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Biofuels Make Greenhouse Gases Worse
vortex2.71 sends us to the Seattle Times for an account of two studies published in the prestigious journal Science pointing to the conclusion that almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse-gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these "green" fuels are taken into account. "The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These plant-based fuels were originally billed as better than fossil fuels because the carbon released when they were burned was balanced by the carbon absorbed when the plants grew. But that equation proved overly simplistic because the process of turning plants into fuels causes its own emissions — for refining and transport, for example. These studies... for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development."
So an effort to fix global warming made things worse? How surprising.
That's because all choices (corn as the worst) make sure oil is included in production. And substituting one hydrocarbon for another can't realistically solve anything as long as usage keeps rising.
The article cites no references nor names any of the "eminent" scientists. I smell political propaganda.
Just callin' it like I see it.
While I've always thought that using cropland to produce biofuels is unethical and ineffective. On the other hand, small scale production can make a huge amount of sense.
For example, the biodiesel I run in my Jetta is made locally at a rendering plant out of waste fats. So, not only am I being a little more carbon neutral compared to buying fossil fuels that have been transported long distances, I'm also keeping what would otherwise be wastes from going into the landfill.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
so, either we kill ourselves by burning coal and oil, or we kill ourselves chopping forests.
you know what ? fuckit!!!
if we're so stupid we can't find a stable balance to ensure the survival of the specie, so be it. let mass extinction come. and in 60 million years from now, some form of land dweling squid will be unearthing our bones, just like we do with the dinosaurs.
What ? Me, worry ?
Yes, corn ethanol has a very low yield and has no business being used for fuel - this is very well known. As the article states, "Searchinger said the only possible exception he could see for now was sugar cane grown in Brazil, which takes relatively little energy to grow and is readily refined into fuel." which is entirely unsurprising to anyone who's looked at this stuff before. Corn is only popular in the US, and only because it's subsidized.
How about a discussion on SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil) from crops like Chinese Tallow, and the newer algae production processed instead.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Its kind of surprising how many people don't realize this. The University I attend is extremely liberal and environmentally aware. They have banner and flyers and meetings about how E85 Ethanol and corn is going to save the world basically. They don't fully understand the complications of producing these things. They are so focused on the problem that they fail to see the big picture. And as stated above, the knee-jerk reactions rarely work.
-Eric-
~Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder~
Who didn't see this coming? Turning beans into greenhouse gases makes the whole global warming thing worse. Like duh!
To confirm you're not a script, please type the word in this image: thinker
The looks like propaganda.
This has been mentioned in issues of Scientific American and National Geographic before. Personally I believe we need better power transmission technologies so that we can tap into various solar and wind sources and transport the energy where needed.
But even realizing local benefits of such power generation seems far fetched in todays current political climate. Here in Idaho we have much unrealized potential for wind energy. However the person in charge of our "Office of Energy Resources", Paul Kjellander. Has publicly stated he only believes in, "The Three N's"... Natural Gas, Nuclear or Nothing.
Even the state that has some of the highest potential of wind based energy in the U.S. is in the dark, so to speak. Thing are not looking good when it comes to energy policy here in the states.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Maybe I have a skewed perspective, but in New England 'most' biofuel is firewood. I've been heating my house with it for a couple years and have plenty of trees to burn. But even when I buy a cord from the woodsman a couple miles away the amount of fossil fuel used to generate a cord of wood is probably about five gallons of petrol. I heat the house on two cords a year, and the same heating can be achieved with 1200 gallons of propane. It's not even close.
There is some additional point pollution but I run a catalytic stove from Woodstock Soapstone which reburns the smoke so you can barely smell the woodsmoke outside (and I own enough forestland to eat my share of pollution). Besides that most of that 'pollution' was sequestered from the environment within the past thirty years.
If they want to argue against most fermentation-based biofuels, fine, but most cultures burn wood and have before 1830 when the planet started heating up.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So long as this research isn't being funded (or bribed) by the oil industry or government officials who would rather stick with oil, I could be persuaded to believe this. Pretty much anything we use for fuel is going to have production and transport costs.
As far as fuel goes, we will always these problems until we figure out a decent way to run our machines using air, water, or the Sun. The reason it will take forever to reach such a goal is that there is no money in it: once you've bought the machine that runs on air, water, or Sun, you don't have to buy the fuel. Companies have no real reason to pursue this goal. No money.
Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change
Timothy Searchinger 1*, Ralph Heimlich 2, R. A. Houghton 3, Fengxia Dong 4, Amani Elobeid 4, Jacinto Fabiosa 4, Simla Tokgoz 4, Dermot Hayes 4, Tun-Hsiang Yu 4
1 Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. German Marshall Fund of the U.S., Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute.
2 Agricultural Conservation Economics, Laurel, MD, USA.
3 Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA.
4 Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
How Green Are Biofuels?
Jörn P. W. Scharlemann and William F. Laurance
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
we'd be selling fuel to the rest of the world by cracking H20 into H2 and O2 via nuclear power. While the initial construction costs of a reactor are large, it pays for itself in the energy it produces. Also, over half of our budget goes to defense. If we were to spend just a fraction of that , heck a fraction of the cost of the "war" in Iraq which is projected to reach into the *trillions* , we could spend it on research and development of modern advanced reactor designs to fasttrack the deployment of safe efficient high temperature gas reactors, while at the same time having enough money to build conventional reactors at a regular rate. All the nuclear "waste" that we've produced , mostly in the form of depleted fuel elements , could be exhumed and reprocessed at some remote site using a fast breeder reactor. In the future, the investment in research would produce much safer versions. But oh wait, I forgot, plutonium ( at least the fissile type ) is a no-no in the U.S. although other nations have no problems. Oh, and then there's that problem of Joe stupid American ( by the way, I'm American ) who thinks that "nucular" power is so dangerous when in reality you get more radiation in the vicinity of a coal plant because of trace amounts of U-235 or even when you eat a banana because of the abundance of radioactive potassium isotopes in nature. Nuclear power has been available since 1938-- that 70 years! We could have built thousands of them by now, but due to corruption and ignorance, which unfortunately is a self sustaining cycle ( unless there's a major shock to the system, like, uh, the planet going to hell ) I'm afraid the status quo will remain for the foreseeable future.
jdb2
Besides the problem of fertilizer production, irrigation, machines burning diesel fuel, the biofuel craze is increasing pressures on farm land, promoting deforestation, and contributing to global food price rises. But that doesn't mean we won't eventually get a biofuel that has more energy in it than we put into it. Once we reach this point, then the biofuel itself can fuel its production. But in the mean time there are some other intriguing alternatives.
Just today I was listening to CBC's "Quirks and Quarks" talking to Sandia labs about using solar energy to convert CO2 and H2O into H2 and CO, which can be effectively combined to make hydrocarbons. Unlike bacteria or algae, this process uses a special solid substance that, when exposed to the intense light, has its oxygen molecules stripped off, releasing O2 into the atmosphere. Then this substance is taken out of the sunlight, exposed to CO2 and Water, and it rips the oxygen molecules out of those substances, leaving H2 and CO behind, both of which can be fairly economically combined into hydrocarbons like methanol and gasoline. What's intriguing is that the substance they are using to rip the oxygen out of the water and CO2 can do this over and over again. Right now they are using CO2 from sources other than the atmosphere, making this not carbon neutral. However they plan to work towards harvesting CO2 from the atmosphere. In the meantime, though, this is a great way of increasing the efficiency of energy extraction from, say coal. If, someday, we could capture all CO2 from coal plants and convert it to gasoline for use in autos, that would have an overall decrease in our CO2 emissions because the coal could now be used to generate electricity *and* drive cars, reducing the CO2 emissions from refined gasoline. Assuming we can control particulates, nitrous oxides, and sulfur dioxides from burning gasoline, in the future perhaps gasoline-burning cars will be the cleanest things on the planet! Certainly as the scientist pointed out, gasoline (hydrocarbons anyway) is the best way of storying energy. Generating electricity is nice, but we have to use it as we generate it. Batteries and H2 production aren't really that good at storing energy as densely. The radio program is http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/feb09.html and the Sandia press release is http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/sunshine.html
If we are wise, then I think the push to biodiesel or solar gasoline will ultimately be our ticket.
that biofuels actually increased carbon emissions. Namely because of the emissions costs of processing all the fuel. Now, something like the waste cooking oil I could see being useful, but the corn lobby will make sure that method is not widespread.
How I love politics. Politics getting in the way of reason, in the way of human survival. Nothing new. Or, in the Slashdot lore, "Nothing to see here, move along."
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
Both papers are published in Science Express rather than the regular journal yet. Here are the abstracts:
Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt
Joseph Fargione Jason Hill David Tilman Stephen Polasky, Peter Hawthorne
Increasing energy use, climate change, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels make switching to lowcarbon fuels a high priority. Biofuels are a potential lowcarbon energy source, but whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food-based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a 'biofuel carbon debt' by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions these biofuels provide by displacing fossil fuels. In contrast, biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials incur little or no carbon debt and offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages.
Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change
Timothy Searchinger, Ralph Heimlich R. A. Houghton, Fengxia Dong, Amani Elobeid, Jacinto Fabiosa, Simla Tokgoz, Dermot Hayes, Tun-Hsiang Yu
Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. Using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%. This result raises concerns about large biofuel mandates and highlights the value of using waste products.
