Biofuels: A Hoax

By stevendedalus Posted May 9, 2008 14:00:30

Biofuels: A Hoax

I’m guilty of thinking alternative fuels as a panacea until I realized that many of them require disproportionately more energy to produce. In the case of biofuel it not only consumes more energy but frighteningly jeopardizes food abundance, ending in price gouging. Plus the increased use of fertilizers draining off into the Gulf creating health hazards and depleting fish life.

By ignoring soil preservation farmers are wrecking the planet by releasing heretofore trapped carbon dioxide. Globally, wholesale deforestation of the Amazon Basin foreshadows disaster.

For this country the result has been a mere 1% savings in oil consumption—hardly a Marshall Plan.

Far more effective is for the government and consumers to insist on stringent CAFE regulation, reducing the mindset of “bigger and better”; green building codes and incentives to revamp existing buildings into new green giants, along with environmental appliances. In the meantime, environmentally sensitive drilling in ANWR and other locations should be allowed; coal plants must be mandated to trap its toxins back into the earth. At the same time the government should lift the moratorium on Nuclear energy and increase incentives to build state of the arts plants and worry about what to do with waste later—perhaps eventually shuttled to the moon. Solar generated centrally would be far better and cheaper than costly solar panels on roofing, subject to storm damage. Federally preserved lands should be used for wind power grid plants. Further we should look into upgrading existing dams and think about new dam projects.

Wacky biofuels should be terminated.

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Wacky biofuels should be terminated.

As long as it was an unrealized campaign slogan, there was nothing wrong and everything right with it. But as the price of oil has skyrocketed, and more attention has been paid to it, the emperor's new clothes can be seen for what they are.

Ain't it the truth!

Bio fuels are being backed by the government because it gives the appearance that they're doing something without them actually changing anything. Bio fuels allow business as usual, all the present infrastructure stays intact.

There are new ways coming to manufacture bio fuels without the need for crops. Link

I represent tha cynicism of Government!

And, yes I have read about the bio fuels that are not made from corn. Hemp being one of them. But what they all require is arable land - land that is currently growing food stuff. And that is the rub.

Stubby, I agree with the good doctor that's the rub. Think of oil based fuel required for production and plowing conservation land releasing disaster.

Personally I think the solution is a few hundred pebble bed reactors and all electric cars, however bio fuels can be useful. Corn and switch grass are stupid but hemp because it has so many other environmentally friendly uses could be viable. Of course our enlightened benefactors would never allow the evil hemp to be used.

The engineered cells that the link I provided talks about use sunlight and C02 to produce octane and are far more efficient than any of the various crops without taking up farmland. They have the ability now to capture all the C02 from coal plants and that C02 could be used as feed stock for these engineered organisms.

So, some new nukes so electric cars won't crash the power grid, C02 eating bacteria, some hemp, some wind, sun, hydro and geothermal. Build only electric, fuel cell and hybrid cars and problem solved for at least few hundred years.

The problem with your plan is just that. It is a plan, and so will never be adopted by the government (see earlier statement on cynicism). But then that is to be expected as it would require leadership and abandoning some of the interest groups - Nuclear power??? - and that will never happen.

It's ironic that the best two options available now, nukes and hemp, has the liberals being all for hemp and the government all for nukes with the government being opposed to hemp and liberals being opposed to nukes. For the life of me I can't think of a better way to write that

Greenpeace and the no-nukes movement in general has lost much of their enthusiasms now with many of their members agreeing that nukes are now safe. Trouble is these groups aren't going to risk losing half their members by saying okay maybe nukes can be added to the list of clean air alternatives. A definite drawback to organizations like these is how wrong they have to be before they can openly admit it.

For the life of me I can't think of a better way to write that

Actually, you wrote it very well.

And I agree with you on Greenpeace. The only difference between them and the government is in what they stand for, not what they do or say.