What is Digg?181 Comments
- Johann4u, on 10/11/2007, -7/+79Alright, I'm diggin this up just because ethanol & biodiesel are a massive waste of resources and are definitely not the direction we should be going in. We need to put our resources into researching more viable/sustainable options. Rather than keep on screwing around with 'alternative gas' which will just turn into a gigantic catch-22 business and tap an already unsustainable agricultural system.
- Artifez, on 10/11/2007, -4/+50Biofuel is bunk unless it's made from the waste of other processes, to actually grow things in order to burn them is idiotic.
- agrabob, on 10/11/2007, -20/+46"The question is not whether ethanol and biodiesel have a place in our future, but whether or not we allow a handful of global corporations to impoverish the planet and the majority of its people."
This article is all about this agenda. Why not name it: "Hippy rants about capitalism and its relation to biofuels"
C'mon, take a step back and look at it: All businesses attempt to capitalize on the weaker/poorer. If you live in America, where was the car your driving made? The clothes your wearing? The computer your looking at this on? And how much money was that worker earning while making these products? - dweeb79, on 10/11/2007, -2/+23The amount of energy to create and transport ethanol is much more costly to the environment then drilling, shipping, and burning oil. The machines need to harvest, refine, transport and then finally burn it. There was CBS 60 minutes video (I believe) that claimed that ethanol can not be transported via long distance pipelines unlike oil because of it breaking down (something like that), so it needs to be transported via truck.
Another big problem with corn is that it will only take a bad year of production to quickly raise ethanol prices.
The consumer loses all the way around here. - Error601, on 10/11/2007, -2/+22Why is the whole article in italics? Anyway, it's not hard to figure out the massive environmental impact of plowing the planet over to plant corn for fuel and the potential hunger problems with cranking up the price of corn products. We already have farming runoff issues just with food crops.
- kwhitenack, on 10/11/2007, -3/+17To make ethanol consumes more energy than it provides
- mrgreenjeans, on 10/11/2007, -1/+15Bio fuel from algae grown with the sequestered CO2 of power plants is a good one. Any others?
- 10scott10, on 10/11/2007, -5/+17no, it about government subsidies. it is about corn ethanol takes 1.2 gallons of oil to make 1 gallon of ethanol. that is the problem. you have burn more oil than you get from it. it requires tons of oil to make the fertilizers that are used on corn.
- profOblivion, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11The point dweeb79 makes about the energy put into the process between planting the corn and filling your tank is similar to the argument against hybrid vehicles - that all the shipping, processing, etc., that goes into the creation of the product, actually outweighs the benefits reaped by using it, or doesn't make up for it in a reasonable time. Also interesting point about the possible instability of the prices. So obvious yet I hadn't thought about it before.
- jserio, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10From: http://www.diabetesnewspaper.com/cheap-corn.shtml
FACT: US Department of Energy says it takes 3 barrels of oil to produce 4 barrels of Ethanol; Ethanol gets 15% less mileage so it is a wash - $10 billion corn subsidy - Now has 5.7 billion added for Ethanol production from corn.
Does this sound like an "energy" solution or more "corn" politics?
Due to Subsidy, Corn Farmers now raise corn year after year on same land, forcing high production with artificially made NITROGEN, made exclusively from OIL - vroom101, on 10/11/2007, -5/+15I'm DIGGing this up in the hope that someone will explain why biofuel, which is-was a "darling" fuel alternative, is now getting what appears to a constant beating.
- Protean1, on 10/11/2007, -3/+12To grow all that corn, soybeans or whatever, you need fertilizer, weed killer, harvesters, tractors, refrigeration, processing plants, trucks for transport, trains for more transport, and so on, and so on. All powered by fossil fuels.
This is like trying to run your car by farting into a tube.
This is a huge waste of time, resources, and is a big distraction from the simple fact that there's too many people to feed without completely wrecking this planet. Ever seen an overgrazed field, after cows have been left on it too long? They'll tear the grass up by the roots, and turn it into a sea of mud.