While this work is very useful, the immediate concern would seem to be that grain carryover stocks are becoming quite low as a result of ethanol production. They are now at about 54 days worth of world consumption compared to over 100 days in 2000. Much lower stocks would mean making a choice between starvation of people or reducing feedlot operations and meat availability.
It's not as though people who actually considered the overall impact haven't been pointing this out for years.
what about getting cellulosic ethanol from algae/etc?
it hasn't quite been perfected yet, but i don't see a problem with it once it does. get yeast or bacteria to convert it and do the dirty work for you.
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
I mean... its nice to see that they did them and all... but does anyone have access to the studies?
You know... for those among us that find paying $10 per article that you can only have for 24 hours kinda steep.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...and carbon's what plants crave.
Hey, wait! Biofuels' got what plants crave!
Note that this lead author is quoted as stating "probably increase". I am taking note of this apparently overlooked qualification. I've yet to read the actual Science paper yet. Until I read the primary source, I'll take this news with a grain of salt.
...that basically starts with a pre-conceived conclusion and looks for evidence to back it up, I suspect.
The problem is that the net emissions from biofuel production cannot ever be determined accurately---it is totally impossible ot absolutely quanitfy it because it is always a moving target.
The article goes on about rainforest being clear-cut to make way for the production of fuel plants. That kind of land makes really poor land for growing and there is no evidence at all that shows biofuel production has been cited as a reason for clearing a significant amount of new land. The "biofuel lobbyists" are right about one thing; the study is too simplistic to be an accruate assesment of the real net impact of biofuel production. What if the farm equipment itself was powered by biofuels? What if the waste biomass from preparing farmland and growing the crops was recovered and used for power generation? What if we used biomass from the ocean (this is already done on an experimental scale)? Have there been studies on the efficiency of biofuel-powered engines and on the overall emissions (sulphur, particulates and things that not only afect the climate but actually harm our health)? What about the impact of making fuel out of tarsands vs middle-east light sweet crude vs. crude drilled in the Gulf of Mexico? How can they put a number like "92 years of emissions"? It all smells pretty fishy to me.
It's like the argument that biofuels threaten foodstocks. Well, we used Soybeans extensively for food products...and it makes a good biofuel...and plastic...and industrial lubricants...and a host of other things. What is wrong with doing that using corn too? Corn production in the US actually exceeds what the world NEEDS for food by quite a margin, as do the production of many other crops (wheat, etc). These crops have been very cheap since the depression (in fact for decades they went down significantly when adjusted for inflation) and only in the last few years have grain prices been coming up to where they really should be. Sometimes I wonder if there are lobbyists out there for the processed food undustry putting resistance out to any competing demand in order to ensure they can name their own bargain prices for high-fructose corn syrup, bleached and enriched white wheat flour and hydrogenated vegetable oil and keep the margins on twinkie sales up.
Anyways, what is the big surprise here? Burning fuel creates emissions...surprise surprise! When you drive an electric car you are indirectly burning natural gas, or coal, or splitting uranium atoms. When you are using biodiesel you are burning soybeans or canola, along with whatever the equipment used to grow it uses. Same with ethanol except it's corn or switchgrass or sugarcane. Hello...if you want to reduce emmissions DON'T DRIVE SO DAMN MUCH! Get rid of your suburbans and buy a hatchback (a VW Golf diesel is better than a Prius if you don't live in a big city). Better yet, get off your ass and WALK once in a while.
Actually having worked in power plants and refineries and such...I have a hard time believing ANY sort of fuel doesn't have a significant environmental impact. These guys obviously haven't seen how tarsands ar mined, or how much fuel an oil tanker uses, or how much power an offshore drilling platform uses.
The problem is most of the plants build up till this time haven't taken transportation into account. Many were build by co-ops (though many have been bought up by very large petrochemical companies) out in the middle of nowhere. So everything gets trucked in and out. It's very inefficient. So yes, old plants bad.
On the other hand, many of the larger biofuel plants on the drawing board have been placed on train lines. Which is crazy fuel efficient compared to trucks. Even more efficient is building out pipelines. So new well placed plants good.
I'm sure someone will point out that corn-based ethanol, if not grown using sustainable agriculture will destroy topsoil and use up valuable water, but don't diss ethanol in general, there's plenty of possible improvements that are on their way that will improve full-cycle efficiency, reduce topsoil impact, improve genetic diversity, improve soil quality... but I won't go into them all right now.
I think one of the most valuable results of corn ethanol production has been the raising of the awareness level to the point where people understand that, yes, there is another way besides petroleum. They have witnessed at least some ethanol going into their fuel tanks and so Joe Public doesn't think ethanol or alternative energy is some sort of fringe idea.
Now we just have to find the best solution or solutions and switch (rotate?) as necessary to what currently makes the most sense and improve, improve, improve.
Time is of the essence because billions of people in the developing world are growing wealthy and will be trying to drive a car for the first time whether the planet likes it or not, and of course it's going to be much better if we have those choices worked out by that time.
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
still in development; no current production
Sources of Cellulosic Ethanol:
Energy Balance
Fossil-fuel energy used to make the fuel (input) compared with the energy in the fuel (output)
1 to 2-36
Greenhouse gas emissions (production and use)
Gasoline=20.4, Cellulosic ethanol 1.9 (lbs/gallon)
Sources: U.S. DOE; U.S. EPA; Worldwatch Institute
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
coal is the greenest fuel because it requires the least processing. The point is corn sucks as a fuel source and sugar cane requires vast amounts of land and fertilizer. Biofuels will never replace oil. Here's a big shocker, so what? We've never run our houses on one source of electricity so why should we expect to run our cars that way? Biofuels are a great way to offset oil use until something like electrics can take over. Just a reminder hydrogen isn't a fuel source it's a storage medium and it has a really low energy density so dont hold your breath on that one. Diesels can be run on blends of biodiesel and regular diesel and cars can handle alcohol blends without modification, flex fuel cars can run up to a 100%. Where's the problem? Biodiesel can also be made from waste products and there are processes for turning grasses and such into alcohol with far less energy than corn. Even the worst biodiesel can't be as bad as any fossil fuel simply because fossil fuels ALWAYS contribute to CO2 where as biofuels at least part of the year store CO2. Petroleum based fertilizer? Bad idea. Believe it or not there are alternatives it's just cost and convienence that determines the type of fertilizer used. Some bio crops do require little or no fertilizer. If we just added 5% biofuel to existing fuel sources it'd save millions of barrels a year. Wants really save? Try upping mileage to 50mpg. Can't be done? I'll call BS on that one. They made cars in the 70s that better than 35 mpg, I owned one, used but I owned one. Hybrids can get that without recharging and rechargables can get radically more. That'd cut our fuel usage down by half. Gee then biofuels are suddenly contributing 10% of our needs. Battery technology is already good enough for easily 90% of our needs so try that number on for size, suddenly biofuels could largely replace oil with current technology. Can't drive your monster SUVs? My heart bleeds.
There are a few thing to consider before dismissing biofuels entirely.
First, this study states that the break even point is 93 years. That's a reasonable timeframe when assessing anthropogenic global warming. Most of the time, the warming potential of gasses is measured using a 100 year potential. As a long term investment, biofuels still pay off.
Second, the study looks at corn as a fuel. Nobody except Iowans and pandering politicians think corn is a good biofuel. The technology for cellulosic ethanol is just around the corner. Biodiesel far more energy efficient than ethanol. Sugar is a far more viable alternative than corn, where it will grow.
Finally, it looks like the study considers only a monoculture. Multiple crops on the same area of land is more efficient. Of course, far too much of our agriculture is monoculture.
Methanol made from ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is far and away the best option, especially if one factors in the benefit to the environment of having no emissions and renewable, non-polluting production. There's just no comparison. Current biofuels, especially corn-based ethanol, are an economic disaster and cause corn prices to rise so high that people starve.
Bio-fuels make developing and developed world farmers switch from food crops to bio-fuels crops which drives up the price of food for the poorest members of society. In some cases farmers are even switching to thigns like Jatropha which are poisonous. It's really sick and twisted that we can drive our SUVs and feel good about being environmentalists by using corn that could be eaten by starving people in developing nations and be depleting topsoil at the same time.
As I've said before on slashdot, burning carbon that we produce is no different than burning what we dig up. If the current plant life cannot scrub the air, we are not carbon neutral.
The only interesting point in this is just the fact that ethanol is *worse* than oil, since it produces far more carbon in the manufacturing process.
It's like stopping a leak in a major artery by poking lots of holes before the artery - sure, no blood is coming out of the artery, but you're still dead.
posted as AC because I know what tends to happen to karma with these kinds of issues.
Doesn't distilling ethanol (disregarding other transport and growing costs) still take more energy than you get from burning it?
I mean, can we burn ethanol to distill more ethanol than we burned to do it? And I realize that doesn't matter much if you use nuke power (or something) to distill, but I have a feeling that it would be mostly distilled using the same age old power sources or coal/oil/nat. gas/whatever the nearest power plant burns, thus making ethanol an answer only for energy storage, we still need a source, right?
If you accept the arguments here then you must also accept that vegetarianism, as practiced in the west, is even worse for the planet.
Each bite of vegetable travels on average 2000 miles. And the fuel used to power the travel came from even further away.
