Is biodiesel even worse than fossil fuels?

[Karmadillo]

No substitute for cutting back? Monbiot is such a wet blanket. Let's ignore him. I'm sure Intelligent Design guarantees our ability to destroy the earth without adverse consequences for ourselves.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=56&ItemID=9279

Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic.

In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44 x 10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet's current biota."(1) In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries' worth of plants and animals.

The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy - and the extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at the climate talks in Montreal, by states - such as ours - which seek to avoid the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one of them is worse than the fossil fuel burning it replaces.

The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent by the supporters of the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact.

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are perfoming a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet one 380th of our demand for road transport fuel(2). Beyond that, the trouble begins.

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[darkmaestro019]

1. HEMP. Monbiot, you moran. HEMP HEMP HEMP. (nt)

[tofubo]

2. Avitar. Darkmaestro019, you moran. Avitar Avitar Avitar. (nt)

[slor]

3. Support HR 3037 ! n/t

[mike_c]

5. so would you cut down all the world's forests for hemp production...?

And still be able to meet only a fraction of western society's energy needs? Monbiot is correct. Fossil fuels are temporally CONCENTRATED on a scale that cannot be replicated spatially without doing tremendous ecological damage. And even if it were possible to capture sufficient solar energy into biomass to meet current energy demands-- and I don't believe that it is-- doing so would require massive disruption of the biosphere's nitrogen cycle, way beyond the damage already underway to support food and fiber agriculture.

[Ready4Change]

9. I thought the same, till I read this link:

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

Meeting the US's transportation needs with biodiesel from this source would take 2-3% of our current cropland. And that doesn't include grazing pastures for cattle, etc... If you include those, it's only 1-2%.

The supposed choice between fuel or food is a fallacy.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. What's the yield?

How much liquid fuel do you get per acre (or hectare), once you've taken growing and processing fuel use into account? What rainfall, or irrigation, would you need?

[phantom power]

4. Well... biodiesel is renewable and burns cleaner than fossil diesel.

Obviously biodiesel requires agricultural resources to produce, so in that sense it's unlikely that bio-fuels will ever be common or cheap as fossil fuels were. Energy in general will never again be as cheap, as the fossil fuels deplete. At least not in our lifetimes.

[Ready4Change]

6. How did Duke derive his numbers?

I suspect he estimated that the oil we burn is the condensed output of ALL ancient plant matter.

Truth is, oil deposits are created by really freakishly rare conditions, and only capture a small percentage of their eras life mass. We only have the quantities of petroleum we do because of the huge spans of time in which they have collected.

Not that the actual amount of ancient captured materials being released isn't a problem. But it's that huge a percentage of current life mass. We'd be in far, far worse condition right now were that true.

[izzybeans]

7. If biodiesal plants comes from farms I'm not sure if this would be any

different than being vegan. Have your man calculate food consumption and see how much of the world's plant material is eaten by the human machine. Then think of all the plant material wasted by overproduction. Imagine a more efficient farming system if it were geared toward biodiesal.

I really don't have a stake in this one way or another. The jury may be out. But imagination must be required.