Or to pick another analogy, the current world political environment is like a bunch of lions fighting over who gets to drink the last few mouthfuls from a dried up water hole. If we're lucky, we, the mice in the grass, will still be able to find a few small puddles to drink from, amidst all the churned-up mud. - NikoKun, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8I was gonna write an article about this myself... Corn Ethanol doesn't produce enough energy, when you compare it to how much energy it takes to make it...
It would be far more effective if they'd pursue Hemp Ethanol. - diggydougie, on 10/11/2007, -3/+11Most of these arguments can be improved upon. We don't HAVE to clear rain forests to grow crops for instance. And think of it this way: What would we do if the oil simply ran out? We have to have a back up plan. Actually I vote nuclear, solar, wind, hydro.
- baalzebub, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10Bio-Diesel is good, making ethanol out of corn is a bad idea, we need corn for other things like for eating and cattle feed, i think ethanol should be made out of something that is not as necessary for survival such as sugarbeets or switchgrass both of which are much easier to grow so land that is not good enough for corn can be used for sugarbeets & switchgrass,
the corn issue is all politics to manipulate the market... - lovek, on 10/11/2007, -3/+10Biofuel is generally seen as useful because Brazil does it so successfully... with sugar. Corn just doesn't work. So I say... why not import sugar instead of oil?
- unusualbob, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9wtf is with the whole article being in italics
- eastbeast314, on 10/11/2007, -4/+10Solar power is the obvious best.
The solar lobby isn't exactly a force to be reckoned with though. - mrgreenjeans, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Just to let you know, they call this the "well-to-pump" cost.
- 10scott10, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6
yes it does. we need the oil to make the fertilizer to grow the corn. and it takes 1.2 gallons of oil to make one gallon of corn ethanol. - spect3r, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Canada has plenty of oil. We're not terrorists.
- MikeSobe, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5It takes Oil to grow Corn.... so yes actually it does come from 'Terrorist Countries'
- bobcrotch, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Not to mention the fact that forcing double duty on a food source is a bad idea anyhow. The US couldn't be self sufficient from bio-fuels anyhow. The farmers would have to start over farming and it would destroy the soil, they would have to skip seasons on crops and rotate.
Again its just another green party thing. People think it's good for the environment because someone else guilted them into it. We have a bio-fuel fueling station by my house and bio-diesel is 3.75 a gallon. These greedy hippy predator ***** are making money hand over fist on these idiots, and what do they do? Give the owners infinite praise for 'saving the earth'
Sick to death of all this *****. - catalytica, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7This article sounds like it was financed and written by Big Oil. The facts are not straight -- like oil based fuels, there are different biofuels that are better/cheaper/less polluting than others. Biodiesel from waste veggie oil has a very low carbon footprint. Ethanol fuel from corn is more expensive, and more wasteful. Ethanol fuel from switchgrass uses less energy to process than corn, but more than biodiesel, as long as the biodiesel comes from waste products. The push for corn based ethanol fuel comes from the farming industry lobbyists. Corn isn't that efficient, but it decreases our dependence on foreign oil (which does nothing to change the fact that our country is at the mercy of international lending institutions)
- qtuner, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5the other cost that is not mentioned is that crop lands needs nitrogen to grow. This Nitrogen comes from ammonia contained in fertilizers that are made from natural gas. There will never be anymore new natural gas electric plants built because natural gas supplies are expected to be scarce in 30 years. Clearly this is not sustainable.
- Corynorhinus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4What makes it not wasteful is that the CO2 released by burning plant fuels was recently fixed by a plant from atmospheric CO2, returning it to the carbon cycle. Fossil fuels release CO2 that's been trapped in the earth, out of the atmosphere, for millions of years, adding to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Bio-fuels make sense because they are carbon neutral.
