Given the American media’s fascination with spreading global warming alarmism, how likely would it be to see the following headline in one of our papers:
Top Scientist Says Biofuels Are Scam.
Not very likely, right?
Well, such was the headline in England’s Sunday Times today (emphasis added throughout, h/t Alister McFarquhar):
Roland Clift will tell a seminar of the Royal Academy of Engineering that the plan to promote bioethanol and biodiesel produced from plants is a “scam”.
Clift, professor of environmental technology at Surrey University, sits on the scientific advisory council of Defra, David Miliband’s environment department.
He will tell the seminar that promoting the use of biofuels is likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Shocking stuff, yes? Think Katie, Charlie, or Brian will be interviewing Clift any time soon?
Regardless of the answer, the article continued:
Clift said: “Biodiesel is a complete scam because in the tropics the growing demand is causing forests to be burnt to make way for palm oil and similar crops.
“We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops for 70-300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest destruction.”
Although Clift didn’t specifically refer to the Amazon rainforest, an article published Friday by Eric Holt-Gimenez, director of FoodFirst/Institute for Food and Development Policy, did (emphasis added throughout):
Proponents of agro-fuels argue that fuel crops planted on ecologically degraded lands will improve, rather than destroy, the environment. Perhaps the government of Brazil had this in mind when it re-classified some 200 million hectares of dry tropical forests, grassland and marshes as “degraded” and apt for cultivation. In reality, these are the bio-diverse ecosystems of the Mata Atlantica, the Cerrado and the Pantanal, occupied by indigenous people, subsistence farmers and extensive cattle ranches. The introduction of agro-fuel plantations will simply push these communities to the “agricultural frontier” of the Amazon where deforestation will intensify. Soybeans supply 40 percent of Brazil’s biodiesel. NASA has positively correlated their market price with the destruction of the Amazon rainforest — currently at nearly 325,000 hectares a year.
As the reader is certainly aware, environmentalists for decades have been cautioning dire consequences to the planet as a result of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Yet, the delicious irony today is how a supposed solution to global warming is – wait for it – destroying the Amazon rainforest.
As such, in reality, if soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore and his sycophant devotees were really concerned about the environment, shouldn’t they be coming down on the use of biofuels?
This seems doubly the case given all the other environmental issues reported by Holt-Gimenez:
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. Every ton of palm oil produced results in 33 tons of carbon dioxide emissions — 10 times more than petroleum. Clearing tropical forests for sugarcane ethanol emits 50 percent more greenhouse gases than the production and use of the same amount of gasoline.
There are other environmental problems as well. Industrial agro-fuels require large applications of petroleum-based fertilizers, whose global use has more than doubled the biologically available nitrogen in the world, contributing heavily to the emission of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. To produce a liter of ethanol takes three to five liters of irrigation water and produces up to 13 liters of waste water. It takes the energy equivalent of 113 liters of natural gas to treat this waste, increasing the likelihood that it will simply be released into the environment. Intensive cultivation of fuel crops also leads to high rates of erosion.
Shouldn’t these issues be discussed before the world begins devastating rainforests and growing lands around the planet in order to avert a climate crisis that likely doesn’t exist?
Oh, that’s right. The debate’s over.
—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.
Editor at Large
Comments Policy
The other point to be made
June 10, 2007 - 18:02 ET by steve2007The other point to be made about biofuels is that, for corn in particular, more energy may be used to produce the fuel than will be harnessed in the end. http://en.wikipedia..... Sugar cane would be a much more energy efficient crop for the U.S., but the powerful corn lobby might have something to say about that.
Does anyone know how much rai
June 10, 2007 - 18:08 ET by balboaDoes anyone know how much rain forest the soybean plantations are destroying vs. other industries?
Hey, don't knock soy.... soy
June 10, 2007 - 20:15 ET by liberal_bug_zapperHey, don't knock soy.... soy is some good stuff. Soy, Corn and Wheat are important for our food and we need to stop these leftists from convincing everyone to make food into fuel for cars.
There is no emergency, so there is no need to rush headlong into Ethanol production.
