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Biofuel Production to Cause Water Shortages?
WED Fan writes "Scientists meeting in Stockholm are reporting that increased food and biofuel production will place higher demand upon irrigation and water resources." From the article: "Demand for irrigation -- which absorbs about 74 percent of all water used by people against 18 percent for hydro-power and other industrial uses and just 8 percent for households -- was likely to surge by 2050. Many nations are also shifting to produce biofuels -- from sugarcane, corn or wood -- as a less polluting alternative to fossil fuels. Oil prices at $75 a barrel and worries about global warming are driving the shift."
If that was true, the use of biofuels could cause more climate changes.
We're doomed. I'm gonna go hide under the bed. My Y2K supplies are finally coming in handy. Call me when its over.
Well then, it's a good thing water is a renewable resource, isn't it?
The only thing in danger is CHEAP water, really. Desalination can ramp-up to whatever volume you want, and most countries are located near an effectively unlimited source from which to draw saline...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What these environmentalists need to do is build a priority management system. This shotgun approach has got to end. They are going to have to decide if global warming is worse than water shortages, if nuclear power is worse than coal, etc.
Good grief! The only solution that the shotgun approach gives is for all humans to go live in caves--with the caveat that 5 billion or so of us dissappear (remember that farming and ranching contribute to global warming as well).
[cynical]I am an engineer and I think I figured out what I could never be a scientist. Too darn pessimisstic. "Use fossil fuels = global warming", "change to non-fossil fuels = water shortage". How about instead of annoying us, come up with solutions! Oh yeah forgot that would require an engineer[/cynical]
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
...electric!
due to the melting icecaps - which may or may not is/has/will happen(ing/ed), we have an abundance of fresh water anyway, which we can use for our irrigation purposes.
To increase the watervolume and thus the production of precious bio-materials, we could perhaps think of increasing the exhaust of fossil fuels. Four cars per household minimum and a global road/asphalt-coverage of 80% should do the trick - we should have melted all ice in no time.
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Between another series of civil wars all over the Middle East practically inevitable and daily production capacity already at a limit, oil prices are very likely to double in the next two years. Biofuel will be a good choice for countries able to produce it (Europe, US, China, Russia, Brazil, Australia), but a massive problem for regions already in agriculture hell (Africa, India, even the Middle East). In the latter regions, the need for fuel will press food production to drop further. Much of the fuel - especially from Africa - will be exported, too.
If there was no biofuel, the fuel consumers would be forced to change their lifestyles. The way things are, we won't, and the starvation toll is going to rise accordingly. Currently, it stands at 27000 - or 8 times 9/11 as I like to call it - per day. (Source: WHO)
blow your mind already
biofuels lead to water shortages, and wind power kils birds, and nuclear causes terrorism concerns, and coal causes acid rain, and solar cells create pollution in production, and tidal leads to increased silt deposits, and hydro interferes with fish spawning...
etc., etc., etc...
finding ANYTHING wrong with an energy source is not a valid point. weighing the trade offs of one energy source's negatives against another's IS a valid point
and in a world where chinese demand fuels increased petrol prices, and in a world where petrol dollars fund islamic fundamentalist militants, and in a world where petrol fueled global warming creates hurricane katrinas, then whatever downside to biofuels you find to throw at me doesn't even begin to tip the scales. because it's not about choosing some magic energy source that has no downsides. it's about picking the energy source with least downsides that we can adequately foresee
i don't blame post-world war ii planners and politicians for making us so dependent on the internal combustion engine and the diesel engine for so much of what we need in our lives today. they didn't, and couldn't, foresee the problems in today's world
but if we're still largely dependent on petrol we dig from the ground in 50 years, then yes, i would blame today's politicians and planners. for whatever doom we would then be neck deep in, we are only knee deep in now. and any fool can see continuing to be so dependent on petrol is so dunderheaded wrong for so many reasons: security, environment, economics, etc
i say revive nuclear, and bow low before the mighty country of brazil for showing the rest of the world the way to a more secure, less polluted, and cheaper world of biofuels
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Explain the existance of Ecover shower gel, then.
To reduce the demand for irrigation requires a whole lot of technologies, some cheap and some not, but the situation is far from hopeless. This is not about environmentalists, it's about politicians finding the political will to do something concerted and practical. In the US, bioethanol is largely a porkbarrel project. In Europe and Brazil, it's about energy cost and so more practical. Growing the wrong crops in the wrong places and spending a fortune on irrigation is stupid. Moving the US economy to dry States and then irrigating golf courses is stupid. And your post is stupid.
On the other hand, working out a plan to find the best places to grow biofuels and then, say, providing tax breaks to make it happen might be a sensible option. What is clear is that politicians need to be talking to scientists and economists on the whole energy and water issue, not to lobbyists.
Pining for the fjords
When demand outstrips the supply of a limited resource they only way out is to cut the demand.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
(plus dependent on the location, it could have an added benefit of recharging local aquifers)
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
There's a process, which apparently nobody appears to know or care anything about, that will convert pretty much anything containing long-chain hydrocarbons into, roughly, crude oil, natural gas, potable water, and assorted minerals. Check out thermal depolymerisation on Wikipedia. There's a pilot plant in the US that currently runs on turkey guts --- it's producing oil at about 400 barrels a day, at about break-even prices.
The real bonus? It's an energy-positive system. That is, the process itself produces all the energy it needs to run itself, plus a bit.
