BIO-FUELS: the impressive Brazilian example

[Alexandre]

Nowadays, due to the financial crisis and to global warming, there are
many people suggesting that it is the right moment to invest in the
development of environmentally friendly technologies. In this context,
investments in low-carbon solutions would be priority. I do not know
how realistic this idea is. New technologies usually take time to be
developed and the current crisis calls for investments that can
quickly generate new jobs and growth. However there are various
already existing eco-friendly technologies that can be adopted in the
short term. A good example of that is the successful Brazilian bio-
fuel model. In Brazil, nearly six million cars can use ethanol, from
sugar cane, as fuel. These cars are known as “flexible” because they
can run on a mixture of gasoline and alcohol, in any proportion (even
100% alcohol). Most of the cars manufactured in Brazil nowadays are
flexible-fuel vehicles.
Besides, according to a national regulation, the Brazilian gasoline
has from 20% to 25% ethanol. Ethanol can be easily found in nearly 33
thousand gas stations in the country and accounts for more than 40% of
the fuel consumption of the brazilian cars.
The use of sugar cane to produce ethanol is also a smart choice. Sugar
cane produces eight times more energy per pound than corn, and even
its waste, the bagasse, can be used for the production of bio-based
materials.
PS: sugar cane is planted vary far away from the amazon rain forest.
There is no deforestation because of it, as some people argue.
Find a lot more information at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil
==========================
Alexandre Couto de Andrade

[Christopher Calder]

Your neglecting to mention the millions of acres of rainforest that
the Brazilians have burned down in the past few years in order to grow
more sugarcane for ethanol. We need the rainforests because they are
the lungs of the world, and burning them down releases so much CO2
into the atmosphere it creates a carbon debt that will take decades or
even centuries to repay. Ethanol production is the worst choice if
you believe global warming is a real threat. The fact that the USA
and Europe have pushed up the price of all grains and food products
through biofuel production has given Brazil and other tropical
countries a strong incentive to burn down even more acres of
rainforest in order to grow more food, which would not be needed if we
used our own crops to feed people instead of SUVs.

The biofuel fiasco is a bandwagon to hell. It has driven up the price
of food all over the world, and has literally starved to death
millions of people globally. Every year the human race burns up the
equivalent of 400 years worth of total planetary vegetation in the
condensed form of fossil fuels. The idea that we replace all of that
concentrated biomass energy by growing biofuel crops is not only
ridiculous, it is the deadliest mistake of the 21st century. Biofuels
are a disaster and a failure no matter how you look at them, and they
are distracting us from the real energy sources: oil, natural gas, and
the truly “green” energy sources, nuclear power and geothermal
energy. Nuclear power is the only MAJOR way to slow global warming,
and we can make synthetic gasoline and jet fuel using nuclear energy
and CO2 sucked right out of the atmosphere. Nuclear power could also
be used to make fertilizer from atmospheric CO2 and nitrogen. As
farming and the fertilizer it requires currently causes more
greenhouse gas release than all land, air, and sea transportation
combined, the only way to address global warming is through nuclear
energy as a main energy source, with geothermal energy being a smaller
but very positive secondary source.

An advanced, industrialized, heavily populated world needs highly
concentrated energy that can be produced 24 hours a day, 365 days a
year. Solar and wind power are inherently inefficient and expensive
because they tap into natural energy sources that are far too diffuse
and fluctuating to keep us all alive on this planet. How much solar
and wind power can we generate on a still, windless night?
Environmentalists should not use biofuels and symbolic but impotent
energy schemes to kill off the human population through starvation,
which is exactly what they are doing now. Human population can be
controlled by birth control, financial incentives to have less
children, and even mandatory limits on childbearing if all else
fails. Intentionally starving people is not an ethical and
compassionate way to keep global human overpopulation in check.

SEE http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html

Christopher Calder

[William Connolley]

2008/12/1 Christopher Calder <calde...@yahoo.com>:

> Your neglecting to mention the millions of acres of rainforest that

Well that was a bit of a rant, starting off badly on the first line.

Not all biofuels are the same. From grain is a disaster
(http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/10/biofuels_again.php and loads of
other people). Sugar cane appears to be much better:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/01/the_ethanol_program_in_brazil.php
and links therein.

-W.

--
William M. Connolley | www.wmconnolley.org.uk | 07985 935400

[Tom Adams]

> > Alexandre Couto de Andrade- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

The USA has a 54 cent per gallon tariff on ethanol imports and no
tariff on oil.

This cost US consumers about 10 cent per gallon at the pump, it's
estimated. But I am not sure that is a up-to-date estimate.

