The Myth of Biofuels: Exhibit A

Dead zone in gulf linked to ethanol production

"As to which is worse, the oil spill or the hypoxia, 'it's a really tough call,' said Nathaniel Ostrom, a zoologist at Michigan State University. "There's no real answer to that question."

Here we have a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico about the size of the oil slick. Both are responsible for the destruction of a large portion of the ecosystem. Each comes as the result of a source of energy. The difference is that while one of these energy sources is coming under fire as polluting, out-of-date, and simply infeasible, the other is being sold to us as a clean and renewable. To make a long story short: "Biofuel" is as big of an oxymoron as "clean coal." This hasn't been sold to us as a way to save the environment. No, just as with everything involving the big energy companies, it's yet another way for them to make money at the expense of the environment.

But there are truly clean, renewable solutions out there, and they have been available for some time. Did you know that if we built a 100mi X 100mi solar power plant in the Arizona or Southern California desert, then it would produce enough electricity for the entire nation? Don't take my word for it--Politifact themselves investigated the claim and found it to be dead on.

We need to be on our guard against the lies that can lead to more destruction of the environment, and more dead zones in the Gulf. We need to replace the myth of "biofuels" and "comprehensive energy solutions" (buzzwords that really mean, "it's OK to keep polluting") and replace them with production of energy whose process is truly carbon-neutral. And there's only a handful of ways to do that, but *they do exist* and they are ready for us. Will we take advantage?

I wonder what the effect of building and repairing the solar panels would be, along with all the infrastructure.... I'm still seeing environmental destruction in the cards.

croak said:

I wonder what the effect of building and repairing the solar panels would be, along with all the infrastructure.... I'm still seeing environmental destruction in the cards.

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You got dat right! There's no easy fix. The solution (which won't really "solve" anything) will be a mix of competing technologies whose cost effectiveness will increase:
- LED light bulbs
- Local cogeneration of electricity
- More efficient CPUs
- Smaller cars
- More diesel engines in cars
- Hybrid & electric cars
- Mold/fungus/bio-unfriendly air-to-air heat exchangers for air-tite houses
- Smaller houses...or better yet, more apartments
- Denser cities
- More right-kind public transportation (which requires denser cities)
- Less war
- End tax disincentives for capital investment in energy saving measures.
- Etc, etc, etc

croak said:

I wonder what the effect of building and repairing the solar panels would be, along with all the infrastructure.... I'm still seeing environmental destruction in the cards.

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Though I think that you're overestimating the risk, you're right that there is no such thing as an energy solution that has zero negative effects on the environment, even ecologically top-of-the-line solutions such as solar, wind, and tidal.

Revoltingest said:

You got dat right! There's no easy fix. The solution (which won't really "solve" anything) will be a mix of competing technologies whose cost effectiveness will increase:
- LED light bulbs
- Local cogeneration of electricity
- More efficient CPUs
- Smaller cars
- More diesel engines in cars
- Hybrid & electric cars
- Mold/fungus/bio-unfriendly air-to-air heat exchangers for air-tite houses
- Smaller houses...or better yet, more apartments
- Denser cities
- More right-kind public transportation (which requires denser cities)
- Less war
- End tax disincentives for capital investment in energy saving measures.
- Etc, etc, etc

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Very, very nice list. And you're right: Saving the planet does not involve one big solution (unless we can somehow get that 100mi X 100mi solar plant built in the Mojave), but a lot of little solutions. An SUV replaced by a hybrid here, a coal plant razed for a solar plant there, and one-step-at-a-time we're going to have a cleaner world.

But not biofuels, please. Those are carbon-based fuels that aren't much better than coal.

Bio-fuels will likely be part of the mix, but not that horribly expensive & inefficient corn based ethanol.
Likely, it'll be something like algae, bio-waste, used fryer oil, switchgrass, etc.

Revoltingest said:

Bio-fuels will likely be part of the mix, but not that horribly expensive & inefficient corn based ethanol.
Likely, it'll be something like algae, bio-waste, used fryer oil, switchgrass, etc.

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Those aren't as bad, but they're still carbon-based fuel. Honestly, considering that biofuels' ultimate power source is the sun, why couldn't we just build more solar plants?