Say, Bal, you and I are from different ideological camps..... but would you be willing to call your congressman or Senator to tell them to stop support for bio fuels? It's not like we should rush headlong into the unknown just because we think it's better than oil... right?
____________________________________________________
"We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities." ~ Thomas Paine
lbz,LOL-Hey, watch out for th
June 10, 2007 - 20:27 ET by Dave Rlbz,
LOL-Hey, watch out for that soy stuff. The side affects could be, well, feminizing. :-O
I'll have to look into that.
June 10, 2007 - 21:26 ET by liberal_bug_zapperI'll have to look into that. It sure would explain the lack of body hair on Chinese people. However, I don't see men here being any more prone to homosexuality than in the US.... and, if it is true that it is feminizing, couldn't it be that Soy products could prevent girl children from becoming lesbians?
I've been eating soy products (the Chinese have really outdone themselves in the number of tofu dishes that are just fabulous) for quite some time now, and drink soy milk on a daily basis and I'm still a hairy aggressive bastard and proud of it. The boys over here are boys, and the girls.... well, are girls.
I read the article and he's doing exactly what Rachel Carson did with her book Silent Spring and the subsequent articles that followed. I would take what this guy is writing with a grain of salt.
____________________________________________________
"We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities." ~ Thomas Paine
On an ironic note, shouldn'
June 10, 2007 - 18:10 ET by steve2007On an ironic note, shouldn't NB be held to the same standard as you hold the rest of the media? The question that the post begins with is pretty loaded, with the clause "Given the American media’s fascination with spreading global warming alarmism".
Given that the article you refer to is not even about whether global warming is a reality, but instead about ways to reduce emissions, this comes off as a bit biased.
Steve
June 10, 2007 - 18:37 ET by Noel SheppardSteve,
I'm not sure I understand your concern. Are you suggesting that only articles addressing the reality of global warming should be analyzed for the media's bias regarding the issue? What about articles that implicitly question issues surrounding AGW that don't delve into such a reality?
Furthermore, in this case, the issue of global warming was indeed raised. For instance, this was in the fourth paragraph:
This was paragraph eight:
This was paragraph twelve:
And paragraphs fourteen and fifteen:
As such, there was plenty in this article directly related to global warming/climate change, and I suggest quite fervently that none of this will be covered by America's media any time soon.
And therein lies the bias. ns
I don't think you addressed
June 11, 2007 - 14:41 ET by steve2007I don't think you addressed my concern, which was that the question of whether or not global warming was a reality was not addressed in the article, yet it was portrayed as a knock against global warming alarmists. On the contrary, Mr. Clift clearly takes global warming seriously, and is concerned with the way politicians, such as George Bush, are promoting biofuels as a way to deal with it.
Flash: Corn country to city folks "thanks for the cash suckers!"
June 10, 2007 - 18:23 ET by w0tmNews Flash: Corn country to city folks, "thanks for the cash
suckers!" I wish I could post that headline on DailyKOS, Sierra
Club, or any of the thousand other leftie Web sites but it would be pulled in
minutes. I sell industrial products to bio-fuel refineries here in the
Midwest. Their business is BOOMING! MY business is BOOMING!
Recently, UCLA released a study showing E85 fuel emits MORE pollutants than
gasoline. That didn't mention the higher cost of production, removing food
from the mouths of the Third World poor, the considerable need for petroleum in
all stages of ethanol to E85 fuel production and so on. Did you know
ethanol cannot be shoved down the pipelines used today to efficiently transport
gasoline? It all has to be go by truck
or train. Did you know ethanol must be heated in very cold weather or it turns
to the consistency of Crisco? Talk to the Canadian bus companies that
had to run their busses all night every night last winter. Canada passed
the law and told the bus manufacturers "making it work is your
problem". Where have we heard that before? I own a home built in 1994 the year Clinton said that to
companies such as Kohler. Every toilet
in my house has to be flushed three times.
So much for saving water! I pay
double my old rates to have my trash separated except now they say it costs
more to separate than is saved in the process. But it’s how we FEEL and how we CARE. Will the lunacy ever end?
Ethanol of various types all the way up to E85 is a gigantic
scam. Presented with the UCLA evidence in an interview, the Green
spokesman in the interview had his canned answer ready. "We planned
on that. We have to start somewhere. It's how we all FEEL about
something that counts, not the short-term results. Scientists will soon
make ethanol more efficient and cleaner."
