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1. 

   Jon Rynn Posted 8:06 am
   13 Sep 2007

   Disturbing on 3 levels:

   First, he says "environmentalists", by which I suppose he means groups big enough to have lobbyists in Washington and Brussels, have stopped their 20 year opposition to biofuels:

   Environmentalists' support for biofuels is tied directly to their support for action on climate change. For environmentalists, imposing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions on the United States is their primary objective. They see a carbon cap as the prize, and they figure that anything done in the process of achieving that goal can be fixed later

   Yuk -- this is like in the early 90s, dropping support for better CAFE standards in exchange for no drilling in ANWR.  Is a carbon cap (which I suppose means cap-and-trade) really worth it?

   Second problem, which is worse, is the farm lobby power, in both the U.S. and Europe:

   While the EU environmental lobby is much stronger than its U.S. counterpart, it pales in Brussels compared to the farm lobby. In Europe, the important energy issues are energy security and climate change. Environmentalists were helpless when the farm lobby flexed its muscles in the most recent energy policy discussion and won a dramatic increase in biofuel use, having used both energy security and climate change as justification. Though environmentalists were livid, for EU politicians it was an easy decision

   The farm lobby is so powerful in Europe that most of the EU budget is subsidies for agriculture, and there are high tariffs for farm products, even from desperately poor countries.

   There's a third fact that's scary, which is that Brazil's ethanol is by far the best -- which means the Amazon is in even more trouble.

   We better go toward electric vehicles and public transit before there's no more soil left.

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2. 

   Ron Steenblik Posted 5:49 pm
   13 Sep 2007

   Unintended consequences

   I must say, the mainstream media reaction to the discussion paper -- which is understandably but wrongly attributed to the OECD -- has been interesting to see unfold. The paper was leaked, picked up first by the Financial Times, and then everybody started paying attention.

   I share Jon's annoyance with the Stratfor article's glib lumping together of "environmentalists". While Bart Mongoven is right that those environmental groups in Washington who derive their very life essence from their access to the Hill are inclined to make the kind of Faustian bargains that he discusses in his article, a more accurate picture would be to describe environmental groups as comprised of circular firing squads when it comes to the issue of agrofuels.

   Lately we are beginning to see mass defections from the "any biofuels will do" forces, with some moving into the "we need to move to second-generation biofuels ASAP" camp, and others joining the original sceptics and opponents.

   As for the Amazon, that is not directly threatened by ethanol: rather, Brazil's savanna, the Cerrado, is where ethanol expansion will take place. Indeed, if anything, the Amazon is threatened by grain-based ethanol in North America and Europe. In the USA, corn is displacing soybeans (acres planted to the former up by 15% this year, and to the latter down by 11%), which is driving production of soy elsewhere. And soy grows very well in the Amazon.

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3. 

   WWAGD?! Posted 1:12 am
   14 Sep 2007

   Salt Licks Ethanol

   Pennsylvania Man Claims He Made Fuel From Salt Water
   http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/pennsylvania-m ...

   This sounds a wee bit nutty, but an article in Sunday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tells the story of an Erie, Pennsylvania man who created a 3,000-degree flame by exposing salt water to radio frequencies.

   ...

   Roy [a Penn State University...chemist and expert in water structure] called Kanzius' discovery "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years."

   John Bailo
   Sutext:

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4. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 2:09 am
   14 Sep 2007

   Bailo, always with the fake technology

   As mentioned by one of the blog posts.

   The "chemist" who says this works thinks homeopathy works, too. He's a nut.

   They've built a machine that liberates hydrogen from water, and then burns the hydrogen. Umm, the energy they get back from burning the hydrogen will be less than the energy it took to liberate it. This is not an energy source. This is an embarrassment to journalists.

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5. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 2:23 am
   14 Sep 2007

   Incomplete Life Cycle Assessments scare me

   Lately we are beginning to see mass defections from the "any biofuels will do" forces, with some moving into the "we need to move to second-generation biofuels ASAP" camp, and others joining the original sceptics and opponents.

   
   Heh, me I'm in the camp of "virgin terrestrial feedstocks are bad"

   True waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill, or as sewage is fair game.

   And Algae might be able to make some impact.

   Everything else is simply bottlenecked by a lack of topsoil, water, and the limitations of photosynthesis itself and how weakly it transfers sunlight into energy.

   As is, it seems like eating up 500 year old topsoil, and eating up 500 year old ground water resources is assumed to regenerate itself in less than one year.  When thats simply not the case.

   Even rainfed agriculture, that fresh water would have been used for some purpose elsewhere.  And by polluting it for the purpose of agriculture that purpose elsewhere is being subverted.

   If you simply included the energy cost of water remediation in these biofuel processing facilities, that would kill almost all their energy gains.

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6. 

   WWAGD?! Posted 2:24 am
   14 Sep 2007

   Well...There You Go Again.

   GreyFlcn...try doing the full amount of research before posting.   The science is under review:

   Salt water fuel gets major university review
   http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=74285

   But fascinating if workable.  As far as the inventor, he's a respected cancer technologist:

   Kanzius had originally designed his RF machine to kill cancer cells by heating up high tech nanoparticles.

   Doctor Steven Curley, M.D. is using the Kanzius RF device for research at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.</blockquote?<br>

   John Bailo
   Sutext:

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7. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 2:31 am
   14 Sep 2007

   Heh, thanks

   Also from your article:

   Energy experts like University of Akron Professor Emeritus, Rudy Scavuzzo, Ph.D, say the burning of salt water is nothing more than a new twist on a high school science experiment.

   Scavuzzo told Channel 3's Mike O'Mara that the Kanzius invention requires too much energy to be worth celebrating.

   "There is no breakthrough", said Professor Scavuzzo, "because there are more efficient ways of breaking water down to hydrogen and oxygen."
   

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