BURN THE TREES FOR GAIA

"Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time."
-Steven Wright

Congress is pushing pretty hard for the subsidization of ethanol in the United States. The idea is that the country can produce fuel in the United States rather than rely on foreign oil and in the process produce cleaner burning energy that is cleaner to produce. As I've pointed out in the past, that's not exactly true: ethanol actually takes more energy than it produces (as opposed to gasoline) and it requires more work and pollution to produce than gasoline.

That doesn't stop advertisers from showing pristine corn fields and green vehicles with the sun shining on them, implying or outright stating that they are doing their part to save the world from global warming by making cars that run on natural, clean corn! Never mind that gasoline is natural and just as clean, and that the net result is a loss of energy, requiring more energy to maintain the infrastructure and thus more emissions.

Now we have a study that, according to the New Scientist, suggests that the overall pollution produced by using biofuels is worse than petroleum:

The reason is that producing biofuel is not a "green process". It requires tractors and fertilisers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make "green" fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn – an alternative to oil – "it's essentially a zero-sums game," says Ghislaine Kieffer, programme manager for Latin America at the International Energy Agency in Paris, France (see Complete carbon footprint of biofuel - or is it?).

What is more, environmentalists have expressed concerns that the growing political backing that biofuel is enjoying will mean forests will be chopped down to make room for biofuel crops such as maize and sugarcane. "When you do this, you immediately release between 100 and 200 tonnes of carbon [per hectare]," says Renton Righelato of the World Land Trust, UK, a conservation agency that seeks to preserve rainforests.

To be clear, they do mention that biofuels could probably be made with less pollution and damage to the environment by using prairie grass, actually. Commenters discussed this presentation:

It should be recalled that in the *public* justifications for investments in biofuels (this is different from an analysis of why some group or politician may 'actually' back them) in the USA recently the emphasis was more on replacing a dependence on 'foreign' (particularly 'Middle Eastern',even though that's a minority of US oil imports) oil. If a person or institution backs biofuels as a way of reducing dependence on foreign oil, then global warming arguments may be less swaying to them. Of course it may also be true in reality that a particular use of biofuels increases use of foreign petroleum products such as fertilizers, etc., but again, that's an analysis of how various initiatives may actually work, as opposed to how people apparently justify some preference.
-by El Cid


As I understand it , there is not enough fertile land in the world to replace even American fuel use , even growing biofuels on all the land now used for food, forest ,etc.. It's biofuels ,or forests ,not both . Or better still ,ban private motor vehicles as the threat to life, health, social cohesion, and worldwide environmental stability that they are. Also , whilst I like the idea of some uses of algae, they also need nutrients from somewhere. Of course these should be the natural waste product of our consumption , and not a further industrial product ,with all the problems that has brought us.
-by Simon


As I understand it , there is not enough fertile land in the world to replace even American fuel use , even growing biofuels on all the land now used for food, forest ,etc.. It's biofuels ,or forests ,not both . Or better still ,ban private motor vehicles as the threat to life, health, social cohesion, and worldwide environmental stability that they are. Also , whilst I like the idea of some uses of algae, they also need nutrients from somewhere. Of course these should be the natural waste product of our consumption , and not a further industrial product ,with all the problems that has brought us.
-by gt


A 'big picture' perspective is useful here: It's indisputable that biofuels are playing a major role in removing the fossil fuel monopoly on our energy sources for transport. That in itself is a gain. Sure, there's an ecological price for that. However, biofuels will inevitably go through more technological refinement. And while corn is a primary source of stock for ethanol currently, there are also cellulose to ethanol projects in the pipeline. So give a biofuels a chance. And I agree with the writer who said do both: biofuels and treeplanting.
-by PeteMoss


Why don't we convert cars to run on natural gas? It is very easy to do without much cost and it burns cleaner than gasoline. You can increase the compression ratio to produce higher power output than gasoline. Also the United States has the worlds largest supplies of nautural gas. We could eliminate our need for oild within a decade or two at the most.
-by Greg Girtman


