Apologies for the terrible photo, but it was pouring (and snowing) when I took it. That's Duff Badgley again, the dirty hippie, protesting at a Safeway store. You can see the marquee advertising the price of B-5 (5 percent) biodiesel at $4.20 a gallon.
Biofuel proponents are not going to like having their fuel compared to coal, but think about it. Most of the CO2 in the United States comes from liquid fossil fuels. Replace them with today's biofuels, and you would have an unmitigated ecological disaster of planet-killing proportions. In other words, the more we use, the worse it gets.
Removing mountaintops and dumping the tailings in mountain streams is beyond bad, but biofuels have already razed more ecosystems than all the coal mines in history, and coal has never contributed to food shortages. So, which sign is more appropriate? The icing on the cake, of course, is the new science pointing out that biofuels are also worse for global warming.
Funny how they can call a fuel "biodiesel" when only 5 percent of it actually is. This means that if I filled my Prius up in Portland, Oregon, where a 10 percent blend of ethanol is mandatory, my Prius would be burning more biofuel than the Jettas (covered with biodiesel stickers) that filled up while I was standing there. It's all about perceptions. I asked one woman filling up a Jetta what the blend was, just to see if she even knew. She said it was B-95. She didn't know. The sticker emblazoned across her back window said "Biodiesel: Clean, Renewable, Domestic." I'm sure she also had no idea if the feedstock for Safeway's fuel comes from domestic stock, not that it matters. The word "domestic" replaced the word "local." "Domestic" meaning that it came from somewhere in the continental United States, or possibly the North American continent, or possibly somewhere in the Americas (since we are joined by the Central American land bridge).
Safeway sells this only because it has a customer base that has been duped into thinking it is an environmentally superior fuel. Somehow, word has to get out to the consumers. Actually, it will take a lot more than that. Biodiesel enthusiasts have become emotionally invested in the idea, and once that happens, you can argue yourself blue in the face because recent brain research has shown that strong emotions always trump rational argument. Researchers can predict with roughly 90 percent accuracy which way a person will fall on a given issue based solely on how emotionally charged they are about it. Not to mention that bumper stickers are a bitch to remove.
Note the results of the poll attached to this link.
I wonder when attitudes will start to change along with the facts?
Not all green jobs are created equal
Ask Umbra on green moving companies
Comments
View as Flat
Biodiversivist Posted 9:29 am
07 Apr 2008
Another article in NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/opinion/07krugman.html? ...
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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John Galt Posted 12:31 pm
07 Apr 2008
Biofool Scams
the statement:
"Most of the CO2 in the United States comes from liquid fossil fuels."
is incorrect
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/04/06/weekinreview ...
Most of the CO2 comes from burning coal and gas to produce electricity.
Biofuels can't compete with fossil diesel fuel and gasoline extracted from coal or tar sands.
The "Biofuels Take Food From Our Mouths" argument is based on fallacy. The two most common biofuel feedstocks, corn and soybeans, are grown for animals to feed the industrial meat business producing pork, poultry and beef. Processing these feedstocks to extract sugars or oils to make biofuels, makes the byproduct 'seed cake' and 'spent mash' more digestible as animal feed. Thus the animals get more nutrition from the byproduct than the original feedstock, and less is crapped out as waste. We can get food and fuel from the same crop.
Granted that the feedstock grains and legumes could be exported to feed the starving millions instead of being used to feed meat animals. But that practice has been going on for decades, is not likely to change, and is totally external to the biofuels issue.
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human power Posted 1:21 pm
07 Apr 2008
Cars or life?