Mercy Not Sacrifice said:

We need to be on our guard against the lies that can lead to more destruction of the environment, and more dead zones in the Gulf. We need to replace the myth of "biofuels" and "comprehensive energy solutions" (buzzwords that really mean, "it's OK to keep polluting") and replace them with production of energy whose process is truly carbon-neutral. And there's only a handful of ways to do that, but *they do exist* and they are ready for us. Will we take advantage?

Click to expand...

Personally, while I think that worrying about energy production is all fine and good, there are other measures that could be much more effective at actually producing environmental benefit.

Which do you think has the greater impact? Continuing our pattern of urban sprawl and highways jammed with single-occupant vehicles while making more and more of those vehicles "green", or doing sensible urban planning that actually reduces the average commuting distance instead of increasing it?

IMO, the single-occupant vehicle has major societal and environmental costs associated with it. Changing the energy source of that vehicle addresses only a few of these costs. I think that what's going to have the real benefit, both in terms of the natural environment as well as societal costs, is going to be a move away from car dependence... at least in urban centres.

And there's not going to be any technological "magic bullet" that makes this work; it's going to be done through boring things like transit-supportive land use planning and transportation demand management. IMO, things like moving from fossil fuels to solar are only ever going to produce small, incremental improvements. They're definitely not the whole solution. They're not even the most important part of the solution.

Revoltingest said:

You got dat right! There's no easy fix. The solution (which won't really "solve" anything) will be a mix of competing technologies whose cost effectiveness will increase:
- LED light bulbs
- Local cogeneration of electricity
- More efficient CPUs
- Smaller cars
- More diesel engines in cars
- Hybrid & electric cars
- Mold/fungus/bio-unfriendly air-to-air heat exchangers for air-tite houses
- Smaller houses...or better yet, more apartments
- Denser cities
- More right-kind public transportation (which requires denser cities)
- Less war
- End tax disincentives for capital investment in energy saving measures.
- Etc, etc, etc

Click to expand...

The only real solution, which would "fix" the problems, is a significant population reduction worldwide. Somehow I can't see that happening by choice.

Mercy Not Sacrifice said:

Though I think that you're overestimating the risk, you're right that there is no such thing as an energy solution that has zero negative effects on the environment, even ecologically top-of-the-line solutions such as solar, wind, and tidal.

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I'm not saying that solar wouldn't be a better solution that burning coal or ethanol and the like; of course it would be. For the time being. But mining for replacement parts and such would mean that, eventually, we'd be at the same point.

Engyo said:

The only real solution, which would "fix" the problems, is a significant population reduction worldwide. Somehow I can't see that happening by choice.

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I doubt simply reducing population numbers would solve the situation. Then again, my idea is probably more of a fringe idea: if we want to continue the way we're living now, there's no solution. Being 'green' will only prolong the eventual crash. I'm not expecting much to change, though.

croak said:

I'm not saying that solar wouldn't be a better solution that burning coal or ethanol and the like; of course it would be. For the time being. But mining for replacement parts and such would mean that, eventually, we'd be at the same point.

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Thing is, though, even if the production of solar facilities was powered mostly by coal-fired plants, it's simply a capital investment. That is, once the solar plants are in place, they're done. Contrast that with the alternative, fossil fuels, which continuously pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

9-10ths_Penguin said:

Personally, while I think that worrying about energy production is all fine and good, there are other measures that could be much more effective at actually producing environmental benefit.

Which do you think has the greater impact? Continuing our pattern of urban sprawl and highways jammed with single-occupant vehicles while making more and more of those vehicles "green", or doing sensible urban planning that actually reduces the average commuting distance instead of increasing it?

IMO, the single-occupant vehicle has major societal and environmental costs associated with it. Changing the energy source of that vehicle addresses only a few of these costs. I think that what's going to have the real benefit, both in terms of the natural environment as well as societal costs, is going to be a move away from car dependence... at least in urban centres.

And there's not going to be any technological "magic bullet" that makes this work; it's going to be done through boring things like transit-supportive land use planning and transportation demand management. IMO, things like moving from fossil fuels to solar are only ever going to produce small, incremental improvements. They're definitely not the whole solution. They're not even the most important part of the solution.