- Jazzillion, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6Hemp is the only viable Biofuel. Hemp has ten times the biomass of corn, grows without pesticide, and improves farm land rather than destroys it. I do believe that some sort of hydrogen or molecular fusion based fuel with carbon-free exhaust is a much more plausible resource. However, there is a billion cars with combustible engines already existing and rather than dispose of all of them and start new with fancy electric, solar, or fusion cars, we need to utilize what we already have in the transition phase, and possibly doing diesel conversions to hemp fuels is the temporary answer, or a hemp fuel into a gasoline compatible substitute.
At 10x the efficiency, I think that accounts for the harvesting and transportation equipment, albeit, a thorn in biofuel's side - bemenaker, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Alcohol can be transported in pipelines, but not the existing pipelines. It is too corrosive and will eat the pipes up. Alcohol contains too much oxygen for the metal currently used.
- member57, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Burning a food source is stupid. Switch grass or the above mentioned algae could be better alternatives. When I first heard all the BS about biofuel being better, I thought, what about the other factors involved, plowing, planting, reaping, and processing the product, all that requires fuel, lots of it. Food based biofuels are not the answer.
- yargthepirate, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5and the US has oil available which we can't use because of hippie ***** like you
- CaptMonkey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Why does everyone who argues against ethanol have no reputable sources for their information? I didn't see a single source in the article. No, I don't think ethanol is going to solve the world's problems, but it's certainly not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. For example, the using more fuel to make ethanol than it creates argument has been proven wrong by mutliple government-backed studies.
Digg me down if you don't agree, but until someone makes a good argument against it with facts to support it, you're just spouting more left-wing hippy drivel (and that's coming from me, who's on the left). So far I've only seen two real studies against ethanol and both of those made assumptions and omitted facts. The fact is, I haven't seen any reasonable alternatives to oil. What does everyone arguing against it suggest? Solar? Too expensive/doesn't produce enough energy. Nuclear? Non-renewable also. Wind? See solar. Hydrogen? How are you planning to power the production of it? - Charlotte_Web, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I just watched "Who Killed The Electric Car?" last night for the first time, and I can't recommend it highly enough. I think it's obvious that purely electric cars were killed off for reasons other than lack of consumer demand. My personal belief (not really covered in-depth by the movie) is that the auto manufacturers don't like electric vehicles because they have far less moving parts (i.e., no internal combustion engine and no transmission), and thus have a lower maintenance cost. The threat to the manufacturers is that the dealerships will suffer and many would go out of business. I used to work at a dealership, so I know firsthand that the service department is where the money is made, and the sales floor is just gravy.
I thought it was interesting how the movie pointed out that hydrogen fuel cell technology (like biofuels) was also a bit of a smoke-and-mirrors. - futurebird, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Well said. We need to look at ways to use cars less. This can be done!
- Doghound, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Or find a more eco-friendly way to power them.
- adenansu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3everyone go diesel, and covert your cars to run on used vegetable oil. nation wide law that all fast food joints turn their drive throughs into drive through fuel stations, as well. want to fuel up? order some food, and you can get some more fuel.
the weight loss rip offs will make a ton of cash, health insurance companies will make tons and tons of cash from being able to cancel all those policies without refunding the costs. and americans will get to do more of what they love most, getting fatter! - KhanneaSuntzu, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Biofuels, sadly, are a dead end. That may change in the next decades, and biofuels may in fact be cheaper to manufacture than the steadily more expensive fossil fuels. But whatever the case, biofuels will n e v e r be able to generate the same abundance of energy like we used to have in the last century.
In other words: if industrial society will have to depend solely on biofuels then we are screwed and humanity will not be able to sustain 6 billion people on this world without die-off. Imagine a few billion people in africa, asia, china, southamerica or the middle east not being able to feed themselves (and the rich countries well capable) .... those people are not going to quietly fade away.
Hence the hard truth is we either need complimentary energy sources equalling or clearly exceeding the same output as fossil fuels. They will exist, or may exist, with the advent of nanotechnology, in the shape of hard to describe, but theoretically very plausible solar cells or biogen-based biofuels. The easy way out of this horrible dilemma is Fusion energy, but that does not look plausible in the current Big Oil dominated politfical landscape, at least before 2050. So we are stuck with piling on solar cells, at enormous investment costs, on buildings (and later on, in the worlds deserts!).