Sadly, my fellow Americans would rather drive now and condemn ourselves, our children and our grandchildren to the ravages of catastrophic climate change. While we're at it, let's heat our poorly insulated houses to 75 F and run the air conditioner all summer long. There is no magic fuel; we can get out of our two-ton wheelchairs or watch the end of history.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:19 am
08 Apr 2008
John
If you combine natural gas and coal you beat liquid fossil fuels. If you look at each type of fossil fuel alone, coal, natural gas, and oil, you see that oil beats coal.
http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/uscoalvsoil.jpg
Let's run some more numbers. It takes 56 pounds of corn kernels to produce 2.8 gallons of ethanol, 11.4 pounds of distiller's grain, 3 pounds of Glutan meal, and 1.6 pounds of corn oil. So, 56 - 11.4 -3 -1.6 = 40 pounds of corn lost that cannot feed people (or the cows that people eat). In other words, about 70 percent of a bushel of corn is lost to the food chain when you use it to make sugar for ethanol.
If we can make fuel and food from the same crop, why has the price of corn gone ballistic along with record production? Normally, record production corresponds to lower prices (supply and demand).
That might work if you could figure out a way to get everyone on the planet to go vegan. Hominids have been processing food for over a million years with technology like fire and grinding, and later with agriculture and domesticated animals. Livestock is just another (resource intensive) way to process grain into something more palatable (for most).
Wouldn't it be wiser to just make our government stop subsidizing biofuels? They are worse for global warming, they are destroying biodiversity, and they don't increase our energy security (a drought would be as bad as an oil embargo).
No, as I demonstrated above with the calculations, biofuels are diverting food to gas tanks.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 10:06 am
08 Apr 2008
It has been brought to my attention, again,
that my poll is biased. It is possible that most biofuel enthusiasts refuse to take the poll because they are disgusted with the only option I gave them.
It is also possible that had I given a fifth option, like, oh, "Next generation biofuels will fix most problems" that the votes would also be wildly different. All very real possibilities.
However, I repeated my old biased poll because it gives a relative measure of the same (or very similar) demographic group separated in time.
To date, before a biofuel group rallies to the site, we see most people picking the most reasonable slogans, with fewer people on the ends.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Ron Steenblik Posted 4:41 pm
08 Apr 2008
Let's not forget the possible down-side of DDGS
John Galt writes:
In the case of dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) -- Mr. Galt's "spent mash" co-product from ethanol production -- the claim that it is "more digestible as animal feed" is debatable. First off, it is certainly LESS digestible for poultry and hogs. Cattle like it, and it may be as good or better for them than straight corn. But let's not forget that cattle have evolved to eat grass, not DDGS.
Moreover, there is growing suspicion that the increased use of DDGS in cattle feed is leading to increased incidence of E. coli 0157:H7 -- a a strain of bacterium that is responsible for sickening 73,000 people in the United States (among whom around 60 die from the infection), every year. As documented in this recent article:
Grist's own Tom Philpott has written extensively on this problem. See here, for example.
These are only my personal opinions.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:53 pm
09 Apr 2008
A quick Google search finds
vegetetable oil shortages in parts of China, India, Africa, South America, Southeast Asia.... Even in the States the high price of soy oil is starving biodiesel producers. Common sense suggests that we shouldn't be fueling our cars with the same oil people need to cook and prepare their meals. The Science showing that it's worse for global warming is almost extraneous.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 3:10 pm
09 Apr 2008
That says it all
Worse than coal! Good bumpersticker bio-d! I gotta make one.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Rob Posted 6:35 pm
19 Apr 2008
PEV: Worse than coal
I see you continue your unique style of personal attacks, bad science, and agenda. Despite being warned by the Grist editors.
Have you reconsidered your allegiance to PEHV vehicles, considering recent studies showing increased CO2 footprint for these vehicles? Your "future" solar and wind grid is decades away, and is strewn direct and secondary CO2 and environmental impacts associated with mining, land use, and cost (not to mention the almost total biodiversity destruction by our local PNW dams- do you support expanded hydro?) With Clean Coal "technologies" and existing base load power projected to be primarily coal derived for the next decade how could you endorse these vehicles that use ZERO renewable energy to power them?
Comprehensive life cycle studies, underway from ARB and others, will shed light on our mobility options, and from initial reports I have seen, biodiesel does very very well, compared to all other near and mid-term options.
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