The system needs to be specialised for a particular input material; you can't (currently) build a plant that can take all feedstocks. That said, it ought to be entirely possible to build a giant TPD plant that takes raw sewage as its input feedstock. If you do this, and plug it into the sewage output from, say, New York, then you should be able to have it produce drinking water and biodiesel more or less for free (minus fixed running costs). After all, the feedstock's not costing you anything --- you're just throwing it away...
Even if it turns out that sewage contains too much water for the system to be power itself, it'd most likely still be worth doing simply as a sewage treatment system. TPD fully sterilises the input feedstock; it can break down prions and dioxins, remove heavy metals, and so in, and what's more, can do it in bulk. The fact that the output is saleable can be treated as a bonus.
I just seem to be amazed at how little interest there is in this...
from the oil camp.
Actually, I've been thinking it might be sane to use ocean algae for biofuel production?
Look at how much Exxon pays to put out propaganda...
http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/exxon.html
And here is a directory of biofuel producers...
http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/biodiesel.html
It has a large, flat body of ocean sitting off its shores, which is practically and more importantly, politically, a great place to put wind farms. There are few places in the US that are similar. Our great wind resources are in places such as west Texas or North Dakota - far from where the energy is needed. Or another place is the Great Lakes - except that they are over a hundred meters deep (as opposed to 10-15 meters for the waters off Denmark).
Wind WILL be part of the solution, but Denmark cannot be taken as the typical case.
I think humanity should have little bio-hazard symbols tattooed on our collective foreheads!
All kidding aside, though our problems have several parts:
We are moving slowly into developing technologies that sip, rather then guzzle energy. Rising energy prices help drive an economic decision in this direction. The addition of microcontrollers and wily engineering can help achieve this goal.
However I think that more distributed production of local needs is an important part of a less energy strategy. Economies of scale help a lot in some areas, but may be harmful in other ways. The large electrical power plant is a one off deal as an example.
Suppose we decided to use a distributed approach. Here, some oil crop like canola is used as the primary solar capture. Treating the seeds gives an oil that can be used for a foodstuff, and a biodiesel feedstock. The protein cake left over can be used as food either for humans or livestock or both.
The biodiesel is used to run a small engine that generates power fed into an electrical grid and process heat for cottage industry and home heating.
Plant and animal wastes are composted and aged to eliminate pathogens, then used to support the oilseed crop. I think you get the systems idea...and some kind soul's left entries in the wikipedia.
Consider, also, that we still used mass production techniques to make the tools we need. We just spread the results out more!
We have to figure out how to make a no-waste society work. That means thinking up cheap friendly ways to repurpose or reclaim the stuff we want after its' end of life. We have started to do this already, but it will take ingenuity to make it work. RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) is a good start. Is their any way we can use biological systems to help do the work for us?
Understanding how to arrange biological systems to be effective partners would help. No sense trying to make a lawn in a desert, except as a demonstration of bad taste and poor judgement. Understanding the soil foodweb is a start. Developing understanding and engineering of micro climates and micro ecologies might make a lot of tough problems less so.
False pride in humanities accomplishments is a major problem. Just because we can build something doesn't mean it is the "right thing". On the other hand, denegrating our abilities doesn't help either. There is a balance point, it is just hard to find. ... nervous.
Further, having society run by warring experts makes me
Finally, the way we account for things, systems and resources is suspect. If you wish to make a difference, then change the tax law for corporations. Choosing to reward stewardship rather then rapine and pillage means that the financial systems will put their money for the best value proposition. Think Warren Buffet....
This is progress?
hundred thousand Americans each year, so perhaps rising food prices would be a good thing.
People oppose population control so we'll soon be facing ten billion people on the planet. There simply aren't enough resources no matter what we do. We have to conserve. We can't keep wasting energy and water. The vast majority is wasted. We also can't keep contaiminating ground water. The quote I read is since the early 80s we exceeded what the planet can sustain and the condition is getting worse not better. No other option.
Worry is a useless emotion.Go on worry as hard as you can and see if anything changes. ,spin ,spin.Spin till you get your political way.The world is indeed a changing place,dramatically so.Not the weather climate so much as the political one.
Worry over manmade global warming is 10 times more useless as it doesn't exist.
Check history,we heat up,we cool down,hell occasionally we rotate a different direction.
Everyone is still here despite climactic change and the last big one was an ice age!
Everyone with a few working synapses also recognises all the "research" and "studies" to be political yanks in one direction or another.(Not only can we not trust politicians,but now scientists are joining the ranks of used car salesmen.)Spin
What? Me worry? --A.E.Neuman
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
This is no problem. We'll be able to desalinate seawater for irrigation as long as we have enough energy for the desalinisation plants. And we'll have plenty of energy for them as a result of all the biofuels we'll generate through our irrigation endeavors. I don't see how anything can go wrong.
Well, instead of human manufactured bio fuels perhaps more people should be driving the type of hybrids that I do and use natural bio fuel?
Check with the reporter in my
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
There are a lot of people in Europe talking about canola as a way of producing biofuel. But I have seen no one talking about the environmental and biodiversity devastation coming from using x% of europe's or china's or brazil's agricultural land for sugar or canola production. I don't see how biofuels are a solution - they will just lead to faster deforestation/erosion/water pollution etc. (I am no advocate of oil, I just want to hear about the dangers of large monocultures)
"Human activity uses natural resources, film at 11"
Some people/groups won't be happy until humans are gone and use nothing at all...
Oil prices at $75 a barrel and worries about global warming are driving the shift.
Aargh! Where do people get the idea that any alternative to petroleum will help reduce global warming?