Vegetarianism requires conversion of forest to crop land which this article points out has a 93 year carbon-debt payback time for fuel production and of course an infinite period payback for growing vegetable since they don't carbon offset anything.
Vegetables use irritation which requires energy to move the water (most large scale irrigation is done in proximity to hydro electric dams for a reason: water+power.
Vegetables use irritation which makes the land salty and eventually depletes the soil.
Plowing weeding planting, ferilizing, storing and drying consume energy. In contrast with beef, the cows are self propelled, and can even deliver themselves to colllection points. 100% of the animal is used. And only the high density nutritious parts have to be shipped.
Beef will graze in forests and other areas without destoying them. They don't need irrigation, there is no huge loss of water to evaporation. No pesticides enter the water stream.
Most beef spends only a short portion of it's life cycle on a feedlot. And feed lot animals produce 1/3 of the methane as grain fed animals. The net methane production of cattle affecting the environment is a flawed notion when you consider there are half as many cows in the US as buffalo that used to roam.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
For more see Energy Biofuel and Carbon Emmisions
Here is the cliff notes. Ethanol from switchgrass has zero to one year carbon debt payback. I asked Mr Fargione if he thought it was irresponsible to paint all biofuels with such a broad brush, go figure, No response.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
1) Nuclear power
2) Fully electric vehicles
Nucler power technology has matured in Japan and France while we've sat on our butts for 25 years. Solar thermal is also a promising new technology.
Electric vehicles are just waiting on batteries which should be just a year or two away.
Cellulosic ethanol, wind power, and particular fuel cells, are pipe dreams.
About a year ago Science also had a long analysis examining the impact of various plants to create biofuels. It concluded, essentially, that corn was the worst while natural weeds and crop waste was the best. This initial analysis did not effect US policy which is based on year over year profit rather than long term costs. The overcapacity we currently see in ethanol facilities is not a result of good analysis or market forces, but by the subversion of those market forces by government regulations, such as subsidizing the oil companies, for instance through the reduction of oil taxes, and the subsidy of corn as a biofuel over more advantageous plants.
It is unlikely that greenhouse gasses are going to fall without a reduction of consumption. We are talking a higher fuel economy in all vehicles, and a large tax on those vehicles that do not meet those fuel efficiencies, as well as a loss of other tax benefits for such vehicles. We are talking large tax benefits for small businesses that meet rigorous emission standards. We are talking a reduction in consumption of product made in factories that have no concern for efficiency, and a willingness to pay more for products that are made in more environmentally friendly patterns.
The only reason that such an article seems controversial is that consumers want a free lunch. People were hoping that corn would be a panacea, like nuclear power, too cheap to meter, with no negative consequences. It is like how some people drive on the freeway. With no regard to Newton's laws of motion. I guess they believe they drive fast enough so to be out of the domain of where such laws are valid.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Burning biofuels produces CO2, as does burning fossil fuels. The production of biofuels requires clearing land and driving tractors, both of which also produce CO2. Cleared land is worse for fixing carbon from CO2. The amounts probably are bigger than the amount of CO2 produced by fossil fuel extraction. This story has been big in the news, but the finding seemed obvious with minimal thought.
I'm sure you will get modded down for being politically incorrect but those are some seriously good points. Even though I have a few quibbles, I can't really say the net effect is not persuasive. Damn you! I now feel guilty eating those brazil nuts, tahini salad dressing, and frozen mangos. Over the years befor the new CFCs came to market, frozen peas alone probably cause huge releases of ozone destroying chemicals.
I heard an interview with one of the authors on Science Friday. He said that if done wrong biofuels are bad, but if biofuels are grown on marginal land with the non-food crops it'll be a good thing. Their criticism was the way biofuels are being made now like from corn and soy and clearing forests for palm.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I wonder if they're counting the positive impact that the plants they make fuels like Ethanol out of are having, too.... most of the carbon dioxide that gets released by burning something like corn-based Ethanol was carbon dioxide in the first place, and was scrubbed from the atmosphere by the plant you ultimately turn into alcohol. Yes, the fermentation process releases CO2. Yes, burning the resulting alcohol releases CO2. But unlike fossil fuels, this is CO2 that was removed from our atmosphere in living memory. The plants we're distilling and burning are ones that get cultivated for months, not millenia.
Even granting the benefit of the doubt and admitting that burning fossil fuels may release less CO2 in the long run, the important point that TFA is ignoring is that it's CO2 that hasn't been part of our atmosphere for millions of years. It's not about eliminating greenhouse gases entirely. That's never going to happen without a fundamental shift in how we get energy in the first place. Switching to alternative fuels is about carbon neutrality, and that's something that has to be measured within the human lifespan. Actually, it's something that needs to be measured over as short a period of time as possible.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Maybe they could use the heat and methane collected from the massive piles of rotting political bullshit and use that to power, heat, and fuel the U.S.?
Here in the U.S., we could free ourselves from the fat tits of the Oil Sheiks in the Middle East in no time!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I also find it interesting how the article kept talking about how biofuels were responsible for rainforest destruction, when they need not be, and they weren't talking about the most efficient biofuel methods. Also, of course, biofuel techniques are far from perfected at the moment, so even if it really is worse right now, I don't think the technology's potential shouldn't underestimated.
Would solar energy as an alternative be somewhat effective? I always pictured a worldwide solar grid connected all around the world. (the Sun would be shining somewhere)
(I know I'm super-simplifying the idea --but I'm just asking; and you seem like you know what you're talking about)
What percentage of the world's energy could possibly come from solar?
(And what percentage after most of our cars are electric?) (if that ever happens)
Mever nind the typos.
"It was really convenient in that it allowed politicians to act "green" and look like they were moving away from supporting big bad Middle East oil (which is in large part financed by American companies under American-supported governments... that's a discussion for another day). "
Large part? Name the number of US oil companies. You'll find that the majority are foreign owned companies. You'll aslo find out that China and other countries are likewise funding "Middle Eastern Oil" with their purchases.
ADM is going to be so pissed...
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
Perhaps I just don't understand, but even if an alternative energy source (biofuel or otherwise) generates more greenhouse gas, isn't there still an advantage if we can limit the use of these fuels in regards to geography?
My point is this. We have all of these gasoline engines around the country pumping out greenhouse gas from our cars. There isn't a very good way to limit this output at the engine due to the life cycle of a vehicle, people bucking the system, and the fact there are just so many of them!
If we produce an alternative fuel that burns cleaner at the automobile even if it is terribly dirty at the production factories, isn't this source of greenhouse gas easier to address? Couldn't the production factories have a sort of scrubber or way to capture/recycle/reduce this harmful output? I would think it would be easier to implement these measures in a few thousand plants than in millions of automobiles.
Of course, this has just been the thought rattling around in my head when I read a story like this. It seems there isn't a magic solution to our environmental impact, but I would think stuff like this could at least make somewhat of a positive change.
I think that the case for SVO is even clearer. The emissions from burning SVO in a conventional diesel engine are considerably worse than straight diesel pretty much across the board, and yet people claim that they are offset by the plant production process and are thus "carbon neutral."
The thing that really gets me about this is that usually people are talking about reclaimed SVO -- so it's something that would not ordinarily be burnt and would instead end up in a landfill. I always say that if they *really* want to be environmentally conscious, what they should do is dumpster a gallon of SVO, then bury it in the soil so that nobody else can burn it, and burn a gallon of diesel instead. Less emissions, and their "carbon neutral" crap still applies.
The key discussion is the current primary biodiesel production is on crop land. They're right. We're going to be needing all our crop land to grow food to feed a rapidly growing population.
Biodiesel production from high oil content algaes doesn't need to use crop land. From a University of New Hampshire study...
"...NREL's research focused on the development of algae farms in desert regions, using shallow saltwater pools for growing the algae. Using saltwater eliminates the need for desalination, but could lead to problems as far as salt build-up in bonds. Building the ponds in deserts also leads to problems of high evaporation rates. There are solutions to these problems, but for the purpose of this paper, we will focus instead on the potential such ponds can promise, ignoring for the moment the methods of addressing the solvable challenges remaining when the Aquatic Species Program at NREL ended.
NREL's research showed that one quad (7.5 billion gallons) of biodiesel could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land (200,000 hectares is equivalent to 780 square miles, roughly 500,000 acres), if the remaining challenges are solved (as they will be, with several research groups and companies working towards it, including ours at UNH). In the previous section, we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 19 quads (one quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 15,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert (note for clarification - I am not advocating putting 15,000 square miles of algae ponds in the Sonora desert. This hypothetical example is used strictly for the purpose of showing the scale of land required). That 15,000 square miles works out to roughly 9.5 million acres - far less than the 450 million acres currently used for crop farming in the US, and the over 500 million acres used as grazing land for farm animals.
The algae farms would not all need to be built in the same location, of course (and should not for a variety of reasons). The case mentioned above of building it all in the Sonora desert is purely a hypothetical example to illustrate the amount of land required. It would be preferable to spread the algae production around the country, to lessen the cost and energy used in transporting the feedstocks. Algae farms could also be constructed to use waste streams (either human waste or animal waste from animal farms) as a food source, which would provide a beautiful way of spreading algae production around the country. Nutrients can also be extracted from the algae for the production of a fertilizer high in nitrogen and phosphorous. By using waste streams (agricultural, farm animal waste, and human sewage) as the nutrient source, these farms essentially also provide a means of recycling nutrients from fertilizer to food to waste and back to fertilizer. Extracting the nutrients from algae provides a far safer and cleaner method of doing this than spreading manure or wastewater treatment plant "bio-solids" on farmland.
