And how much of their net oxygen producing rain forest had to be burned to have area for the sugar cane? How long will it take until those areas drop in productivity because the minerals are being washed out of the ground?

The rainforest was burned primary to feed cattle for meat. There is very little linkage between sugar production and rainforest destruction. Brazil has produced sugar and ethanol for thrity years and yields have improved vastly. They are now working on organic production.

The only known methods to produce energy from solar radiation with a good EROEI are solar cells and thermal solar plants. Everything else is a waste of time, land and taxpayer dollars.

That is just a falsehood. Sugar cane to ethanol has an EROEI of 8-10. I advocate solar, but at the moment ethanol makes more sense from economic and energy perspectives. Engineer Poet wrote a whole poast recently about other ways to transform biomass to energy. Read it.