The hemp plant is the perfect biofuel. Though biofuels are said to create more carbon emmisions. Hemp roughly is 400% more efficient than trees per land use. Hemp grows in all soil types, altitudes and climates without the need for chemical inputs and improves soil structure. Another property of hemp is as a substitute for plant derived products such as plastics, building and insulation materials, paper, fuel and nutrition. In fact hemp has 25,000 uses. Its estimated that 90,000ha of hemp creates an immediate use value of heating and cooking fuel for 500,000 households.
-by Frank

being a horticulturist I investigated industrial hemp when it was being touted as the 'plant that could save the world' during the 90s, and I agree with you. Certainly hemp does have some great fibre qualities, but for biomass production, industrial coppicing using tree species like willow in temperate zones, and Eucalyptus in the subtropics is a superior alternative to hemp. Perennial tree species that coppice after harvesting don't have to be resown like annual hemp requires. Also trees are generally deeper rooted, and species like Eucalyptus are more tolerant of lower soil fertility and lower soil moisture. High biomass hemp production requires lots of nutrients and water. From what I understand in Sweden they are using industrrial coppicing of trees for biomass production for their biomass fuel power plant.
-by Pete Moss


Activists of various flavors have managed to get people's shorts in a knot over enhanced greenhouse (the concept of increased atmospheric greenhouse gas availability cranking up the misnamed 'greenhouse effect' and causing catastrophic surface heating). One major problem with this hypothesis that always seems to get lost or glossed over is that there has been three times more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere than required to deliver the current greenhouse effect since at least the end of the last great glaciation. There has never been a need for anthropogenic greenhouse enhancement to increase potential greenhouse warming because the atmosphere is already opaque in the relevant absorption bands in most regions (that is, there's 'competition' between overabundant GHG molecules for available outbound infrared radiation with only limited, regional potential remaining). This is why catastrophic warming scenarios generated by woeful 'climate models' are so laughable because models are programmed only with 'positive feedbacks' (even greater warming from trivial increase in absorber availability) while real world potential actually works with negative feedback (you get progressively less bang for your buck by adding more GHGs because there's insufficient suitable infrared radiation to go around). So, why the hysteria over something that physically cannot happen? Burn oil. Eat plants
-by RobertG


There is no mention in this article about the amount of pesticides and herbicides(also taking lots of fuel to produce) used to grow these expansive monocrop fields of genetically modified(my other point in the dangers of biofuels) plants like corn. Thank you for the article.
-by woody guthrie

Some commenters suggested alternatives: algae, for instance grows easily and takes up significantly less space than grass or corn. It can even be stacked in layers, whereas these grain plants cannot ordinarily. Others suggested growing on the ocean, a plan which writers have suggested in the past, particularly the growth of algae on massive sea-based self sustaining platforms in the deep blue. And finally, another suggested harvesting Kudzu for biofuel, although I don't believe Kudzu produces much oil, it is a ready and easy to cultivate source of biomass.

This article is limited in its scope, and it makes some presumptions that aren't necessarily valid. For instance, part of its pollution data comes from the assumption that you'd have to clear forests to plant corn; that's not absolutely required, although it likely would be true on an island like the UK. However, some of the things left out make matters worse, such as Woody's point about pesticides and farming techniques.

Corn is not the salvation of the world, it is not going to make everything better. Producing corn takes energy, which comes from other sources. It never will ever be energy efficient as other sources, even if you use biofuel to run the power plants because corn is not an energy source, it is a fuel source. I'm fine with using biodiesel and biofuels to run vehicles, just don't fool yourself into believing this is somehow ecologically beneficial; in the end it's not.

I share Greg Girtman's confusion about natural gas, though. The United States is almost floating on a sea of natural gas, the largest reserves in the world; why is that not used more? In the town I live the busses and many government vehicles run on natural gas, why not more? Seems to me that's where we should be looking. The only answer I can come up with as to why that's not being tapped into more seems to be that it would help oil companies (who are at least publicly hated by Democrat politicians and the left) and would not help powerful farming lobbies. In other words: the kickbacks would not be from the right people. Call me cynical, perhaps there are other reasons I'm not aware of.

Biofuel, Pollution