And without the cure all of Fusion, there WILL be a die off, because the rich world will displace the "combustible" demands of the poor countries one way or another, either displacing fuel sources, or displacing energy resources. And the third world can not afford even a small bit of displacement - it costs a LOT of energy to even keep normal agribusiness running smoothly.
If I were young and living in, say, Pakistan, and I knew all these facts, I'd be worried. Or getting prepared, one way or another. Terrorism might get a good bit uglier in the next 5 decades. - xptoast, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Here is the fix to using up all the food resources and a possible fix for it as well. It has recently been published but I had thought of it a long time ago. Farms are a 1 area kind of operation. Stack the farm. Runoff you say? Troughs in the stacked building you plant in. Expensive equipment? Not really. It would cost less to buy a Morton building or so and build a multi level farming operation using hydroponics. Using a bot on a rail it could perform routine operations such as pretty much anything including harvest and replanting. This could be all year long used. Powering it? Use solar and wind harnessing tech to solve that. Fertilizers? Got Cows? There is a very simple answer to so many of our problems but the whole system of the world wishes to suppress it in order to reap the profits. Such as the cancer cures we hear of so much lately. They don't get out there because theres no money in a healthy person at least not for the pharmaceutical companies. No money needed for drugs that means no money needed for insurance or as much. Its a whole beat around the bush thing. Seriously though very simple concept with many benefits to reap from a stacked, hydroponics, environmentally powered, system. As well as that plants give off that wonderful air we breath and the fact that the moisture being put off by them is clean and can be used for humans. Wow no kidding? God is awesome for creating such a pure wonderful system of logic and the universe in its simplistic complex beautiful ways. By the way we humans screw up everything with greed.
- ryanmetcalf, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4but, the one advantage of recycling over throwing it away is space used, though more fuels may be burned in recycling, there is much less landfill space used.
- DRINKxREDxBULL, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Becuase huge corn companies like Archer Danial Midlands and Cargill give TONS of cash to both parties. The whole "lets get the gov't to pay for us to stay in business (while we make profits)" thing has been working out great for them, but if they could create new demand (ie the gov't forcing us to buy to buy their corn) they can make even more.
- roseap, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3@eckre: dugg you up for admitting you're using biodiesel among these comments. :)
I've been using biodiesel for over a year... on average, I pay about what petrol-diesel costs. It's still cheaper per mile than the comparable gas engine model.
what many don't realize is that biodiesel can be made from a variety of sources. Waste veggie oil, algae, even some have made it out of animal waste byproducts. Cleaner, yes but the fact that it's produced locally (er, not imported from another company) makes this more viable. Additionally, think about the CO2 that the plants are taking out of the atmosphere... it makes biofuels a little more carbon-neutral (not completely, of course, since it takes energy to harvest). - sgglynn, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I agree with Agrabob, this article is completely agenda based, and he represents his feelings as facts.
He seems to mislead, and misrepresent alot of facts as well:
But when the full "life cycle" of agro-fuels is considered -- from land clearing to automotive consumption -- the moderate emission savings are undone by far greater emissions from deforestation, burning, peat drainage, cultivation and soil carbon losses.
While it's correct, that the rest of the life cycle does damage, it doesn't at all show the full life cycle of oil. In fact, the article is comparing the ENTIRE life cycle of biofuel to ONLY the burning of oil, not production. That is very misleading.
"100 hectares dedicated to family farming generates 35 jobs. Oil palm and sugarcane provide 10 jobs, eucalyptus two and soybeans just one half-job per 100 hectares, all poorly paid."
Why is this one misleading? Because 100 hectares isn't that ***** big, but it sure looks big.... according to google, 100 hectare = 1.0 square kilometers, in turn, 35 jobs per square kilometer isn't that horrible.
