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.
When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land(3). Arable land that would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel industry has accidentally invented the world's most carbon-intensive fuel.
In promoting biodiesel - as the European Union, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do - you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.
http://www.monbiot.com
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=57&ItemID=9285
Note: http://www.monbiot.com
http://www.zmag.org/con...
Biodiesel Is Worse Than Fossil Fuel
Posted on Saturday, December 10 at 08:23 by AnonymousContributed By
Topic
Article Rating
(0 votes)
Options
Stumble It!Comments
view comments in forum
Page 1
Google Abiotic Oil!!!
200,000g/barrel x 83 million bbl/day x 365 days/year yields a gross number of 6 x 10e15 grams/year or nearly 10,000 times less than the number claimed. And in using the full weight of oil as carbon, rather than reducing it to reflect the hydrogen content, my number is a little conservative for oil, though the number could be doubled to reflect coal and natural gas consumption.
This does not negate the argument against biodiesel but makes us demand greater accuracy and honesty. A similar argument has been made by poorly informed people about the 'evils' of using trees for fibre (paper products). To switch to kenaf and other fibres would mean turning massive quantities of forestlands into kenaf plantations. Not possible, not even desirable.
Examining the numbers, global energy consumption is a tiny fraction of the solar energy that falls upon the planet. We need to develop means of capturing and storing this energy in tandem with moving towards lifestyles which consume energy more frugally. Biodiesel will have a tiny role to play in this if we are so blinkered as to thing that oil seeds and similar plants are the only way to capture the solar energy. I suspect there is great potential in developing (bioengineering) organisms that can flourish in desert climates that are too hostile for current agriculture, thereby enabling utilization of little- or unused and sun-endowed land, with the fringe benefit of removing CO2 from the air as part of the fuel cycle.
G.Strebel
Quesnel BC
The major flaw that most opponents of Biodiesel or using corn to make alcohol -> hydrogen always seem to forget, (that you touched on) is that Earth is not a closed system. The Sun produces liquid sunshine, which we can make into fuel. Until we can make more efficeient use of solar and wind power, plants are the most effective collectors of solar energy we have.
---
"If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it." Winston Churchill
On a side issue, I remember very well when nuclear power became the great hope of mankind, supposedly providing electricity so cheap that it wasn't thought to be worthwhile to read the meters. I still have a lot of articles in old magazines predicting the golden age provided by nuclear power. We now know the rest.
Unlimited energy would still be subject to Newton's law of reactions, which, in this case, would come about through the unlimited exploitation of resources, transports, etc.
Also in power struggles, as we now have with oil, for the control of the technology, either by countries, or by corporations, possibly causing permanent wars.
I had a lot of discussions on this subject with some top line scientists in this field, just had one for over an hour on the phone, and our fears is that no matter how we produce, or use energy, the ultimate physical costs would be
the same, regardless how energy is produced. For one thing, the technology and infrastructure needed, transmission lines and problems, huge demands on the roads etc, etc. would cancel out the benefits, as it is happening with oil now.
The only solution is to cut back on energy use, not to increase it, thrpough the development of self sufficiency from the individual to global.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
The question is, how much carbon from a living plant then ends up as oil in a barrel now? Perhaps we should all read the original article by the biologist in question?
Agreed, I think we should shed our baggage and go back to riding horses. If you want to double your horsepower, get another horse. You want 4x horse power...get 4 horses. Come to think of it, horses produce too much manure. Better that we just get around by walking.
---
Your mantra has been your opinions are stifled due to their contrary nature, when they are actually stifled for being without perceivable foundation.