Slashdot Mirror

When large corporate-owned farm plots do not raise any food, the corporation sells off the land.

Corporation buys field. Corporation farms field continuously, without even letting it lie fallow, let alone with crop rotation. Soil is depleted and incapable of producing food. Corporation sells field to... a housing development, because its time in food production is over.

The USA consumed record quantities of ethanol fuel last year, and over 90% of fuel ethanol is produced from corn. Virtually 100% of corn ethanol feedstock is grown continuously. Once used for this purpose, the land will not support crops without providing nearly 100% of their needed nutrients as fertilizer — it is hydroponic farming in a dirt medium. Not soil — healthy soil is at least 20% organic material, and preferably up to 80%. Dirt, on the other hand, is made up mostly of silicates.

It's ridiculous to pretend that all land use is equivalent. And it's also ridiculous to pretend that fuel ethanol mandates are a strictly governmental problem, since they were lobbied for by the corn industry, so please don't go there. That would be tedious. The problem continues to be corporatism. There's nothing that corporations do that co-ops couldn't accomplish, except shield people from well-deserved blame.

CO2 can be extracted from the atmosphere for about $160/ton.

Gasoline emits 8.887 kg of CO2 per gallon of gasoline, so that's 112.5 gallons of gasoline for one ton of CO2. At current prices, that's about $225 worth of gasoline, so this process is "worth it" in terms of recapturing CO2 produced by burning gasoline (basically stick a $1.42/gal tax on gasoline to pay for it).

Electricity generation results in 0.703 kg of CO2 per kWh (same EPA source), so that's 1422 kWh per ton of CO2. At a U.S. average of $0.115/kWh, that's $163.50 worth of electricity. So it would basically double the average price of electricity in the U.S. Still doable, although the similarity of the price means this is getting close to the break-even point where the energy cost to recapture the CO2 approaches the energy gained by producing it (by burning fuel) in the first place.

Cost of sequestration would have to be added on top of this though.

Nonsense. Power generation by coal is quickly going away. Natural gas is far cleaner than gasoline, kerosene, or bio equivalents.

Actually, that is the nonsense. Nat Gas is still introducing sequestered carbon. Bio is not.

Your description of bio was BS. Cutting down the rain forest is not necessary. Massive fertilization is not necessary. Biofuel can be generated by bacteria. Ex: Intestinal bacterium producing propane.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2...
"The authors isolated bacteria that make high concentrations of alcohols including ethanol and 1-butanol, and other strains that make hydrocarbons, like hexane and octane. These compounds are similar to components already found in gasoline. Although the Department of Energy and many investors have invested millions of dollars trying to genetically engineer organisms like these, the scientists from Maryland led by UM professor Rick Korn say that such organisms are already common in nature."
http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/...

Who finances this 'prominent environmental think tank'?

Oil and gas lobby sues EPA over biofuel mandate

CREW seeks EPA docs to uncover undue oil lobbying pressure

Notice: I got about halfway through an Aerospace Engineering degree, but did not finish; and that was 15 years ago, so take this with a grain of salt. (Although I do have friends in high places in Boeing and Lockheed.)

So, there are two main ways of making an airliner "solar".

1. Put solar-to-propulsion technologies directly on the airliner. Not feasible with current technology at the airliner level. See Solar Impulse, a *BARELY* possible with current technology one-seater. We simply do not have the capability to make a 100+ passenger aircraft strong enough to be safe while still light enough to be able to be powered by solar. And either way, it would be painfully slow by airliner standards. Nobody would choose it.

2. Put solar-to-energy-storage technologies on the ground, and transfer the energy to the airliner. This exists now. It's called Aviation biofuel, and has been used by Lufthansa (and others) on passenger-bearing flights already, albeit at low percentages. Many others have used up to 50% on test flights, and just yesterday the Canadian NRC used 100%. Biofuel *IS* "solar" power. Yes, current biofuel production statistically speaking uses some fossil fuels during its production, but that can be easily changed at the production end (switch all electricity used to solar/wind/etc, switch all machinery used in farming/production to biofuel itself rather than diesel/gasoline.)

Biofuel also makes a lot more sense than putting batteries in aircraft, because it is much more energy dense. Perhaps someday we will develop sufficient supercapacitors to supply airliner-sized craft, but for now, we're just hitting sufficiency for short-range personal aircraft (ElectraFlyer.com.)

You sure seem to be throwing around a lot of insults without providing a single source to back up your claims

You seem to be someone who can't use google.

Butamax sues Gevo over patent infringment claim ("Butamax was formed as a BP/DuPont joint venture to develop and commercialize biobutanol as a next generation renewable biofuel for the transport market, and is poised for commercial launch from 2012/2013")

SB LiMotive: Company ("The 50:50 joint company SB LiMotive of Samsung and Bosch has the target to develop, manufacture, and sell lithium-ion batteries for automotive applications") — That's LiIon, not NiMH.

Now if you have something to say that would not be said by someone with enough brain cells to use a search engine then by all means, say it.

That only provides incentive for manufacturers to keep prices high - it dies *not*lower the cost of the car, it just distributes it to other people.

And a dino-juice guzzler is not cheaper than an EV, it just distributes the cost to the entire world in the form of pollution.

Sure, you could run gassers on butanol, if BP and DuPont weren't actively suing people to prevent them from making it. That's right, BP is not only leaking oil all over the globe, but also preventing you from getting a 1:1 direct replacement for gasoline.

I notice a few people commenting on using fresh water. Well according to CSIRO (Australia) you can happily use salt water There is even a prototype plant that has been commissioned to look at making this more cost effective.

Corn Ethanol? uses more energy to produce than it provides.

No, corn ethanol's EROEI, Energy Returned on Energy Invested, is about 1.5 or 1.6 to 1 or 1.2 or 1.5 to 1, about the same as oil sands. While it does make more energy than the energy required to make it, it doesn't even double the energy. Brazil gets from 8 to 10 units per unit of energy used from sugarcane.

PV

PV's produce as much energy in 5 years as it takes to make. PVs are warrantied for from 10 to 30 years depending on the manufacturer, so over their life they produce more energy than they need for manufacturing.

Wind - sure if you're lucky to live where it's windy and you use energy in the spring and fall (you don't).

Wind blows year round not just in the spring and fall. Wind also blows in a lot of places. As the Picken's Plan details the Rocky Mountains alone have enough potential wind energy to provide the 48 continuous states in the US with energy. That's not all though, the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States gives wind's potential in other parts of the US. The Pacific Coast from British Columbia to Southern California has an abundance of potential, along with Southern CA eastward to Texas. In the east the Appalachias and Cascades have good potential as it does off the coast between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras.

Falcon