Comments Jonas has made

Don't want to be advocate of the devil

But what would be wrong with carbon capture and storage?

According to James Hansen -- not a right-wing pro-coal nut -- coal with CCS is okay, but what's even more important, the development of CCS is crucial for the transition to carbon-negative bioenergy.

So what's up with the rather narrowminded rejection of the technology of carbon capture and storage?

This technology basically saves humanity's behind. On Coal front group sets up 'Blogger Brigade' to fight reality posted 11 months, 1 week ago 5 Responses

Dear Madeleine

Dear Madeleine,
75% of the world's hungry and poor people are farmers living in the developing world.

Why are they hungry? Because they don't have the money to buy a diversity of food. And why don't they have the money? Because they don't have access to profitable agricultural markets.

If we could help these farmers produce biofuels, they could receive more money for their work. And they would become less poor and less hungry.

In short, in order to fight hunger and poverty, an increase in agricultural prices is a good thing. Remember 75% of the world's poor and hungry, are farmers in developing countries. They make more money and go less hungry when they get better prices for their products.

So contrary to what you think, economists understand that an increase in corn prices is actually great for the world's poor.

Best regards and welcome to the world of complexity!

JonasOn What U.S. leaders could learn from a 13-year-old posted 11 months, 1 week ago 11 Responses

Biodiversivist grows his own food too

See, biodiversivist lives in the United States. The U.S. is a country where everybody grows his own food in his own backyard. Nobody there has any other job outside growing his own food.

In America, it's impossible to have a non-food-growing job and still eat food every day. It's an unbearable thought.

Common biodiversivist, you're writing pure propaganda.

Why do you insist that farmers in Africa stick to their old poverty-generating model of growing only what they can eat? This is not how the world works, unless you are a racist (which, apparently you are), or an imperialist (telling Africans they should not join the global economy), or both.

The point is that there is a huge amount of land available for agriculture. Poor farmers can make more money if they grow biofuel crops on this land.

You just want them to live in poverty and deny them any chance of growing into prosperity.

This is such a Western attitude, so full of exoticism and latent racism its sickening.

I have told you many times before: you should book a flight, and go visit a rural village in Africa, someday. Perhaps then you could talk sense, one day.On Impoverished Africans can't eat their own crops posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 18 Responses

There where it makes most sense

There's a group of people trying to implement biochar at the tropical forest frontier amongst dead-poor slash-and-burn farmers - there where it makes most sense.

Check them out at: http://www.biocharfund.com

According to them, biochar could help reduce deforestation, hunger, energy poverty and climate change, and all this simultaneously. Sounds a bit too good to be true. But I know some of these people, and they have a good understanding of the challenges small farmers face in Central Africa.

If I'm not mistaken, they have two pilot projects up and running, one in Congo and one in Cameroon.

Let's hope biochar remains small-scale, and aimed at helping the poor, rather than yet another industrial-scale intervention.

So please help promote or link to Biochar Fund's concept a bit!
On Biochar posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 11 Responses

McKibben is off-target

Strange, but the man who creates a 'movement' around Hansen's 350ppm paper, does seem to do everything, except strive for the implementation of the very precise strategies outlined by Hansen, needed to get to 350.

Let's recap. To get to 350, says Hansen, we need:

1. A coal phase out.
   
2. A reduction of tropical deforestation and a massive reforestation campaign.
   
3. A massive biochar initiative.
   
4. A massive production of carbon-negative bioenergy.

I find this strange. To say the least.

From what I read at the website, it seems like 350.org is just another campaign sticking to the totally unacceptable 450ppm, because there's no mention whatsoever of the 4 points specifically needed to make 350, but lots of mention of 'carbon-neutral' stuff, which will never get us there (fundamentally so, because carbon-neutral stuff is not the carbon-negative stuff we need.)

In what sense would 350.org be any different from the gazillion other climate campaigns out there? On I finally got to see Bill McKibben in action posted 1 year ago 10 Responses

Free the birds

"More people die or grow sick from polluted water than from coffee, tea, tobacco, and other stimulants. I myself eschew all stimulants. I also practically abstain from meat. I am convinced that within a century coffee, tea, and tobacco will be no longer in vogue. Alcohol, however, will still be used. It is not a stimulant but a veritable elixir of life. The abolition of stimulants will not come about forcibly. It will simply be no longer fashionable to poison the system with harmful ingredients. Bernarr Macfadden has shown how it is possible to provide palatable food based upon natural products such as milk, honey, and wheat. I believe that the food which is served today in his penny restaurants will be the basis of epicurean meals in the smartest banquet halls of the twenty-first century. There will be enough wheat and wheat products to feed the entire world, including the teeming millions of China and India, now chronically on the verge of starvation. The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900."

Nikola Tesla, 1937On Sarah Palin pardons a turkey just before another is slaughtered behind her ... live posted 1 year ago 7 Responses

Not merely "reducing" emissions

We need to start thinking on a whole new level.

We should stop merely aiming for "carbon-neutrality" or "zero emissions", we need to think in terms of "negative emissions" energy and carbon sequestration, in soils, in trees, in ecosystems.

Preventing or reducing new emissions is too weak an offer, it will still ruin our planet. 450ppm is not an option, it's a crime.

We need to do everything to revert to a path towards 350ppm now.

This is what we must do:

-All coal plants must be closed if they don't implement CCS. No new coal plants are allowed if they don't do CCS.

-All deforestation in the tropics must be halted at once.

-We need a massive biochar campaign, which helps end deforestation.

-We need a massive reforestation campaign.

-We need a massive carbon-negative bioenergy campaign.

These are the Hansen priorities. Anything less must be seen as a fraud. "Reducing" emissions is only half the story.On Carbon is forever posted 1 year ago 35 Responses

350ppm means bioenergy

The reason why Romm (and others at Gristmill) are afraid of the 350 number, is because it means a massive investment in carbon-negative bioenergy, that is: biomass electricity coupled to CCS, biohydrogen coupled to CCS, and biochar. All bio that is, and not so much wind or solar or geothermal.

This is so because these bioenergy technologies can yield carbon-negative energy, whereas the weak renewables only yield carbon-neutral energy and thus won't do (they won't do because we need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and wind, solar and geothermal don't do that; negative emissions bioenergy does.)

Read Hansen's text, page 227 (the key passage of the text, called "Policy Relevance" of this article - not mentioned by Romm, because it's all "bio").

Desire to reduce airborne CO2 raises the question of whether CO2 could be drawn from the air artificially. There are no large-scale technologies for CO2 air capture now, but with strong research and development support and industrial scale pilot projects sustained over decades it may be possible to achieve costs ~$200/tC or perhaps less. At $200/tC, the cost of removing 50 ppm of CO2 is ~$20 trillion.

Improved agricultural and forestry practices offer a more natural way to draw down CO2. Deforestation contributed a net emission of 60±30 ppm over the past few hundred years, of which ~20 ppm CO2 remains in the air today.

Reforestation could absorb a substantial fraction of the 60±30 ppm net deforestation emission.

Carbon sequestration in soil also has significant potential. Biochar, produced in pyrolysis of residues from crops, forestry, and animal wastes, can be used to restore soil fertility while storing carbon for centuries to millennia. Biochar helps soil retain nutrients and fertilizers, reducing emissions of GHGs such as N2O. Replacing slash-and-burn agriculture with slash-and-char and use of agricultural and forestry wastes for biochar production could provide a CO2 drawdown of ~8 ppm or more in half a century.

[In the Supplementary Material Section] we define a forest/ soil drawdown scenario that reaches 50 ppm by 2150. This scenario returns CO2 below 350 ppm late this century, after about 100 years above that level.

More rapid drawdown could be provided by CO2 capture at power plants fueled by gas and biofuels [that is: carbon-negative bioenergy - biomass power plants coupled to CCS]. Low-input high-diversity biofuels grown on degraded or marginal lands, with associated biochar production, could accelerate CO2 drawdown, but the nature of a biofuel approach must be carefully designed.

A rising price on carbon emissions and payment for carbon sequestration is surely needed to make drawdown of airborne CO2 a reality. A 50 ppm drawdown via agricultural and forestry practices seems plausible. But if most of the CO2 in coal is put into the air, no such "natural" drawdown of CO2 to 350 ppm is feasible. Indeed, if the world continues on a business-as-usual path for even another decade without initiating phase-out of unconstrained coal use, prospects for avoiding a dangerously large, extended overshoot of the 350 ppm level will be dim.

Romm is uncomfortable with Hansen's message, because it implies a massive investment in bioenergy - the type of renewable that Romm, for some bizarre reason, can't stand.

Anything less than a 350 aim means you're a fake green.On Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al posted 1 year ago 3 Responses

Free market capitalism doesn't exist anyways

The State is and always will be the primordial force setting the rules within which capitalism is allowed to function.

In the 19th century, the People and the State decided that capitalists can no longer use 10 year old kids as slaves in their mills. And the capitalist obeyed. He then began to innovate, to make sure he remained productive by only exploiting adult slaves. Later there were even capitalists courageous enough to act proactively, and abandon crazy modes of production. They innovated, set new rules themselves, and prospered, because they were first and everyone else had to follow.

The People and the State now decide that capitalists can no longer destroy the planet and the conditions that allow life to thrive on it (such as the right atmosphere). The capitalist will work within these rules.

As always, some capitalists (like Google, to name just one), act proactively and set the rules for everyone else. They see opportunity in the green economy. And everyone else will follow.

The problem is that some capitalists and their 'think tanks' are a tad idiotic, and keep promoting the bankrupt past. They will be forgotten by history. Just like the loonies who kept defending child labor in the 19th century are forgotten too.

The People and the State remain the primordial force determining the rules within which economic systems are allowed to function. That will not change, no matter how the capitalist tries to change the mindset of the People (and eventually even that of the State).

As Reason progresses, the People keep setting ever more Rational rules. Irrational capitalists cannot stop this process, for it is a force of historic necessity. On The intellectual bankruptcy of conservatism: Heritage even opposes energy efficiency posted 1 year ago 9 Responses

Biodiversivist and Wolverine

Are you as critical about wind and solar power and geothermal, etc... -- industries that receive much more subsidies still.

So why defend industries that receive far more subsidies and reduce CO2 levels less, over an industry that reduces CO2 levels more and is less subsidized?

They don't need propaganda, people like you do the work for them!On When in doubt, propagandize posted 1 year ago 12 Responses

Minor problems

Problems are Obama's support for all too lavish subsidies for solar and wind, which are unsustainable and uncompetitive sources of energy, for the time being.

He hasn't mentioned bioenergy, which is, so far, the only true sustainable and competitive source of renewable energy.

His support for clean coal is problematic too.

So: a more reasonable and tech-neutral subsidy regime, combined with more focus on the cost-competitiveness of renewables would make these minor mistakes a thing of the past.
On What can greens expect from Obama? posted 1 year ago 8 Responses

Biodiversivist, food crashes

Biodiversivist, the point is that food prices are crashing.

This will have devastating environmental effects, as the poor -- who are farmers -- will now once again be trapped in low farm product prices and remain in poverty. This poverty is strictly correlated with environmental destruction and degradation.

Everything you have ever said about the link between biofuels and food prices has proved to be false (you do are able to read a basic price chart, are you?)

So how can we trust that anything else you say has any rational meaning?On Democrat gets black mark from environmental lobby for backing of corn-based ethanol posted 1 year, 1 month ago 13 Responses

I do believe in solar powered blimps, though

They'd be fun and doable. Slow and pensive. Also: efficient and elegant.

But flying in air planes is a sin indeed. Just like driving a car is. Or eating kiwis imported from New Zealand.

There's no real need to do all this. You can just sit in your own garden under an apple tree, and wait till an apple drops into your hand. That's the essence of life. If you don't like it, then please go away.
On Corporate foot soldiers fired up to kick environmental butt posted 1 year, 1 month ago 17 Responses

Jon, she doesn't have to start from scratch

Jon, I quickly wanted to add that Mrs Shiva doesn't have to start from scratch to "prove" the viability of her concepts.