As Al Gore says, "the discussion is over!”
I'm making money hand over fist on this out here in Kansas. I have
farmer friends who are banking more money in a year then they used to do in
ten. Farm magazines contain articles telling their readers to keep a VERY
low profile on their bonanza of riches. This huge transfer of
wealth from the urban many to the rural few is a closely held
secret. Since it goes along with the dreams of total ownership of you
and me by a select few, it's quietly accepted. With both parties on
the bio-fuel bandwagon, neither party can take the issue to the voting
booth. This should be a huge issue in urban areas in a BIG way but not
with today's media. Filling up a Prius with E85 gives the urban
left a warm and fuzzy feeling of superiority. NO connection with the
starving Third World masses the world will soon see. There have already been
riots over the huge price increase of corn tortillas in Mexico! Rain
forests, as this post explains, burnt to make room for bio-fuel crops.
The downsides are just beginning to be known to the public. Others knew it from the beginning back when
this craziness could have been stopped.
We already had the most efficient, lowest pollutant portable energy
source sitting in the ground ready to be put to use. And technology will render oil a useless substance by the 22nd
century. Historians will shake their
heads at the mass lunacy the planet experienced back in the 2007. Many will write papers guessing as to the
reason. As if there is a reason other
than the demagoguery of a few wishing to own the lives of many, the same reason
for mass stupidity in the entire history of mankind. There is NO attention to
simple science, math and economics in any of this. All
emotion. But what else is new? Is that the core of the
left? Sadly, mindless emotion and rhetoric beats facts, truth and
common sense almost every time.
In the meantime, I'm taking money to the bank for all
the ethanol plant equipment I'm selling. I can't take orders fast
enough. Farmers out here are planting corn in their front
yards! This is seen as a once in every 500-year event. The last one
was the Tulip Mania in Holland 500(?) years ago. Do I feel guilty getting
rich off of this absolute stupidity? You bet! Will I
vote my wallet or my conscience? I’ll vote my conscience of course. But, until that unlikely event occurs, the trillion-dollar
bio-fuel scam continues and you “city-folks” can have my address if you’d like
to cut out the middleman and just mail me checks. I take all major credit cards too.
yep
June 10, 2007 - 18:41 ET by Pragmatic-ManYep! Carbon credits hold nothing to this. At least the cash is flowing in the right direction.
I'll pass on the ethanol eq
June 10, 2007 - 23:13 ET by ckc1227I'll pass on the ethanol equipment, but you can tell me how to get a piece of the action. I promise I won't actually put the information to use or anything. Entertainment purposes only. :)
"Did you know ethano
June 10, 2007 - 23:35 ET by sarcasmo"Did you know ethanol must be heated in very cold weather or it turns
to the consistency of Crisco?"
No, but that's because IMO that's a totally false "fact." Vodka doesn't freeze in my freezer, it pours into the little shotglass that's also in there...Vodka is ethyl alcohol + H2O, why would the same variety of alcohol -- albeit not the human consumption grade of it -- plus gasoline act any different??
JMR
I don't know about ethanol, b
June 10, 2007 - 23:41 ET by MikeBI don't know about ethanol, but some diesels did this, and maybe still do. When it got cold enough, parafin would come out of solution in the diesel and clog up the injectors. You have to put an additive in the fuel tank to keep the parafin in solution.
"A communist is someone who reads Marx. An anti-communist is someone who understands Marx." Ronald Reagan
True, but diesel's totally-
June 11, 2007 - 00:18 ET by sarcasmoTrue, but diesel's totally-different stuff from gasoline, much less gasoline plus a compound which was, in its pure form, said to be widely used as an antifreeze & for braking systems on old Soviet fighter jets, to the immense but predictable joy of many aircrews I'm told. I think this guy may have been confusing diesel's behavior with ethanol's. Ethanol, to be sure, has plenty of faults besides this alleged one, but we should stick with the actual faults around here -- like "it's wasteful & socialistic."
