A new study in the journal Science ($ub req'd) validates what many have been saying here in Gristmill: Biofuels, especially those from the tropics, are far worse for the planet than regular old crude oil.
The study finds that we could reduce global warming pollution two to nine times more by conserving or restoring forests and grasslands than by razing them and turning them into biofuels plantations -- even if we continue to use fossil fuels as our main source of energy. That's because those forests and grasslands act as the lungs of the planet. Their dense vegetation sucks up far more carbon dioxide and breathes out far more oxygen than any biofuel crop ever could.
When you destroy that wilderness, much of the carbon stored in its living matter is either burned or otherwise oxidized -- which is why the destruction of tropical forests accounts for more than 20 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions (more than China produces). Meanwhile, we'd be saving all the creatures that rely on those wildlands for habitat. The scale is huge: replacing even 10 percent of our gas with biofuels would require 43 percent of U.S. arable land.
Are you listening George Soros? What about you, Center for American Progress? And you, Barack Obama?
If you don't have access to Science, here's the free write-up from The New Scientist (and you can take action on this issue here).
‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science
Environmental education in Guinea Bissau
Make the kids pay: The economic effects of climate change on future generations
Comments
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infp Posted 5:29 am
20 Aug 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-ethanol20aug20, ...
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Biodiversivist Posted 5:34 am
20 Aug 2007
This article should prove helpful in arguing against agrofuels, but rational argument has little impact on people when profit/status is at stake. We can rationalize anything to suit our personal preferences. Laying this argument on the guy who drives up and down my street blowing soy biodiesel smoke out the ass of his old Volvo would do nothing to change his mind because he has obtained status in his circle for doing so, all based on erroneous data of course, but until those in his circle start to question the validity of his symbol, he is going to cling to it for all it's worth.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Jonas Posted 10:28 am
20 Aug 2007
It's amazing Gristmill can't spot them! :-)
Temperate, high and mid-latitude forests are net carbon contributers. The authors refused to take this into account, invalidating their entire case.
The entire study is based on the flawed idea that forests outside of the humid tropics are carbon sinks.
In fact: all biofuels are better than all forests. The greatest taboo: palm oil sequesters more carbon than pristine rainforests! (Of course this doesn't mean we should chop down forests, because they deliver other ecoservices). But still:
Livermore, Carnegie: Study: Temperate Forests Could Worsen Global Warming
DOE: Growing more forests in United States could contribute to global warming
University of Michigan: Soil fertility limits forests capacity to absorb excess CO2
Duke University: Duke open-air experiment results could deflate hopes that forests can alleviate global warming
Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) program: Experiment suggests limitations to carbon dioxide 'tree banking'
FACE: Temperate forests not a fix for global warming - Carbon offsets based on northern plantations may be bunk
Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology: High-latitude forests increase warming
The science proving this study wrong on virtually all fronts is overwhelming.
Sad to see conservationists making themselves so irrelevant in the biofuels debate, because they could have played an important role.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:05 pm
20 Aug 2007
Your seven references represent just three studies and none of them claim that temperate, high and mid-latitude forests are net carbon contributors. I am curious where you got that idea. Two show that trees in a high carbon atmosphere won't grow faster unless also fertilized and watered better. One shows that trees in high latitude forests might cool the planet for the first few decades but would begin to absorb heat as they got older, even as they continue to absorb carbon, resulting in a net heating of the planet after many decades.
I think you are trying to say that the one study that says higher latitude forests could warm the atmosphere invalidates this new study. However, this latest study in Science does not say that we should run out and plant forests instead of food crops at high latitudes. It says that planting agrofuels is worse than leaving the existing forest intact because agrofuel crops "are not, by and large, grown in" high latitude areas. It also shows that letting forests reclaim agrofuel cropland (in the lower latitudes where most is grown) would release less carbon than continuing to grow the agrofuels.
"In fact: all biofuels are better than all forests. The greatest taboo: palm oil sequesters more carbon than pristine rainforests!"
An exclamation mark makes a poor substitute for valid sources. All biofuels are better than all forests? Right, mow down the Amazon and cover it with neat rows of corn and soybeans. Once again, I think you are confusing the fact that an old growth tropical forest does not absorb carbon with the fact that a palm oil plantation displaces fossil fuels.
Neither one pulls more carbon out of the air and neither one adds carbon to the air.