If I recall it correctly, there recently was a study from the FAO or the UNEP (not sure), claiming that "organic farming can feed Africa". It blew me a bit off my chair, because I had never expected this to come from the FAO/UNEP, agencies that don't sell bs.

So, can someone at Grist plz quickly look this up? It would be a very important reference in this 'debate' over whether organic agriculture can work on a large scale, and in such extremely difficult and key areas like SSAfrica.

The study was, I think, based on a very large body of previous research (t was a bit of a meta-study of kinds).

I just meant to say that one of Mrs Shiva's staff's more important efforts should go towards gathering evidence, from long-term field trials.

Supercomputers will do the rest for her. It's not like she has to prove scenarios, she just has to pour some data into the terminal.

And I think she could convince more sceptical white men like myself if she gets a bit rid of that guru-goa-beatles aura of hers - I've seen her sitting in her garden, surrounded by tantalized hippies who literally prayed to her. Truly horrible.

Mrs Shiva should definitely look into Monstanto-esque marketing strategies. On A food/climate manifesto presents new visions for responding to climate change posted 1 year, 1 month ago 30 Responses

Blame much on ethanol, but not food price rise

There's been a lot of really bad arguments pro and contra corn ethanol. But one thing is now certain: biofuels have played no or at best a very marginal role in the increase in food prices.

This is easy to see: world food prices are crashing, dropping 40, 50 and up to 60%, while there's not less biofuels being produced.

Even The Guardian knows it:

Ethanol played no role in food price rises, we were wrong:

Heavy demand for corn from ethanol makers was seen as a key driver of corn futures to record highs in June, but since then the sharp decline of corn along with other commodities shows that belief was mistaken.

Corn is down about 50 percent from its record high in June, even as the amount of the grain used to produce the renewable fuel in the United States remained the same.

"The record high prices were a speculative bubble".

Source: The Guardian.

A whole huge army of biofuel critics was wrong on this. One has to wonder, if they are totally wrong on that crucial topic, how can they be right on any other of the contentious topics?

I tend to go with Lula's analysis: "not investing in biofuels is a crime against humanity", because the vast majority of the world's poor are farmers, and they stand to benefit from the biofuels opportunity.

Gristmill is one of those blogs who still has to write that 'mea culpa' piece: sorry, we screwed up on this food-versus-fuel thing, and perhaps we are responsible for denying the world's farmers (that is: the world's poor) a chance for development. On Democrat gets black mark from environmental lobby for backing of corn-based ethanol posted 1 year, 1 month ago 13 Responses

Shiva's right but care is needed

I think most of us would agree that Shiva's vision of agriculture is what we should strive for. Nobody can be against the conservation of biodiversity, water, soils.

But the question is whether Shiva's alternatives can really provide enough food, bioenergy, fiber and forest products for the world's growing population. That's the question. And there's a lot of doubt over this.

Shiva should first prove her system and demonstrate all the longterm social, economic and environmental effects of this concept.

It's not like we're simply going to believe or trust a guru. That would be a very dangerous mistake. Demonstrate the feasibility of the concept first.

Let's also not forget that we only need to increase food production for the coming 5 decades. After that, world population stagnates and then begins to decline.

Converting a single African country like Congo or the Central African Republic to Green Revolution technologies, suffices to provide enough food for all the people that will be born between 2010 and 2075 (Congo alone can produce food for an estimated 3 billion people).

Maybe it's wiser to wait until population levels begin to stagnate and decline (from 2075 onwards) - then we can take this huge risk of transitioning towards a more organic and biodiversity-rich form of agriculture, the impacts of which are unknown.

In the meantime, we just need to produce enough food to feed the world's newborn babies and the hungry. The most efficient, immediate way to do this is by following the hugely successful Green Revolution approach.

The problem with Shiva, though, is that she seldom sticks to facts. I recently witnessed her making the link between GM cotton, endebtedness, and farmer suicides in India. The link is exactly the contrary: farmers who didn't invest in GM cotton got bankrupt and committed suicide. That was one example that struck me. She often relies on incorrect information, to make a case the grist of which is entirely rational and elegant, though.

So only two problems:
-demonstrate the concept first
-and use correct information

If she succeeds in both, she may become Nobel Peace Prize material. On A food/climate manifesto presents new visions for responding to climate change posted 1 year, 1 month ago 30 Responses

Wolverine, frankly it's not black and white

Wolverine, I summarized your vision at an other post here on Grist. To you it comes simplistically down to: good versus evil.

Scientists don't think that way. They look at reality. And what did they find?

They found that if you give people a certain level of development and security, their fertility rates drop. Look at Europe, Japan, China, Russia,... these regions even have declining populations.

Now where do you find the highest fertility rate on the planet? Exactly, in the world's most food insecure regions: Central Africa, 7 kids per woman, and populations booming.

The best thing to do is to help speed up the transition towards lower fertility rates in these countries, which implies food security and working agricultural systems - that's the sine qua non for development.

Next up follows a transition from agrarian to (post)industrial societies, a stabilisation of populations levels, and then a decline.

Even a typical 'developing' country like Brazil recently announced that it's population will begin to decline from 2035 onwards. Can you imagine? Brazil! Well, guess what, the country has also massively succeeded in boosting food security and in raising rural incomes.

So get of your simplistic horse please. The real choice is between: high fertility rates and rapidly growing populations who keep dieing and living in misery, on the one hand, and the 'long road' to modernity and ultimately declining populations.

The latter is better for the environment (and obviously so for people too, because starving is not so pleasant, in case you wonder.)On David Rieff on the Gates Foundation's 'Green Revolution in Africa' posted 1 year, 1 month ago 7 Responses

Good and evil

The evil maniacs surrounding that diabolic genius Borlaug are evil.

We should only listen to the righteous good kind gurus of Via Campesina, who haven't produced a single grain of maize, but who surely know the right words.

Good versus evil, it's all so simple, isn't it, Tom?On Distributing industrial-ag commodities vs. reviving local-food economies posted 1 year, 1 month ago 3 Responses

Just a few words

Tom Philpott wrote:

No mention of low-tech ways of boosting yields through biodiversity and compost; no mention of local agricultural knowledge.

Norman Borlaug responds:

"If [environmentalists] lived for just one month among the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertiliser and irrigation canals."

Tom, have you ever lived and farmed in Africa? On David Rieff on the Gates Foundation's 'Green Revolution in Africa' posted 1 year, 1 month ago 7 Responses

Mm, not sure

Perhaps synthetic biology and the bioeconomy can do what biotech did during the Green Revolution. That is: lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty?

Why not?

If smart people like Craig Venter succeed in developing techniques that can feed more people and dramatically cut fuel prices, then surely that's good for humanity? And if it means a decentralisation of energy production, based on perpetually renewable resources, managed by local communities, then surely this is a good thing?

I think synthetic biology can be what biotech did to some parts of the Global South. That is: end hunger and poverty.

The case of Malawi comes to mind. The BBC has a great series of essays on it, running now. You see there how biotech is saving this entire nation:

Seeking Africa's green revolution

From the begging bowl to the bread basket: in just two years, Malawi has gone from famine to food surplus - a minor agricultural miracle.
The BBC goes to the field.

The piece about hybrid seeds is interesting.

The result was six successive years of food shortage in Malawi - beginning in 2000.

"And there was no lack of rains, I can tell you," says Dr Jeffrey Luhanga, technical co-ordinator at the Ministry for Agriculture.

"I experienced the famine in 2005; there were lines of people queuing for food aid.

"The thing you have to remember is that these were the ones who were still strong enough to walk to the depots. The hungriest - the ones who really needed the food - they were stuck at home, starving.

"Now look around Malawi, you see only healthy faces. Yes, this is a green revolution. And it is being driven by science."

He reels off a list of programmes - irrigation, agronomy, planting patterns, science-based economic practices.

"These technologies have been in our research institutes for years, but they went nowhere. Now, for the first time, the technology is in the farmers' hands."

Seeds of hope?

It begins with the seeds. The hybrid maize varieties are high yielding - around 2,500kg/hectare or more.

"I grew 80 bags this year, in the land just around my house. Eighty bags!" says Mitengo Gamr, one of Admarc's regional managers.

"My family no longer queues to buy food."

But they come with a catch - they are addicted to costly nitrogen fertiliser.

"But it is worth the investment," explains Muhhuku, "because the extra maize you grow, you can sell to pay for the fertiliser, buy an animal for your farm and diversify. You can build security."

And what if the rains fail? "Then you have enough left over from your big harvest last year," he smiles.

[...]

But utter the words "technological dependency" to Muhhuku, and he simply shakes his head.

"We hear this accusation from western development workers. We are told 'why make farmers buy seeds every year? Why let the companies trap you?' But this is based on a misunderstanding. Storing the hybrid seeds - it takes a lot of technical knowledge.

"The farmers can stick to their traditional ways. But the yields are not worth their sweat."

Tomorrow, I will meet the farmers and ask them myself.

And the journalist asked the farmers, and they all say: "ah, these pampered bourgeois critics from the West. They know nothing about the world.  They write reports warning about what we do and that's it. They have never put their own hands in the dirt. They don't know what they're talking about. They can come and visit us to learn, but they prefer to stay at their well paid desks in their wealthy Euro-American headquarters."

Perhaps synthetic biology can do in a next round, what the Green(er) Revolution has and is doing during this round?

If a poor African peasant understands the benefits of technology, then why shouldn't a well-educated Euro-American civil society organisation? On With little oversight, BP, Chevron, ADM, and Cargill cook up next-gen biofuels posted 1 year, 1 month ago 16 Responses

Good news for farmers

This is very good news for farmers, who have been crippled by skyrocketing fertilizer and fuel prices.

Especially good news for the countries in the developing world, who are, for the first time, beginning to promote Green Revolution technologies.

Just imagine Malawi, which as crawled out of hunger for the first time in a decade by its 'miraculous' fertilizer campaign. This campaign came under strain because of high fertilizer prices. If they had risen further, the system could have collapsed. Now it can expand it more easily.

We must hope, though, that these poor countries do not step into the trap of buying food from the international market instead of investing in agriculture, because this would plunge their own farmers into poverty once again. Low food prices are definitely a risk here.

High food prices had the great effect that agriculture came back on the development agenda, for the first time in 3 decades. The risk exists that this push to have poor countries invest more in agriculture again will slow down because of low grain prices.

The best scenario would be high food prices and low input prices (fertilizer, fuel). This would be the best scenario for global poverty alleviation. Perhaps this can be achieved by producing more biofuels. On Tough times for agribiz giants -- and likely soon for farmers posted 1 year, 1 month ago 2 Responses

Good to see biomass

It's good to see the most important renewable energy technology, biomass, receiving its credits too.

Of course, given the fact that biomass is by far already the largest and the most cost-effective of the renewables, it doesn't need that many incentives.

Still, it would be nice to treat technologies equally. On The energy tax credits in the bailout bill, part 1 posted 1 year, 1 month ago 6 Responses

Biomass + CCS is the core solution

The only true core solution to climate change is biomass coupled to CCS. This allows you to remove vast quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere while producing baseload energy.

No other technology is capable of doing this.

Renewables like solar or wind are okay, but they are merely 'carbon neutral' (in practise they are quite carbon positive, though). They will push us to catastrophic 450ppm, whereas we need to go to 350ppm.

This is why CCS research is very important, because it prepares the development of the only core climate solution, which is carbon-negative bioenergy.

Many coal plants are already being converted to run on biomass (today Xcel Energy in Wisconsin announced yet another such project). If you couple CCS to these plants, you actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

There will be a time when "not producing emissions" ("zero emissions") is seen as a weak offer, because climate change will require active removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. Special "negative emissions credits" will be created, which make bioenergy + CCS highly competitive.