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Agreed 100%. There's going to come a point where really and truly conquering global warming is going to take a real shift in people's ideas and behaviors, as you summed up very nicely.

Case in point. If you've got five people driving 50-mpg Priuses along roughly the same route to work, they'd burn off the same amount of fuel as they would if they all piled into one 10-mpg SUV. See, we put a lot of emphasis on fuel efficiency, but what really matters is not MPG but gallons of fuel burnt off. And mathematically, MPG may well be an inherently faulty measure. Did you know that you can save more gas by upgrading from 10mpg to 12mpg than you can from 30mpg to 50? Without boring anyone with the mathematical proof, the deception comes from the measure itself. It would make more sense to invert it: gallons per mile, or because that would be such a small number, gallons per 1000 miles. That's actually a trend that is sweeping over Europe, as cars are beginning to be measured in liters per 100km. It makes more sense to figure how much gas you will be using over a set distance, which is what gallons per 1000 miles does, as opposed to figuring how far a gallon of gas will get you, which is what miles per gallon does.

And that's but one example of how we've got to rethink things. This is not a choice; this is survival.

Oooooo....population control! I wish I'd put that in my list. It's a biggie...a controversial one, but still a biggie.
It'll really affect our quality of life as time goes by.

Mercy Not Sacrifice said:

Thing is, though, even if the production of solar facilities was powered mostly by coal-fired plants, it's simply a capital investment. That is, once the solar plants are in place, they're done. Contrast that with the alternative, fossil fuels, which continuously pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.per gallon does.

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What I'm saying is that, eventually, it's not done. It has to be replaced. Sure, it might be a thousand years in the future, for all I know, but batteries need to be replaced, metals mined, and so on.

I'm just being nitpicky, mostly. Solar and the like > fossil fuels.

Why do you humans even need electricity? We ravens do just fine without it.

croak said:

What I'm saying is that, eventually, it's not done. It has to be replaced. Sure, it might be a thousand years in the future, for all I know, but batteries need to be replaced, metals mined, and so on.

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You're right about that. There's a solar electricity generating station just down the road from me. At less than 10 years old, it was completely replaced.
When the useful life of a project is less than the payback period, that's a sign of a wasteful technology. All power generation devices have initial,
operating, environmental & replacement costs. One must look at them completely & coldly, lest popular fashion drive our decisions.
It reminds me of my foolish reason for becoming a landlord, ie, I thought it was an investment...& a durable one. Actually, it's a service industry. The
real estate itself has a very short life before it must be reconfigured, replaced or removed. (My advice - stay away from real estate unless you have
very compelling needs.)

Why do you humans even need electricity? We ravens do just fine without it.

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Clearly, you are the superior species!

croak said:

What I'm saying is that, eventually, it's not done. It has to be replaced. Sure, it might be a thousand years in the future, for all I know, but batteries need to be replaced, metals mined, and so on.

I'm just being nitpicky, mostly. Solar and the like > fossil fuels.

Why do you humans even need electricity? We ravens do just fine without it.

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Replacing a power plant every half-century, as opposed to replacing coal every second, is by far the lesser of two evils. The goal is not to become completely carbon-free--that's virtually infeasible in the near future--but to significantly reduce our carbon output.

Mercy Not Sacrifice said:

Replacing a power plant every half-century, as opposed to replacing coal every second, is by far the lesser of two evils. The goal is not to become completely carbon-free--that's virtually infeasible in the near future--but to significantly reduce our carbon output.

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Just wondering: where are you getting your figures from? I've never heard anyone in a position to actually know say that the useful life of a solar power plant is 50 years.

9-10ths_Penguin said:

Just wondering: where are you getting your figures from? I've never heard anyone in a position to actually know say that the useful life of a solar power plant is 50 years.

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It was a hypothetical. Ten years, a hundred years; I have no idea what the general lifespan of a solar power plant is. However, I think it's a safe bet, that the greenhouse gases spent on producing it are insignificant compared to how much CO2 it will save over its lifespan.

Mercy Not Sacrifice said:

It was a hypothetical. Ten years, a hundred years; I have no idea what the general lifespan of a solar power plant is. However, I think it's a safe bet, that the greenhouse gases spent on producing it are insignificant compared to how much CO2 it will save over its lifespan.

