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Fuel vs. Food
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allardjd View Drop Down
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    Posted: 25 Apr 2008 at 4:07pm
This comes as no surprise to me.  Those who are pushing bio-fuels do so at the peril of causing or exacerbating food shortages.   Putting energy production in competition with food production for farmland, farm labor, irrigation and fertilizer stocks is insanity.
 
The oil is in the ground and isn't good for much of anything else.  Maybe we ought to continue burning it. 
 
A fallacy of bio-fuels is that they do ANYTHING to reduce the emission of the greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming.  The only benefit of bio-fuels is reducing the dependance on imported oil.  Food shortages are a high price to pay for that.
 
Nuclear power for electricity and hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines for transportation, both employed on a large scale, are the answer.  Bio-fuels are not.
 
http://www.nysun.com/news/food-crisis-eclipsing-climate-change
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wisemanp View Drop Down
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Originally posted by allardjd allardjd wrote:

  
Nuclear power for electricity and hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines for transportation, both employed on a large scale, are the answer.  Bio-fuels are not.
 
I totally agree.
 
Biofuels burn in the same way as fossil fuels so produce the same carbon dioxide emmissions.
By planting biofuel crops you are either taking away food producing land, or destroying forest, meaning less CO2 taken out of the air by trees...
Just some of the disadvantages of biofuel...
Regards, Phil


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MartinW View Drop Down
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The claim is that the crops absorb Co2 from the atmosphere during their life cycle so there is no net increase in Co2 when it's utilized as fuel. This doesn't take into account the Co2 emitted by agricultural vehicles preparing the land though and depends on the land being free of vegetation before planting.

 

I'm not a fan of biofuels either:

 

Quote Increased demand for biofuels, particularly in America and Europe has led to deforestation (see deforestation) and food shortages (see 2007-2008 world food price crisis‎ ). This is increasingly making biofuels into a political issue throughout the world.[1] Locations such as Indonesia are subject to deforestation and the accompanying displacement of indigenous peoples. In some areas use of pesticides for biofuel crops are disrupting clean water supplies.

 

Quote Biofuels and other forms of renewable energy aim to be carbon neutral or even carbon negative. Carbon neutral means that the carbon released during the use of the fuel, e.g. through burning to power transport or generate electricity, is reabsorbed and balanced by the carbon absorbed by new plant growth. These plants are then harvested to make the next batch of fuel. Carbon neutral fuels lead to no net increases in human contributions to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, reducing the human contributions to global warming. A carbon negative aim is achieved when a portion of the biomass is used for carbon sequestration.[46]

In practice, biofuels are neither carbon neutral or carbon negative. This is because energy is required to grow crops and process them into fuel. Examples of energy use during the production of biofuels include: fertilizer manufacture, fuel used to power machinery, and fuel used to transport crops and fuels to and from biofuel processing plants. The amount of fuel used during biofuel production has a large impact on the overall greenhouse gas emissions savings achieved by biofuels.
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VulcanB2 View Drop Down
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The whole thing is a bloody joke, and really cheeses me off.

Environmentalists won't be happy until we're back in the dark ages, fighting each other to survive. Even then, I bet they can find some reason for climate change.

We can't do a darn thing about it. Creating food shortages is far more of a problem than any climate change ever could be. If they're not careful, they're going to turn this whole mess into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I agree that the only thing bio-fuels do is cut our reliance on middle eastern oil. I don't quite understand what the fuss is about; is it in the "what if" scenario, or is there some problem with supplies we know nothing about?

BTW: proud to have a second monitor consuming an additional 75W of power. I don't care how "green" it is; it's still a consumer (something else environmentalists don't fully understand).

Best regards,
Vulcan.
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allardjd View Drop Down
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I find the whole arguement that bio-fuels are "carbon-neutral" or better to be the result of fuzzy logic - or worse, of deliberate deception.
 
The ground that the fuel crop grew on had something growing on it, whether cultivated or wild, before it was put to use for growing a fuel crop.  Converting that ground to the production of fuel did not materially change the oxygen-producing, carbon-consuming effect of the plant life growing there... ...but they'd like us to think it did.
 
Some utilities in the US now offer "green" electricity, supposedly produced from renewable resources.  Some people willingly pay the premium price that is charged. 
 
Of course all the generating units are connected to the same grid, as are all the customers, so the whole concept that you're getting something that was generated from "renewable" fuel is laughable.
 
P.T. Barnum was right.  There's a sucker born every minute.
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MartinW View Drop Down
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They do use forestry waste and naturally occurring wild switch grass, elephant grass etc. So in some cases it's the indigenous crop itself that's converted into bio fuels. In most cases not though, the second generation biofuels are better, but the rest of the process to convert to fuel is still an issue.
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VulcanB2 View Drop Down
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Quote P.T. Barnum was right.  There's a sucker born every minute.

.

Two major things that annoy me are:

* They go on about something that has actually had little research done on it

* (in the case of bio-fuel) they're finding that it may actually result in MORE CO2 being produced than if we used regular fossile fuel.

Quote Some utilities in the US now offer "green" electricity, supposedly produced from renewable resources.  Some people willingly pay the premium price that is charged.
[
That happened over here for a short time, but since it was exposed as a con on national TV, they've dropped the part about needing to pay a premium. It's a blatent attempt at profiteering, nothing else.

Best regards,
Vulcan.
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