So yes, let the coal industry develop CCS, and then force it to switch to biomass. On Is coal with carbon capture and storage a core climate solution? posted 1 year, 1 month ago 24 Responses

No, no David

No, no, David, that's too easy.

I seldom or never use the term.

But when I use it, I mean it. Malthusianism has been historically tied to fascism and nazism. And Neo-Malthusianism still is.

This topic requires labelling, indeed, so as to stiffle any resurgence of these horribly irrational lines of thought. On Minsky on population posted 1 year, 2 months ago 9 Responses

Check the numbers

KenG, you're wrong. Of all the big European so-called 'core nations', France has by far the largest share of renewables.

You can check the numbers here: http://www.energy.eu/#renewable

Share of renewables (i.e. not nuclear) in total energy portfolio:

-United Kingdom: 1.3%
-Germany: 5.8%
-France: 10.3%

See? France twice as much as Germany, and almost 10 times as much as the most free-market of the European member states. France's renewables are dominated by biomass power plants (by far the largest source of renewable energy in Europe).

This is all well known.

You're also totally wrong about the other things you write:

Sweden has almost no solar or wind. They are half hydro and half nuclear (for electricity). Again that is a direct result of good luck in hydro resources (that are now all tapped) and a recognization that they did not have oil/coal/gas resources.

Sweden has the largest share of renewables of all EU countries: 39.8%. Half of that is biomass.

In short, please take it from me, the most socialist countries in Europe (France, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, etc...) all lead on renewables. The least socialist (U.K., Netherlands (only 2.4%), etc...) are all failing.On Obama says he will postpone some spending programs in light of financial bailout posted 1 year, 2 months ago 18 Responses

Stop the fascist lies

Let me repeat: there is obviously no population problem whatsoever. Whoever says there is, must be qualified instantly as a fascist.

-Population growth rates are rapidly declining in Europe, Russia, China and Japan

-Just today, in MO*, a key magazine about sustainable development, new figures show that the aging trend is even rapidly emerging in developing countries

-The UN knows that by 2075 world population will stabilize at 8.9 to 9.2 billion people, and will decline from 2100 onwards.

-So we must succeed in feeding only 2.5 to 3 billion people more, which is entirely non-problematic.

The only long-term worry about population, is the trend of rapid aging populations and depopulation.

Neo-malthusianism equals neo-fascism. On Minsky on population posted 1 year, 2 months ago 9 Responses

Why are Americans so afraid of taxes?

Jon, what I don't understand is Americans' irrational fear of tax increases.

Taxes are good. High taxes are better.

Ever wondered why people in Sweden want more taxes and why Sweden happens to be the wealthiest country in the world?

A recent study found 80% of Swedes, who already pay the highest taxes in the world, in fact want to pay more taxes, instead of less.

http://www.thelocal.se/11016/20080410/

Why is this so? Because high taxes allow you to invest in excellent health care, education, infrastructures, labor relations, social security, etc... Things the private sector is messy at.

And what does all the research in the world show? Yes, that excellent health care, education, infrastructures, etc... all lead to smarter, happier, healthier and wealthier people.

Every rational human being should be proud to pay taxes, and ask to share more of the profits of his individual labor with his fellow men. Because if you join your cash, you get to do far greater things than if you let markets fend for themselves.

In short, Americans should be enlightened about the fantastic benefits of high taxes. They should be encouraged to join the European movement for higher taxes. Because it would be good for them, for their health, for their wealth, for their pleasure and for that of their children.

Obviously, the same applies to investments in renewables. Sweden is by far the country in the world with the highest share of renewables in its portfolio, leading Europe by far (really: by far - check: http://www.energy.eu/  - Sweden now has already reached the 40% level. The next most successful country only generates 28%, and it is Finland, not coincidentally also a rather socialist nation).

This should give us a clue. Socialism and high taxes lead to the wealthiest, healthiest, best educated, happiest, smartest, brightest, and nicest people, who deal with their environment in the best possible way.

Sorry, it's the simple truth. On Obama says he will postpone some spending programs in light of financial bailout posted 1 year, 2 months ago 18 Responses

Jon, the important next step

Jon, you are right that this bail-out is just the rape of the American people, pure theft. But the American people are used to being raped and stolen from, they have never resisted this, this is in their nature. It's the nature of the slave-state that America has always been.

But now is the chance to stand up and say: look our bail-out is not a free lunch for the tiny club of masters which dominates us, slaves. The bail-out is nothing less than Us, the People, taking over the economy.

It's wrong to "criminalize" the capitalists who wrecked America's economy. Because they're no criminals, they just did what the American system allowed them to do - with the fiat of the people.

So don't send in the FBI, this is the wrong message. They're not criminals, they stole from you and enslaved you fair and squarely - you have never protested, so this is what you deserved.

But this crisis is now a moment when you can change things for the better, and become a free nation, like the rest of the world.

You have to be proud to have this opportunity to become socialists. It is your only chance at liberation.
On Obama says he will postpone some spending programs in light of financial bailout posted 1 year, 2 months ago 18 Responses

Beyond Zero Emissions

The only climate blog I really read on a regular basis is Beyond Zero Emissions, because it is the only one willing to take a radical stance on the matter.

We don't need to stabilize at 450ppm or so, which is what most climate blogs in Romm's list seem to be okay with. We need to go much further. We need to go beyond zero emissions. On This year's top 10 climate blogs posted 1 year, 2 months ago 3 Responses

Wow, biomass growing big in the US

And a few days earlier, Oglethorpe Power Corporation (OPC), supposedly America's largest power supply cooperative, announced a $1.5 billion investment also in biomass power plants.

http://www.opc.com/Newsroom/RecentNews/ct_000410

At last biomass is beginning to grow a bit in the U.S. It was about time.

Note, yesterday the UNEP's landmark report on how the green economy will generate millions of new jobs, also noted that the biomass sector is going to be enormous: 12 million new jobs by 2030 (wind: 2.1 million; solar: 6.3 million).

Great!On Duke Energy announces investment in wood biomass on first day of the Clinton Global Initiative posted 1 year, 2 months ago 18 Responses

Playing around

Jabailo, please remember that the MacArthur prizes are essentially given to encourage individuals to keep up their creativity and experimentation. These qualities are more important than common sense or scientific rigor.

Urban farming can't be scaled up or is of course never a recipe for solving the world's food problems - nobody disagrees here -, but it is a symbol of the mere fact that we must rethink the way in which we produce food.

An iniative like Growing Power illustrates this rethink well. On Milwaukee's Growing Power founder snags a much-deserved MacArthur posted 1 year, 2 months ago 3 Responses

Open accounting, please

It's nice to want something.

But to make it economically viable, we need a few simple transparent accounting rules.

1. a price on carbon
   
2. no subsidies, or equal subsidies (because now some forms of renewable and fossil energy get loads, whereas others don't)

Who on earth

Who on earth would spend a second of his time studying the production of biofuels from food?

Biofuels have nothing to do with food, they have to do with lignocellulosic biomass.

Next, please. On New research shows that ethanol will continue to increase the cost of wheat posted 1 year, 2 months ago 7 Responses

Russ, perhaps a compromise?

Russ, don't you think that agriculture has become rather globalised?

A local food movement in Europe or America could be a real threat to farmers in Kenya and Cameroon.

Also, the author of the article calls for loads of money to support the proposed farming concepts. Isn't it so that there's not an infinite amount of money and that, thus, you do have to make choices (as a government)?

Why don't we come to some brilliant meeting point: abolish the billions of subsidies thrown at wealthy industrial farmers in Europe and America (farmers who don't need the money), and give half of these billions to Zoe's farmers, and the other half to the farmers in the developing world, who could use the money to modernise.

What's so horrible about this?On The key political, economic, and cultural needs of young farmers posted 1 year, 2 months ago 12 Responses

Sure, it's a growing industry

Europe's building biomass cogen plants by the dozens each quarter. It a rapidly growing renewable energy concept - been around for decades, though.On Castens and Recycled Energy Development featured in Forbes magazine posted 1 year, 2 months ago 7 Responses

Maybe we should start somewhere else?

Maybe we should start by ending the billions upon billions of subsidies for Euro-American farmers, because these subsidies keep 3 billion farmers in poverty and in hunger.

That's what young farmers 'all over the world' are really asking.

For the rest, I think the model of expensive, eco-friendly and culturally rooted food is good for niche markets (Europe, U.S., Japan). But it is obviously not yet a model for the developing world. Where people need plentiful, affordable food - no matter how it is produced (because having food is better than not having food).

Not yet. Once the people in the developing world have become as wealthy as us (in crude, hard, simplistic terms), they too might begin to look at kinder food. In order to get there, they do need a highly efficient, cost-effective farming system. I'm not sure whether the model proposed here would fit their needs. On The key political, economic, and cultural needs of young farmers posted 1 year, 2 months ago 12 Responses

You don't need a H2 infrastructure

There are several concepts out there that skip the need for a hydrogen infrastructure as well as for onboard hydrogen storage.

Scientists from Ohio State University have developed a very cheap non-precious metal catalyst that converts biofuels like ethanol into hydrogen with an efficiency of up to 90%. This development opens up a future of decentralised, on-the-spot hydrogen production for use in fuel cell cars. What is more, it makes the prospect of a carbon-negative transportation fuel more realistic.
[...]
using hydrogen in fuel cells is also far more efficient than using biofuels in internal combustion engines.

[...]
Umit Ozkan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State University, says that the new catalyst is much less expensive than others being developed around the world, because it does not contain precious metals, such as platinum or rhodium. Rhodium is used most often for this kind of catalyst, and it costs around $9,000 an ounce. The new catalyst costs around $9 a kilogram - that's about 35,000 times less.
Source

So if there's any breakthrough in automotive energy technologies, it's this one: a 35,000 times cheaper catalyst...

This will develop as follows:

-hybrids will dump their batteries and replace them by non-precious metal fuel cells instead, powered by the on-board H2-generator (which turns gasoline or biofuels into the gas)

-this will bring down the cost of the fuel cells

-the catalyst is dirt-cheap and allows for a fully decentralised H2 production process - either in each separate station, or in the car itself

-the cheapest way to make H2, by far, is based on the gasification of biomass (electrolysis based on wind or solar are not competitive). So you're only facing a primary fuel supply issue. But given that the use of H2 in fuel cells is much more efficient than using liquid fuels in ICEs, there's much more buck to each ton of biomass we use. The conversion efficiency of the new catalyst is very high (90%).

Now we need a comparison of electric vehicles powered on the basis of the most cost-effective renewable (i.e. biomass), versus fuel cell vehicles based on decentralised, on-the-spot H2 production based on biomass. On The Economist agrees with me on hydrogen posted 1 year, 2 months ago 21 Responses

Exactly, Tasermon

Exactly. Like Sir David King recently said: organic farming is what you find in the most disastrously poor and food insecure regions of Africa, where people starve to death by the hundreds of thousands.

It is these regions that urgently need modern agriculture and inputs, in order to survive.

It's the most important development objective around. The rapid transition from primitive, organic, low-yield agriculture, towards highly intensive, modern, high yield farming.

This transition is:

1. good for people - because it allows them to eat instead of starve to death
   
2. good for the environment - because it requires far less land, which means far less deforestation, soil erosion, soil nutrient depletion, etc...
   
3. good for development; because when farmers get modern, a large share of them has to move to cities, which is great, because rural-urban migration straightforwardly leads to reduced fertility rates, thus reducing pressures on the environment further

Luckily, governments, aid agencies and scientists are beginning to understand this.

Initiative likes the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) are key.

Like Sir David says: green bourgeois organic food pushers are responsible for keeping Africa poor and for killing hundreds of thousands of people. On New data show that 2008 organic food sales will reach $32.9 billion posted 1 year, 2 months ago 7 Responses

What's the share?