These projected yields of course depend on a variety of factors, sunlight levels in particular. The yield in North Dakota, for example, wouldn't be as good as the yield in California. Spreading the algae production around the country would result in more land being required than the projected 9.5 million acres, but the benefits from distributed production would outweigh the larger land requirement. Further, these yield estimates are based on what is theoretically achievable - roughly 15,000 gallons per acre-year. It's important to point out that the DOE's ASP that projected that such yields are possible, was never able to come close to achieving such yields. Thei
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/beer4.htm
With ethanol, its less all around ...
Anyone who tracks their gasoline consumption (gee, with all this concern about the environment, you'd think tree-huggers would) knows that ethanol also makes a lousy fuel additive. My mpg dropped 15% when I tanked up with "gasahol.". 84,000 BTU per gallon as opposed to 115,000 BTU for gasoline - it takes 1.37 gallons of ethanol to produce the same energy as 1 gallon of gas, so your engine isn't running as efficiently on the ethanol-gasoline mix (lower peak cylinder temp/pressure), which explains the disproportionate drop in mpg.
It's a rip-off.
What happens when it turns out to be solar activity driven? Thre is no causative relationship, only poor and parital correlation of so-called "greenhouse gasses" to warming events historically.
I guess they forgot to consider the costs of continuing to rely on oil, and the costs of producing shipping, refining, transporting to gas stations, those are way worse than grow a plant. we have to pollute to just to get to the oil, and the destruction that's already happened, Prudoe Bay is still cleaning up form the Valdez spill, and other places are still dealing with oil spills that happened 10-50 years ago.
The only way that nuclear power production can be considered cheap is if you leave out the costs of building the reactors AND the cost of decommissioning the reactors after the facilities eventually they lose their licenses and have to be decommissioned. The cost of decommisioning nuclear reactors is ALWAYS left out of the equation by nuclear power advocates. ALWAYS.
Including the multi-billion dollar cost of decommissioning nuclear reactors makes burning US currency to generate power look like a better idea.
The nuclear power industry never pays this cost, either. The decommissioned reactors get spun off into separate corporations with only the shut-down reactor in the portfolio of assets, leaving the US Gov't to pay the multi-billion dollar price tag every single shut down nuclear reactor costs to decommission.
Let's face it. Corn sucks. Of course there is a solution. Look for a better crop (switch grass). What about fats and oils? Nah, then the problem wouldn't be CO2 emissions. The obesity epidemic would get worse! Think about it. Americans gorge themselves on fast food. The waste oils and fats get turned into fuel. Many claim the fuels smell like fried food when burned. This makes you hungry so you eat more.
The article specifically discusses forms of ethanol, which by 21st century standards is not cutting edge bio fuels.
However, until such time as the production process matures and is, no pun intended, refined, there cannot be an equitable comparison to the petroleum industry.
However, once you start getting into biodiesels refined from waste products or even algae, the overall impact may start to decrease. I am not saying there is no carbon foot print, but it seemed to be a fairly clean process from the show I watched on how biodiesel is made from waste cooking oils. It is not a simple process, but if the resources were invested into it on a large scale, I am fairly certain that the carbon footprint would be equal or less than that of petroleum refineries.
We also need to work to harness other natural power resources to further offload our dependance on fossil fuels. Geothermal, solar, wind, etc. Hydro-electric is pretty well covere, but more efficient turbines might be a way to boost the power generated.
Anyway, enough rambling.
The vast majority of the billions of animals grown for food out there are NOT fed by allowing them to freely graze "in forests and other areas". Most of them live out their lives in intensive factory farming operations. They are mostly fed vegetable and grain based diets, designed to make them grow quickly. So if you were to eat only meat, you would not avoid the need to grow vegetables. In fact, to grow a pound of beef in north america, it takes at least 2.6 pounds of grain (if you take the numbers from the beef industry at face value). And all this grain is not grown anywhere near the feed lots, either. It is shipped to the cows from all over the world, again requiring large amounts of fossil fuels. And I haven't even mentioned the methane that is produced by cattle in enormous quantities, or the methane produced by their manure. And this is just for cattle. You also need to factor in the billions more pigs, chickens, etc.
Your only valid point is that too much of the vegetables we buy comes from too far away, and that is why it is not only important to eat less meat (note I didn't say NO meat), but it is also important to purchase as much seasonal, local produce as possible. One criticism you missed, however, is the popularity of heavily processed meat substitutes (eg: "Tofurkey"). They probably consume far more energy per pound than most meats.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_animal_feeding_operation
http://www.beeffrompasturetoplate.org/mythmeatproductioniswasteful.aspx#Sixteen%20pounds%20of%20grain
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1740-0929.2007.00457.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=asj
http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.htm
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h307k69711m5nh00/
Yes, we need liquid chemical fuels in Aviation. Liquid fuels are also useful wherever you need high power density in a portable form. I would guess that about 10% to 15% of current vehicular and power-tool use will continue to be based on internal combustion. But we should be able to sustain that using biofuels.
The original article is simply a statement of the fact that ANY industrial process in our current economy uses lots of fossil fuels. So just about anything you do is going to result in carbon emissions. Duh. But there is no reason why 85% of the uses of fossil fuels couldn't be replaced by something else or reduced through recycling. See The Methanol Economy for one possible alternative.
In a plausible future where all of out industrial processes have been changed to reduce carbon emissions, there won't be carbon emissions. In the present, where everything we do causes them, there are. Uh, Yeah!
You know you're a hopeless academic when you think a book can save your life in the face of a severe famine. No, my friend, a book can not tell you how to survive and live off the land. This is something you must learn in person.
A company called Solazyme was on NPR Science Friday last Friday talking about their next generation biofuel that is low net-carbon. They feed agricultural and industrial waste products or cellulosic sugars to algae to grow transportation fuels or food oils. Net carbon emissions come from the fossil fuels used in the biofuel production process (tractors, distillers, etc.) and the land use changes mentioned in the studies here. However, since Solazyme makes fuels that can be used in the tractors, etc. that part can be net zero carbon (the fuel gives off CO2 like fossil fuels do, but that carbon is taken out of the atmosphere during the growing process). Since Solazyme's algage can eat non-food crop sugars, that also will be net-zero carbon (as long as forests aren't cleared to grow the non-food sugars). They said they expect their fuels to be cost competitive with fossil fuels in 2 to 3 years.
there is another issue: giving money to fundamentalist regimes (iran, saudi arabia) and authoritarian regimes (venezuela, russia)
the west basically funds those who wish to see the downfall of the west via petrodollars. in what world does bankrolling your worst enemies makes sense?
we need to get off fossil fuels because of the environment, yes. but there is also the issue of security. if we stop funding fundamentalism in the middle east, and we stop funding regimes which oppress the rights of their people like venezuela and russia, then we go along way to making this world a better place, with or without more smog
i honestly think the security issue is more important than the environmental issue. it doesn't do our grandchildren any good to inherit a word with a pristine physical environment, and a fascist political one. so gung ho on biofuels, even if they pollute more than fossil fuels by an order of magnitude
but even better, go nuclear and electric cars. then we win at the environment AND security. if we go nuclear and electric cars, we won't have to worry about chernobyl because of the newer failsafe nuclear tech (the staff can just walk away from a pebble bed reactor and it won't ever melt down), and we won't have to worry about the 10,000 year old waste if we use breeder reactors (which also means getting 10x more energy out of the fuel, with a tenth of the waste, that lasts only a century or two, at a much safer radiation profile). by using thorium as well as uranium, we can have enough fuel for centuries (btw: uranium and thorium isn't mostly buried in the land of vile regimes, like oil)
and in a few centuries, we better have fusion finally figured out
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wow, now that I've seen the abstracts it makes me think that this is all that Ms. Rosenthal of The New Your Times read of these studies before she wrote this article.
When we have so many sources of clean and renewable energy? Those in the developing world, and many more in developed nations aren't interested in "making due with less" when there isn't any reason to do so. Ethanol from corn isn't a solution to our energy problems, but that doesn't imply that neither nuclear nor solar are. I for one, look forward to consuming ever greater amounts of energy, more cheaply and cleanly than ever, as time goes on and technology improves.
The planet can clearly support (through the help of our friend Albert Einstein) FAR more energy than we're using right now. Ignoring that blindingly obvious fact is lazy and defeatist. And ignorant of history. When has the "just make do forever" crowd ever won out? Why would you want them to?
Relax I just want some peanuts.
What about Bio-diesel produced from Algae sources?? -Ian
As far as bio-fuels go, I thought it was pretty well understood that those in use today (either bio-diesel or ethanol) don't reduce CO2 emissions. Isn't that why there's an emphasis on finding ways to make ethanol from cellulosic material? In fact there was an article on slashdot a couple weeks ago about a company which had developed a technology that would make this possible http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/25/2313212. The article says that they'll have a pilot plant operating early next-year and if all goes well we could see commercial scale operations early next decade. I'm all for that.
The price of corn (to use the most inefficient and expensive example) may go up from momentary demand, but that doesn't mean that the cost of other foods also goes up. I don't see any plans to make ethanol from legumes, food-grade grains and many other dietary staples. If people starve, it will be because they've been subsisting only on corn grown in the midwest U.S. and I don't believe that.