Any process that generates energy by burning a hydrocarbon procudes CO2. That most certainly includes biofuels.
(In other news, unless you can find a place to mine hydrogen fuel cells, "hydrogen-powered cars" will also not necessarily reduce total CO2 emissions. Those fuel cells have to be charged up somehow.)
From the article:
Demand for irrigation -- which absorbs about 74 percent of all water used by people against 18 percent for hydro-power and other industrial uses and just 8 percent for households -- was likely to surge by 2050.
Surely hydro-power doesn't "absorb" any water at all? Surely water can be used both for hydro-power and then irrigation?
"The real bonus? It's an energy-positive system. That is, the process itself produces all the energy it needs to run itself, plus a bit." lol... sure it is... Can I buy some pot from you? - Brain Griffin
Relax... You're soaking in it." -Madge
I fear Biofuels could ultimatly cause the Amazon rainforest's demise. The Brazillian government already seems eager to trash the rainforest whenever the opportunity to make a bit of cash presents itself.
whats up with Zero piont energy, surely with enough funding we can harness this resource too?
When we have bled that dry the universe will collapse in on itself & all these argument's will be over,
then universe will be able to rebuild a better version without wastefull/greedy/smelly humans???
Also i think the idea about a biohazard symbol on all humans is great..Bring out the branding irons & warning sirens
Environmentalists should consider whether they want a world in which people are starved because feeding SUVs is more profitable to LAND OWNERS than producing food for the poor masses. One thing is certain, the additional demand for agricultural products (processed into biodiesel) will rise their prices. The consumers of those products will either pay more or consume less.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
From the American Brodcasting Corporation (ABC) news division:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Business/story?id=156678 4
Still, the report concluded that there is enough land, water and human capacity to solve the shortages. "The big solution is to find ways to grow more food with less water. Basically, more crop per drop," Molden said. "The number one recommendation . . . is to look to improve rain-fed systems in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia."
I live in Kansas, where there are a couple of ethanol plants either under construction or in the planning stages. Ethanol plants require something like 200 gallons of water a minute to function, which is a huge amount of water. Some posters above have mentioned desalination to get water, but they're missing the point of ethanol plants: to put the plant near corn production, i.e. away from the coasts. The vast majority of the water in Kansas comes from a single aquifer, and there's a lot of debate about how long before the aquifer will run dry. It's not always an issue of having good water; sometimes it's an issue of having any water at all.
There will probably be some good answers to nuclear power in the next few years (eg. accelerated thorium gets around a lot of problems, including the difficulty of getting enough good fuel), but actual effort needs to be expended instead of just throwing money at guys who will build you a 1950's style reactor proven to be an expensive way to make steam.
As for coal - yes people die from accidents in mining it and breathing in dust in a lot of places - but we've known that for centuries. It doesn't make the nuclear waste problems any less real, they are seperate problems and both should be dealt with. Ignoring bad stuff and pointing at how other stuff is worse is the act of a child or an advertising agency.
This is not something 'the environmentalists' need to do - their job, inasmuch as they have any official role, is to do exactly what they do: point out the dangers, because that is what they are qualified to do, as opposed to eg. you. They don't have any power over what the politicians, businesses, farmers and consumers do.
And you are right, we will all end up in caves, the few that survive, if we don't all take this serious and START DOING OUR BIT. No of course I don't believe the bit about caves, but one way or the other, we are all going to have to face up to this problem. Not just the government or 'these environmentalists'; it is some thing we all must take part in, both by saving resources in our own households, but also by putting pressure on our governments, businesses and farmers.
And that, I think is the message from 'these environmentalists'.
- Plants coverts water and carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons.
- Humans extract fuel-grade hydrocarbons from plants.
- Other humans burn the fuel, converting it back into water and carbon dioxide.
So what am I missing? To me this seems to have ahuge advantage over petroleum, because the carbon dioxide from biofuels was in the atmosphere only a year or so ago, as opposed to millions of years ago as with conventional oil.Plants consume water from two places; the ground and the atmosphere. Likewise, they store it in two ways: as absorbed liquid and conveted to hydrocarbons. We want the hydrocarbons as fuel, but the absorbed liquid gets extracted during the fuelmaking process. Why can't we reuse it to irrigate the next crop? As for irrigation, can't we use (or design) plants that (a) don't require as much groundwater, (b) can tolerate a much lower quality of groundwater, such as high-salinity water that can be found in and near the oceans, and (c) maximize the ratio of usable fuel to used water?
It seems to me that this is, overall, a win. My only concern is a blurb I heard on the news last night but haven't had time to investigate on my own: That the food value of a tank of biofuel could feed a human for six months. Offhand, this sounds sensationalistic, like they're using a very inefficient biofuel source as the exclusive diet of somebody even an American would think is fat. But I'd be much more pissed off if SUVs == starving babies than if SUVs == Los Angelenos finally admit they live in a desert.
This is not my sandwich.
Thanks for the correction. A quick Google revealed this which backs you up. http://www.potentialenergyuk.com/?p=47
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
There is something about them that refuses to be satisfied. I think it may be some sort of mental defect.
Maybe it's more of a physical defect. And maybe those "3nl/\rg3 Yr P3n1s" spams are actually coming from her.
What ever happened to algae that can be grown in salt water? Or does controlling the salt concentration require similar levels of water?
This is another great reason to go to nuclear power. How long will it take before people realize that biodiesel is just another crackpot energy scheme cooked up by people looking to get rich?
We're moving from an era of abundance to an era of scarcity.
