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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).
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
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
(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...
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?
Actually, I've been thinking it might be sane to use ocean algae for biofuel production?
Some days ago there was a program on Discovery Channel which was discussing this exact thing. They dumped a lot of iron (salt) to a sea bed where there was no plantation at all. And after some months that area was 'blooming' with all the sea plantations and increased algae, more than they expected. The thing is, majority of the sea is barren because of lack of iron.
So I am quite convinced that work is going on in that direction too. Though it has its own problems of changing water currents, ocean geography, endangering species etc.
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?
biofuel != no CO2
True but it is also true that biofuel != NET increase CO2.
A biofueled economy would put CO2 in the atmosphere at the consumer end of the cycle but it takes it out of the atmosphere at the production end of the cycle. Over time, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will not increase due to biofuels.
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.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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'.
I see you are missing a very important piece of information, which is misleading your entire judgement. I'll explain.
Petroleum is a fossil fuel (and coal, for that matter). When fossil fuels are uses the carbon which was stored and trapped beneath the soil is again being released into the atmosphere. So in the end when someone uses fossil fuels that person is adding more carbon to the atmosphere and in effect contributing to global warming.
That isn't the case when using biofuels. They are produced by storing carbon already available from the atmosphere. So instead of releasing more carbon into the air we are recycling the carbon already present. When using biofuels no one is introducing more carbon into the atmosphere. The carbon produced by using biofuels is in fact reclycled from the carbon which is already present. In the end there is no CO2 production in the sense that the overall quantity of carbon present in the atmosphere stays exactly the same.
So in the end burning biofuels doesn't contribute to global warming. It doesn't have any effect watsoever. The carbon being release to the atmosphere was extracted from the atmosphere in the first place. Moreover, producing biofuel can also help reduce the carbon levels presented in the air because not every quantity of carbon which is extracted from the atmosphere is again released into it.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
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.
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?
>> 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
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?
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.
Sure. At the very least, you could generate the power precisely at the place where the demand is rather than transport it (with corresponding energy losses) from somewhere else. But what you really need is pressure. Rather than convert some power source to electricity, transport it to the plant, and then convert to mechanical energy, why not use tidal energy directly to generate the necessary pressure?
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.
We pay farmers to grow nothing as it is. Pay them to grow fuel crops instead.
+++ATH0
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.
Actually, it wouldn't be such a large monoculture. Current policy is good politics but lousy science and economics. Algae produces far higher yields than traditional crops, can be grown in salt water and waste water, and doesn't need fertile fields (displace food crops). In order to replace all of the US oil consumption 15000 square miles or 9.5 million acres of algae farms would be needed. Sounds like a lot, but in the U.S. 450 million acres are currently used for crop farming and another 500 million for grazing land. There's still a lot of research to be done into sustaining algal blooms and oil recovery, but its been proven to be practical. There is also consideration of using algae farms as carbon sinks for traditional power plants, boosting algae production while scrubbing exhaust. http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html
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?