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- FairDinkumMate, on 07/13/2008, -2/+9Yet another uninformed, hysterical article. I live in Brazil & I hate these stupid articles referring to things of which they have no idea or understanding. Why can't people on either side of this issue discuss it with facts, evidence & logic?
The issues with regard to oil are pretty well known(although still regularly distorted by oil company representatives & the like), but the biofuels issue is now becoming just as distorted.
I'm not up to speed on the in's & out's of Borneo's Orangu-tans, but this article talks about some other biofuel production issues, "not least by the clearing for biofuels of vast areas of rainforest in Brazil...". Anyone who knows anything about Brazil knows that clearing rainforest to grow sugar would be like the US clearing Alaska to grow corn, the climate & rainfall are all wrong. Sugar is grown in the SOUTH of Brazil, about 15º latitude south of the Brazilian Amazon. That's about the same latitude difference as between New York & Miami!
Rainforest IS being cleared in Brazil, predominantly by cattle grazers too cheap to buy any of the 40% of land in the country that is unused & suitable for food production. The country has a huge issue trying to limit this clearing, not least because the Amazon is an area approximately 6 times the size of Texas. Can you imagine trying to keep track of what happens to 5 acres in an area this large? The Brazilian government is now using satellite images weekly to identify cleared areas & sending in the police. Just last month a cattle grazer was fined R$5 million(about US$2.7 million) for illegally clearing land. But for these 'journalists' to continually misrepresent that clearing of the Amazon in Brazil is related to biofuels is just plain lying.
On top of all of this, not only is Brazil being spoken of as part of the problem, they are in fact the only country on earth with a SUSTAINABLE bio-ethanol industry! More than 50% of the fuel used in Brazil is sugar cane ethanol & NONE of that is produced in the Amazon! - Ferre1, on 07/13/2008, -1/+6No food crops needed for bio fuel. Hemp can grow on places where other crops don't, like large parts of Africa. If it was not for the ban on Hemp Africa could become a major producer of Hemp based fuel and other (now) third world countries could do that too.
- BiggLonn, on 07/13/2008, -0/+4Ya know we never hear these stories like this, the in the pocket media, aka the main stream media, they sqawk like parrots and wonder why no one really takes them seriously any more. Thanks for the information share.
- thethinktank, on 07/14/2008, -0/+3Dugg you up, my friend. And not only is your ethanol program sustainable, it provided nearly 700,000 jobs as far back as 2003. Hell, in our economy, we sure as hell could use 700,000 jobs...
- inactive, on 07/13/2008, -0/+3@FairDinkum
By th way, I agree that Brazil is the only place that biofuels make sense - thethinktank, on 07/14/2008, -0/+2One more thing, pay close attention to the biggest enemies of the Biofuel movement:
Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, possible McCain VP, received more campaign donations from Big Oil than any other congressman in her 2006 Senate campaign.
Texas Governor Rick Perry received huge donations from the food industry like the CEO of Pilgrim's Pride, who has forced Governor Perry to demand that congress make Texas exempt from the U.S. biofuel mandate. Pilgrim's Pride doesn't give a ***** about starving children in Africa, they only care about their bottom line-- and the cost of their chicken feed which includes corn. That and the cattle industry, complaining about the same feed costs. Keep your corn-fed beef, I had a grass fed steak for dinner tonight, its tastier and healthier.
The "but its making people starve!" myth is perpetuated by big oil, food conglomerates and the grocery industry. The sad thing is, everyone is buying it-- even diggers. - thethinktank, on 07/14/2008, -0/+2This article is utter b.s.
"A Cornell University study shows that biofuel production from farm crops such as corn takes 29 per cent more energy than is yielded by the fuel itself "
That study they cite? Yeah, its three years old, written by Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel, who included FREE SOLAR ENERGY FROM THE SUN in his study. He has since admitted that corn-based ethanol has a net energy gain, meaning more energy is stored in the fuel than it takes to create. So does the USDA:
http://www.usda.gov/oce/reports/energy/aer-814.pdf
Ethanol is not a great fuel, it does have an impact on the world's food supply. But don't buy the hype. The USDA has reported that biofuels account for only 3% of the total increase of global food costs.
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_ ...
Again, ethanol is not a great fuel. We should only use it to force the auto makers to develop more flex fueled autos and get the biofuel market going, then transition to a variety of fuels like cellulosic ethanol and algae methanol-- which are both VERY green friendly and produce a strong net energy gain.
Last, electric cars should be the final answer, but even if we had a viable option on the market today, we'd still have hundreds of millions of internal combustion cars on the road today. To get to the electric car economy, we're going to need smart fuel to get there. Personally, I'd rather get MY fuel from the midwest, not the middle east... - inactive, on 07/13/2008, -1/+3Actually the rainforest is being cleared to plant soybeans, which are used to make biodiesel.
- avengingturnip, on 07/13/2008, -0/+1Maybe a dumb question but what do you displace with hemp? Even if not food grain something else clearly is growing there now.
- FairDinkumMate, on 07/13/2008, -1/+2Source?
I'll bet you whatever source you quote will be 2 yeasr out of date! Amazon land was being cleared by some unscrupulous farmers for soybean production(& probably still is to some extent), but most of these were the first people to be prosecuted once the satellite imagery program began. Unlike cattle, farmers can't move the soybean crops & can't claim that the soybeans just 'wandered' into the Amazon land that neighbours their legitimate farm land.
There is high demand for soy crops in Brazil at the moment as the government has mandated that all fuels derived from crude oil must contain 3% biofuel(this will increase to 5% in 2010). The soy demand however will be short lived as Brazil has some native palms(the African palm or 'Dende' as it's known here) that are far superior in the yield of oil. These palms start producing oil 3 years after planting & the first crops have already gone in.
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