So what's the share of organic food in the total food consumption in the US?

Over here in the EU, it is less than 1 percent.

I have nothing against organic food in highly developed, wealthy markets with few poor people.

But it would be a criminal disaster to implement organic food projects in countries where people still have to farm and work to make a living. On New data show that 2008 organic food sales will reach $32.9 billion posted 1 year, 2 months ago 7 Responses

And since we're talking about science

Since we're talking about science and fiction (a McCain win) anyways, we can only say this: we need some kind of blade runner to retire the old man. He acts like a republican replicant, replicating the same lifeless stuff over and over again.

I really see this fight in Spenglerian terms. This is a fight about life and death, about light and dark, about reason and madness.

The choice has never been so clear for Americans, I think.
---------- end of intermezzo ---------

Russ, I agree: no American politician can come out and say he's an atheist, a homosexual or a science-minded person - even though the majority of them are one or more of the above. All these normal things are seen as taboo in the US.

But that's only when it comes to getting elected. Once in office, there are reasonable people amongst the executive and the legislative crowd.

So there's a split between what the average American wants (a quintessential image of a symbol of a simulacrum of an American: science-averse, deeply religious, sexually correct, etc), and what the politician really thinks.

That's a strange disconnect. We don't have it here in Europe. I've never understood this. Despite being a reasonably well developed country (materially speaking), the U.S. has so many taboos about so many rather boring subjects (science, sexuality, religion, etc...). It requires a lot of explanation. This explanation is best given by self-reflecting Americans, because we're tired of being called eurosnobs.

So tell us: why are you so weird?On New Scientist assesses McCain and Obama on science issues posted 1 year, 2 months ago 27 Responses

350 now

Joseph, I really think it's high time to begin to push for 350ppm now. There's no time to lose.

Once we get some formal agreement amongst and commitment from governments on getting 450ppm done (just imagine that), it's every climate scientist's duty to immediately call for 350ppm.

Aiming for 450ppm will not prevent dangerous feedbacks and tipping points, like the total collapse of the Arctic or the destruction of permafrost.

350 is a minimum. 350 now.On Arctic shrinks by one Alaska and three Arizonas in August posted 1 year, 2 months ago 2 Responses

Where, Jeremy?

Jeremy, you don't mind me asking where you have worked in particular? And for which organisation? On Only GMOs and agrichemicals can 'feed the world,' don't you know? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 53 Responses

Please keep this to yourself

Please keep the slow food ideology to yourself okay? Don't even think of exporting it to people who need to work to make a living.

Also keep the solar ovens to yourself, as a hobby toy. Don't even think of the obscene idea to export them to Africa. They don't work.

For the rest: lovely recipes. On A few thoughts on an amazing event -- and a recipe for a delectably slow-cooked pasta sauce posted 1 year, 2 months ago 6 Responses

Well, well

How nice. High oil prices have killed hundreds of thousands of people, by pushing up food prices for all basic foodstuffs.

And then we hear someone say how nice it is to be able to invest in some efficiency.

The thing the world really needs right now, more than anything else, is low-cost liquid transportation fuels.

High oil prices are killing scores of people. On One farmer says 'peak oil' prompted energy-saving steps posted 1 year, 2 months ago 3 Responses

Abatement

Sorry, my English is not that good.

I looked up "abatement" in a dictionary. It says:

1.  Diminution in amount, degree, or intensity; moderation.
   
2. The amount lowered; a reduction.
   
3. Law The act of eliminating or annulling.

To sum it all up:

-according to all scientific studies on the abatement costs of different energy technologies and environmental actions:

-biofuels are the most cost-effective
-wind power and solar follow
-avoiding deforestation is the least cost-effectiveOn Biofuels: not cost-effective or lucrative for climate change or business posted 1 year, 2 months ago 17 Responses

Can't wait

This is a very important topic, because food production is so symbolic and tied up with so many different environmental factors.

All new perspectives on how we can improve the production and consumption model are much needed.

Can't wait to see the interviews.On Prepare for a bunch of recaps and videos posted 1 year, 2 months ago 2 Responses

For the U.S.

Here's another graph of GHG Abatement Costs, specifically for the U.S.:

Graph.

-Solar CSP: $55/per ton
-Onshore wind: $40
-Biomass cofiring: $32
-Cellulosic biofuels: -$15 (minus)

(It doesn't take into account carbon-negative biomass strategies like biochar, though).

I think the "Think Tank" in question should stick to things it knows - writing about crime & justice, housing and pension systems, etc...

I always have a problem when so-called "think tanks" write about things they obviously have no clue about. Rather annoying.On Biofuels: not cost-effective or lucrative for climate change or business posted 1 year, 2 months ago 17 Responses

MAD MAC, feel free to play

Mad Mac, feel free to play around with some of the things you mention. Nobody will stop you. But please don't assume that any of these fun experiments are a basis for any serious policy or pathway aimed at serving hundreds of millions of people and their needs for low-cost food and energy. On Slow foodies unveil declaration of sustainability posted 1 year, 2 months ago 45 Responses

Russ, some nuances

First off, the breakthroughs in plant biology I mentioned - cold tolerance and drought tolerance for maize - have led to the breeding of crops in an entirely classic way.

These crops are non-GMO. So let me repeat this: the crops have not been genetically modified, they have been bred the classic way.

Some other nuances:

Probably the craziest idea I keep hearing from enviro-types is that we're somehow going to (1) transform the West's entire automobile fleet to plug-ins, (2) do the same for the putative auto fleets of the developing world,

Not overnight, but eventually, yes, there will be only electric trains, EVs, biohydrogen fuel cell cars, etc...

Several developing countries can 'leapfrog' us. Brazil would be a case in point, with 85% of all new cars sold there already being flex-fuel cars, a transitional technology.

Of course, switching to new technologies takes some time, but market conditions (high oil prices) and policies (carbon accounting) can speed up this transition.

(3) do all this with renewables,

Obviously this is entirely feasible. Renewables can replace all coal, gas and nuclear many, many times over, at an equal or even lower cost.

Again, it will take time to build infrastructures, but not that much.

(4) at the same time as renewables are also maintaining the accustomed energy consumption in all other areas, again for both the West and the developing world.

Enhanced Geothermal = several thousand Exajoules.
Concentrated solar = several thousand Exajoules.
Biomass = several hundred Exajoules.
Wind = several hundred Exajoules.

Seriously, the renewable potential is gigantic.

As for renewables powering huge cargo ships, my understanding is that this can't be done, that ships, and therefore trade volume, will have to be much diminished (they're even talking about reviving sail technology to assist ships). As for planes, at anything approaching the current volume, forget it.

Well, SkySails, for example, is a dead-simple, giga-cheap technology that cuts fuel consumption of the heaviest ships by up to 40%.

Fuel cells will do the rest.

This is a rather easy technological challenge.

I see more problems with air transport, which could be considered to be a luxury.

synthetic fertilizers can be made without a drop of oil or gas

Now this I've never heard before. Please elaborate - how do you generate massive quantities of fertilizer, transport it and apply it, and then harvest and transport the mass monocrop, without fossil fuels?

Well, the only range of synthetic fertilizer that is made from hydrocarbons is nitrogenous fertilizer.

All you need to produce this is a source of energy, a source of hydrogen and a source of nitrogen.  That's basically air, water and energy.

Norway has been making nitrogenous fertilizers this way by relying on hydropower. There are numerous other examples.

You can make nitrogen-fertilizers entirely from renewables. There's some good research and investment going into this (with, e.g. wind power using excess electricity for electrolysis of water into hydrogen, which can then be used to produce N fertilizer, easier to ship out than hydrogen itself).

The reason we currently make it from natural gas, is because this is cheap and not penalised for its carbon-emissions.

More problematic are the other fertilizers which we get from rocks, but reserves of these are big enough to get us beyond 2075, when the world's population plateaus and, a few decades later, begins to decline.

So I don't see how any of what you consider to be insurmountable problems, are anything of a trouble. There's no technological or scientific barrier that keeps these technologies back. There is only the barrier of political will, correct carbon accounting, and investment risk. On Slow foodies unveil declaration of sustainability posted 1 year, 2 months ago 45 Responses

BruceMCF, it's about efficiency

Bruce, it's about the efficiency of producing biofuels.

Brazilian ethanol is up to 8 times more energy efficient to produce than corn ethanol; it cuts 80% GHG, whereas corn ethanol cuts none.

According to the leading scientists in the field, there's more than enough capacity in Latin America and Africa alone, to produce more sustainable bioenergy than all energy that is currently consumed by the entire planet. (Sustainable capacity of these two regions: 600Ej by 2050).

Now you produce ethanol from a key food crop and have caused an entirely unnecessary food crisis.

This is almost criminal.

And all this while you could be importing ethanol from Brazil and other efficient ethanol producers, to replace all your gasoline needs, without seriously impacting the environment nor without impacting food markets.

Brazil is currently using 1% of its land for the fuel, and can replace world gasoline production all by itself, if it wanted to. Add the myriad of countries in the Global South who can do the same, and you understand that opening markets is the best thing we can do.

It's insane to subsidize American farmers to produce the crappiest of all fuels, while you could be importing ethanol that is cheaper than gasoline, solves climate change, and helps the developing world.On Bearded freak hippie discusses biofuels with Bill Scher posted 1 year, 2 months ago 23 Responses

Devotay, sorry, I'm with Lula

Sorry, I'm with the socially progressive Lula, and not with the reactionary slow fooders, on this one.

Raj Patel should know that burning biofuels in an ICE is more efficient than burning food in a stomach. But that's another matter.

The point is that I'm all for slow food, but only inasmuch as it can achieve basic social goals for the poor in developing countries.

Sadly, there's no scientific evidence that it can. Agribusiness has proven that it is capable of feeding quite a lot of people (like Lula says: the current 'food crisis' is a crisis of wealth - there's too much wealth being created by agribusiness, which is succeeding in feeding ever more people.)

So for these reasons, and until slow food actually demonstrates that it can achieve the same social results, I'm entirely with Lula - a classic social progressive. On Wendell Berry's statement of facts posted 1 year, 2 months ago 7 Responses

Jon, it's about implementation

Jonas, read "Dirt: The erosion of civilizations" by David Montgomery.  It's not a question of expanding the current global agricultural system.  That system has a limited life span.  It will collapse.  Then what?  Now is the time to move, as quickly as possible, to farming systems that conserve/build up soil and use water sustainably.  Otherwise billions of people will be threatened.

But Jon, I think I am not expressing myself well.

I fully agree that current agribusiness is not sustainable.

The only thing that bothers me is this idea that we can suddenly stop the clock, implement a totally new system, and think that this won't lead to big social problems.

My whole point is that, in order to phase out filthy agribusiness, we must push it just a little bit further, so that all people on the planet have achieved a basic level of wealth, so that they too can consciously appreciate, understand, and support the need for less materialism and more sustainable production systems.

But many people in developing countries simply need and want to achieve a basic level of wealth, so that they can survive in decency. That, to me, is still a priority.

I feel that slow food/localism cannot meet this need, and that agribusiness can.

So to get things straight: I'm just trying to understand how you can scale up a localist/slow food system and take it globally, without it resulting in social mass graves or without setting the clock back.

If - and this is wholly conditional - slow food/localism can meet the entirely legitimate desires of the world's lower classes in the developing countries, then I would want to hear this, and see some evidence for it. And if this evidence is convincing, then I'm all for the model.

If there is, however, evidence to the contrary, I prefer to stick to efficient Greener Revolution strategies, for the time being (i.e. until these basic needs have been met).

But that agribusiness as such is not sustainable, that I can fully appreciate. On Slow foodies unveil declaration of sustainability posted 1 year, 2 months ago 45 Responses

Okay, but a small reminder

The recuperation of this virtual "food crisis" by the slow food movement is really rather shallow.

