This is really, really sad. A group, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which has done stalwart work on relocalizing the economy, has let their pro-local passion overcome their principles.
Now they simply embarass themselves, beating the drums for corn ethanol, using flackery techniques that would do any corporate PR shop proud. Let's start in:
New Anti-Ethanol Studies Reach Wrong Conclusion on Greenhouse Gases
Wow, quite a headline, about not one but two studies in one of the most respected journals in the world. Must be quite a ... no wait ...
A new policy brief from Institute for Local Self Reliance criticizes the authors of two recent studies published in Science for advancing a conclusion not supported by their own studies.
OK, so ILSR has no study -- only a "policy brief" -- which, in essence, has no more standing than a blog entry, except that it's put on dead trees and served up to the media in pre-digested sound bites for easier mastication by the empty-headed.
ILSR's paper notes that the vast majority of today's ethanol production comes from corn cultivated on land that has been in corn production for generations. Since little new land has come into production, either directly or indirectly, the current use of ethanol clearly reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
OMFG, did they really say that? Were they really willing to leap over the concerns about nitrogen fertilizers? Were they really willing to say that because we've destabilizing the climate for decades now, the forcing functions we're driving now are not destabilizing the climate?
If, as they note, little new land has come into production, then huge crop conversions (wheat and soy acreage going into corn acreage) are exchanging less fertilized food crops for heavy feeding corn, which is then used in SUVs rather than to feed people. But hey, because this is the result we want, we're going to say that "the current use of ethanol clearly reduces greenhouse gas emissions." No data, just pulling it out of our ... corn holes.
(A lawyer friend says that some respected appellate judges advise that the fastest way to home in on the weakest part of any argument is find where the person making the argument has used "clearly" this way (as in, "this argument clearly shows ..."). If it were actually clear, you wouldn't have to characterize it as such. Instead, the typical reason for saying that X is clearly shown by Y is that you don't want to actually try proving Y, you just want X to be true, so you "prove" it by assertion and move on as fast as possible.)
The studies fail to recognize the very low greenhouse gas emissions from advanced ethanol plants, plants that can reduce emissions by over 50 percent as compared to gasoline.
Meanwhile, the ethanol plants burning coal, plants that are essentially nothing more than coal to liquids operations with a side of global starvation on the side, use 300 tons of coal a day.
But hey! There's some better ones on the drawing board, and that's all that counts. It's like cellulosic ethanol -- the important thing is to be able to suggest that no matter how bad agrofuels actually are, there's a theoretical chance that they could be better.
Nor do the studies factor in the higher greenhouse gases that will be emitted when crude oil is extracted from unconventional sources like tar sands.
Not that we've displaced an iota of tar-sands-derived oil with ethanol because, as you may have noticed, the more energy we waste growing corn at such a low energy profit, the more we turn to destructive oil sources.
ILSR, if you want to oppose tar sands, wouldn't the obvious thing to do be to suggest getting rid of the infernal combustion engine as fast as possible, rather than trying to keep the whole liquid fuels infrastructure going?
A controversial part of these studies examines the indirect impacts of growing energy crops.
The scare word -- a "controversial part" of a study is "the part we can't even rebut plausibly, so we'll label it controversial, a word that sheeple in America have been taught to mean 'scary'."
For example, if corn acreage displaces soybeans in the U.S., the authors assume that an equal amount of soybeans will have to be grown in the rest of the world to make up for that loss in animal feed. But a byproduct of corn ethanol production is a high protein animal feed called distiller's grains. Indeed, distiller's grains produce more protein per acre of corn harvested than is produced from an acre of soybeans.
Naturally ILSR fails to note that, unlike feed corn, soy has lots of uses other than as animal feed, including as one of the highest quality protein sources for people. Whereas distiller's grains are poisoning cattle and helping prop up the industrial meatrix that is further helping destroy the climate and the health of the people who eat all that grain-fed, hormone-, drug-, and disease-ridden beef.
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
Global boiling declares war on Thanksgiving
Climate Citizen: Michael Pollan on agriculture and health care
Comments
View as Flat
Jon Rynn Posted 3:14 am
19 Feb 2008
Permalink
Tom Philpott Posted 3:17 am
19 Feb 2008
And the group's dismissive attitude toward the environmentally ruinous aspects of industrial-corn production -- that just boggles the mind.
I wish David Morris, ISLR's main pro-ethanol hawk, would come over hear again and engage us on these points.
Victual Reality
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 3:40 am
19 Feb 2008
The main issue? Burning biomass as fuel prevents plants from removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil.
No, the carbon cycle of biomass to fuel to CO2 back to biomass again is not a closed loop. because it interupts the natural carbon sink activity of the soil/biomass ecosystem.
If one put algae growing collectors on rooftops and made fuel from that and burned it, with no GHG energy asdded for refining or transport, it would be a closed loop.
But as long as land space that naturally stored carbon, before the advent of chemical ag,is used to grow fuel, or food crops where the products are washed into rivers in the form of manure and crop waste, as in cAFO agriculture, the cycle is not a cycle. The carbon that was stored out of the atmosphere is emitted as GHG in the form of methane, CO2, or other even worse GHGs.
What is the solution? Organic agriculuture where manure and crop waste are returned to the soil and no fuel farming. Energy from crops only as food and byproduct in the form of biogas from organic fertilizer production. With as much of the carbon as possible returned to the soil.
When will this reality be aknowledged? My guess is never, as long as chemical ag is the norm. Folks will keep on thinking that fuel farming is a green cycle.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
Penfold007 Posted 5:40 am
19 Feb 2008
Too bad the original papers are behind a paid firewall, as there is a lot of hackery going on just based on the press releases, which lack a lot of key facts.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 6:00 am
19 Feb 2008
What a mess these ethanol corpoRATS are making here in Wisconsin! They plan to destroy a stream and lake with cooling water and filter backwash.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
fiutzi Posted 4:07 am
20 Feb 2008
Permalink
johnilsr Posted 2:03 am
21 Feb 2008
First, thanks to those folks offering kind words about the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) and our work over the last 33 years. To be clear, our longtime work on related to biofuels have primarily been focused on issues related to scale and local ownership. To that end, we have periodically responded to or prepared our own research that hopefully helps to direct public policy to support that focus.
The studies in Science and our response focused narrowly on the GHG issue related to land use for biofuels. Our purpose was pointing out the limitations and fuzzy assumptions of these Science studies. Assuming you've read our paper...you'll quickly see that it does not offer a comprehensive look at our positions on transportation, global warming and biofuels policy. For that you have to work a little harder and go beyond a simple press release. I'd urge folks to look around more completely at ILSR's work via our New Rules Project web site (much of our ethanol work can be found at this link)
To extrapolate from this single policy brief that we are ignoring myriad issues is to ignore the breadth of our positions, which is much more comprehensive and nuanced. It includes shifting some of our transportation investments from driving to other modes, enabling energy consumers to become energy producers, building more traditional neighborhoods and business districts that reduce the distances people need to travel, plug-in vehicles, and more.
We do see biofuels as a key part of the solution to the transportation, climate and energy problems, at least in the short-term, and we've strongly advocated for biofuels policies that minimize pollution and maximize community benefit. That means smaller scale and local ownership along with better farming practices and advanced and cleaner production techniques. I'll also note that coming soon from ILSR is a report titled, Driving our Way to Energy Independence.
Thanks.
John Bailey
ILSR
John Bailey
http://www.newrules.org/
Permalink