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Maybe, maybe not. Definitely not if the solar plant is built without proper planning or in an area that can't support it.

We need to keep a few things in mind, though.

Solar power is an intermittent power source. It doesn't work at all at night; during the day, its output varies by season and cloud cover. It needs some sort of supplementary power source that can ramp up and down quickly so that the fluctuations in the solar power system can be handled while still providing reliable power. Most of these supplementary plants get their energy from some sort of fossil fuel (for instance). If we don't consider these emissions when we're evaluating the solar power option, then we're not getting the full picture.

There are other power sources that probably produce much less in the way of GHG emissions and are stable enough to meet base load demand: hydroelectric power, for instance. Or nuclear. These power sources have other environmental issues associated with them, but so does solar: the by-products of solar cell manufacturing can be very nasty to the environment, and the cells themselves contain toxic chemicals that need to be handled and disposed of when the cells are decommissioned (which from what I read would happen at intervals more like 10 or 20 years, not 50).

Also there's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison going on. Yes, we do use fossil fuels for electrical power for our homes and buildings, but there are many ways that we use fossil fuels that just wouldn't work with solar, or with electrical power of any kind. You aren't going to see an electric-powered passenger airliner any time soon. Or an electric container ship.

And when it comes to personal vehicles, if you're trying to compare the current situation of gas-powered cars to a future of electric vehicles powered by solar energy, then the impact of the cars themselves (including the production and disposal of all the storage batteries they'd use) is part of the impact of this switchover.

Realistically addressing the energy & environment crises consists of slowing down a catastrophic landslide of factors that have been collectively gaining momentum for many decades and still are massively gaining momentum. Its likely that a new & very prolonged kind of dark age will have to be endured just to bring the landslide to a standstill. After that, and if there is anything left to work with, we might have an opportunity to start something that reverses the destructive nature of human civilisation.

Revoltingest said:

You got dat right! There's no easy fix. The solution (which won't really "solve" anything) will be a mix of competing technologies whose cost effectiveness will increase:
- LED light bulbs
- Local cogeneration of electricity
- More efficient CPUs
- Smaller cars
- More diesel engines in cars
- Hybrid & electric cars
- Mold/fungus/bio-unfriendly air-to-air heat exchangers for air-tite houses
- Smaller houses...or better yet, more apartments
- Denser cities
- More right-kind public transportation (which requires denser cities)
- Less war
- End tax disincentives for capital investment in energy saving measures.
- Etc, etc, etc

Click to expand...

- More diesel engines in cars... And bikes. Riding a Royal Enflied is great fun. (until you need to stop)

But there is one consideration for fully electric vehicles, even if their is now a production 'lectric bike.

Where does the electricity come from?

And while your list is pretty good and agreeable, cities tend to make their own climates, and also tend to be huge heat sinks as well.

The energy that would be needed just to keep the place cool enough would be prohibitive, I believe.

Mercy Not Sacrifice said:

Dead zone in gulf linked to ethanol production.......?

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Ethenol is just like nuclear energy in this aspect. They are the new "sexy thing" in the apartment building every guy wants to ge to know, until they get a look under the make-up and girdle.

None of the newer energy technologies where intended to be stand alone replacements for crude/coal energy sources.

This includes solor.

A 100 mile by 100 mile array of solor panels means 10,000 square miles of JUST solor cells, which I assume does not include leaving room for frames and gimbals. To put that in perspective, that is larger in square miles than six US states including Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, etc. This also doesn't account for the added space of storage and maintenance facilities, transfer and step-up stations, offices, etc.

I think when it is examined closely, one will see that the power infrasctructure needed just to maintain such an array, not to mention the brand new power grid system that would need to be built and also maintained, would prove unfeasable.

Ethenol is not the way to go either, IMHO, especially from corn, no matter how "sexy" it appears to be. It burns too hot, too guickly, and is highly corrosive, and takes too much energy to make.

Biodeasel, on the other hand, is very economical to make, has a very high power-to-production ratio, does not use food sources in production such as corn, behaves exactly in the same manner, performance wise, as standard diesel, and the only byproduct can be used to replace many petrolueum based products from cosmetics to lubricants.