The palm plantation keeps more from being added by displacing fossil fuel, but if you let it go fallow, the regenerating tropical forest would pull more carbon out of the air than the palm biodiesel would have displaced. Get it?
The study didn't include palm oil. But it did include cane ethanol and you can see that even if palm oil contains twice as much energy per acre than cane ethanol (which it doesn't) it would still fall far short of letting tropical cropland return to forest.
http://environment.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn12496/dn12496-1_650.jpg
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:03 pm
20 Aug 2007
But if it's tropical forrests situated ontop of Peatland Bogs, then the negative impact is numerically doubled.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/7/19/111413/890
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Jonas Posted 10:15 pm
20 Aug 2007
So you see, where it reads 'temperate cropland to forest', we should see a negative bar, going somewhere to -50.
Unless you harvest such a temperate forest after a few years.
But what does it mean, to harvest a young-growth forest to replant it with new seedlings?
That means you're producing bioenergy (assuming that the most obvious use for that mass of wood would be to burn it or to turn it into liquid or gaseous biofuels).
The study is flawed, because temperate forests as such as net carbon contributers. The science is pretty clear on that (see the studies mentioned above).
Anyways, I have nothing against reforesting tropical forests. But afforesting or reforesting temperate forests would be very dangerous, unless they are used to produce biofuels, in which case they reduce CO2 emissions.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:36 pm
20 Aug 2007
No ethanol or other biofuel farming needed! Plugin!! We have the technology right now.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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justlou Posted 10:48 pm
20 Aug 2007
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justlou Posted 10:54 pm
20 Aug 2007
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Biodiversivist Posted 8:58 am
21 Aug 2007
I am repeating myself here, but none of your references to date have claimed that temperate forests don't sequester carbon. Your claim above that the "temperate cropland to forest" bar should be fifty units to the left makes no sense whatsoever.
Their model shows that the trees remove carbon from the atmosphere while they grow but after several decades the absorbed sunlight from the dark trees would heat the atmosphere. The new study covers a 30 year span before the trees would lose their ability to cool by absorbing carbon, at which time we could choose to harvest them in a manner that would not release their stored carbon. That is a long time away. And again, as I said before, the study does not propose converting existing food crops into forests. It suggests not converting them into agrofuels.
"The study is flawed, because temperate forests as such as net carbon contributors. The science is pretty clear on that (see the studies mentioned above)."
Once again I am repeating myself but go read those three studies again. None of them say that temperate forests are net carbon contributors. Only one study shows that after several decades a temperate forest would have a heating effect because of its dark color, not because it does not absorb carbon. Have you got your hands over your ears again?
You are the perfect example of what I said earlier. A person who wants to believe something is immune to rational argument, as anyone who has debated a creationist knows all too well.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:09 am
21 Aug 2007
Not, "net carbon" it's "net heat"
Catch being that the timeframe is over hundreds of years. And in the meantime they would actually be worthwhile.
http://www.llnl.gov/pao/news/news_releases/2005/NR-05-12- ...
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:31 am
22 Aug 2007
"Unless you harvest such a temperate forest after a few years"
The Livermore study says that planting a forest in the United States could actually cool the Earth for a few decades. The walnut tree in my back yard is only two decades old and it is fifty feet tall. From Greyfln's link:
"On time scales longer than a few centuries, the net effect will actually be warming in these regions," said Govindasamy Bala of the Livermore team."
I find it interesting how so many people put so much confidence in this one study. When you look at the time scales in the study, you realize that even temperate forests in the mid-latitudes could be used to fight global warming as long as they were harvested before they get large enough to cause warming. One way to do that would be to displace fossil fuel with it but who knows what technology will be available thirty years from now. It does not advise us to cut down our temperate forests as a way to cool the planet.
All of the above is a rebuttal to your distracting side argument. The study in Science is about agrofuels grown in mid to low latitudes, not upper latitudes where few agrofuels can be grown in comparison.
In addition, you said:
"The bioenergy community is bombarding the journal with letters pointing out the amazingly high number of errors."
Right, a collection of biodiesel distributors, refiners, and enthusiasts take Science to task. This suggests to me that you hang out in places like the Biodiesel Now forum where, like in a church or mosque, "believers" congregate to reinforce one another's "beliefs." When Monbiot first wrote an article bashing biofuels this same "bioenergy community" (a collection of biodiesel enthusiasts and the profiteers using them) buried him in hate mail.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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