Even corn ethanol can be produced for less than half the cost of gasoline. Thus, over time, the cost of producing all foods other than corn goes *down* because the energy costs for those (production & transportation) are chopped in half.
It's even possible that it may cost less to bring corn itself to the table thanks to cheaper fuel, so I just don't buy the starvation argument. It looks to me like it would be the opposite, that economic opportunities everywhere would increase, and the result would be more food and more food transportation, not less.
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
Is the inefficiency a failure of your engine or your fuel ? It seems odd that ethanol is so popular for racing engines if it produces less energy.
Come on guys. The politicians love the entire biofuel train and will disregard the negative consequences for as long as possible. The entire thing was so quickly accepted NOT because it will reduce emissions, but because it is a way to pump agricultural subsidies without actually saying you do.
Agri subsidies have been a major problem between Europe+US vs. rest of the world. Due to subsidies, it is cheaper for people in Nigeria to actually buy corn and wheat from US/Europe than to actually grow it themselves. Agri subsidies are essentially screwing the third world for monetary, political and strategic reasons (ie. country can feed itself without imports - strategic advantage).
The only problem is that all this is anti-WTO. Anti global free-trade. So, how can politicians fix the problem? How can they continue to subsidize agriculture without being contrary to the WTO agreements they want? They subsidize "new technology" called biofuels. Then the agri-subsidies take an extra step to get to farmer, but end result is the same. Subsidies continue while WTO is happy.
The only problem is that this is again at the cost of the environment. More land cleared. More jungles and peat bogs destroyed to make "environmentally friendly" fuel. Subsidies are why bio-fuel from corn, sugar cane, wheat, even grass. But no bio-fuel from oily algae grown on treated sewage lagoons. No, that fertilizer is just dumped to kill lakes instead.
Bio-fuels are just a cover to continue with agri subsidies in US and Europe. That's why politicians love it.
This has all been known for some time, that's why they're working on other sources for biofuels. I hope the people who are rushing to build corn processing plants are building them with some flexibility...
The idea of being green is not creating Big Corn as alternative to Big Oil.
Eventually we'll be down to 1 thing which hasn't been blamed for destroying the environment: too many humans. Then the media will shift focus to Michael Jackson tabloids.
whenever i eat vegetarian my gases get worse
These studies only apply to 1st & 2nd generation biofuel efforts. No one outside the United States is seriously pursuing them now. In fact the Germans have a pilot algae CO2 capture facility attached to a coal burning power plant that could safely be called 5th generation. No cutting down rainforests for the land and it's capturing nearly 80% of CO2 coming out of the plant during the day. Growth rates are hugely increased and they have an output of both BioDiesel, Ethanol.
The EU has has already moved away from oil sources from former rain-forested lands and begun a series of next generation BioDiesel & SynGas plants which look very promising I'm not sure why the US is so stuck on Ethanol from corn sugars.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I think current economy gives good incentive for US to find a reasonable solution to solve the energy and environment problem. There are plenty solutions can be used:
* use LED to replace light bulb. It is 10x more efficient and 20x longer life.
* improve building efficiency to reduce heating and AC need.
* let gas price reach $5 and people will be forced to drive efficient cars. Prius has 45 miles per gallon. Technically, it is possible to create 100 miles per gallon small commute car.
* use more solar system for both heating and electricity.
* use more nuclear power. Fast reactor can burn away most of nuclear waste.
If gov gives enough incentive to open market, it will figure out ways to address the problem. During the process, American companies will develop many new technologies and become far more competitive than it is today.
The only thing I can think that will work to store energy efficiently and without pollutents is hydrogen. You produce it from water (and yes you have to be careful not to ruin local environment, but the fact is there is so much sea water it's not hard). You store both hydrogen and oxygen from electrolysis or alternately you just release the oxygen. The hydrogen burns to produce water vapour that replaces the water you took from the ocean.
Now there are problems with this
1) storage problems for hydrogen (safety etc) exist I don't believe they're insurmountable.
2) Desalination of seawater means there's more waste than optimal. Our fresh water is much scarcer so we shouldn't be using it
3) The REAL problem is where do you get the energy originally.
- Nuclear is dirty and I'm not convinced even a single large radioactive stockpile is acceptable or containable over the life of the material. I hear new breeder reactors etc are the answer but I don't know enough about it.
- Solar is inefficent and you have to damage the environment digging up materials for the panels then use more energy producing them. Still solar cells have quite a long life, and there are other ways of collecting solar energy
- Wind power, geothermal etc. aren't consistent or large scale and also require large structures to be created to collect the energy. These in turn require energy to produce.
Bio-fuels are a dead end that continue to emit CO2 turning our planet into Venus. They're cheap to make so there's money in them.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Biodiesel from algae is not new, and algae doesn't use up land resources like converting farmland for ethanol production does. In fact growing algae utilizes waste water streams from sewage plants, making the water cleaner in the process. On top of that, the yield of oil from algae (and hence biodiesel yields) can be up to 200 times more per acre than the best performing vegetable oil crops. Biodiesel from algae isn't without it's faults: it is expensive to set up the infrastructure to produce it (although that is a one time cost), and extracting the oil can be difficult. However new technology in systems using supercritical fluid extraction (using a superfluid CO2 of all things) has been nearly 100% efficient. There are companies already doing this: http://www.aquaflowgroup.com/technology.html
The problem is that people are still focussed on ethanol as the solution, being a quick and easy replacement for gasoline. Ethanol production from crops is nowhere near as efficient as producing biodiesel from crops, and ethanol production is expensive from both an economic and energy point of view. Many of the crops used to make ethanol only grow well in specific climates, meaning farmers outside those climate ranges who convert to ethanol crops can expect very low yields per acre. An eventual solution would be to move to diesel/biodiesel engines over gasoline/ethanol engines, and use ethanol is only an intermediate step to cover that conversion. Jets already make use of biodiesel blends with jetfuel, and progress is being made to jets using biodiesel only fuels. http://www.stuff.co.nz/4218411a10.html
The problem I have with these studies is that they treat ethanol as the only biofuel available. There are other biofuels, from straight vegetable oil to biodiesel. They claim that it is more destructive than commonly made out, yet the do not mention it is nowhere near as destructive to the environment as fossil fuels (and related fuel processing). Once the infrastructure is in place, it is far better for the environment. The studies also make out that biofuel production has resulted in massive deforestation, yet massive deforestation has been happening for decades before biofuels became mainstream. The real culprits are primarily demand for wood, farmland (and not just biofuel crops) and resource mismanagement on an extreme level. While the studies have raise some important issues that must be considered, I can't help but feeling that somewhere along the funding chain for these studies is an oil company. On top of that oil companies' PR agents are having a field day, making sure these studies get published everywhere.
First off, the concerns raised by the original article only apply to some biofuels, not all. The corcerns only apply to some biofuel crops and to some farming practices.
Secondly, the original article had a 'might' in it and was of the form "Biofuels might make greenhouse gases worse". Deleting 'might' combletely changes the meaning and esculates the threat.
Slashdot editors are getting to be like regular journalists ((hint: this is not a compliment) and looking for a new inflammatory headline where they can. Junk journalism!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm designing a car that runs on Islamic radicals and Christian fundamentalists.
Here's the real math from the UK where government contractors face a real threat of jail time if they are caught intentionally lowballing a cost estimate....
"Total cost of closing down nuclear sites rises to £73bn
The cost of decommissioning Britain's ageing nuclear power sites has risen from an estimated £61bn in 2005 to £73bn as the "start-stop" nature of the work is creating significant uncertainty for contractors, Whitehall's value-for-money watchdog reveals today.
The report by the National Audit Office (NAO) into the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will prove particularly uneasy reading for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who earlier this month gave the green light to a new generation of nuclear power stations - albeit that none will be built in Scotland because of the anti-nuclear stance adopted by the Scottish Government.
As well as reporting to the UK Government via the Department for Business, the authority also reports to Scottish ministers who agree its strategy and plans for sites in Scotland. By December 2007, 14 of 19 facilities across Britain had already shut down and were in the process of being decommissioned, which includes cleaning up the sites.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2003619.0.Total_cost_of_closing_down_nuclear_sites_rises_to_73bn.php
That's 150 BILLION DOLLARS... ON JUST 19 UK reactors. That means the REAL US cost of decommissioning US nuclear reactors is going to be well over ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!
Like I showed above, the UK estimate on decommissioning the 19 nuclear reactors there is 73 BIL pounds.
"Overly simplistic"
Talk about understatement.
So not only do we have to consume MORE biofuel to go the same distances as vehicles running standard petroleum products, it's per-gallon production-to-consumption greenhouse footprint is larger too.
It's a magic bullet all right. Loaded in a gun and put right to our own head.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
i work at ADM we burn coal to produce the steam we need to make ethanol, and the corn syrup that you eat and drink to make us all fat. so dont forget to add that to the equation. also as a side effect of making the syrup we also burn carbon granules regenerating the carbon to filter the syrup. add that up too.... ya i have a little bit of guilt, but like any other blue collar person, its the best paying job wi9th or without an education. i make as much as a person with a bachelors there. (so does go to college to get a good job really mean anything? :D )
Good that they have not just taken the environmentalists at their word (hook, line, sinker). As for the automotive industry, they've been caught and filleted by them.