This means people are going to have to start paying their way for oil and water. Pay by the litre for both, no more flat rate water usage and higher prices for oil. Ultimately economics will drive more efficient technologies for both water and oil usage.
Deleted
>> The only thing in danger is CHEAP water, really.
:P
Seawater is pretty cheap. Why not use it directly instead of using freshwater biomass and then needing a supply of freshwater for it?
Make biofuel from kelp biomass and no freshwater irrigation is needed. Grow it in situ or pump the seawater into a shoreline kelp farm, and harvest the biomass.
Jeez, do I have to think of everything for those environmentalists?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Wow, President, Sunday school teacher, peanut farmer, Habitat for Humanity homebuilder AND nuclear engineer! Is there anything Jimmy can't do?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Lots of people make predictions about how the world and its economy will change, but I do recall that even 15-20 years ago predictions were being made in many major media outlets about how fresh water would become a vital, high-value resource in the not-too-distant future.
Desalination is possible, yet requires much energy, creating its own set of problems. Two countries which bear a huge proportion of the world's natural fresh water supplies are Russia and Canada. They could reap the rewards of the predicted rise in value of fresh water. However, the demand for fresh water would not be without consequences.
Some posts here have minimalised the significance of the need for fresh water, suggesting that it is a "renewable resource", but the effects of overuse or mismanagement can be drastic. The effects of irrigation on the Colorado River and the water table in Saudi Arabia, and the effect of water diversion for cities in California are well known, but not isolated. Flooding caused by hydro electric dams in northern Canada had a notable impact on the flow of rivers and the rising water "dissolved" islands and shorelines by melting the permafrost just below the ground's surface.
How much more fresh water can be taken or diverted from the natural system? What are the real, long-term affects of increasing demand on the fresh water system? Ultimately, fresh water comes from rain, and we can't make it rain on demand (yet). Fresh water is only renewable to a degree, and the consequences of its consumption must be considered.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Using 200 GPM and wasting 200 GPM are two entirely different things. Most of the water is used in
cooling the fractional distillation towers and this is entirely recirculated. Most of the mashing water is also recovered in holding ponds. So your figure is nothing more than a little interesting not a indication of a problem as you suggest.
Got Code?
Do you really think that you'll be able to do it any cheaper than using conventional electricity to run a reverse osmosis plant?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
We need to go electric as much as possible. Build more nuclear power plants. Wind power is also a good idea. Upgrade our hydroelectric dams with the most modern and efficient technology (building more has it's own consequences).
Then move to a hydrogen economy with fuel cell vehicles, use battery-powered cars for city use, and build a first-rate, modern, automated system of moderate-speed (~100 mph) electrified passenger and freight railroads. I'm talking about routing and switching being done by computer and having either unmanned or minimally-manned freight trains that are constantly tracked by satellite. Also, encourage businesses to locate in towns rather than on the highway strips and encourage the growth of medium-sized (~100,000 people) towns outside the major urban areas.
Our moving to this new economy will cost money, but it will also create jobs; and the US economy isn't doing great right now. With appropriate government stimulus, this project could be a New Deal for the 21st century.
-b.
E) Geothermal
This is a combination of energy left over from the formation of of the Earth and heat from the natural radioactivity inside the Earth.
this is why global worming is good
Biofuels have a tremendous environmental impact, one far larger than fossil fuels.
Agriculture has the greatest environment impact of any human activity. Most of the impact comes the sheer area that agriculture requires. Every cleared field represents an entirely destroy natural area. The diffuse nature of the fields also means that they require more roads and other support infrastructure to function. By contrast, fossil fuels, especially oil, can be extracted from natural areas using only small fraction of the total area.
Agriculture in the developed world has been growing progressively more dense in the last few decades. Significant areas formally under cultivation are reverting to natural states. This reversion is also interring huge amounts of carbon. Using biofuels created from crops will reverse that trend. In the 19th century 30-40% of all agricultural land was dedicated to growing carbohydrates to feed to draft animals. Biofuels will take us back to that time.
Let it go, man. Do you realize you just used a Geek forum discussion about bio-fuel to go on about your ex-wife?
It's not worth it to carry that baggage.
Besides, I could tell you a few things about my ex-wife that would...
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I wouldn't mind fermenting my ex-wife to make fuel at all. We could call it the Justice Bio Fuel Company!
But on a more serious note the loss of farmland, the creation of agriculture run off, and the inevitable raising of the cost of food all negate any current efforts to grow fuel crops. When we get the technology to raise enough algae to create fuel that might not be a concern. As always the real solution goes back to reduction of the size of population to get the best results.
You are correct that they don't have an official governmental job, but that's not what the GP is talking about. What he's talking about is what they need to do if they want to be taken more seriously and to get more people to do what they say.
When you run around doom and glooming about how fucked we are in every way, when you tell me that every solution I come up with is a bad one, when you are anti-EVERYTHING, I'm going to label you a crackpot and stop listening. People have been screaming about the world ending for a long time and they've all been wrong. So I'll guess that you are the same.
Even if this doom and gloom happens to be right, I don't care. Why? Because I will not give up everything I love. I'm willing to make sacrifices and cut back, I'm not willing to go live in a hut in the woods. If the hut in the woods is the only long term sustainable solution, well sorry, we are fucked then. I won't do it. I'll do my part in not contributing more humans to the situation, but I won't compromise my life to that degree.
If you want to get people to do things, you need to set realistic goals, and you can't be anti-everything. If have to evaluate things and settle for the lesser of two evils in some cases. You have to give people goals that are actually attainable, and not just doom and gloom.
