Posted on 08/31/2007 8:39:51 AM PDT by Mikey_1962
It sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fuelling cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead.
They recommend governments steer away from biofuel and focus on reforestation and maximising the efficiency of fossil fuels instead.
The reason is that producing biofuel is not a "green process". It requires tractors and fertilisers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make "green" fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn – an alternative to oil – "it's essentially a zero-sums game," says Ghislaine Kieffer, programme manager for Latin America at the International Energy Agency in Paris, France
Snip
Righelato and Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds, UK, calculated how long it would take to compensate for those initial emissions by burning biofuel instead of gasoline. The answer is between 50 and 100 years. "We cannot afford that, in terms of climate change," says Righelato.
The researchers also compared how much carbon would be stored by replanting forests with how much is saved by burning biofuel grown on the land instead of gasoline.
They found that reforestation would sequester between two and nine times as much carbon over 30 years than would be saved by burning biofuels instead of gasoline (see bar chart, right). "You get far more carbon sequestered by planting forests than you avoid emissions by producing biofuels on the same land," says Righelato
(Excerpt) Read more at environment.newscientist.com ...
Hey Liberals - Its a dynamic world not a static one...
planting forests doesn’t stop us from dependency on the middle east. biofuels do.
It could undermine my plan to speed up global warming.
How about using electric power from nuclear power plants to run the farm machinery and to power the biofuel refineries?
How can you tell if an environMentalist is honest?
Well, how many have you seen planting more of their gods? (trees)
Frauds...
Since there is no way to reason with the Algorites, the problem needs to be ignored and it will go away eventually.
Today, Vermont is 80% forest. And it's considered "climax forest" which means that it is homogenous, has low diversity of animals, and young plants cannot grow in the forest shade. It's considered unhealthy (and risky because when a fire comes, it could be massive).
But, yeah, I guess we could plant more trees ...
Forget growing stuff on land that could be used for growing food. We can grow algae on rooftops. What are we, stuck on stupid?
No they don't. The costs of making biofuels will also increase when OPEC or other producers cut back their output, because the cost of fertilizers, diesel fuel and other inputs into biofuel production will increase in cost. Biofuel production barely breaks even in terms of energy in and energy out. Financially, the only way it makes sense to producers is with massive subsidies.
OK, let’s clear up some misconceptions:
1. Everyone keeps yammering about fertilizers, but obviously most non-farming folks don’t know that there are many different types of fertilizers.
The most common rant by the neo-malthusians is that notrigen fertilizers require “fuel.” Yes, they do: Natural gas. We have a LOT of natural gas available here in the US. Natural gas is used to produce anhydrous ammonia, which is then used the feedstock for other forms of nitrogen.
Phosphorous is typically mined as rock phosphate in some form, then processed into other fertilizers. It doesn’t come from hydrocarbon stock.
Potassium chloride, aka “potash” also is typically mined.
So let’s get that out of the way: Yes, there is some hydrocarbon input in fertilizers, but the majority of the hydrocarbon->fertilizer conversion is happening in nitrogen.
2. We can create biofuels other than corn that have huge payoffs for the amount of diesel fuel expended. Switchgrass is one example. If we wanted to talk about farming trees, then we should be planting hybrid poplar trees, which grow at an astronomical rate.
Normal, “natural” trees put on about 1 ton/acre of dry matter per year in growth. HP’s put on between three and six tons/year in dry matter growth. Their growth rate is astounding. If we wanted to sequester CO2 at a rapid rate in silviculture, then we should treat trees as a crop and pick the best genetics for the job, which is something like hybrid poplars, not natural trees.
3. Biofuel production, modulo corn-based ethanol, will more than break even if we treat it as a specialty crop that is not fungible with food crops. For example, if we want to maximize biodiesel production, then we don’t do silly things like use soybeans for the oil feedstock. We instead should be growing rape, crambe, mustards, etc, not beans. The mustard family has seeds that produce much more oil on much lower soil fertility than beans. The biofuels market needs a little more time to achieve a market point where farmers can start to plant bio-fuel specialty crops for only one market and be assured that the market will absorb all commodities produced within a reasonable distance.
First, you need to build the nuke plants.
And there, you’re going to run into resistance, not the least of which will come from Nevada here, as we don’t want to be the dumping ground for everyone else’s high-level nuke waste.
What needs to come first is a breeder reactor, to reprocess fission fuel and get it back into power plants.
Then we need more power plants.
Then we can start thinking about how we use this abundant electrical source for farming.
Fuel from biomass - Thermal Depolymerization has been done on industrial scale, and the product is kerogen - indistinguishable from crude oil, except it has much less sand and debris, and as it comes from the process already at vaporization tempertures, it is ready to send through the fractionation columns. A well-engineered system, which reciriculates the spent steam, can be highly energy efficient, once it is up and running.
Only healthy young forests effectively sequester carbon. “Old growth forests” almost cease to sequester carbon. When the trees rot or burn, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere. So removing older trees and ladder fuels that make forests prone to burning would be a good thing and would provide sawlogs as well as biomass for biofuels and cogeneration. Harvested trees carry the carbon sequestered in them. The act of harvesting does not release carbon into the atmosphere.
Even better is to use the waste heat from the nukes, especially for ethanol production, because the main process is a low-temperature distillation.
If I were Archer-Daniels-Midland, I'd be building biofuel plants right next door the any willing nuke plants.
Cellulose is a proven fuel. I heat my house with it.
So far, algae is all promise, no product. The equipment to grow it is expensive. It is finicky, subject to massive die-off and the goo is not easily turned into fuel. It does have potential because you can grow about 3 times the drymass tonnage/acre compared to the best grass but it may actually be more expensive when you calculate the cost to grow. BTW, the government is paying farmers not to grow food on about 100,000,000 acres every year.
Our biggest problem is that the typical vehicle is about 20% carnot efficient and the tranportation system burns about 8 billion barrels/year. Considering that 10 lbs of dry biomass has about the same heat value as 1 gallon of gasoline (not factoring in conversion loss) we would need about 3.2 trillion pounds of algae to replace our transportation fuel. Factoring in conversion and transportation, you are looking at over 5 trillion pounds.
We won’t get there with algae alone.
All is not lost though.
Do both. Of course, this assumes that the biofuel industry can become self-sufficient. Buying 2 gallons of foreign fuel to make a gallon of biofuel won't cut it!
The one and only reason I support research into any of this "green" silliness is to defund militant Islam. Money we pay at the pump finds its way into the pockets of Al Qaeda. Even if it costs more to use biofuels, and it probably will, it's worth it to keep that money out of the hands of Muslims who would pass it along to terrorists.
As for planting forests, I'm all for it. I hunt. More habitat means more cute and fluffy woodland creatures for me to kill and eat.
For Pete’s sake, will you stop with the damn logic, reasoning and common sense are soooooo irritating. Enough to make a tree hugger want to marry the tree.
Fertilizer, humm??? Isn’t that fertilizer, that ammonium nitrate stuff dangerous. Yup, that’s what terrorists use to make bombs. We need to ban all fertilizer.
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