"Myth #2: Agro-fuels will not result in deforestation"
It doesn't even debunk this myth *at all*... It gives a few sentences of anecdotal evidence and moves on.
"Myth #4: Agro-fuels will not cause hunger"
Not only haven't I heard that myth, he's not even providing an argument against it... He literally just gives some poverty statistics and moves on, that's not debunking a myth, that's just talking about something else, with or without my lemonade... (see, I can do it too) - valkraider, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2--"I don't need a source to tell you that ethanol from corn is stupid. "
And I don't need a source to tell you that Paris Hilton is a virgin.
Doesn't make either of us any more credible... - KhanneaSuntzu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Look out your window, look at all those people's faces. They will starve themselves to be able to keep on driving around. Cars have become deeply embedded into euro-american culture by now. Cars have a high "from my cold dead fingers" quality; people will get ugly once you force them to seek alternatives. Public transportation has been neglected plus in a few years there will be massive automation, increases of efficiency and eventually even robotization.
Even now we could sustain a level lifestyle in the first world by massive increases of efficiency, lay offs and automatization. By 2020 I can see millions of jobs evaporating. In the US that will ideologically mean : breadlines, even more prisons and riots. The the EU it will probably mean a basic income in one form or another and riots.
I don't even wanna speculate what less cars, less fossil fuels, more automation (etc) will do to the third world. Imagine DNA engineered crops that grow as weeds. You will solve food problems a good bit but, hell, imagine all those subsistence farmers being out of a job suddenly.
Pick your poison. - member57, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Switch grass, makes as much as sugar, and easier to grow and harvest.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Well, if were allowed to drill in certain areas, maybe we wouldn't be in position that we're in. Cuba made huge oil find and parceled off the area. They have since lease many of the parcels off to China. The nice thing about this oil field is it extends under the North American continental shelf. So basically, Cuba is selling our oil to China because, although their drilling in Cuban waters, they can drill at an angle. So thanks to the tree huggers, not only are bio fuels increasing deforestation, but now it's going to be affecting our economy further down the line. Hurray!
- yargthepirate, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2RTFA.
- DRINKxREDxBULL, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Doesn't matter who wrote it - ethanol is unsustainable.
- DRINKxREDxBULL, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2your comment make NO sense.
- CaptMonkey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Yeah, except nuclear is in no way renewable. And if we built enough plants to replace our oil addiction, we would run out of uranium within 20 years.
- smeliot, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I am an analyst for a major investment firm and I am currently covering the Alternative Energy sector. Over the past year I have read/written numerous reports covering such alternative fuels as bio diesel, corn ethanol, sugarcane ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, etc. The common trait between all these "alternative energies" is that are simply meant to divert our intense reliance on oil. Ethanol (in all its forms) is typically used as an additive to gasoline to decrease the amount of gasoline needed to run your car.
The primary negative aspect of corn and cellulosic ethanol is that in almost all blends, from E1 (1% ethanol) to E100 (you guessed it, 100% ethanol), ethanol reduces fuel economy. The positive of the alternative fuels is that they have a higher EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested) that gasoline. Corn ethanol is only marginally higher, but sugarcane ethanol (used in Brazil) is much higher. While sugarcane is obviously a better plant to use for ethanol (higher sugar content and the entire plant can be used to produce ethanol) it is difficult/impossible to plant in the continental US. So, producers must make do with what they can grow and that is naturally corn (or switch grass in the case of cellulosic ethanol).
As the article states, certain bio fuels have greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of gasoline. This is because when you consider the natural gas used to produce the ammonia needed for fertilizer as well as the fuel that goes into producing the ethanol (though certain facilities are beginning to use manure to fertilize AND burn to produce ethanol) the greenhouse gas produced is high. While my firm and I are clearly more interested in ethanol and bio fuels as an investment and not so interested in saving the planet, we do feel as though it is a move in the right direction towards lessening the dependence on foreign oil. -
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