I have never been too keen on bio fuels, and I have been talking about the negative effect the boom for the industry has been causing with respect to food prices, Time magazine finally did a well done piece on it. Remember, whatever we do has a cause and effect. You need to think carefully, use your own intelligence.
Another so called green technology, is those compact florescent light bulbs that people are pushing. Won't find one in my house, a heck of a lot of mercury in those. Something that TIME did NOT pick up.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975-2,00.html I heard about the bio thing before. One of my friend is running this business now. I saw him put this fuel into his car fuel tank. As what I know, most of the product my friend sell for industry or manufacture company. He is doing pretty good.
I guess this bio-fuel help the machine generate more energy and less carbon. 
Yesterday, I think it was, I watched a local program about Florida agriculture and biofuels. It also mentioned the concerns about rising food prices with so much of the food crops going to make biofuels instead instead of going for food.
However this program detailed a scientist who had developed an enzyme that could breakdown cellulose (spelling?) into a form that could be used to create biofuels. After developing this method successfully in the lab, they are in the process of creating a demonstration plant where they can use any plant based material to create biofuels.
Instead of corn, they can use the corn stalks. Instead of sugar cane, they can use the waste products of sugar cane. They can use saw dust and wood chips, walnut shells, peanut shells, yard waste, christmas trees. Literally any wood waste product or plant waste product can be converted into biofuel using this scientist's methods.
They plan to have small scale plants online by 2010 producing and selling fuel, with larger plants to follow. Most of the processing plants will be located in the southern warmer states where they can grow crops nearly year round.
They also talked about an early form of sugar cane that was used before the newer strains were developed. The older strains produced much less sugar and more stalk, so they are calling it 'fuel cane' and are planning to have farmers grow it. It is harder than the newer strains, grows faster, grows in poorer soil, and they estimate they may get 10 havests or more per field, per year in the southern states.
They also have plans to harvest 'invasive species' that have literally taken over Florida in some places. Once those species have value as a biofuel producer there will be incentive for people go go and harvenst those species.
I think they should also look at bamboo as a potental biofuel plant. Bamboo grows very fast also.
Chad
It doesn't have to come from food though ...
Ethanol can come from cellulose and algae.
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Cellulosic ethanol is chemically identical to ethanol from other sources, such as corn starch or sugar, but has the advantage that the lignocellulose raw material is highly abundant and diverse...
...According to US Department of Energy studies conducted by the Argonne Laboratories of the University of Chicago, one of the benefits of cellulosic ethanol is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 85% over reformulated gasoline. By contrast, starch ethanol (e.g., from corn), which most frequently uses natural gas to provide energy for the process,may not reduce GHG emissions at all depending on how the starch-based feedstock is produced...
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Read the whole article at WikiPedia | Quote: |
| They also have plans to harvest 'invasive species' that have literally taken over Florida in some places. Once those species have value as a biofuel producer there will be incentive for people go go and harvest those species. |
So they may have finally found a use for Kudzu? Cool!
I wouldn't let the fact that food prices might go up because of bio-fuel scare you. If we continue to rely on petroleum then the prices for everything will go up anyway, because it all has to be transported.Situation has become critical or about to become critical for about 33 countries according to the United Nations where there is a ton of violence and bloodshed trying to get the bare minimums. In some countries, 2/3's of your income is going to food, more than your shelter!
Problem is going to get worse before it gets better. Eventually, it will hit us as well.
I do like the idea about bio fuels coming from organic wastes, we do however need to stop using good land just to grow crops for fuel. Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal illustrating the quick fixes Western countries are going to try and do:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120813134819111573.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Food Inflation, Riots Spark
Worries for World Leaders
IMF, World Bank
Push for Solutions;
Turmoil in Haiti
By BOB DAVIS and DOUGLAS BELKIN
April 14, 2008; Page A1
WASHINGTON -- Finance ministers gathered this weekend to grapple with the global financial crisis also struggled with a problem that has plagued the world periodically since before the time of the Pharaohs: food shortages.
Surging commodity prices have pushed up global food prices 83% in the past three years, according to the World Bank -- putting huge stress on some of the world's poorest nations. Even as the ministers met, Haiti's Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was resigning after a week in which that tiny country's capital was racked by rioting over higher prices for staples like rice and beans.
