Clearly the ethanol advocates are not concerned about net energy. Mr Khoslas comment

It is time to stop asking the wrong question of "energy balance" or even the somewhat less wrong question of "energy balance relative to petroleum" but rather ask the two right questions (a) how much petroleum use can we displace per gallon of an alternative liquid fuel...

Also, (although you take Argonnes results as given), I disagree with their boundaries of analysis, especially for long term sustainability purposes.  When doing energy (or financial) analysis, we need to include the widest boundaries possible. Oil is so ubiquitous in our societies transportation, that to count all the energy inputs is nearly impossible. If oil triples in price, can we assume all products necessary to make ethanol will be available, irrespective of price? (like steel for pipelines, new trucks, highway maintenance, tractors, fertilizer, farm tools, labor, insurance, etc).  Furthermore, Argonne models assumed the best yields and states for growing corn. To use corn ethanol nationally, it needs to be trucked because it picks up water in normal oil pipelines. This energy cost isnt factored into the models.  Also, a tankful of ethanol can transport a car only 70% as far as a tankful of gasoline, so requires more fillups and driving 'downtime'.

Most importantly, the ethanol debate is ignoring multicriteria analysis and your critics are focusing exclusively on the irrelvance of the energy balance. Energy may or may not ultimately be the limiting factor in corn ethanol infrastructure. What is the Energy Return on Soil Invested? or Energy Return on Water Invested? These questions are not being addressed because currently we have bumper crops and the ecological deficits are not being calculated in financial ethanol models.

If government subsidies were removed and full ecological and societal boundaries were used in the analysis, corn ethanol would take the same path it did in the 1970s.