That's the real problem here is that environmentalists by and large aren't interested in solutions, they are interested in problems, including made up ones. They scream on and on about how fucked we are, and reject almost any solution that is forwarded to fix it. However when you go to them and say "Alright, so what should we do?" They don't have an answer. I mean yes they have boilerplate non-answers like "conserve more" but that's not an answer and they should know it. An answer is HOW to conserve more, with a minimal impact on life and what's more worth conserving.
Now it's not their "job" to do this in the sense that they are paid for it, but it is in the sense that if they want anyone to actually listen or do what they say. When all they say is how bad everything is and how fucked we are, I just stop listening. Even if it's right, it just doesn't matter.
We pay farmers to grow nothing as it is. Pay them to grow fuel crops instead.
+++ATH0
One thing to keep in mind is that water to be used for plant irrigation and other such things has a different purity requirement than human drinking water. What might be good for your plants isn't always good for people, so one might be able to happily use other sources of non-drinkable water without affecting the regular supply.
hey, it's good we'll be using up more of that excess water in biofuel production. And don't forget, we're also holding more water up in skin sacks of mostly water( people = ~80% newborns, ~55% adults ). So besides biofuel product helping to absorb all that extra H2O covering our planet from glacial ice melting, population growth is helping too.
;-)
.55 / 8.34 = 19,784,172,661 gal of water stored instead of flowing around the planet. But with the increased rate of melting over the last couple of decades, we still might need a higher rate of tiny sacks of mostly water production. Geeks UNITE! Well, atleast try harder. ;-)
~240,000 new people per day, avg ~8lb and ~80% water = 1,536,000 lbs of water or 184,172 gals of water each day being held up in tiny sacks of skin.
So it's all good.
And don't forget, in the last 40 years, we've gone from 3b to 6b sacks of skin of mostly water. That's 3,000,000 * ~100lb *
LoB
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It's a real issue. Historically, water shortages have brought down several civilizations, usually those with failed irrigation cultures.
It could have been worse. A few years ago, there was much talk of "privatizing" the world's water supply. Enron entered the water-trading business. (Their web site for water trading was Water2Water.com.) Fortunately, this didn't catch on, except in Australia, which does have water trading.
Have you ever known someone who, regardless of the issue or the solution, can always find something wrong with anything?
Sounds like an utlra-environmentalist to me. Switch to wind power, and they're worried about killing birds. Switch to biodiesel, and they worry about irrigation. Whatever you do to help the environment, an ultra-environmentalist can find a reason why it is bad for the environment.
Luckily, they haven't figured out yet that harnessing solar power on a large scale would prevent heat energy from being absorbed by the earth and probably cause all kinds of weather problems. But they'll put two and two together before long.
The only solution acceptable to an ultra-environmentalist is for all humans to lay down and die.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
from sugarcane, corn or wood -- as a less polluting alternative to fossil fuels.
It's less polluting until you realize that fossil fuel is still a requirement to produce sugarcane, corn, or wood. Unless you're harvesting with oxen and plows, the production of biodiesel still uses the oil you're purportedly saving.
I've been reading some people worrying biofuels may compete with food agriculture and result less food reserves and higher food prices. "Lets see, do I eat or drive today?" Some of us geezers remember world wheat shortages in the 1970s and 1980s. I dont know if it was inferior farming methods or periodic famines in communist countries that drove this, but havent heard about serious world wide grain shortages in some time. This in spite that China has now become a net food importer and has really increased its consumption less efficient meat products.
We need to remember that all energy sources have drawbacks. I did a TV show on alternative energies during the 70s and 80s in British Columbia, Canada, and I tried to depict both the pros and cons of each energy source. Fusion, for example, is always 20 years in the future (which it was in the 1950s); hydropower has impacts on land usage, water flow (which can be good), and fish/animals; coal has pollution and is fairly dangerous to extract; solar has point pollution at the manufacturing site for solar cells (part of the doping process) - or space impacts for solar water heaters (passive solar is usually great); insulation/conservation means the grid has less flexibility (but is usually cheapest) and minor pollutants; biomass requires water and land and fertilizer (pollution).
Biofuels are part of a wide range of alternative energies and work best in areas with abundant water and reasonable solar radiation and excess arable land, but are best if made as part of crop rotation strategies and recycling of crop waste.
The only country with sufficient fresh water supply not to be concerned by 2050, sadly, is Canada.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Gravity is (relatively) constant. Gravity is the reason the water cycle works.
Sunlight is the sole energy source for the water cycle. Water is heated, and rises as water vapor, creating potential energy. That potential energy is released as rain, then rivers and streams.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
The only thing in danger is CHEAP water, really. Desalination can ramp-up to whatever volume you want, and most countries are located near an effectively unlimited source from which to draw saline...
Desalination has it's own concerns such as where is all the salt going to go? Even marine life that has evolved in salt water can take only so much salt. Maybe instead of surface mining for table salt what's left from desalination can be used on the table, and/or it can be used in industrial processes that need it. However desalination will also concentrate heavy metals like lead and mercury in the water. What of them?
FalconShould there be a Law?
I don't seem to get your point well. Aren't your seashore suitable sources of wind energy, too? Don't you think that nowadays windmill technology is advanced enough to produce sufficient energy at such places, too? Correct me, if I'm wrong.