See, the slow food people are totally out of touch with the rest of the world.

Please travel to any developing country, and hear and read what people there think about this so-called "food crisis".

An example:

Brazil's farms see quiet revolution

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told farmers that concerns about food prices and shortages around the world offered them an exceptional opportunity

"We have more Chinese people eating, we have more Indians eating, we have more Africans eating and we have a lot more Brazilians eating."

"All this, which is treated by the press as if it were a crisis and is sold to the world as if it were a crisis," he said."

"Without any arrogance or self-importance, we Brazilians need to confront what for others is a crisis, as an extraordinary opportunity to truly transform ourselves into the granary of the world, as many people have long predicted."

[...]

For Professor Marcos Fava Neves of the University of Sao Paulo, the president is right to think on a grand scale, based on the country's recent achievements.

"What we have seen in the last 10 years is a quiet revolution happening in our country, mostly in agribusiness production," he says.

"We came from being an irrelevant international market participant to be one of the world's major food and biofuel suppliers today.

"So if you look at what happened to our agriculture in terms of beef exports, poultry exports - again we were irrelevant, and now we have the position of largest exporter in the world in major food crops."

[...]

Rising demand
It is not only in Brazil that Prof Neves sees potential.

"Next up is Africa. I think for Africa, this could be a redemption, in terms of inclusion of people in production systems and making Africa produce food and biofuels for the world."

BBC

The same optimism and thinking big, can be found all across the developing world. It's their time. They're fully in the logic of modernisation.

The so-called "food crisis" is in fact nothing more than the result of an immense social and economic progress in developing countries.

This continuing progress and this massive growth of global middle classes, is going to push big farming ever more.

The crisis is a crisis of too much wealth being created everywhere, so much that only big agribusiness seems to be capable of satisfying its needs.

The "crisis" is not a crisis of the nature of farming, but of the nature of demand for cheap food.

Big farming.

China has invested $7 billion in Congo's agriculture and infrastructures, just a few months ago. 3000 kilometers of roads, merely to get food, forestry products and minerals out, from Congo to China.

This is all just the beginning.

I can't help but to think that in this context slow food just seems so out of touch with reality. It seems very 'localist' indeed, that is, very Euro-American. An agenda created by a nano-community inside a micro-community of people whose role on the world stage is in freefall.

Our only hope for the successful implementation of a global slow food agenda, is in the rapid creation of wealthy middle classes in the developing world. And it seems Brazil is ready to service their needs. On Wendell Berry's statement of facts posted 1 year, 2 months ago 7 Responses

Ultimately, we're on the same line

Just to add that I think ultimately we're on the same line.

Where you and I differ is in the view on how to scale, phase and implement such a more sustainable form of agriculture.

Let's first prove that a localist/slow food concept works in extremely wealthy regions, who can take the risk of experimenting, before we risk gambling away the lives of the poor.

Just remember that the poorest people on the planet - the farmers in the Congo - are already fully applying your system of no-input, autarky-based, localist food production. And quite frankly, it is totally catastrophic. What they really need are fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, infrastructures, market access and trade - so they can produce more than what's strictly needed to feed themselves (which most of them are even incapable to do.)

You go tell them to stick to their current concept. I will go and sell them inputs, market access, infrastructures, trade opportunities. I'm sure your farmers will survive but only by making many children who will live in poverty and who have to work on the farm; whereas half of my farmers will leave the country-side, go to cities, slash their fertility rates in half, whereas the other half remains on farms, feeding their urban fellows, with both groups being better off in the process, living longer, healthier and happier lives.

That's the test.On Slow foodies unveil declaration of sustainability posted 1 year, 3 months ago 45 Responses

Your laws are not nature's

MAD MAC, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but supporting collective interests is a far more important natural law than the pursuit of individual interests. The idea that individual interests are important is very new, and was invented in the 19th century by liberal ideologues. It is a fantasy.

You should know this, if you follow the findings of ethology, evolutionary biology, game theory, neuropsychiatry, socio-biology, and other behavioral sciences a bit. Solidarity, group-thinking, altruism are all key traits defining our species and our evolution.

Concretely speaking, I think world politics will be ever more dominated by political decision making processes that aim to serve humanity as a whole, instead of self-interests of countries. The global consensus building and decision making around climate change is just one big sign of this trend, which has been going on for a long time.On Arctic ice in a 'death spiral' as it hits second-lowest point ever posted 1 year, 3 months ago 16 Responses

American politics is so cool

Americans, sometimes I wish we had your binary black-and-white system instead of our complex multi-party system, with greens, blues, reds, yellows, brownshirts and everything in between.

You now face the simplest choice of any voter on the planet.

-A clean and secure energy future vs. the guaranteed destruction of America because of a continued dependence on hydrocarbons
-Leadership in the world vs. remaining the pariah you became under Bushco
-Economic progress and justice vs. economic downfall and injustice
-Social progress and equality vs. social sclerosis and exclusion, and ever more privileges for the very wealthy few
-Policy creation based on reason and science vs. policy creation based on religion and special interests
-Tapping into the creativity and dynamism of the American spirit vs. declining because of fear of change

It's fantastic to have such a dead-simple choice.

On the other hand, this simple choice is very important to all non-Americans too. Because in November we will know whether we have to prepare ourselves for the historic, definitive downfall of America or not.

It's really that simple: either you go down and America will have proven to be nothing more than an interesting European offshore experiment. Or you go up, and prove that even when in big trouble, America is a resilient nation that dares to step into the future, once again.

It's a thriller!On The eco-rundown on Alaska guv Sarah Palin, John McCain's veep pick posted 1 year, 3 months ago 120 Responses

Russ, agreed but we do need more studies

Russ, I agree with most of what you write, but there's this matter of scale. And on this point, what you write...

I doubt that anyone is advocating anything new, or anything which hasn't been studied to death already. Rather, they're advocating that existing ideas finally be implemented.

... is not really correct.

There have been no comparative studies on the large socio-economic and ecologic impacts of the two production systems (slow, local, organic food vs. industrial food). None whatsoever.

And the few studies that have been conducted, point to some troubling news.

-For example, we now know that organic food is not 'healthier', nor more 'nutritious'. The first comprehensive study on this ever to appear, appeared only a few weeks ago. So it's not true that all these things have been studied to death. None of them have been studied even superficially.

-We also know that organic farming is not the most optimal form of land-use.  The first comprehensive study pointing this out appeared only very recently.

-The other aspects all need to be studied much more in-depth as well.

And then we have to get all these studies together and create one big meta-study to look at the effects of a scaled-up local/slow food universe.

It's just that I don't want to rush into yet another new ideology that remains, until this day, basically an ideology, not based on scientific fact.

About the small farmers in developing countries. Hundreds of millions are dependent on producing for international markets. From baby maize and christmas tomatos, to avocados, honey, coffee and cacao, to palm oil, bananas, cotton, flowers, and tea - you name it - millions and millions are involved. The only sectors which have pulled millions of small farmers out of poverty, have been the ones that connect them with global markets.

The only non-industrial farming experiments with poor farmers in the South, - which have not led to poverty -, are experiments such as the Millennium Villages, which are costly and heavily subsidized (or based on charity).

Sorry, we have to study the global social effects of a localist, slow, organic food industry much more in-depth, before we implement it. We have to ascertain that it will lead to prosperity, instead of poverty. We have to study the environmental effects (because if it happens that the new concept leads to more poverty, then this will have environmental consequences).

Basically each single one of the 12 points mentioned in the pamphlet has not been studied yet. So let's do this first.On Slow foodies unveil declaration of sustainability posted 1 year, 3 months ago 45 Responses

Russ, not so... fast

Russ, wouldn't you agree that implementing concepts aggressively, fast, and without studying the multiple consequences of such a rushed implementation - are key aspects of the system we're trying to alter?

If we emulate them, we do exactly the same thing as the thing we're trying to change.

I just think you have to be very careful with disrupting the global food system, without studying the effects of your action.

This doesn't mean a delay in time. Going about 'slowly' just means going about more sensibly.

I don't want to be responsible for destroying the jobs of the millions of small farmers who depend on their exports within the global food system.

We first have to explain them that we will be changing their market, and that we will help them so that they too can benefit from another system. We will, if needed, even provide alternative livelihoods to them, because the slow-food market will undoubtedly (initially) lead to massive jobs losses in the agricultural sector in the developing world.

That's what I meant with implementing things 'slowly': i.e. not repeating the aggressiveness of the current system.On Slow foodies unveil declaration of sustainability posted 1 year, 3 months ago 45 Responses

Record low can still be broken

According to the European Space Agency's Envisat images, and projections, last year's record low can still be broken.

ESA: Arctic ice on the verge of another all-time low.

In any case, does anyone need more proof for the catastrophy climate change's going to bring?On Arctic ice in a 'death spiral' as it hits second-lowest point ever posted 1 year, 3 months ago 16 Responses

Russ

Just wondering - where do you think the energy for this is going to come from?

Remember before you answer - any large-scale renewable system can be built only on the foundation of cheap, plentiful fossil fuels.

Russ, you're right. Cheap and plentiful. Let's first do the 'plentiful' bit: there's more coal than we can use. That's the fuel China and India are using to rapidly industrialise. Interestingly, China is one of the largest investors in renewables.

The 'cheap' bit is more interesting. As long as fossil fuels (of which we have established that they are 'plentiful'), remain too cheap, there will be no investments in renewables. So it's best to have them a bit more expensive, prompting countries to make definitive switches to renewables.

So what we really need is plentiful expensive fossil fuels. Which is exactly where we are.

I don't see how a Fukuoka based farming system can become global. It will work in highly advanced, post-industrial societies which are extremely wealthy and which have low fertility rates and aging populations. But it won't work in the rapidly developing countries, who need quick fixes to produce enough food to make a transition to becoming industrialised nations with lower fertility rates. Eventually, these countries too, after the dirty phase, will have enough resources to invest in more sustainable production methods.On Long live 'do-nothing farming' posted 1 year, 3 months ago 21 Responses

On the pro side

I would add on the pro side:

-biomass based carbon-negative energy is the largest wedge of all wedges, in an aggressive scenario that aims to cut emissions by 80% by 2050

-biomass has a wedge here of 23%, higher than all other renewables combined

[See the Bellona Foundation's scenario, and Hansen, of course, who even goes 350ppm].

-biomass can be used in entirely existing infrastructures at a very low cost, and provide a robust baseload, making the other renewables independent of coal

-biomass used in biochar systems can restore the earth's soils, perhaps the most important ecosystem service of the coming centuriesOn A choice of primary energies: renewable electrons win the gold posted 1 year, 3 months ago 58 Responses

Agrobusiness food is real food too

What's up with the annoying terminology here: as if organic produce is "real food" and agrobusiness food is fake.

In case you didn't know, a new big study just debunks this stupid myth.

Study: Organic food not more nutritional.

Organic food is not more nutritional, healthy, sustainable or real than dirty fake agrobusiness food.

This debate is too important for it to become burdened by cheap language.

To me, personally, real food is food that is both nutritious and cheap enough to fight hunger amongst millions of people. Organic food is totally fake in this respect, because it is expensive and only for the well-off people who belong to the bourgeois classes of opulent, wealthy societies.

Agrobusiness and the global food system is perhaps the most efficient way to use resources, yielding the biggest social benefits on a global scale.

And the fact that small farmers get pushed out of the market is not that dramatic. Because it allows larger farmers to concentrate their means and make farming far more efficient.

This can best be seen in developing countries where people are migrating from the rural areas to the cities. They abandon their miserable farming lives, to become wealthier in cities. And all the while, larger farmers take over their land to use it in a far more efficient way. It's the biggest win-win in the history of human organisation.

The move from miserable rural livelihoods, which lead to high fertility rates, and towards cities, with their low fertility rates, is good for the planet. The big farmers stepping in, guarantee the food security needed to maintain declining populations in cities.