Now what does it take to get back to a slightly larger (and saner) size for cars under $20-25k instead of stuff that is usually underpowered for the body that it occupies? It's not as if one can't find them after a while in quite good condition - it's that environmentalists are going overboard.
No thank you, but there are some who know not what a US car is. It is not an underpowered Nippon import. It is not a Chinese knockoff. It is not a European inspired ultracompact. It is one that pulls no compromises on size, power and quality, but do not require a first-born for most of the population to afford.
Environmentalists, go fly back to Aspen, Detroit does not want you(your presence is merely tolerated). You've been proven wrong many times over.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
But what about land not suitable for growing crops? Say, african scrubland. Not enough rain to make a good consumable, but goats will "collect" a lot of grass and other poor nutrition and turn it into concentrated meat.
Or marginal land, where you'd have to drain it. Feed birds on there and eat the birds.
How about steep valley slopes like in south wales? Can't plough and the soil is too thin anyway, so let goats and sheep eat the crappy grass and get them to turn that grass into meat and walk it back to the farmer?
Nice to see the nay-sayers fall over each other with I-told-you-sos.
Alright, suppose this has merit —not unlikely it has— is it then fair to compare this to what we're using now without its overhead calculated in? Fossil oils need to be refined and transported and whatnot, too, you know.
Yes, the bio-crowd's proposed alternatives turn out to be no panacea. Whodathot? We still need (a) replacement(s) for all the fossil fuels we're using up ever more rapidly. Even if only as a contingency. Running out is simply not an option for our economy as it is; gambling on not running out is gambling with the continued feasability of most of our technology too.
From the article:
"
Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse-gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these "green" fuels are taken into account, two studies published Thursday have concluded.
(...)
Searchinger said the only possible exception he could see for now was sugar cane grown in Brazil, which takes relatively little energy to grow and is readily refined into fuel. He added that governments should focus on developing biofuels that did not require cropping, such as those from agricultural waste products. "This land-use problem is not just a secondary effect -- it was often just a footnote in prior papers," Searchinger said. "It is major."
"
So producing alcohol from bottle caps isn't viable, is it?
Everytime I see this alcohol discussion, I get amazed at how late the US is coming to this.
We have used alcohol as fuel for nearly 30 years now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lcool_combust%C3%ADvel_no_Brasil
We do a lot of stupid things here in Brazil -- e.g. the non-saving "daylight savings time" -- but:
1) this ethanol thing was supposed to get us out of dependence on foreign oil _and_ foreign currency (that means the US dollar)
2) the real problem with growing anything to make ethanol is the area you use for the culture -- and no, it's not because there will be famine (at least, not yet!) -- it's because new areas are explored and habitats destroyed.
I guess 30 years would be enough, even by our own moronic standards, to figure out whether ethanol is good or bad.
So, the article is useful to show corn is a stupid thing to use for ethanol, but don't stretch it to make judgements on the whole ethanol use; also, the soybean is a serious problem and it affects the Amazon (I even fear these fools are using gm seeds, like Monsanto's, which would be very disturbing near a forest environment) .
Please notice, though, that ethanol is not being grown in the Amazon, but rather much more to the South (the rosed area):
http://www.brazadv.com/images/mapa_biomas.gif
and
http://www.fotosdocerrado.fot.br/MainCerradoEnglish.htm
and
http://www.conservation.org.br/onde/cerrado/
especially:
http://www.conservation.org.br/arquivos/Mapa%20desmat%20Cerrado.jpg
The real problem is that it is very cheap to rape nature; we should make sure it costs an arm or a leg so people would be more prone to use human-powered bycicles, because using cars would be too damn expensive and thus such areas could be better protected.
All rights belong to their legal owners.
if cane sugar was plentiful we could get rid of the high fructose corn syrup that is being used to sweeten everything and have Coke that tastes normal again. Not to mention that fructose is about the worst sugar to metabolize (look at the growth curves in the use of fructose sweeteners and resulting obesity rates).
Does anyone realize how much money in the last 30-80 years has been spent making a perfected process for delivering gasoline for automobiles to consumers in the U.S.? Then, you point out that making "green" fuel sources is still somewhat behind in its ability to offset greenhouse gases? That's obscene. Give "green" fuel a chance to catch up with petroleum, and I challenge you (in 10-20 years) to say the same thing. It is absurd to suggest that in the END most green fuels (solar panels, wind turbines, bio-diesel, etc.) won't far exceed petroleum.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
Aphorisms don't fix code. (Bart Smaalders)
Just as I thought the entire world had gone crazy, a small glimmer of hope! The genuine care for the environment that people have is being made into a religion, with a hierarchy of money grabbing priests and cardinals in every political party...tax this, tax that - level the forests, just pay the tax for it!
Somebody is actually selling the right to create carbon dioxide...it is so stupid I can't believe it is really happening.
Toxic waste pouring into rivers, whaling, levelling the rain forests - these are real environmental issues that have completely disappeared from the agenda because of this windmill of a problem, the huge money-circus called "global warming".
I fear that when people wake up and realise how they have been fooled, if they ever do, environmental causes will suffer for generations.
but i'll add anyway. David Tilman from U of MN has worked quite extensively with mono- and polycultures of plants/grass for purposes of productivity. his paper here talks about using switchgrass in combination with other plants to use degraded/poor ag. lands and still get better, even carbon negative, output than corn or soy beans for ethanol, without a lot of input. i don't know why this didn't get more press.
"To stop the terrorists."
I see a possible solution to the energy problem, and the developed world's obesity problem: free liposuction for everyone and turn that fat into biofuels! There's one problem though. According to my wife, who used to major in biochemical engineering, the technology to convert animal fat into fuels is just not there yet. Another possible solution that may be less efficient is to hook a generator to every freaking treadmill and stationary bike. Turn your fat into energy and stay away from foreign oil!
Bio-fuels, grown and processed in the US, don't cause a trade-deficit. That alone makes up for a lot.
I'm a huge advocate of studying and reducing carbon emissions, I even work for one of the IPCC lead authors. But biofuels have never sat well with me. Something about burning our food for fuel makes me nervous and for some reason I start thinging about Easter Island. And now it looks like subsidised corn ethanol is one of the factors jacking up beer prices. Thanks jerks.
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
You can build thousands of new nuke plants, and eventually, all that past "trapped" heat in "fossil uranium" that is released in the fission process makes its way to the atmosphere as it is used in electrical devices all over. Uranium energy is just as much sequestered now left in the ground and ignored as coal or oil are, if they were left in the ground. And a lot (most of them?) of the nuke plants use water cooling, and guess which is a stronger greenhouse gas, even more than CO2? That's right, H2O, water vapor, and the hotter the water, the more it evaporates. So at point of origin for the water cooled nuke plants you get both massive heat release at either the cooling towers or at their downstream cooling water source, a river or ocean pipe, etc., plus extra "unnatural" water vapor release, a "greenhouse" gas, then downstream all the various devices that use the electricity produced dump heat by the ..x-megawatt, whatever the plant puts out that supplies them (do a conversion to a thermal equivalent). More heat + more greenhouse gas. Even the air cooled plants will still cause warming as the entire natural structure of the earth that already exists despite of any human additions works to trap in heat, the way the atmosphere is anyway.
So unless they can come up with a way to make nuclear "cold" or even "heat-neutral" electricity, you'll still get a significant rise in global temps from using nukes, on a direct linear scale, as you add one, more global warming.
I have to say that I genuinely do not believe in the so called science behind the article. I would not be surprised if this study was funded, like
so many others are, by the oil industry.
This is my sig.
funniest post I've read on /. in a long time...
Bio fuels are GROWN...they start out as plants...plants take CO2 and convert it into O2, CO2 is one of the "greenhouse gases" while O2 is NOT...
So if we grow large quantities of plants to create bio fuels, HOW could they INCREASE greenhouse gases?
--E--
Pointing out data is not trolling, it is just facts. Right now, there is no free lunch with energy, if you are discussing trapped heat. If you add excess heat-from any source at all, including nuclear, plus "trap" it more, you will get global warming to a larger degree than what would have been normal without any anthropocentric additions. Uranium in the ground gradually decays and gives off the heat, that isn't the issue really, the issue is the rapidity by which the heat is released and then trapped compared to normal human society evolution. Natural decay=zillions of years, whereas inside a fission reactor than down to the consumer = a few years = rapid rise in global temps if done on a huge scale. And it scales quite literally, one for one. Nuclear fission power is an anthropocentric addition to global warming. that huge amount of heat is *released*, that's all a reactor does is get "hot", we use turbines to make electricity and transfer that energy around, but it all gets back to just transferring the heat around. Just reality. Same with burning biomatter, whether dug up out of the ground, pumped out, or grown on the surface. The biological stuff on the surface though is a lot closer-not perfect but a lot closer- to being neutral in heat addition and the "trapping" effect with the gases compared to coal or oil or nuclear fission plants. Solar thermal is probably about the same level as purposefully grown biofuels.
I repeat, no free lunch, and a massive addition of hundreds or thousands more nuke plants around the world will, without any doubt whatsoever, add to global warming in a significant degree, unless one suspends the laws of thermodynamics somehow, which I don't think is all that possible. And the faster it happens, the faster the warming happens, the less chance humans have of adapting to it in a non chaotic or socially destructive way.