Rioting in response to soaring food prices recently has broken out in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. In Pakistan and Thailand, army troops have been deployed to deter food theft from fields and warehouses. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned in a recent speech that 33 countries are at risk of social upheaval because of rising food prices. Those could include Indonesia, Yemen, Ghana, Uzbekistan and the Philippines. In countries where buying food requires half to three-quarters of a poor person's income, "there is no margin for survival," he said. is the current approach by the western world just another case of doing to little of the wrong thing too late?
we've known for years that oil is going to get short - so we carried on producing bigger nad bigger cars and find more uses for oil based products - all for the sake of more profit.
we've known for years that our co2 emmissions are to high and getting higher - so we carried on chopping down trees, pillaging the land, centralising prductions meaning longer distribution channels - all for the sake of more profit.
now suddenly some of us wake up, see all the co2 kiling us off slowly, oil running out rather quick and we shout bio-fuel.
so what do we do? we look for the easy way out and use well tested technollogy by converting corn and other food stuff to enable us to drive these big cars we're still producing for a bit longer. already western nations have done deals with developing countries to buy more or less their whole corn production - at higher prices than the producers get at home if they sell it as food. the producer - usually a little poor farmer needs to maximise his profits - so the local population ends up short on food and/or it becomes so expensive it's not affordable anymore.
at the same time we carry on WASTING so much bio-mass that potentially could be turned into bio-fuel. corn and rice stalks, wood waste in every form, grasses - literally anything that has grown can be converted - lets face it, oil is nothing but decomposed vegetation.
BUT. it would need some new technologies.
that means r & d investment
that means lless profit on the bottom line
so we just carry on in the same old way, never learn from our past screw-ups and kill ourselves off slowly or faster - ALL FOR PROFIT.
good thing i'm already 55 and have no kids - i may just make it to die a natural death.
cheers
Yep, the world is always jumping on the bandwagon and then finding that the wheels all fell off. 
I think this is one of those big blunders that look great on paper. When Mao Tse-Tsun ordered all of China to kill small birds 'cause they 'stole' rice... without them millions of people died because of hunger because the small birds killed various insects that attacked rice and so people didn't have anything to eat. Or the russian plan to turn water from a small inland sea to a desert, thus making it good for crops. So, the sea dried up and the desert turned to swampland, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs.
I could go on, but it seems that people like to THINK that something will turn out great but they don't wanna see the worse sides of the idea. I'd rather bicycle to school than make people hungry cause I want cheap biofuel.
Here a number of items that might be of interest:
- Production of 1 kcal in foods (delivered to the U.S. consumer) = 10 kcal of energy
This includes production of fertilizer, transportation, field machinery, irrigation, pesticide production, packaging, refrigeration, cooking
- If we would for a moment assume, that no fossil fuels are available then:
the daily per capita diet in the U.S. = 111 hours of labor
Since we are consuming fossil fuels, the actual labor cost is aprox. 20 minutes, but as availability of fossil fuels decreases (and demand increases), this calculation is shifting.
- 1950 -1985: grain production increased by 250% = energy consumption (by agriculture) 1000%
- U.S. fuel use: 2000% increase in 40 years
U.S. fuel use: 2000% to 3000% more than in developing nations
U.S. fuel use: Agriculture accounts for 17% of all the energy used, 1,000 liters of oil produce food for 1 ha. of land
- U.S. agriculture: 85% of all U.S. freshwater resources
- Pesticide production in the U.S.: 3300% increase in 20 years (although loss of crops is still increasing)
I haven't found any data on the energy input vs. output as would apply to the production of biofuels, but it would be quite surprising if input/output < 1.
Note: These are U.S. numbers, but similar values apply to all western nations.
Sources:
FOOD, LAND, POPULATION and the U.S. ECONOMY by David Pimentel Cornell University and Mario Giampietro Isiituto Nazionale dell; Nutrizione, Rome
U.S. Census Bureau U.S. and World Population Clocks - POPClocks
From the Wilderness Publications http://www.fromthewilderness.com ahhhhh the age old problem of the western world looking for the easy way out.
Ok the problem with the western mind set of thinking is this, we want it cheap and we want it easy. Most of the times we attack (not literally) the result of the problem, not the cause. Say there is a war going through Africa and there is very little food. Well being in good nature we donate some food. Well this is actually the completely wrong thing to do because what happens if another war breaks out. Ok back to square one. But if you were to do something to help prevent the breakout of another war than you wouldn't have this problem. Now how do you stop war? War is caused by ignorance most of the time. So simple education = less chance of a war (note i said less chance not no more war, there will always be stupid people). But if everyone in this poor country gets an education than they get better jobs. Now we start loosing our jobs to people who are desperate and will work for less money. That is where the fault lies, we don't want to give up our good life style. If we truly wanted the western world could eliminate poverty, world hunger etc in a few generations. But that's a lot of time and then our life style would go down. So in the end we figure the best we can do is just send over some food well we are busy using 90% of the worlds resources.
And as for the topic of bio fuel use. Bio fuel still uses combustion which = bad most of the time. Some fuels burn more clean but still.
I know that giving food to poor nations can result in squabbles over control of the food and etc, but I think it's a big jump to say that just because we donate some food to starving nations that there will be a war erupting. There are also ways to control the distribution of food in the country, and if we can do that, then there's not much problem.