When this 'long cycle' is taken through to its finality, the end result is wealthy people, who have few children, and enough money to invest in luxury ideas like organic farming.

But thinking that you can use these thoroughly bourgeois ideas as a model for the developing countries who are only beginning to go through this long cycle, is of course entirely naive.On Can sustainable farming provide a sustainable living? posted 1 year, 3 months ago 26 Responses

Food tourism

I see a grim future: writers from wealthy places like Europe and the US will travel to places like Mexico, and ask the locals about old traditions. They will scribble down all the names of the many different types of plants and cultivation methods; they will write books about the thousands of lost types of exotic drinks and dishes.

And then they will go home and publish their texts for their wealthy audiences.

All the while, the big majority of ordinary Mexicans is buying standardized food in standardized Wal-Marts, and has forgotten about all these traditional foodstuffs.

I can see this happening, this strange division of labor and representations.On Notes on a recent trip to Mexico posted 1 year, 3 months ago 8 Responses

China is already big on renewables

The Chinese government is already doing quite a bit on renewables.

Its official targets for 2020 are now the following:

-300 GW hydro capacity
-30 GW biomass capacity
-30 GW wind capacity
-1.8 GW solar
-300 million rural citizens on biogas

They are putting $256 billion into this plan.

No word about 'solar baseload', because that apparently remains a rather theoretical, untried idea written about by Gristmill, but not many other people. China does have some solar PV and solar water heating in the plan (1.8 GW).

Russia for its part is betting heavily on biomass. It's the only renewable energy source they have taken up in a recent plan on alternative energy. The Russian agriculture ministry announced the country will produce 1 billion tons of biomass for exports to China and the US, in a first phase, and in the form of either gaseous fuels (so-called synthetic natural gas), as liquids or as solid biofuels.

Let's not forget that Russia has a gigantic potential for sustainable biomass, so large that it can rather easily supply all the energy the EU, China and India need in the future.

Russia doesn't have that much potential for other renewables. Obviously, it will also want to perpetuate the use of its infrastructures. Biomethane can be pumped through its pipelines without any modifications.

So I'm rather optimistic about Russia's willingness to participate in the green market, merely because it will be an unbeatable competitor, with biobased energy.On Why Biden is such an important pick for those who care about the climate posted 1 year, 3 months ago 7 Responses

The Honda solution is not nearly enough

Agreed, the "GM solution" is not the way forward, but the "Honda solution" is a weak offer as well.

We must begin to think long-term and go beyond mere carbon-neutrality.

We need carbon-negative energy. Vaclav Smil should read Hansen.

Carbon-negative energy systems - always based on bioenergy - are the most progressive and revolutionary of all the energy options, because they are systems that allow us to manage the atmosphere (adding or removing CO2 as needed).

We need active planetary carbon management solutions that yield energy at the same time. We won't get there with ordinary renewables or nuclear.  On Carbon sequestration is a GM solution; we need a Honda solution posted 1 year, 3 months ago 7 Responses

Looking forward

Interesting acknowledgement of the feasibility of CCS.

Looking forward to silver and gold.

My bet:

Silver - concentrating solar power and wind, coupled to some energy storage technology.

Gold - carbon-negative baseload energy.On A choice of primary energies: clean coal takes the bronze posted 1 year, 3 months ago 24 Responses

Compulsory voting

The problem with democratic systems in which the vote is not compulsory, is that you always have to make a pathetic, overly dramatic show to get people to vote.

After a while, the tear-jerking, lame songs and show elements come to dominate the political messaging, which is kinda sad.

Make the vote compulsory. That's much more democratic. And that way, you can invest more in message than in melodrama.On OMFG posted 1 year, 3 months ago 12 Responses

Black + Catholic = a losing team?

Isn't it too early for so much "off center" diversity? Perhaps in a few decades time, when the majority of the people in the U.S. have latinized and catholicized will such an exotic black + catholic team be capable of winning.

But the U.S. is perhaps still too Anglosaxon protestant today for them to stand a chance.

Let's not forget that the last Catholic to make it into the White House was JFK. On Barack Obama selects Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate posted 1 year, 3 months ago 17 Responses

No modifications of infrastructures

In some cases, you don't even need to modify infrastructures at all, you can just use the existing ones.

For example, it is very difficult to co-fire large amounts of biomass with coal - 5 to 10% seems to be a practical limit. The wet dream of the renewable energy sector would be to find a way to replace all coal in existing coal plants.

And voilà, some smart scientists have already come up with a technology capable of doing so. It's called torrefaction, a highly efficient conversion and densification process which results in a renewable fuel that can replace 100% of coal in existing infrastructures (not only the boilers, but the entire existing logistical, storage and processing infrastructures can be used).

So all the anti-renewables talk based on the idea that there are no cost-effective or efficient baseloads, are nonsensical. It's perfectly feasible to create such green baseloads, which can serve to make the intermittent renewables independent of coal and gas. On Why electricity is the energy carrier of choice posted 1 year, 3 months ago 7 Responses

Hope this makes avoided deforestation work

The study is very limited in scope, and looks at Australian eucalyptus forests only.

The measurements of the carbon stock of tropical rainforests proper are far more detailed and better established, and the IPCC is not that much off target there.

In any case, if the carbon value of an intact forest triples, the carbon credits to be gotten under any "avoided deforestation" (AD) scheme might begin to be good enough in order for AD to be competitive with the alternatives (that is: exploiting the forest for timber and agriculture).

Still, AD would be too costly to work for most forests, because the social costs are very high.

An interesting approach would be to take very detailed ground based measurements of high carbon forests, and start protecting these via the carbon market. You would 'fan out' from these high carbon kernels, and use excess credits to bring lower carbon forests into the scheme. On IPCC needs to update projections to include deforestation feedbacks posted 1 year, 3 months ago 13 Responses

Ultra-conservatism and environmentalism

By the way, I find it bizarre to see a growing coalition between an extreme conservative right-wing Royal person who has never had to work in his life, on the one hand, and self-proclaimed environmentalists on the other.

But then, many environmentalists nowadays are extremely right-wing reactionaries. So it doesn't really come as a surprise.

With all due respect to his Majesty, but I don't think His Higness The Royal Prince of Lalaland has no authority to speak about he lives of billions of food insecure people who have to plough the earth to make a living.

Science and technology can help these people. Not myth and reactionary bourgeois thinking. On Prince Charles sparked controversy when he expressed doubt in GM crops posted 1 year, 3 months ago 53 Responses

Greenleft GMOs

It would be nice not to become too science-averse. There are many biotechnology initiatives aimed at developing genetically improved crops for developing countries, - crops that would not be patented or owned by corporations, and that would benefit the poor, while limiting environmental risks.

For example, the father of GMOs - professor Marc Van Montagu - chairs the Institute of Plant Biotechnology for Developing Countries. These are very serious people, working on such things as improving cassava, the staple of the world's poorest people.

They want an open-source style biotech universe. And they're no fundamentalists, they are all for a smart combination of organic production methods where feasible, biotech where reasonable, etc...

This debate is often way too black and white. Nowadays, GMOs can be designed in such a way that the traditional associated risks are really minimized, while bringing major environmental, economic and social benefits to very many people.

Finally, let's not forget that it can sometimes be very rational to take a small risk in order to avoid much larger risks: e.g. keeping sub-Saharan Africa's population dependent on traditional agricultural methods and food imports, fuels population growth, which is environmentally and socially catastrophic (leading to wars, abject poverty and the wholesale destruction of ecosystems). A mild GMO-based local food industry could rapidly transform this situation and help bring about the urgently needed demographic transition in these countries. That would be very wholesome from an environmental point of view.On Prince Charles sparked controversy when he expressed doubt in GM crops posted 1 year, 3 months ago 53 Responses

Post failed

Post Failed. Subject is too long (max is 50 characters). On What it means to put 4.1 billion bushels of corn into our gas tanks posted 1 year, 3 months ago 46 Responses

Two questions

1. How much of all the corn produced on the planet, is actually traded internationally, and how much of it is consumed locally?

2. What is wrong with using energy as energy? Food is energy for our muscles. Ethanol is energy for machines that replace our muscles. What's wrong with using energy?

Don't forget the Superbus

Sure, here in Europe we like electric rail.

But it's not meeting all our needs.

As an intermediary between road and rail, we are now working on the "superbus" - a highly aerodynamic electric bus which uses dedicated roads, but which can also drive on normal roads.

Check it out:

Superbus.On A three-pronged approach to getting off oil for transportation posted 1 year, 3 months ago 36 Responses

You forgot the most important option

You forgot the most important option: the carbon-negative electron economy. This economy turns transportation into an act that removes CO2 from the atmosphere.

Zero emissions vehicles (ZEVs) are not good enough. We need NEGEVs (negative emissions vehicles).

The carbon-negative electron economy is a hybrid between (1) renewables and (3) carbon capture and storage.

I admit, the concept is extremely radical and very new. But it has the highest potential for solving the climate crisis (at least according to the first climate report that included carbon-negative energy - the Bellona Foundation's recent report).

The carbon-negative electron economy is so counter-intuitive that most people fall from their chairs when they think of it.

Because this economy works best when consumers drive more. Because the more miles you drive in your NEGEV, the more CO2 you take out of the atmosphere.

In a carbon-negative electron economy, driving a car is an act of saving the planet.On The five transport energy solutions and one imperative posted 1 year, 3 months ago 34 Responses

Did someone mention colonialism?

Sorry, but this is such a nice topic. I have to add this short note.

The author uses the metaphor of colonial expansion. Rightly so: modernity is expansionist.

But he should be aware of a very strange situation that is emerging. There will be a time - in fact, we're already here - when the developing countries will be calling us neo-colonialists, precisely because we advocate localism and similar concepts.

Our green thinking is being perceived by many of the vital nations of the world, as being 'imperialist'.

Just listen to the discourse in Brazil or Indonesia, where both governments and NGOs are telling Europe and the US to shut up about how the Amazon or the forests in Indonesia should be governed. They use terms like "sovereignty" and "green imperialism" in environmental debates.

Brazil recently created its Amazon Fund, basically choosing a fund based approach to forest conservation, instead of the market-based approach advocated by NGOs from the West. This choice by Brazil was very explicitly meant as a kick in our butts (because the fund based approach implies total control over the resources by government, not by the "global carbon market" - which is seen as a Euro-American instrument; Brazil's choice for the fund, basically comes down to a strategy that allows it to deforest further; it's a greenwash).

Green activists in developing countries are more and more being kicked out because they are seen as too paternalistic in their tone and actions.

In short, we think we are producing a universally shared, enlightened, rational discourse on how the world's natural resources should be managed. But the people in the South beg to differ, because they have totally different priorities (they have modern ambitions).

We should not forget this.

If we don't tread carefully, there will be a time when the Kenyan baby maize growers will protest openly against the "neo-colonialist", "green-imperialist ideology" of localism.

But on the other hand, they will trade with the Chinese or the Indians. As Europeans and Americans we must begin to accept that our historical role is over. We are no longer that powerful.

We must simply make sure that the little bit of ideological power that we have left, is used in as effective a manner as possible - to help the vital peoples of the world transit towards a more eco-friendly future. I think the discourse on localism - if put in explicitly simplistic terms as is the case in the article by Jim Goodman - is not the way forward. Because it sounds too much like a prefabricated ideological recipe followed blindly by a crowd of well off bourgeois urbanites from Euro-America, - without a scientific basis, and showing serious disrespect for many social and economic realities.On Globalization failed, cheap oil is gone, local production is the only way forward posted 1 year, 3 months ago 58 Responses

This is good for the world's poor

The U.S. should turn all its corn into ethanol, so that investors flock to farmers in the developing world.

This is already happening, but not fast enough.

Remember: 75% of the world's poor are farmers. They urgently need investments, and this only happens when agricultural prices stay high.