Bio-fuels consume (worst case) 1.1gallons of oil to produce energy equivalent to 1.0 gallons of oil.
But if we didn't have to fuel a huge army....I think the net energy used would be less than now!
I always smile when I see some huge SUV with one person in it, sporting a 'support the troops' ribbon.
Blar.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
However, that does not mean bio fuel is a bad idea, for example, using algae to make bio fuel has been covered again and again here on /.
A short summary of the benefits:
50x yield per acre over grown crops.
Can scrub CO2 from power plants
Can benefit from waste heat from power plants.
Can be grown above ground in industrial settings.
Can scrub pollution from agricultural water (fertilizers, feedlots) before the pollution makes it downstream.
Mutant Algae to Fuel Cars of Tomorrow?
Boeing Helping to Develop Algae-Powered Jet
Newest Energy Source -- Pond Scum
Bio-diesel Made from Sewage
Algae That Cleans Emissions and Produces Fuel
Filling Up On Algae
Renewable Energy From Algae?
San Francisco Photographers
The # of BTUs doesn't lie - ethanol has almost 40% less energy. However, you can always burn MORE of it to make up the difference - and ethanol has an octane rating of 116, so you can go with much higher compresion ratios (and hence more power).
Matryros is 100% right about drawing down on resources, and that affecting the sustainable "income" of the future. There are two things at play here, and they've co-existed for as long as the world has existed with human society on it:
+ The economic system, based on growth
+ The matter-energy relationship humans have with the environment.
So far the world has been big enough for perpetual growth to continue to this point, and a little beyond. However, it is *inevitable* that perpetual exponential growth with reach a choke point with the 2nd relationship. Many left-wing economics believe that the economy based on natural resources will be replaced with an information economy. That the economy can fundamentally do without natural resources. I believe this thinking is flawed. As a society, our information economy will resemble a sky-scraper with an eroding foundation. When people need heat, food and shelter, then the information economy will be meaningless.
Thus one should consider the big picture: at what point will our current economic system become untenable. This is a serious question with horrific consequences. The only sane thing to do is plan for the future, but it remains to be seen if humanity can actually do that en masse.
Personally I believe that the energy crisis will become the choke point that corrects perpetual growth. Rising energy costs will drive huge inflation, and every larger recessions that eventually never seem to end. At some point, investors will realise that there is no value in investing in a economy that fundamentally won't grow. Without investment money, an entirely new system will have to come about, and a scramble for economic reorganisation that should really be planned over lifetimes.
If energy really is the choke point, then this will come about sometime in the next 50 years maximum. If we successfully transition away from an energy based economy, or alternatively, solve our energy problems, then a different choke point will present itself at some time, unless humanity becomes a space faring species.
Over time, our growth-based economic system cannot fundamentally co-exist with our matter-energy relationship with the world.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Sugar cane ethanol does not replace rain forest and does not replace food crops. Rain forest (north of Brazil) is simply not apropriate terrain to produce sugar cane, thus accounting the removal of rain forest agaist ethanol is simply wrong. Here in Brazil this have 29 years of production experience and acctually every region that starts to produce sugar cane also experience a grow in food crops production. Sugar cane requires culture rotation to increase cane productivity thus every sugar cane farm also produce large amounts of beans, soyl or other food crops. Remember this are high production highlty technological farms and all this technices are also used in this food crops. Most sugar cane farms today replaced old ineficiently cattle farms. Dont be afraid of ethanol, it is obvious that growing natural carbon is better them removing it from underground and releasing it in the atmosfeare.
- this
coming... a number of factors prevent biofuel from being the solution to our problems: 1. burning anything will produce undesirable side-effects 2. growing the amount of material we would need to power the world would take a big chunk out of the planets food production, not something we can afford in a world with an ever-exponentially increasing population. 3. why develop a technology that will be obsolete and/or too costly in the near future? go humans. in an attempt to get off fossil fuels, we just invent another product just as bad.Those UK figures are 50x greater than the US figures, that's just troubling.
There must be something else to factor in here besides simple dishonesty and incompetence. Surely the NRC isn't that dumb. England's waste disposal, for example, might be far more expensive due to its smaller size and greater "Not in my backyard!" concentration. Petrol prices for equipment, worker pay, different fees and regulations; these sorts of things might be responsible for a good chunk of that.
Because, fuck, that's god damned crazy expensive at first glance.
A very good talk on this was given last Friday, 02/08/2008 on NPR's Science Friday.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
No, the point is that Europe has reacted to higher costs by reducing consumption.
You're more wrong than right to point out that Europe hasn't responded by producing a very specific solution at your command.
Europe is not a command economy, in respect to energy it may even be a LESS socialistic economy - which opens a very interesting discussion.
If you place the US - with its Universal Gasoline Plan and largely private pay-as-you-go Health care system, next to Europe with its Universal Health Care and pay-at-the-pump fuel system, it begins to explain the concentration of innovation in bot economies. We tend to innovate in health-care, while our energy and transportation sectors are third-world; while Europe has a largely second-rate health-care reputation - but many more leading energy companies and public transportation manufacturers.
AIK
next to Europes more of subsidized pump prices in a continuum with Europe
Don't conventional fuels have approximately the same cost of refining and transportation as biofuels? I mean, does the tanker that drives the BioDiesel to my house get worse mileage because it's carrying Bio instead of Dino?
He's a goddamn transportation researcher. His points are lame. Point one: It's okay because the CO2 emissions from soil decomposition will probably slow down over time? Yeah, and so will emission from fossil fuels as we run out of them. Point two is akin to saying that burning coal is okay because coal also creates soot to reflect heat and keep the atmosphere cool. And who can forget point three, there is no computer model for it... Well goddamn, somebody get right on a computer model for that man.
The point of the research was to determine if bio-fuels, as they are being developed/deployed *right now* are accomplishing their stated goal of reducing atmospheric CO2. The research noted in the summary pointed out that, no, in fact, our bio-fuel initiatives are adding more CO2 to the atmosphere than if we had stayed with 100% fossil fuels. Oxidizing soil humus via tillage is effectively burning tomorrow's fossil fuels today. The global warming cult would rather bury their head in the sand than accept that they are wrong... again. Your "solution" is failing in spectacular fashion, and compounding the CO2 'problem' at the same time. Great job geniuses!
Wouldn't those be moved over to being powered by biofuels as well? Seems stupidly obvious to me. It'd only be in the very beginning that the machinery used in production would still be running on petroleum products.
When you talk nuclear reactors, you've stepped into the realm of one of the most corrupt of all the Bush cronies, but yes the neo-cons as a whole are really are both this corrupt and this incompetent. For example, Paul Wolfowitz... the guy who was on camera on news outlets 24/7 before the war pushing the lie the Iraq War and Iraq reconstruction would pay for itself with Iraq oil proceeds, and was chased out the position of Pres. of the World Bank by all of Europe for corruption was just given another government job by Dubya last month.
"Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president and former deputy secretary of defense who was instrumental in the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003, has been named chairman of a panel that advises the State Department on arms-control issues..."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/01/25/wolfowitz_appointed_chairman_of_arms_control_advisory_panel/
US Government Contractors low-balling (low-balled, low-balling - To underestimate or understate (a cost) deliberately) bids is standard operating procedure with US Government Contractors, and the worst of them lined up to donate campaign money to Dubya and his neo-con cronies. Bechtel is consistently one of the worst of the worst. Bechtel has been getting singled out for corrupt practices since the Truman Commission in WW2.
"Veteran observers of the klepto-plutocracy that has, lazar-like, long encrusted the American body politic were not surprised to see the hoary name of the Bechtel Group bobbing up in the swill of sweetheart deals now being doled out by the Corrupter-in-Chief for the "reconstruction" of his new fiefdom in Iraq. Decades before its comrade in cronyism, the Carlyle Group, made its meteoric, Bush-assisted ascent to global prominence, Bechtel had already perfected the dark art of milking intimate government connections for fat, risk-free contracts.
Last week, while the notorious coward George W. Bush --who walked away from his National Guard duty during the Vietnam War, a criminal act known as "desertion" when committed by lesser mortals --was basking in the man-musk of a shipload of sailors, reciting his usual lies about al Qaeda's "alliance" with Saddam Hussein, and weasel-wording his "victory" declaration to avoid taking full legal responsibility for the consequences of the war of aggression he had unleashed, Bechtel was quietly pocketing a secret, closed-bid, open-ended Iraq contract that could give them almost $700 million in taxpayer money before the 2004 election --with the alluring prospect of untold billions to follow, Mother Jones reports.
What's more, as the New Yorker reports, this public largess will also fill the coffers of a key Bechtel partner in Saudi Arabia --a well-connected global conglomerate that has also been a long-time financial partner of both George Bush I and George Bush II: the Bin Laden Group.
Bechtel, which has served Saudi royalty for more than 60 years, bristles with heavyweight kleptoplute connections. During the 1980s, current Bush warlord Don Rumsfeld acted as a paid shill for a Bechtel pipeline project in the Middle East, operating with the blessing of the Reagan-Bush administration's secretary of state, George Schultz --Bechtel's former president (and now "senior counsel" to the company). Rummy conducted a passionate two-year courtship of a certain Saddam Hussein, plying him with trinkets, blandishments and sweetmeats to win his lordly favor for a Bechtel-built line from Iraq to Jordan, according to national security archives obtained by the Institute for Policy Studies.