Some places, like Cape Cod where the NAMBYs are trying to stop wind farms in the cape, are good sites for wind power. However not everyplace in the US is near the ocean so what energy generated offshore still will need to be transmitted/transported to these areas. Some of these places though, like Colorado, may be good for land based wind ginnies.
FalconShould there be a Law?
They say photovoltaic cells require a lot of energy to make (I haven't heard about water usage, though maybe it's there). I guess a plant takes some energy (and water) to grow too, but some (most?) of that energy can be taken back when you burn it.
What we need is a happy medium -- synthetic biofuel that can somehow be made w/out a lot of water, and only manufactured using the same energy input source that it stores (sunlight).
You also have to remember that a plant uses energy not for our benefit, but it's own. Surely a synthetic biofuel could be more efficient, since it wouldn't "waste" resources on all the "useless" things that natural life does (e.g. attracting bees, fighting disease, etc).
Is the answer in genetic engineering existing plants, or making all-new machines that copy the chemical mechanisms of plants? Just what the hell is so great about corn, anyway, that we can't reproduce with a more focused use of raw chlorophyll?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The Saudis using the aquafer, "fossil water", is draining the aquifer which introduces two problems. The first is that graining of the aquifer leads to it not being able to store as much water as it currently does. And two it leads to saltwater intrusion. Actually it also leads to a third problem, the pumped water leaves salt residues on the land which makes it harder to grow crows.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Denmark is a small place with particularly good wind resources - hence wind is being used quite a bit there. You cannot compare Denmark with the entire USA, whose wind resources vary widely. We do have SOME good places, but not everywhere. Worse yet, most of our good resources are far from population centers.
Simple fact is, nuclear power, based on current designs, is very, very safe. Simple fact is, newer, modern nuclear designs are safer yet. One can certainly argue the economic merits and the finite duration nuclear power is an option. Nonetheless, nuclear is one of the safest sources of power on earth. Anyone with the slightest inkling of knowledge of the subject matter is forced to conclude, nuclear is safe. Period.
Yes, the design of nuclear power plants are such better, safer, today than they were before. However there's still the problem of where to store the wastes for the period of tyme needed to become harmless. In the US the only place being looked at for this is Yucca Mountain in Utah. Two problems come to mind here, one is that it is within ancient Shoshone lands and the Shoshone have been fighting to prevent nuclear from beeing stored there. A second problem, which as far more reaching ramifications is that Yucca Mountain is a siesmically active region with a number of earthquake faultlines and a volcano in the area. In the 1970s a government building at Yucca was damaged in an earthquake, with another one in 2002, Quake reported near Yucca Mountain. And Bush wants to store nuclear waste there?
At one tyme I was against nuclear power but with today's designs if a way to safety store long term the wastes, and they were operated in a true freemarket then I would support them. However I doubt anyone would want one if they had to operate it in a freemarket, there are laws that protect the nuclear industry from lawsuits and the industry gets subsidies.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This happened in Sweden a few weeks ago:
From http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/
This one is so over the top it's hard to know where to start.
The agriculture here in the USA is already messed up.
By using petrolium based pesticides, and fertilizers
By depending on petrolium based irrigation and farming equiptment.
BioFuel's don't need to take up food crop resources. There are 1000's of plants that are suitable for BioFuels, many are weeds! They aren't edible, they grow much better then wood and they don't require fertile soil or irrigation.
I just spent several weeks in India researching biodiesels. Specifically Jatropha and Pongamia - http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/images6/ trip photos.
The Indian railway system is planting GM Jatropha along it tracks and plant to operate all of it's railway system on mixtures with Oil from these plants.
Here is an article I found, Google pull up many articles on this...
Biodiesel Train on Track in India
SolarAccess.com, 17 Jan 2003
The first successful trial run of a passenger train was conducted on December 31, 2002 when the Delhi-Amritsar Shatabdi Express used 5% biodiesel as fuel. Biodiesel will enable Indian Railways to save on its rising fuel bill while controlling pollution levels. Sulphur and lead emissions were reduced significantly when biodiesel was used, according to the Railways. Ultimately, the percentage of biodiesel would go up to 15% in unison with the accepted global norms. The new green fuel is extracted from the seeds of the Jatropha plant and Indian Oil is now engaged in laboratory tests of biodiesel. The plant can easily be grown on either side of railway tracks as it adopts itself well to arid and semiarid conditions, demanding low fertility and moisture. The other advantages are the fuel's contribution to the national energy pool and the potential of creation of jobs in rural sector.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
If it were not for fear mongering fools like you, places like Yuca Mountain [wikipedia.org] would already be in use and would have already prevented radioactive contamination;
Let me get this straight, you want to store nuclear wastes in a place where there are faultlines and have experienced earthquakes? Here'a a link fromthe wiki page you provided, Earthquakes In The Vicinity Of Yucca Mountain. That is NOT safe storage! Hell, CA with a history of earthquakes can't make their buildings earthquake proof.
Falcon FalconShould there be a Law?
If this propaganda is true our society as a whole theoretically could reduce a good portion of greenhouse gases through the use of biodiesel.
While I support biofuels like biodesiel and believe they have their place, there's no way biodesiel can replace all of the petro the US uses. Even if all of the land used for food were converted to growing feedstock there still wouldn't be enough land to grow enough plants to be used for biofuel.
FalconShould there be a Law?
There is no such thing as a water shortage.
There is no such thing as a water shortage.
There is no such thing as a water shortage.
Water is not consumed. It is not destroyed. It simply changes form. There is a virtually unlimited supply of water on this planet. This will not change no matter how hard we try.
There is no such thing as a water shortage.