The worst thing that could happen to the world's poor, is a drop in food prices, back to the catastrophic levels seen over the past decades.

So that's the only real benefit I can see in America's corn ethanol adventure. It is stimulating the most important investment cycle of the past 200 years, capable of ending world poverty and hunger once and for all.

But that's a huge benefit, isn't it?On The discredited agency upholds the biofuel mandate posted 1 year, 3 months ago 11 Responses

Vitality and solidarity

Before we go local, can we please call our African farming friends who are surviving merely because we're eating the chocolate and drinking the coffee and enjoying the cashew nuts they grew for us?

I'm all for localism, but it should be an ideology which is aware of its multiple global consequences.

Localism can only be successful if we first invest in the poor rural masses who are dependent on international agricultural markets.

We should visit the Kenyan farmers who make a living growing baby maize for us, and tell them: look, the system we pulled you into is bankrupt, we are going to destroy it. Not because we don't like you or your baby maize, but because the carbon footprint of your product is too high. But we don't want to push you back into poverty or kill you or anything, so we will teach you and pay you to make a living outside of the baby maize market. Here is a big cheque, and here's a teacher.

If we don't do this, we would basically be green criminals. Localism could be extremely socially disruptive.

We first have to carefully study all the social, environmental, economic and cultural impacts - both direct and indirect - of localist ideas and practises.

On the environmental front, there is no evidence whatsoever that local food - on a complete diet basis - is better (qua emissions) than food that travelled large distances. On the social front, we can safely assume that localism would result in a hecatomb if it is not carefully framed in a program that minimizes its effects on third world farmers. Economically speaking, local food is far more expensive than internationally traded food.

So there's a lot of work left before a transition to local agriculture makes any sense. On Globalization failed, cheap oil is gone, local production is the only way forward posted 1 year, 3 months ago 58 Responses

But OPEC *sells* to the West, doesn't it?

Russ wrote:

This is simply an amen chorus aping the Saudi party line that they could ramp up production to 12, 15, 20, 25mpd at will, but that there's always some Western political factor which renders this unneccessary or imprudent.

First off: OPEC sells oil to the West. Ask George Bush.

Secondly: there are teratonnes of untapped hydrocarbons out there. The point is that not all of them are equally easy to recover. Exploring and  exploiting new oil is more expensive than before and keeps getting more expensive.

This is precisely the reason why OPEC is troubled: the longer they wait with investing in these more difficult resources, the sooner oil prices reach catastrophic levels (because demand keeps growin), prompting a wholesale switch to non-oil mobility.  Once this switch is set in motion, oil prices will drop and decouple themselves from our economies - the legendary inelasticity of oil demand will disappear, and OPEC can no longer hijack the West.

And these low prices will consequently make it impossible to exploit the difficult oil resources - because these need huge investments.

But if they invest today in these difficult reserves, they lose a lot of money, without having the guarantee that anyone will buy the oil, because by the time these new facilities come online - it takes up to 15 years to organise a new flow of oil from well head to new refinery - , the switch to non-oil mobility may already be in full motion.

If you want to call this dynamic Peak Oil, fine with me.

There's no contradiction with what I said. On The WSJ alleges that our use of hybrids increases oil prices posted 1 year, 3 months ago 23 Responses

So what we must do is buy more hybrids

So what we must do in order for OPEC not to invest in new oil output is buy more HEVs, PHEVs, EVs and NEGEVs, and invest in the renewables that can power them.

If we keep giving this signal, OPEC will continue to postpone investments in new capacity; the oil price will keep increasing; prompting an all out rush towards post-oil mobility.

The end result will be the destruction of OPEC and a better, cleaner planet.

With the right policies and consumer behavior, we can bring about this transition faster than OPEC anticipates. Because it is already frightened to death over our current action, which remains fairly prudent.On The WSJ alleges that our use of hybrids increases oil prices posted 1 year, 3 months ago 23 Responses

Time for Hansen's bioenergy

Well, it's time we begin to implement Hansen's 350ppm plan: (1) phasing out coal by switching to biomass, (2) biomass electricity coupled to CCS, (3) soil carbon sequestration via biochar, (4) reforestation and avoided deforestation via biochar.

Now please. Else we will never curb this catastrophic trend.On Jet Propulsion Laboratory has new climate website that shows global sea-level trends posted 1 year, 3 months ago 10 Responses

Jabailo, is that efficient?

Jabailo, do you really think that splitting water in to hydrogen and using that gas in a hyper-costly fuel cell, is efficient?

I don't think so. It costs way too much. And that means we would not be spending money on renewables that work. We better spend that money today, in order to mitigate climate change, because the longer we wait, the less efficient we will be at solving the climate crisis and the costlier it will be.

Energy efficiency, the efficiency of an investment and the efficiency of solving climate change are all intertwined.

It's too easy to say that you have found a highly 'energy efficient' technology, which is however extremely inefficient as an investment, which in turn becomes an inefficient way to tackle climate change.On Energy efficiency, part 4 posted 1 year, 4 months ago 9 Responses

Biochar

Biochar would be a major efficiency improvement in agriculture. Fertilizer use can be reduced substantially while increasing crop yields, because of the improvement of all the major soil functions (nutrient retention and increased CEC, Ph control, improved soil structure, increased activity in soil biology, a steady build up of SOM, etc...); water use would drop because of the improved water-retention capacity of the char amended soils.

Trials by Dr Van Zwieten in Autralia have shown 5 to 10-fold reductions in N2O emissions as a result  of biochar amendments - N2O being a very potent GHG - as well as significant reductions in methane.

See BeyondZeroEmission's interview with Van Zwieten.

In the integrated pyrolysis-and-gasification technology for producing biochar, carbon-negative electricity is produced, actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The technology is low-cost and soon to breakthrough.

On many similar charts as the one produced by TVA, biochar ranks amongst the options with a potential negative CO2 abatement cost, depending on the location, soil type and the nature of the field residues. It also has a very, very large CO2-reduction potential because of its negative emissions. (According to a first assessment, the biochar economy can mitigate all yearly, global emissions, and withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere, taking us steadily back to pre-industrial levels, if need be.)

See Lehmann C. et al. Terrestrial Carbon Sequestration with Biochar: A Preliminary Assessment of its Global Potential, American Geophysical Union, 2007 Fall Meeting.

So CCS coupled to biomass, as a negative emissions energy system, might have a huge potential, but it is simply too costly to be implemented anywhere soon on a large scale. Biochar is much safer, easier to implement, much less costly and has an equally large potential to sequester carbon.

The concept is rather new, though, so it might take a while for it to pop up in the debate.

But I would certainly rank it amongst the most promising of the energy efficiency options, and as an energy efficiency strategy, not merely as a negative emissions energy system; after all, fertilizers, irrigation and farming's use of fossil fuels contribute in a rather large way to wasting energy and to GHG emissions. Biochar offers a tremendous opportunity to make farming far more efficient and sustainable. On There's only one way to get big near-term carbon reductions posted 1 year, 4 months ago 21 Responses

Sadly there's no alternative

It's always sad to see that, when economic reason is used as the guiding light, the big ugly monocropping multinationals win hands down.

There are hundreds of millions of Indian, Chinese and other people from the developing world craving for mobility and a car - the ultimate symbol of economic success and of modernity.

The Tata Nano nightmare.

We can try to convince these hundreds of millions of people not to follow our historic example and our modernity. We could do so by showing the right way forward: use electric cars and mass transit. But then you bump into the economics of these alternatives - and they look very very bad.

So there's very few things we can do:

-a priority for the EU and the US could be to develop a hyper-efficient, ultra-low cost electric car for the developing world; transfer the technology; and then invest billions in a modern electricity grid powered by renewables, in these countries, so that the car actually works. All this while we do the same in our own countries.

This option will cost the tax payer in the EU and the US a lot of money (say 10 to 15% of the average middle class citizen's income. Very few people are willing to spend that much, especially not if the money goes straight to a developing country).

-the alternative is liquid biofuels, used in flex-fuel Tata Nano cars. If we choose this option, we should be investing billions in research into cellulosic biofuels (including FT-fuels), which are at least a tad more sustainable, and share the technology with the South. We are not doing that either.

-still another option is to try to "convince" and "persuade" the hundreds of millions of the fact that our concept of "modernity" (and mobility) is dumb and not worth aiming for. But I suspect that we won't succeed here. Modernity is way too attractive. It's an unstoppable monster that drags all people on the planet towards itself (the only ones escaping are non-existing tribes in the Amazon, and post-modern bourgeois green citizens who live the least efficient lives on the planet).

-so the big ugly monocropping evil GM-pushing megamultinationals have us cornered from all sides. In theory, they are right: there is enough land available to feed either 40 billion people, or to feed and fuel all people and cars by 2050. That's not the problem. The problem is that first generation liquid biofuels are not an efficient technology route, but definitely an economically sound one.

What can we do? Convince Indians and Chinese people not to own cars? Won't work. Invest billions into their renewables that are up to 20 times more expensive than ICE-cars powered with liquid biofuels? No option either.

I'm pessimistic. Economic rationality is cruel, and good intentions are no threat to it.On If we just trust Monsanto and ADM, we can eat and drive to our heart's content posted 1 year, 4 months ago 20 Responses

Thx ngoddard

I've asked the same question about rebound effects several times, but the author doesn't seem to be willing to address it.

And indeed, energy efficiency works both ways, for dirty processes and technologies too. Imagine a much more efficient process for the production of coal-to-liquids... :-) There goes your "core climate solution".

In any case, despite Romm's somewhat fuzzy notes about efficieny and his wegdes, it's quite obvious that there are many ways in which efficiency can play a key role in mitigating climate change, given that few rebound effects really backfire seriously. The Bellona Foundation sees efficiency & lifestyle choices as the biggest wedge in a scenario to reduce emissions by 85% by 2050, giving it a share of 25%; this surpasses carbon-negative bioenergy, which it gives a share of 22%. All other renewables combined represent around 10%.

So Romm's notes can be compared with those of scientists on several points.  On Energy efficiency is the core climate solution, part 2 posted 1 year, 4 months ago 11 Responses

ETS and Kyoto are linked

Jay Alt, the truth is that the ETS and Kyoto are linked.

Many European companies with ETS duties are involved in CDM projects to escape their ETS duty. On Carbon Retirement sees opportunity in European allowances posted 1 year, 4 months ago 8 Responses

Well

I can guarantee you that if you design an affordable electric car that is considerably more efficient than an ICE, it will become a 'backfiring' technology, because tens, possibly hundreds of millions of new consumers will buy it and start using far more energy than they are doing today.

As said before, you have to look at the world as an interconnected, global place. That's why the report looks at 'economy-wide' effects.

Efficiency increases are rapidly transferred to economies in which they can backfire.

I suspect the backfiring effect could be larger than the one the world witnessed after the introduction of the steam engine.

We'll see.

Of course, like Amazingdrx suggests, the backfiring can be a good thing if all these cars are powered by carbon-negative bioenergy. That way, the more you use of it, the more CO2 you remove from the atmosphere... ;-)On Energy efficiency is the core climate solution, part 1 posted 1 year, 4 months ago 21 Responses

So here's an idea

'Social offsets' - offsets that do not punish, but rather help the poor.

You -- you are the vegetarian who has bought 100 percent renewable power for your superefficient home that uses a biomass heating and cooling system to replace natural gas, and you bought a negative emissions vehicle for the family car and you telecommute, but you still want to offset some of your carbon emissions -- you, you help one person who suffers from obesity to achieve a healthier diet.

Obesity is a global pandemic, with more than 1 billion people suffering under it. The numbers keep growing rapidly. There are now more obese people on the planet then there are hungry people. The carbon emissions that go with this life-style and diet are disastrous.

You offset your carbon emissions by paying a team of social workers, psychologists, nutritionists and dietitians who help obese people change their diets away from processed sugar, fat, starch and meat, into one of locally produced veggies, fruits and grains.