Rumsfeld's strenuous attempt to lay pipe with Saddam happened to coincide with the latter's most extensive use of poison gas in the Iran-Iraq war --gassing carried out with the exemplary assistance of U.S. military intelligence and technology provided by the Reagan-Bush administration and its "special envoy" to B
If you're a slashdotter, the odds are the machine doesn't even bother with a disguise. :-)
What a great debate, complete with the usual cries to rape ANWR + drill more U.S. oil from underneath California where upward pressure happens to be HOLDING CALIFORNIA UP. The World drought is worsening. Hm, I wonder why. Could it be the oil companies' pumping water into underground oil fields to push out the remaining oil is where the water table is going? It doesn't matter where the oil comes from when it's taking water from the Earth's water cycle. So ethanol falls 2 years after I knew it was going to fall. Glad you guys are finally catching up to me some. What'cha gonna do now that your champion has fallen, hmm? Convert to all electric hybrids? Yes, great idea! Anybody hear about China, the country that's using the money from us to buy up all the copper mines in the world it can. Hmm. Copper, the new OPEC screw. Detroit, eh tu Brutus? Surely a Goliath made of copper will be able to stand longer than one made of liquid ethanol. BTW, anyone know how much electricity and fossil fuels it TAKES TO MINE COPPER? => Any carbon footprint savings from switching to electric hybrids is preceded by a tremendous copper mine explosion, an explosion under the front seat (where we're sitting) followed by a lot of butt salve? It's still going to fall ~right beside ethanol~ as we slowly go through all the possibilities the greatest scientists comes up with, anything to avoid using my air + steam engine solution (that fixed Virginia Tech's champion Abraham Hertzberg's air-powered 1997 failure): http://www.newpath4.com/enginewow.htm . Anyone have any idea how much water is used & polluted by mining copper? People telling me "you can't get something from nothing". Well? The same applies to crude oil and copper as those new reports have shown: they all came with a price tag. My system engages inertia from car motion to recompress the air on-the-fly, which means it uses an "outside force", which means it is not perpetual motion. But some people kept knocking my engine that it would only make a small amount of horsepower. I recall the early VW bug had only 63 hp or so. An engineer 3 years ago estimated a small version of my engine would develop 70 hp. Where's the BEEF?. The beef is that my engine process is a form of desktop fusion and the scientific community is squealing in agony at the idea a mere highschool graduate discovered it. Well, this HS graduate had a college level worth of courses that eclipsed previous generations: find another argument. My engine is a "closed system" that uses a small amount of recycled water expanded in steam, cylinder-condensed on contact with liquid air, drained out a hmm drain hole & flash-steamed again & injected again. The water less than 1/2 liter per vehicle is never altered, never used up, and NEVER PUMPED INTO THE GROUND. The scientific community's witches brew of failed ideas has led mankind into a World Drought condition >>> and they went to college. So, how long does it take all that underground water (H2O molecules smaller than crude oil) to escape the underground caverns through the cavern walls, allowing a supercavern collapse sliding Californians off into the Pacific? Ask Steven Forbes. NEWS FLASH: Seven months ago I finished designing the rest of the system around my engine, increasing horsepower well over 1000% => It can now push anything on wheels, RV's, SUV's, Hummers, Greyhound buses and tractor-trailers. That's where the beef is now, on my plate, while the "scientific community" is sinking in quicksand, rolling dice on the world trying to save its reputation from being aced by one they publicly brand a wacko independent inventor. Our world today was built by religious wackos, not think tanks. Religious Belief is a catalyst of the highest order. You can argue it caused some wars but you also have to admit a lack of it has contributed us this world drought with more to come. If a Bible believer is a fool, what excuse do the other fools have?
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
I'm quite interested -- Is that net, or gross? And where in Japan do you live?
I lived in Tokyo for three years, and was appalled upon moving back to the US at how bloody expensive everything is -- and what crappy quality you get for all that extra cost.
Take my internet connection, for instance -- I was paying $20 / month in Tokyo for 12Mbps DSL, the most basic package available when I signed up. By the time I left, I was paying -- see if you can guess -- $20 / month. The only thing that had changed was that the ground-level basic package had upgraded to 18Mbps. Meanwhile, the additional monthly landline telephone bill came to $22 / month. Here in the "We're Number One!" US, the best I can get is 5Mbps (on paper, usually more like 3-4Mbps on a good day), for $35 / month (up from $30 / month). It's been 5Mbps for all three years I've been back, with no speed upgrades at all. The additional landline connection fee also weighs in at $35 / month, and seems to include all these unexplained additional fees and taxes -- which investigation shows were part of that terrible congressional handout to the telcos, ostensibly to upgrade the infrastructure but actually just to pad their profit margins. :-\
Or how about mobile phone service (extravagant, I know, but I actually need mine for business). In Japan, our combined monthly bill for two cell phones came to $92 / month, and we had very good service, even down in the tunnels of the Tokyo subway system. Here, we pay $150 / month and can't even keep a phone call going along arterial highway 101 between Palo Alto and San Mateo, right in the blooming heart of Geek Central -- driving right past Google's headquarters at Moffett Field.
Or we could look at rent, an area where Tokyo is usually regarded as mind-bogglingly expensive. We pay 20% *more* in CA than we did in Tokyo, for a place that is just a biscuit bigger, but less centrally located and more inconvenient by almost any measure (shopping, amenities, entertainment, hiking, etc) -- and yet still cheaper than most other possibilities in the area. Hmm, what was all that talk again about Tokyo being so expensive...?
And these are only a few examples. I'm not even going to really get into transportation -- about how it's pretty impossible to live in the US without a car, about how that's largely thanks to car company efforts to kill public transportation, combined with bad zoning and growth policies over the past several decades leading to community layouts that make cars a requirement, etc etc. Or healthcare -- about how prevalent pharmaceutical ads are, about how US healthcare seems to be all about covering the symptoms and less about fixing the underlying issue, about how private insurance for two healthy married people in our mid-30s costs more than our rent, etc etc. If it weren't for my job, and my naïveté about how expensive it actually is here, I'd have stayed in Tokyo. As it is, we'll be moving out this summer, in search of somewhere we can afford.
One of the central conclusions I come to after sifting through my bills and various media (both USian and otherwise) is that the upper echelons of the American power structure, both corporate and governmental, are packed with crooks. Yes, power corrupts and all that, but it sure don't look like the US is going to be number one at much of anything (well, anything positive) for a while to come.
I envy you your ability to function at lower income levels. I don't think that would work quite so well here in the US given the distorted economy.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Critics of bio-fuels pointed out a long time ago that you can't grow enough to make much difference to fuels, but the effect of displacing food production would be to push food prices up and / or create local / regional food deficits. This is now coming to pass, as predicted......with a loaf of bread now over $4 where I live and most food items now much more expensive than last year.....in tandem with higher food prices. We should consider banning bio-fuels as socially irresponsible. I recently changed to the 1.3litre car and I now spend the same on gas as I used to back when it was half the price it is today. If the US car fleet were to downsize similarly, gas usage / demand could fall by over 30% within a year. Conservation makes more sense than continued wastage and displacing food production to support continued wastage.
Only boring people are ever bored.
http://www.m4gw.com:2005/m4gw/multimedia.html
The splendid "If we had some global warming" is the second video downpage.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
"It's also important to note that the VAST majority of our petroleum imports don't actually come from the Middle East! The DOE says so itself. Our top two petroleum importing countries are... Canada and Mexico!"
The argument about dependence on Middle Eastern oil fields is based on world supply. This area of the world still provides a considerable percentage of the total volume. If this volume is reduced then the products in Mexico and Canada will become more attractive to other buyers in the world, like say China, Europe or Japan, and thus more expensive for us all.
I can see where this could be a reasonably valid argument. However I tend to think the root issue is what the root issue always is, ie: WGTMTM or Who Gets To Make The Money. There has been considerable investment in this part of the worlds oil fields by a few really big players that intend to extract every $ they can from said investment. Generally I don't blame them for the base premise, I just have a problem with the ethics and corresponding social fallout of the methods they often employ.
It seems to me that this is a excellent argument against a unilateral approach in dealing with this area of the world. Despite what they are willing to pay in taxes I doubt the Europeans or Japanese want to pay a higher base price. I doubt the traditionally frugal Chinese would be fond of it either. Then again considering these players military history in the last century or two maybe we don't want them any more involved than absolutely necessary. See I can examine and see the good and bad of more than one view point, at least I can, unfortunately some it seems can't manage such.
wabi-sabi
matthew
I repeat, no free lunch, and a massive addition of hundreds or thousands more nuke plants around the world will, without any doubt whatsoever, add to global warming in a significant degree, unless one suspends the laws of thermodynamics somehow, which I don't think is all that possible. And the faster it happens, the faster the warming happens, the less chance humans have of adapting to it in a non chaotic or socially destructive way. I have never seen such idiotic moderation in all my life.
You are completely correct: human society un-traps chemical/nuclear energy currently stored in biofuels/nukefuels, transforms it into electricity, then into heat, that goes into the atmosphere... it's quite simple, especially if our atmosphere is _already_ full of greenhouse-effect gases, so the heat we release _stays_ in the atmosphere instead of dissipating into space.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
If we had less of an oil addiction, the military might not be generating more terrorists over in Iraq because we wouldn't really need access to their oil.
But I'm a cynic.
Blar.