[David B. Benson]

On Nov 30, 11:12 pm, Christopher Calder <caldern...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Your neglecting to mention the millions of acres of rainforest that
> the Brazilians have burned down in the past few years in order to grow
> more sugarcane for ethanol.

This is false. Sugarcane does not grow well in tropical rainforest
conditions. All sugarcane in Brazil is grown far to the south of the
Amazon Basin, from Mato Grosso across to the Northeast, with most in
the middlek, but I don't remember the name of the state (province).

Your statement regarding biofuel contribution to the recently ended
uptick in food prices is also false; ethanol-from-corn contributed
onaly about 6% of the total uptick.

That said, I certainly do not favor ethanol-from-corn, does nothing to
speak of regarding global warming. Ethanol from sugarcane is, on the
other hand, a help and sugar is a seriious glut on world markets.

[Don Libby]

From: "David B. Benson" <dbe...@eecs.wsu.edu>
Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change
To: "globalchange" <global...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 5:14 PM
Subject: [Global Change: 3030] Re: BIO-FUELS: the impressive Brazilian
example

>That said, I certainly do not favor ethanol-from-corn, does nothing to
>speak of regarding global warming. Ethanol from sugarcane is, on the
>other hand, a help and sugar is a seriious glut on world markets.

Cellulosic ethanol from corn stover would reslove some issues with corn
ethanol, but wide-spread corn fermentation infrastructure throughout the
midwest would present a formidable barrier to entry for new technology,
unless it comes in at much lower production cost (or much higher production
tax credit?).

-dl

[David B. Benson]

On Dec 5, 6:44 am, "Don Libby" <dli...@tds.net> wrote:
> ...

> Cellulosic ethanol from corn stover would reslove some issues with corn

> ethanol ...

Yes. But not the nitrogen, etc., pollution.

[robert vocke]

At least 25% (more or less) of corn stover must be left in the field or the organic component of the soil matrix will degrade.

> Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 17:36:55 -0800
> Subject: [Global Change: 3032] Re: BIO-FUELS: the impressive Brazilian example
> From: dbe...@eecs.wsu.edu
> To: global...@googlegroups.com

[Christopher Calder]

On my webpage I have links to news stories showing rainforest
devastation in Brail, Indonesia, and other tropical countries, all
because of expanding production of sugarcane, palm trees for palm oil,
and soybeans and other crops for biodiesel. Brazil still grows
sugarcane for sugar to eat. Where do you think the new, vast amounts
of sugarcane for ethanol production are coming from? They are coming
from new sugarcane plantations all over Brazil. Tropical forests,
both rainforests and dryer tropical forests, are being burned down to
grow more biofuels and more food to make up for the loss of US grains
to biofuel production. When you destroy any forest you unleash vast
amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere that will take decades or centuries
to make up for through carbon recapture. Sugarcane ethanol production
speeds global warming and causes mass starvation. So why do so many
people still mindlessly support it?

Below is a letter I just sent the Obama transition team. Obama is now
surrounded by vegitarian food fanatics who will only increase food
price hyperinflation and thus starve millions more.

-----see below---

Biofuel production, promoted enthusiastically by President-Elect
Barack Obama, has already killed many times more people globally
through malnutrition and related illness than al-Qaida has killed with
bullets and bombs. Most Americans do not realize that according to the
United Nations, somewhere between 12 and 16 million people died
worldwide in 2007 alone due to a lack of food, and the number of
starvation related deaths in 2008 may double those figures thanks to
ever increasing global biofuel production. The problem is not just
limited to ethanol from corn driving up grain and fertilizer prices.
Biodiesel production from soybeans and rapeseed has driven up the
price of cooking oil all over the world, starving Third World families
while self-deluded "green" Americans burn edible cooking oil in their
trucks and automobiles. It takes 9,000 gallons of water to produce
just 1 gallon of biodiesel made from soybeans, so we obviously need to
save our very limited supplies of ground water to grow food, not fuel.
In California water is now so precious that some farmers want to sell
water instead of food. Even without biofuel production, we are turning
vast areas of land into desert every year through loss of topsoil due
to farming for essential food.

Biofuels are the most destructive hoax of the 21st century. Biofuel
zealots now claim they want to produce ethanol from cellulose instead
of food, but a study from three agricultural economists at Iowa State
University with insider information on the latest biofuel technology
states that ethanol made from cellulose will likely never be
affordable. Switchgrass, crop waste, and wood chip biofuel schemes are
too expensive to ever work. Coming after the Princeton study published
in SCIENCE showing that all biofuels are far worse for the environment
and global warming than using ordinary gasoline leaves biofuel
advocates little cover to hide behind.