JMR
Freezing Vodka
June 11, 2007 - 01:00 ET by austinhookVodka freezes by the time the temperature reaches thirty or forty below (40 below is same in C or F, BTW). You havent seen it if you havent experienced a good Canadian winter. Ordinary diesel starts to get waxy as soon as you get a bit below freezing, but it's not a real problem until it gets closer to 0F and below, where the waxiness can clog the fuel filter. Biodiesel gets waxy sooner in cold temperatures, and biodiesel is often prepared with a process involving methyl alcohol. That's probably where the confusion about alcohol in biodiesel starts. Certain additives can help. Some additives cause other problems. Pure ethyl alcohol only freezes in laboratory conditions, well below the coldest temperatures anywhere in the world, at any time of year. Important to keep the discussion to one biofuel at a time, so as not to mix up the facts.
Milk River, AB
Amen. And as a Floridian, I
June 11, 2007 - 01:10 ET by sarcasmoAmen. And as a Floridian, I'm forced to admit I import my Everclear brand grain alcohol (useful for a variety of tasks at 95%-pure, but chiefly used for sterilizing food) from Texas. This is due to a moronic Florida state law which was passed in response to the sexual misbehavior of a legislator's daughter. She's said to have consumed "purple passion punch" in great quantity (before taking-on an entire fraternity, I guess...). Most laws -- but especially this one -- really need "sunset" provisions, so that people can be reminded of how truly-nutty they are.
JMR
moving food from the mouths o
June 11, 2007 - 11:52 ET by taznarThat's another myth.
There is more than enough food to feed everyone in the world. That's why farmers in many different countries are paid not to plant crops. The problem isn't a lack of food, its the inability of so many to pay anything at all for food.
Personally, I don't see the problem with them making money on the market with that set-aside acreage instead of having taxpayers pay them to let it go fallow.
True - true - true
June 11, 2007 - 21:40 ET by w0tmI was making the point of that's what the libs will use to justify a massive transfer of wealth from First World to Third World countries. They get their biofuels, big taxes and loot our wallets. Pretty neat scheme! Almost as if they had it all planned out! Which they did of course.
Sorry -- additional information
June 11, 2007 - 21:36 ET by w0tmSorry - I should have been more specific. For freezing problems I was referring to a higher mixture of vegetable oil. Running on used cooking oil is the "ultimate" to most biofuel purists. The oil is comes from cooking and is often thrown out. Fill up at any Burger King! Ask your wife how she gets rid of a pot of used cooking oil. She freezes it and it turns hard as a rock or at least as hard as Crisco. Which is what I wrote. A city in Canada last winter converted city busses to run on biofuel rich in used vegetable oil. They had to run their engines 24/7. No one ever thought about what grease does when it freezes. Burning vegetable oil emits virtually zero pollution unlike ethanol or even E85. As I say, vegetable oil is THE fuel of choice for those who worship alternate fuels. Just don't try to start your engine much below 40 degrees. Sorry, I should have added this explanation in my post but it was too long already. Don't take my word for it. Google some key words. You'll find hundreds of stories. Instructions on electric heated gas tanks and so forth. Anything flammable and electricity close together somehow doesn't excite me.
They're destroying the rain f
June 10, 2007 - 19:56 ET by dahliatraversThey're destroying the rain forests to prevent an as yet unproven phenomenon (AGW). To create bio-fuels which are just as polluting as the fuels they substitute for. So if the phenomenon were proven, the bio-fuels would, in turn, contribute to it. Except that we'd also be minus the rain forests.
This is seriously warped.
Actually, I think they have e
June 10, 2007 - 21:15 ET by GalvanicActually, I think they have economic reasons for destroying the rain forests, but the irony of destroying millions of acres of a major bio-source of CO2 conversion, while Americans and Europeans buy hybrid cars and rush to Home Depot to buy special flourescent light bulbs to help stem AGW, can't be overlooked. This is just one of the reasons why Kyoto is such a sham.
It also shows that trying to
June 11, 2007 - 11:54 ET by taznarIt also shows that trying to fix a "problem" you don't fully understand can easily make matters worse.
I suspect truer words were ne
June 11, 2007 - 21:41 ET by BlondeI suspect truer words were never spoken. Nice.