Taking a pillow to a knife fight
Traditional print media and complex issues 16
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Posted 11:15 PM on 6 May 2008
by Biodiversivist -
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Read More About
My real name is Russ Finley. I live in Seattle, married with children. Suffice it to say that although I am trained and educated as an engineer, my passion is nature. I very much want my grandchildren to live on a planet where lions, tigers, and bears have not joined the long and growing list of creatures that used to be. In an attempt to minimize the workload on Grist editors responsible for turning my submissions into intelligible articles, I will also be posting on a seperate blog called Biodiversivist, which will contain articles in addition to those submitted to Grist.
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hapa Posted 6:50 pm
06 May 2008
economy's wrecked, climate's melting, oil's scarce, green's the way out.
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mike365 Posted 1:25 am
07 May 2008
There seem to be two real issues here; the first and most obvious is that the global population and increasing standard of living do not match the ability of our planet to supply the demand. So the bottom line is that we need to stabilize the population, accept a more reasonable standard of living, or increase the yield efficiency of our cultivated land.
The second issue is the expectation that people have that there is a magic bullet technology that will replace fossil fuels, and that some group of scientists will swoop in and save the day. We have to understand that the convenience and simplicity of digging a hole and pumping out a liquid fuel, basically `ready to go', cannot be matched. We will be hard-pressed to develop another liquid fuel that can be obtained as cheaply as oil, and equally as hard-pressed to develop a liquid fuel that is less environmentally destructive than oil. The answer to our energy problem, if it comes from truly renewable sources, will not be cheaper than fossil fuels have been in the past decades, but it will be more reflective of the true cost of energy.
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biofuelsimon Posted 12:55 am
12 May 2008
There are some things that simply should not be done in temperate northern climates, using slow growing food crops to make biofuels is one. That would be better done using non-food crops in the tropics where growth is faster and the trade in fuel from the tropics could help to bind north and south closer together.
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atreyger Posted 2:45 am
12 May 2008
2)Rapeseed is not canola, although canola is a conventionally genetical engineered rapeseed variety.
3)There is no citation for the requirement of five times land area for energy from soy versus corn.
For someone trying to 'expose' someone else, you are not doing a good job.
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:18 am
12 May 2008
Yet traditional journalists are blinkered by their emotional investment in their Lippmann-like status as insiders. They tend to dismiss not only most blogosphere-based criticisms but also the messy democratic ferment from which these criticisms emanate.
Atreyger wrote:
1) Nitrogen oxide is not a greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide is.
nitrogen nitrous oxide. Typo fixed. This is an example of constructive feedback.
2) Rapeseed is not canola, although canola is a conventionally genetical engineered rapeseed variety.
From Wiki: Rapeseed (Brassica napus), also known as rape, oilseed rape, rapa, rapaseed and (in the case of one particular group of cultivars) Canola, is a...
I was clarifying that here in the Northwest you get only three choices, soy, rapeseed (genetic variant not being relevant for biodeisel feedstock), and waste oil. Canola is a brand name for a version of rapeseed, renamed for marketing purposes, like the Patagonian toothfish:
The first edible rapeseed was developed in Canada in 1956, and "canola" was registered as a name for this crop in the late 1970s. Canola was developed by genetically altering rapeseed to reduce the levels of glucosinolates (which contribute to the sharp taste in mustard) and erucic acid (a fatty acid not essential for human growth). In 1985 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared canola "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS).
3) There is no citation for the requirement of five times land area for energy from soy versus corn.
Note that there are no citations what-so-ever in the newspaper article. I derived that value a few years ago using 40 gallons oil/acre for soybeans from a Wikipedia article. As is typical with Wikipedia, the articles are in constant flux. The chart showing 40 gallons has disappeared and a new value of 63 gallons per acre has replaced it.
So I checked the Internet this time to verify that number and it looks reasonable for 2007. Using that value I ran the calculation again and come up with soy using roughly 3.6 more acres than corn. Soy is land intensive, corn is energy intensive.
Biodiesel mileage adjustment 15%
Diesel mileage adjustment 30%
Ethanol mileage adjustment 30.5%
153 bushels/acre corn, 41.3 bushels/acre soy
2.7 gallons ethanol/acre
1.5 gallons oil/bushel
153 x 2.7 = 413.1
41.3 x 1.5 = 61.95
413.1/61.95 = 6.67 times more land than corn to produce a gallon of soy oil.
Adjusting for biodiesel/diesel/ethanol mpg:
30% - 15% = 15%
30.5% + 15% = 45.5%
6.67(1-.455) = 3.64 times more land to achieve same miles driven as an acre of corn.
Sources:
Mileage adjustment for biodiesel: http://www.cytoculture.com/Biodiesel%20Handbook.htm:
Mileage adjustment for diesel: http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/Index.do
Mileage adjustment for ethanol: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/new-cars/news/200 ...