Switchgrass and other biofuel weeds will be grown by ordinary, profit
motive driven farmers, not by environmentally trained scientists.
Farmers will grow switchgrass on land that could be used to grow corn,
wheat, or soybeans, and farmers will want to maximize yield, so they
will use lots of fertilizer to increase output. The plans biofuel
idealists are now trying to sell the American public will never
produce the kind of "green," food friendly energy source they promise.
Biofuels displace food production, as our tiny overpopulated planet
does not have enough usable land, water, or fertilizer to grow both
food and fuel.

Few science fiction movie fans can forget the 1963 movie, "The Day of
the Triffids," which told a grim tale of carnivorous weeds taking over
the earth. Barack Obama wants to plant millions of acres of invasive
biofuel weeds on U.S. farmland, thus taking that land out of food
production and shrinking the human food supply. Recent studies suggest
Obama's plan will lead to 9% a year or greater food cost inflation
through the year 2012, and Obama seems committed to his biofuel scheme
despite food riots and pleas from hungry people around the world to
stop the madness.

A key element in the global biofuel disaster is the difficulty we will
face when we inevitably realize that weed based biofuels are also a
tragic mistake. We will then try to rid our farmlands of the invasive
biofuel plants, but this will be no easy task. Switchgrass, Barack
Obama's Triffid of choice, has very deep roots and is difficult to get
rid of once it has been planted. Future newspaper headlines will tell
of the great cost of trying to eradicate the biofuel weeds, which
include water hungry giant reed and toxic jatrophra. Jatropha is being
planted in poor tropical countries to turn its poisonous seeds into
biodiesel, and it is even more difficult to eradicate than
switchgrass. The planting of millions of acres of jatrophra in Burma,
India, Indonesia, and the desperately poor nations of Africa could
destroy the value of the tropical lands for food production and
wildlife habitat for centuries to come.

Biofuels have been condemned by United Nations food officials, Oxfam,
and poverty fighting groups around the world. Planting biofuel weeds
is just another way to destroy the food production capacity of our
overpopulated, fresh water and food starved little planet. The fact
that biofuel production speeds global warming, causes water shortages
and water pollution, drives up the price of fertilizer, and erodes
vital topsoil is ignored by biofuel propagandists. Their attempts to
replace the massive stored energy of fossil fuels with the tiny energy
of biofuels shows a lack of understanding of basic mathematics and
science. Even if the United States used its entire 300 million acres
of cropland for ethanol biofuel production, it would only satisfy 15%
of our national highway energy demand.

Every year the human race burns up the equivalent of 400 years' worth
of total planetary vegetation in the condensed form of fossil fuels.

The one and only energy source that is large enough to replace all of
that massive stored energy is nuclear power, because the nucleus of
the atom is where the major energy lies. The mass of an atom is in its
nucleus, not in its electrons, and as E=MC2 the nucleus is where the
really BIG energy is stored. The tiny energy created by bonding and
unbonding electrons through chemical reactions in the growth of
vegetation must be amplified over centuries by the slow process of
fossilization in order to make that inherently small energy strong
enough to run an industrialized, heavily populated planet. Solar and
wind power can help us a little, but those diffuse (spread out) energy
sources are far too weak and fluctuating to satisfy the bulk of our
energy needs unless we want to revert to a horse and buggy economy and
intentionally kill off the majority of the earth's human population.

Human beings can eventually replace fossil fuel energy by creating an
infrastructure based on nuclear power, improved electric car battery
technology, and the use of new technology to make superior quality,
sulfur free gasoline and jet fuel from atmospheric carbon dioxide in a
new process called Green Freedom. This new energy scheme is cheaper
and more practical than using hydrogen as fuel because it is
completely compatible with current vehicles and our existing energy
distribution infrastructure. Using nuclear fuel reprocessing and
adding abundant thorium as fuel, we have enough nuclear materials
available to last for over 10,000 years. An essentially endless supply
of carbon neutral gasoline is possible if we start facing reality and
stop trying to sell the public phony biofuel schemes that are
mathematically impossible.

Barack Obama is now surrounded by many delusional pseudo-
environmentalists who want to force all Americans to become
vegetarians who only eat organic food that is grown in their own
neighborhood. These childish fanatics will drive up the price of food
so high through new taxes on food production and through impossible
regulations that the current global famine caused by biofuel
production will get even worse. They even want to tax farm animal
flatulence as part of a carbon tax scheme that will put American beef
and chicken farmers out of business. Mao Tse-tung and Pol Pot killed
the most people through well meaning and idealistic agricultural
policies, not through executions. If you get both food and fuel
policies dead wrong you will destroy the nation, and that is what
Barack Obama is going to do unless he stops thinking politically and
fanatically and starts thinking scientifically and realistically. It
is everyone's moral obligation to explain to Barack Obama all the
terrible harm he has done already by supporting biofuel production,
and urge him to reverse course immediately.

