Glad to hear you are not anti- ethanol. Ethanol is no magic bullet and is likely only a stepping stone that gets us along to better forms of energy. I just hate to see mis-information put out about it.
I agree it can give fits if someone pulls out grandpas 52 Chevy out of the barn that has not run in years and fills it up with ethanol. Likely all the gum and varnish out of the tank and carb along with the fuel lines turning to mush are going to be a bad deal. And a chain saw old enough to not have the right diaphram material is going to quit pumping fuel out of the tank. It is a bad deal for old stuff that has not been upgraded.
Interestingly enough, twenty years ago if we had gas line icing problems we dumped in something like Heet which was - alcohol. Maybe methanol (which is much worse corrosion wise) or ethanol. If we wanted to clean the carb a bottle of carb clean which could be petroleum distillates or...... yep, alcohol. But it was only run for a short period of time likely.
Another self induced problem is the people that are so anti-ethanol go way out of their way to not use anything with ethanol. So the fuel pump in the bottom of the gas tank gets varnished up, the fuel system gets a little dirty. Then, for whatever reason they are forced to put some 10%E in the tank. The varnish in the gas tank gets cleaned out, the fuel system gets cleaned out, and plugs up filters or worse injectors. "Yep, ethanol's fault. Had no problems till I used that damn ethanol." Sometimes people can be their own worst enemy.