Have a nice day.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Actually, I was going to point out that C is B as well, for fission.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Just not from our sun.h esis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynt
Solar - impractical in many areas due to lack of intense sunlight, and photovoltaics are very expensive. In the long run, photovoltaics on every home's roof may be a good thing, but only when the price gets more sensible. Also, here in the UK there is some effort involved since you need to get planning permission to put photovoltaics on your roof (why?!?). Of course there are lots of nasty chemicals involved in the production of semiconductors so maybe the energy savings don't offset the damage caused by the production of the panels in the first place?
PV panels are dropping in price and as more are sold more factories will be built thus reducing the price even more. It's the upfront cost that are relatively high but once paid for they'll provide energy "for free". There are maintenance costs but those are lower than having to continually pay for power from the grid. The payback period for good systems are down to about 7 years, ie in 7 years the cost of the system will be paid for from having to pay for energy from the grid. And at least here in the US it's cheaper to have a pv system in some new home construction than it to have power lines lain to the residence. More and more people are going off the grid. Now the chemicals used, the manufacture of, and energy input for pvs bother me. I haven't seen any life cycle analysis of this. I wonder if the energy used to make pvs is less than or more than the energy they will create in their lifetime. Probably less but I haven't seen this. Maybe the used chemicals can either be recycled or seperated and broken down into useful chemicals for other processes. I've thought of trying this in another area, photography. Film contains silver which winds up in the chemicals when the film is developed. So I was wondering whether is would be feasable to process used developer to extract the silver as well as the other impurities from development.
Wind - suffers from the "not in my back yard" problem - noone wants wind turbines anywhere near them, not to mention the fact that they kill birds
Some don't mind at all, I'm one of them. I'd like to build my own home off the grid and use a hybrid energy system, pvs and wind gennies, for electricity. It's the old wind gennies that were responsible for the reputation of killing birds. They had shorter blades and spun fast and thus were a hazzard to birds but newer designs have the blades longer and they don't spin nearly as fast. As you mention the UK here's a UK website, Yes2Wind. On the front page this month they have this to say:
"Myth: Wind turbines disturb migratory bird patterns."
"Before a wind farm is given planning permission, a strict Environmental Impact Assessment must be undertaken and investigations into any possible disruption of local environment or wildlife. If the proposed site turns out to be on a path along which migrating birds frequently fly, the site will be adjusted to eliminate adverse impacts on the bird's migrations and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds insists that the effects of any approved developments are monitored before and after construction. Available evidence suggests that appropriately positioned wind farms do not pose a significant hazard for birds. Migrating birds also usually fly at heights of 150m above the ocean or land, which is higher than most wind turbines."
In their faqs section they have this:
"Don't they kill lots of birds?"
"Monitoring of existing wind farms suggests that with sensitive siting there is no adverse effect on bird populations. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) supports the sustainable development of renewable energy such as wind power because it helps mitigate climate change, which they believe 'poses the most significant long-term threat to the environment...The available evidence suggests that appropriately positioned wind f
Should there be a Law?
We'd need some sort of subsidy to get average homeowners and businesses to slap PV cells on their roofs in any significant quantity, and several states do not have them.
Here's a map of states with incentives: The Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE). I didn't see a list of states, you're supposed to clink on a state to see what the state has, and I wasn't about to clink on all 51. Yes 51 as they include US territories as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The artic, however, seems to be melting; again though, not on the big island of Greenland.
The ice on Greenland IS melting:
"Thawing ice alarms scientists"
"UT study seems to confirm research indicating faster melting caused by global warming"
By ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
"Greenland's massive ice sheet is melting rapidly, losing the equivalent of Lake Houston every six hours."
"That's the conclusion of a study by University of Texas at Austin scientists that appears to confirm earlier, controversial research that suggests the melting of Greenland's ice has nearly tripled since the late 1990s. Greenland's ice sheet contains about 10 percent of the world's fresh water."
"The findings concern climate scientists, who say that since the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the mid-1900s, carbon dioxide levels have risen by more than 40 percent. They attribute much of the increase to fossil fuel burning and say that, in the absence of increased carbon emissions, no natural factor can explain warming global temperatures."
"The warming effect, scientists fear, is accelerating and could lead to rising sea levels."
"'This is a good indication of global warming, that it's there,' said the study's lead author, Jianli Chen, a researcher at UT's Center for Space Research. 'At least, it's happening in the Arctic.'"
"Using two satellites that measured the change in the mass of Greenland's ice sheet, the researchers, publishing last week in the journal Science, found that Greenland was losing 57 cubic miles of ice a year."
"At that rate, Greenland is raising sea levels by less than a half-inch per decade. But still more rapid ice loss could accelerate that rate. If all of Greenland's ice were to melt, seas would rise by 21 feet."
"'Existing ice sheet models estimate that most of the ice sheet will be removed within 1,000 years,' said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., lead author of the Greenland ice study earlier this year that the new work seems to confirm."
"'This is a very conservative estimate, and the time scale is at least three times too large. Whether it will happen in the next century, we do not know. But, realistically, every year we look at Greenland, we realize that things are changing faster than we thought.'"
"One of the first scientists to study Greenland's thinning ice sheet, NASA glaciologist William Krabill, said the two new studies make a strong case that the melting of Greenland has accelerated."
"'There is no question that the sign is correct, Greenland is thinning and losing mass,' Krabill said."
"He added, however, that there are limitations on the new research. The satellites only began collecting data in 2002, making it difficult to discern whether the recent ice loss is part of a long-term trend."