153 bushels/acre corn and 41.3 bushels/acre soy: http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/news/stories/news4202.html
2.7 gallons ethanol/bushel corn: http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/April06/Features/Ethan ...
1.5 gallons oil/bushel soy: http://www.agmrc.org/agmrc/commodity/energy/biodiesel/bio ...
For someone trying to 'expose' someone else, you are not doing a good job.
Hmm, possibly that's because I was not trying to "expose" anyone. I used this article to demonstrate the limits of newspapers to convey complex topics (no sources, natural biases, etc)
Summarizing, you found a typo, pointed out that Canola is a variant of rapeseed (which I knew having read the wiki article prior to posting) and asked for a source (which you got). Based on that, you somehow managed to conclude that I did not do a good job of doing what I was not trying to do in the first place ("expose" someone). For someone trying to expose someone not trying to expose someone, you are not doing a very good job.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:33 am
12 May 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Ron Steenblik Posted 11:08 am
12 May 2008
I've seen this time and time again: reporters cannot resist ending on a smiley-face note. And that usually involves a quote either from a spokesperson for the industry, or a sympathetic voice within the NGO community.
In this New York Times article, published in January, for example, I was the first of the "experts" quoted. But the journalist could not help but conclude with an upbeat ending, quoting from Jean-Philippe Denruyter, global bioenergy coordinator at the World Wide Fund for Nature in Brussels:
"In general Europe and the U.S. will have to move away from vegetable oils," Mr. Denruyter said. "But even with these crops, if you have the right incentives you can improve the greenhouse gas profile a lot."
I always love that phrase: "with the right incentives you can ... ". With the right incentives -- i.e., enough of other people's money -- somebody, I'm sure, could breed pigs that will fly.
One simplification, BioD, if you want to run your calculation again, or elsewhere. Why not just use the different (lower) heating values of ethanol and biodiesel? Oak Ridge National Laboratory shows, respectively, 23.4 MJ/liter and 33.3 - 35.7 MJ/liter. The values for biodiesel vary, according to feedstock. (Another source I have, for which I can't find a link at the moment, shows 21.15 MJ/litre for ethanol and 32.36 MJ/litre for soy methyl ester.) Either way, the usable energy in ethanol is about 66% that of biodiesel. So your equation becomes:
0.66*413.1/61.95 = 4.4 times more land than corn to produce a gallon of soy methyl ester (soy biodiesel), assuming a gallon of SME per gallon of soy oil.
If you want to round down to 4 (up from 3.64 in your results), you'd still have the same order of magnitude.
These are only my personal opinions.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 11:14 am
12 May 2008
0.66*413.1/61.95 = 4.4 times more land to produce a gallon of soy methyl ester (soy biodiesel), assuming a gallon of soy oil per gallon of SME, than to produce the energy equivalent amount of corn-ethanol.
These are only my personal opinions.
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:11 pm
12 May 2008
I used real world mileage values for diesel cars (EPA estimates comparing a diesel and gasoline Jetta), official average crop yields for 2007, independent studies that used four separate biodiesel engines to measure mileage, real world values found by Consumer Reports on mileage loss from e-85 ethanol, ratioed up to 100% ethanol and on and on.
People can, and will argue that they get better or worse mileage, higher or lower yields, as always and forever, amen.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 1:43 pm
12 May 2008
But it is very good! Offsetting over 20 times the GHG emitted when burning it.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 1:46 pm
12 May 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Ron Steenblik Posted 6:40 pm
12 May 2008
I know that transport economists prefer well-to-wheel comparisons (per km driven) to well-to-tank analyses (per MJ), but the latter are not "theoretical" -- they can be measured precisely. (The differences among the values seem to be whether they are being expressed in terms of higher or lower heating value).
By contrast, for a well-to-wheel comparison, one has to assume a particular vehicle model; moreover, keeping "all else equal" when comparing the fuel economy of a vehicle powered by a spark-ignition engine (gasoline, ethanol) with one powered by a compression-ignition engine (diesel, biodiesel, straight vegetable oil) as well as with different fuels, can be tricky.
That's why I suggest keeping it simple and comparing fuels on the basis of their energy contents.
These are only my personal opinions.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:17 pm
12 May 2008
And what about biogas (from waste) to wheel, through a fuel cell/turbine generator?
Every kwh of electric power sent to the wheels with this system cancels over 20 times the CO2 it produces, by curtailing methane emitted by manure and fertilizer run off.
Trucks and trains have the capacity to carry methane tanks big enough to give the same utility as with diesel power. Hypercars (ultralight carbon fiber vehicles) need a lot less fuel and therefore could carry the much smaller amount of methane fuel needed for backup for the plugin battery.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Ron Steenblik Posted 2:26 am
13 May 2008
These are only my personal opinions.
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Biodiversivist Posted 4:03 pm
13 May 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 5:01 pm
13 May 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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