8 Responses

1. good eye. 95% of global warming co2 comes from rotting vegetation. if i burn a tree thats going to rot any ways, i am carbon neutral. nascar is evil.

2. Actually, the energy gained is slightly higher than the energy consumed to make biofuel. But your point is very well presented and is supported by facts. Deforestation is the overiding factor. The loss of trees directly reduces the transition of carbon dioxide into oxygen as well as destruction of habitat for the fauna of the world. Another factor to also consider is that the rainforests of the world provide a multitude of medications that humans need to stay healthy and survive. The effects are exponential and will eventually damage every facet of global stability.

3. Bio fuels are a stopgap measure at best. We need to stop burning fuels and creating CO2 ASAP. The creation of co2 will never stop on this planet. It is a natural part of our ecosystem. Plants absorb the CO2, then release O2. Animals breath in O2 and exhale CO2. Add to that fires and volcanic activity and there is more than enough carbon to go around. We need not add to the carbon with man made pollutants.

   Until something else comes around Electricity is the most viable power source for vehicles. It is plentiful if taken from photo voltaic panels, renewable and cheap too. The electric motor is way more efficient than, let’s say, a fuel cell.

   Compressed air engines are losing energy at every conversion of power. Don’t even get started on Nuclear power. Coal would be safer.

   We need to start the equivalent of the Manhattan Project for batteries. Or some other means of storing/generating electric energy.

   I applaud everyone that is dreaming up new engines and power sources and when one is even more viable than electric I am with you all the way, or until a better idea works. Fickle aren’t I?

4. I can’t really add much to your question, other than to bemoan the fact that in the USA, fads like gas guzzling cars that happen to have motor driven wheels are distracting people from what is being done to rain forests to run those gas guzzlers from a liquid fuel.

5. read this about ethanol production
   Only transient Aliens could have aproved that.

   They are intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest’s in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,

   Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest’s,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.

   Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.

   All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,

   QUOTE;
   The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world’s fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

   “Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil,” said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. “We call it ‘deforestation diesel’,” Lovera told IPS.

   Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world’s number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

   Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

   The FAO’s State of the World’s Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day — equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

   “The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example,” Palo told IPS.

   National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. “Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there,” he said.

   Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

   Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. “Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people,” Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

   Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. “Europe’s carbon credit market could be disastrous,” Lovera said.

   The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

   One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

   Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. “Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country,” Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

   However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. “Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing,” Lovera said. “A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this.”

   This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ – International Federation of Environmental Journalists.
   © 2007 IPS – Inter Press Service

6. Wrong! Biofuels are NOT being wrongfully promoted and mistakenly represented as “carbon neutral”
   Carbon neutral does not at all mean they do not produce CO2 or CO, it simply means that only the amount remediated from the atmosphere, is being replaced by consumption, rather than drilling them out of the ground and adding even more to our atmosphere. Its actually creating a synthetic CO2 cycle, that mimics the natural one.

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   no it does not, you forget one thing….tractors,trains, boats, and 18-wheelers can be run on biofuels, thus not putting anymore CO2 or CO in the atmosphere than the biomass used to make it, remediated from the atmosphere to grow.

   the greenhouse gases causes by nitrogen based fertilizers, is a problem, that microbiologists are working on. They are trying to devlop a method to use microorganisms to remediate the greehouse gases causes by these fertilizers as they are produced. This isn’t forgotten about, you just aren’t informed enough to know what is being devloped to remedy the situation.

   Likewise, the pesticeds being used for biofuel production, is quickly becoming microorganism derived pesticides, that are only harmful if certain insect species take a big bite out of the plants they are used on.
   Do some research on Bacillus therengensis. This is only one of the biological pesticides being used, while others are being devloped and tested.
   What do you think, scientists are just sitting idle, or all are researching climate change??!

   <<40% of the earth’s land is already used up for agriculture; there is no spare land for growing food, let alone bioenergy crops. Demand for biofuels has turned traditional food crops into ‘bioenergy’ crops. Food and energy now compete for the same ‘feedstock’. The pressure on land from food and bioenergy crops will certainly speed up deforestation and species extinction, and at the same time result in food price increases worldwide, hitting the poorest, hungriest countries the hardest.>>
   this is caused by mismanagement of resources caused by little or no regulation of the productions of fuels.
   Biofuels can be made with far more than “feedstock” crops.
   Unfortunately it is cheaper and faster to do it with them, currently, so that is the way investors will continue to demand it done, until the government steps in and puts its foot down.
   Biofuels can be made out of agricultural.industrial waste, and some bacteria.
   you know those fields that farmers burn off after harvesting wheat?? that biomass that they burn can be used to make ethanol.

   Don’t worry, ethanol is only a temporary thing, anyway until a more efficient microorganisms is found to make hydrogen.

   Our biggest problem was created by man, when chemsitry was touted as the savior of man. That claim was wrong. We are now introducing the “life” factor back into our reactions, to reduce harmful products, or control their emission, while making the reactions require less manmade energy by substrituting the work of microorganisms and the substrate they ferment.

7. I think the push comes somewhat from the fact that it is a “renewable” resource which doesn’t require dependency on others for the supply. Whether it is a better fuel depends on the requirements.

   The concept of reusing things like vegetable/cooking oil or similar is also biofuel. Though it is less likely to be viable.

8. Maybe this can help…

   http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/276805/biofuel_implications_and_government.html