"Chen said he's expecting the two satellites used in the study to continue collecting data through at least 2010."
"Scientists say coastal residents shouldn't be immediately concerned about rising seas due to glacial melting in Greenland and Antarctica, where there is increasing evidence that a warming climate also is causing ice loss."
"'Houston has produced much larger apparent sea level changes locally through groundwater pumping, and coastal construction contributes to receding coastlines,' said Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, an atmospheric sciences professor at Texas A&M University."
"'We saw in New Orleans the effect of marsh drainage and upstream damming of sediment on the height of land relative to sea level. I expect that, for the next several decades, what Texans do directly to our coast will have a much bigger effect than what global warming will do to our coast.'"
"eric.berger@chron.com"
FalconShould there be a Law?
The thrid world countries I have been in did have starving/poor, but it wasn't due to having enough food/water/money. It was the political mechanisms in those countries that prevented many folks from gaining access to food/water/money.
For the most part I agree abut food. There's plenty of food but because of conflict and/or politics (doesn't politics invite conflict?) the food that is there doesn't get to where it's needed or it doesn't get distributed. Sudan is a good example. Zimbabwe is better. Zimbabwe used to be a breadbasket for southern Africa but after President Mugabe came to power he kicked off of the land many white farmers and they were the ones who made the country rich in food. Mugabe gave some of his cronies the vacated farms and now they sit fallow, hardly producing any food if they produce any. However Ethiopia is another matter, instead of conflicts they have been suffering droughts the past several years. And so the amount of food they produce has shrank. allAfrica has an article, Ethiopia: Millions Still Face Drought Hardship on the draught, and recent rains, that may cause widespread flooding.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Traditional crop farmers are trying to be self-sufficient in regards to power. E85.
I heard the modern steam engine might be making a comeback. http://www.waterfuelconverters.com/?gclid=CNb159_g 8oYCFRbzSAodywLH_g
"Biofuel Production to Cause Water Shortages" {Slashdot article of August 22 2006 > http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/2 1/0418247}. We are presented today with many answers for solving crude oil dependence. Switching from dirty crude oil derivative fuels (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, natural/propane) to more natural biofuels (ethanol, methane, biodiesel) is a Step Up from what we have been doing but it is a "half step" towards where we need to be: www.newpath4.com/imitationenergy.htm . Getting away from burning various fuels, feeling toasty warm from these our ENERGY CAMPFIRE ENGINES, is not the step that's so hard. It is the PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA of taking that first step away from burning fuel to just using staged & pre-choreographed energy. We fear, fear to jump into water that we believe is COLD when it is not. When we gear ourselves up inside & go ahead and splash in, we will find it to be very enjoyable.
None of these Imitation Energy Engines does away with Laws of Physics! They simply expose an additional layer of understanding layered over the top of existing laws. Engines that do not burn a fuel go way beyond the limited expectations of the Kyoto Agreement as they are temperature-balanced natural engines that fully exploit natural law... achieving machines that do not pollute. No air pollution, self-contained quiet so no excess noise pollution, temperature-balanced so no cooling system patches are needed (overall weight reduction with a resulting associated increased efficiency).
It is combustion engines that are wrong now because they were wrong from the start. All combustion engines are wrong because they destroy Matter. And, as is usually the case, humankind/animalkind/plantlife and sea urchins pays the price for this SIN SIN SIN FUELS "sinful" addiction to -and insistence for- wrong answer combustion engines of ALL KINDS.
Wrong Answer Engines I have been working hard to defeat since July 12 2003 with the air+steam "enginewow" and since November 14 2005 (Feb. 2005) with a waterwheel-like Millenial Dawn engine that uses metal balls successively fired from electrical solenoids as a "dry stream" replacement to a stream or river of water. Opposed solenoids fire simultaneously from a shared switch so there is NO RECOIL {no vibration > no wasted energy from vibration.) In other words, the Millenial Dawn engine sets up a RIVER-EQUIVALENT "dry flow" of metal ball
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
Yes I know used cooking vegetable cooking oil can be used to make biodesiel, in fact I believe that's how most biodeseil is made in the US. Other than the equipment, the only other ingredient that is needed is lye. Once they're mixed together gylerine forms at the top of the vessel being used and it can be used to make soap along with other things. On a small scale it's possible for an individual to start making and selling biodesiel as what is needed is readily available, for instance the oil can to gotten from restaurants. Normally they have to pay someone to pick up and dispose of the oil. Actually one of my favorite musicans started a chain of stations selling biodesiel, Willy Nelson, one of the Highwaymen (pun intended). http://www.wnbiodiesel.com/
Falcon
Boy do I love the Highwaymen: Chriss Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willy Nelson.Should there be a Law?
Peanuts.
+++ATH0
When Henry Ford told a New York Times reporter that ethyl alcohol was "the fuel of the future" in 1925, he was expressing an opinion that was widely shared in the automotive industry. "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything," he said. "There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented."
Ford recognized the utility of the hemp plant. He constructed a car of resin stiffened hemp fiber, and even ran the car on ethanol made from hemp. Ford knew that hemp could produce vast economic resources if widely cultivated.
"There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for one hundred years." - Henry Ford
Our collective addiction to oil is at the root of at least six fundamental issues that are adversely affecting our nation and indeed, the entire planet: corporate- driven globalization, global warming, poverty, war, terrorism, and the undue influence of money on the political process.
Find out why Industrial Hemp is the World's #1 Sustainable Fuel and Energy Source ->