Time to kill crop-derived biofuels

http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/environment/time-to-kill-crop%11derived-biofuels-200803291126/ ^

[stickman20089]

Yet another prominent scientist has joined the chorus against crop-derived biofuels, as Lewis Page reports.

Dr Richard Pike, chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry, has said that biofuels are a "dead end" and "extremely inefficient", and that the government was wrong to impose a requirement for 5 per cent biofuel content in motor fuel by 2010.

Dr Pike points out that "the 80 tonnes of kerosene used for a one-way commercial flight to New York is equivalent to the annual biofuel yield from an area of approximately 30 football pitches." At this rate it would take the whole of Britain's farmland just to run Heathrow.

It really is time to stop this nonsense. To produce these crops people are farming intensively, using more fertilizers and pesticides. In poorer countries people are cutting down virgin rainforest to plant biofuel crops. Poor people are finding corn and wheat priced out of their market, and the tanks of 4x4s are taking the food from the plates of poor families.

[reaganator]

But what about the big question? Does it take more than one gallon of fossil fuel to plant, cultivate, harvest, truck distill, you know, the whole process. Does it take more than one gallon of fossil fuel to produce one gallon of ethanol? What is wrong with gasoline?

[Mr. Lucky]

My ground will produce about 200 bushels of corn per acre, with the principal nitrogen source being manure, with legume carry over. It would be tough to attribute even 10 gallons of fuel per acre to raising this crop.