For more information and better energy alternatives, see
http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html

Christopher Calder

[Don Libby]

From: robert vocke
Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change
To: global...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2008 8:47 PM
Subject: [Global Change: 3034] Re: BIO-FUELS: the impressive Brazilian
example

>At least 25% (more or less) of corn stover must be left in the field or the

>organic component of the soil matrix will >degrade.

Organic soil enrichment sounds like a job for biochar:
http://www.biochar-international.org/
-dl

[David B. Benson]

On Dec 5, 11:44 am, Christopher Calder <caldern...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On my webpage I have links to news stories showing rainforest
> devastation in Brail, Indonesia, and other tropical countries, all
> because of expanding production of sugarcane, palm trees for palm oil,
> and soybeans and other crops for biodiesel. Brazil still grows
> sugarcane for sugar to eat. Where do you think the new, vast amounts
> of sugarcane for ethanol production are coming from? They are coming
> from new sugarcane plantations all over Brazil.

False. All sugercane plantations are south of the Amazon Basin.
There are some in Matto Grosso (wet sevannah), most in Goais and most
receetly, some in the Northwest, from Natal south.

Palm oil in Indonesia does replace tropic rain forest; most of the oil
crop is sole as food these days and several of the biodiesel
operations are in receivership.

Do not trust news stories; use more authoritative sources.

By the way, a recent FAO report states that of the 5 billion hectares
of 'argicultural land', about 30% is 'arable land' (which I take to
mean in production) and about 20% is unused. So it appears there is
ample land, at least, for both food and biofuel.

[robert vocke]

In terms of the soil matrix biochar is not equivalent to organic material such as stover.

[James Annan]

On Dec 6, 11:47 am, robert vocke <ecos...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> At least 25% (more or less) of corn stover must be left in the field or the organic component of the soil matrix will degrade.

That sounds unreasonably dogmatic. It used to be common practice to
remove all harvestable straw and burn the remaining stubble in the UK.
While this did result in a generally lower carbon content (including
but not limited to organic carbon) for the soil, it still remained
fertile and productive. Changes to legislation and farming practice
now mean a larger proportion of organic matter is left behind, and may
be deliberately ploughed into the soil. In principle this should
amount to a significant carbon sink (even though much of it rots
rapidly, some trickles down into less mobile forms of carbon). The
plusses are generally thought to outweigh the minuses but there are
some drawbacks like the increased survival of pests and diseases from
one year to the next.

James

[robert vocke]

Well James - you are not well versed in soil science.

> Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 16:40:06 -0800
> Subject: [Global Change: 3040] Re: BIO-FUELS: the impressive Brazilian example
> From: james...@gmail.com
> To: global...@googlegroups.com

[robert vocke]

Relative to this post:
 
http://www.card.iastate.edu/iowa_ag_review/summer_08/IAR.pdf
 
and CARD has a great deal of science to offer in this area.

> Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 16:40:06 -0800

> Subject: [Global Change: 3040] Re: BIO-FUELS: the impressive Brazilian example
> From: james...@gmail.com
> To: global...@googlegroups.com

[James Annan]

robert vocke wrote:
> Well James - you are not well versed in soil science.

I'd be happy to hear your review and critique of:

Armstrong Brown, S., Rounsevell, M., Annan, J.D., Phillips, V.P. and
Audsley, E. (1997) Agricultural policy impacts on United Kingdom carbon
fluxes. In Climate change mitigation and European land use policies (ed.
Adger, W.N., Pettenella, D. and Whitby, M.), CAB International, Ch.10
p.129-144

which is the main source of my comments. Admittedly, that was 10 years
ago and I have not worked in that area since, so I would not be
surprised to hear that my memory may be failing and/or new research may
have substantially overturned what was the consensus of that time. But a
one-line dismissal from an unknown commenter isn't very convincing.

James

[Michael Tobis]

"Ecostew" has submitted four postingss of somewhat machine-garbled
text, of which the original content is the following references. I
don't make any promises about quality or relevance, but for whatever
they are worth, here they are. Use of the word "relative" and possible
confusion of "Science" and "Science Daily" are as submitted. Here is
the original content of Ecostew's four postings:

mt

Relative to cellulosic ethanol:
http://www.card.iastate.edu/publications/DBS/PDFFiles/08wp460.pdf

Relative to energy return on energy invested:
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2008/03/understanding-eroei.html

Relative to biochar (the article is published in Science):
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080501180247.htm

Relative to organic material and soil:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080501180247.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080708155544.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819160205.htm