It should be possible to roughly calculate the carbon emissions you have avoided this way (you are already a vegan locavore, so you have done the calculation). I'm sure the economics of the 'obesity offsets' look very good too, considering the multiple social, ecological, economic and psychological benefits.

Imagine these benefits:

-Obesity is most often a sign of social injustice; there's a strict correlation between poverty and obesity; so your carbon offsetting trick would help the poor.

-If you choose 'Carbon Retirement', you actually punish the poor, because the EU-ETS makes energy much more costly for consumers; and the poor are the first victims.

-The obesity-offsets would lower the burden put on the health care system.

-The current food system helps destroy extremely biodiverse ecosystems, such as the Amazon and the rainforests of Borneo; your carbon offset would help protect these systems by lowering demand for meat and vegetable oils.

-The meat based diet not only spews CO2 into the atmosphere, it also contributes very heavily with methane and N2O emissions; you would be reducing those too.

-Best of all, you would support local farmers, reduce (transcontinental) food-miles, and create more vegetarians.

What are you waiting for?

David Pimentel's recent paper (see previous comment) provides some good numbers on which to base these obesity carbon-offsets.On Carbon Retirement sees opportunity in European allowances posted 1 year, 4 months ago 8 Responses

Good idea, but I don't trust the EU-ETS

Some of the points made over at Carbon Retirement are certainly valid in that traditional offsetting has had its share of problems.

But I think Joseph Romm is going a bit lightly over the catastrophic failure of the EU-ETS. In fact, the scheme has been the biggest environmental accounting fraud in the history of that word.

Europeans have paid billions upon billions too much for their energy, because of the fraudulent allocations of the first phase. We haven't seen that money back. The companies under the ETS owe me and all other Europeans a lot of money.

And the system is still very much flawed, at the kernel, because it all begins with the national allocation plans and with big lobbies buying over governments.

-Individual EU-member states make up the EU
-Companies lobby their governments
-These governments then write their own allocation plans and let the Commission decide/correct the target
-If the member-state is not in agreement, it either threatens the Commission into obedience (numerous examples of this) or it just grabs tax money and pays the company that threatens the government (see the Arcelor Mittal case in Belgium - the poor Belgians have to pay huge amounts of money to keep the steel maker in their country; Arcelor Mittal threatened to move out if it had to obey the stringent carbon reduction target).
-And so we end up with either too much allowances in the system, once again, in phase 2 this is the case; or tax payers are blackmailed by powerful companies capable of threatening and buying over entire governments.

Worst of all, many companies just buy CERs from the CDM, using the profits to comply with their obligations under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

Now the CDM is just the same like the "traditional offsetting" which CarbonRetirement criticizes.

So who pays? Yes, the European consumer, and not the companies who should be reducing emissions.

Certainly, the EU-ETS is the best of all the bad systems out there. But I would first want to see the results from the second phase, before I would want anybody to 'retire' allowances, of which there are probably too many.  Because if there are, once again, too many, then I am paying for people who use this services.

There are just as much uncertainties over the second phase than over traditional offsetting.

In fact, I trust small NGOs who engage in offsetting projects more than huge multinationals who can buy over entire governments.

In any case, the idea of taking allowances out of the market is very good, in theory. But because of the lobying, the fraud and the arbitrary nature of national allocations, I would wait until the third phase kicks off (from 2013 onwards), and first check the results of the second phase. On Carbon Retirement sees opportunity in European allowances posted 1 year, 4 months ago 8 Responses

Amazingdrx, stop joking

Amazingdrx, can you please stop ridiculing the debate about renewables and stop making a fool of yourself? It's painful to see you at this.

When a forest burns, it combusts, and leaves behind ash, gas and 1 to 2% char. That's the nature of combustion.

Why else do you think the environmental community is so heavily against the burning of tropical rainforests? Why do you think deforestation through burning is such a big contributor to climate change (20% of all global emissions)?

Biochar exactly halts this phenomenon, because it depends not on wild combustion, but on controlled slow pyrolysis, leaving behind 50% char and gases used to replace fossil fuels.

Now please stop the embarrasing exposure of your ignorance. On Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

Amazingdrx, can I help you?

Amazingdrx, first on a good note: you point to a very important fact: standing biomass is in danger of catching fire and of decaying into CO2.

That's why, theoretically, it is not always good to use reforestation as a carbon sink. Because the trees can go up in flames or fall down and rot, becoming CO2 and methane.

It is better to grow biomass, pyrolyse and/or gasify it, decarbonize it, sequester the C, and use the available energy (hydrogen) as a fuel.

Now it is clear that you need some help in understanding carbon-negative bioenergy. Because you like biogas, let's illustrate it with biogas.

Mind you, this is not an optimal route, only for illustrative purposes:

-you know that biogas has a 40 to 30% CO2 content, right? The rest is methane.

-now suppose you were to capture the CO2 so that you only keep pure methane - a 100% methane fuel, made from biomass.

-you capture and sequester the CO2 from the biogas into a geosequestration site.

-so you now have 100% renewable methane to use as fuel, and your carbon has disappeared under the ground.

-you don't have a carbon-negative fuel yet, because you only sequestered 30 to 40% of the fuel as CO2. And when you combust the pure methane, you still release CO2, but this is taken back up by the new crops you have planted. By burning the renewable methane, you displace the CO2 from non-renewable fuels (fossil fuels), so you take that into the balance.

-now if you were to increase the CO2 content of the biogas to 50% or more, and sequester all that CO2, then you come close to a carbon-negative fuel.

Now since methane always contains C, you can not get a strongly carbon-negative fuel.

That's why we only talk about carbon-negative fuels or energy, when the actual fuel used is very hydrogen-rich: either pure hydrogen, as is obtained when biomass is gasified in IGCCs, or biohydrogen made directly via fermentation, or hydrogen-rich syngas that makes up less than 50% of the energy contained in a given biomass feed, with the remainder pyrolysed into C which is then sequestered into soils in a recalcitrant form. An alternative is post-combustion capture of CO2 in traditional biomass fired power plants.

In all these cases, you get a purely carbon-negative fuel (hydrogen) or electricity. And the more you use of it, the more CO2 you remove from the atmosphere.

-Solar, wind, hydro, etc... all add CO2 to the atmosphere over their lifecycle (small amounts in the case of hydro - around 30gKWh; large amounts in the case of solar PV - around 100 to 150 gKWh). Carbon-negative bioenergy can take away up to 1000gKWh. That is: you put a "minus" sign in front of it - "negative emissions".

That's why carbon-negative bioenergy is so radical. It allows you to power societies while at the same time cleaning up the atmosphere.

That's why James Hansen thinks its so important (and he's not an amateur, is he?)

I hope this helps a bit. But if you have more questions, don't hesitate to ask.

As you say: just burning biomass (as would be the case in forest fires) obviously contributes massive amounts of CO2.

Maybe the following short list of papers can help you understand the concept better:

James S. Rhodes and David W. Keith, "Biomass with capture: negative emissions within social and environmental constraints: an editorial comment" [open access], Climatic Change, Volume 87, Numbers 3-4 / April, 2008, page 321-328, doi: 10.1007/s10584-007-9387-4.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/f14824w8v6757nv6/full ...

Peter Read. "Biosphere carbon stock management: addressing the threat of abrupt climate change in the next few decades: an editorial essay", Climatic Change, Volume 87, Numbers 3-4 / April, 2008, page 305-320, doi: 10.1007/s10584-007-9356-y.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/rt798740226381q8/?p=a ...

H. Audus and P. Freund, "Climate Change Mitigation by Biomass Gasificiation Combined with CO2 Capture and Storage", IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme.

http://uregina.ca/ghgt7/PDF/papers/peer/440.pdf

James S. Rhodesa and David W. Keithb, "Engineering economic analysis of biomass IGCC with carbon capture and storage", Biomass and Bioenergy, Volume 29, Issue 6, December 2005, Pages 440-450.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_ ...

Noim Uddin and Leonardo Barreto, "Biomass-fired cogeneration systems with CO2 capture and storage", Renewable Energy, Volume 32, Issue 6, May 2007, Pages 1006-1019, doi:10.1016/j.renene.2006.04.009

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_ ...

Christian Azar, Kristian Lindgren, Eric Larson and Kenneth Möllersten, "Carbon Capture and Storage From Fossil Fuels and Biomass - Costs and Potential Role in Stabilizing the Atmosphere", Climatic Change, Volume 74, Numbers 1-3 / January, 2006, DOI 10.1007/s10584-005-3484-7

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w30h4274h130580u/

Peter Read and Jonathan Lermit, "Bio-Energy with Carbon Storage (BECS): a Sequential Decision Approach to the threat of Abrupt Climate Change", Energy, Volume 30, Issue 14, November 2005, Pages 2654-2671.

http://www.etsap.org/worksh_6_2003/2003P_read.pdf

Stefan Grönkvist, Kenneth Möllersten, Kim Pingoud, "Equal Opportunity for Biomass in Greenhouse Gas Accounting of CO2 Capture and Storage: A Step Towards More Cost-Effective Climate Change Mitigation Regimes", Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Volume 11, Numbers 5-6 / September, 2006, DOI 10.1007/s11027-006-9034-9

http://www.springerlink.com/content/jpq486888v4767q5/On Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

But Amazingdrx...

...Mr Roberts says no to biomass because it's anti-renewable! He and his American friend say only solar-thermal energy stored as steam are renewable.

His entire work is CSP, CSP, CSP only!

Because Mr Roberts loves to refer to Europe, we can tell him that we have shown that thermal storage is not cost-effective!

What now?!On Can the coal industry and an environmental blog find common ground? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 24 Responses

Ron, I'm talking about electric cars

Ron, I'm only talking about using biomass for electric cars, because this is obviously much more efficient than using liquid biofuels. Is anyone still talking about liquid biofuels, really? I thought that debate was over.

All my comments to this post are about biofuels in general, that is, including and most importantly, solid biofuels. On Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

I beg your pardon?

Mr Roberts, where do you get the bizarre idea that I'm anti-renewables? I'm perhaps one of the few rational defenders of renewables.

I'm talking from a European perspective indeed, because over here we have quite a lot of experience with renewables. We have learned that the baseload is the key problem, and that biomass - the renewable par excellence - makes the other renewables viable.

You seem to be making renewables impossible by ignoring their problems. We've learned that this is not the way forward.

We (yes, we in Europe), are of course always willing to share our experience. But it requires an open mind and a willingness to learn. On Can the coal industry and an environmental blog find common ground? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 24 Responses

Baseload is the key question indeed

Non-biomass renewables do have some potential, for sure, but unless cost-effective and efficient energy storage mechanisms are found, they remain a tiny part of the solution.

In Europe, there's now a tendency to look at wind and solar as sources that drive dependency on coal.

That's why the norm has become to state that, without coupling to biomass baseloads, solar and wind cannot be called fully renewable or green.

Luckily, the biomass potential is large enough to replace all coal and gas.

A good proof that it can be done is Germany's Combined Power Plant (Kombi-Kraftwerk), which runs 100% on renewables: biogas provides the baseload, wind and solar add.

Here:

Fully Renewable: the Kombi-Kraftwerk.

It can be done.On Can the coal industry and an environmental blog find common ground? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 24 Responses

Yes Ron, and when do we see your next study?

The fact is, government grants, loans and loan guarantees have played a big role in stimulating the investments in cellulosic ethanol so far.

Yes Ron, and we all appreciate your work on this.

But when will your study on the subsidies for wind and solar appear?

These subsidies and support measures in Europe (and I'm sure in the US too), have been at least as high as those for bioenergy, if not higher.

In Germany, the leading green in the EU, subsidies for wind are 35% higher than those for biomass; subsidies for solar are 100% higher than those for biomass.

When will your report on these subsidies appear?

Why single out biofuels?

I think I must agree with RDMiller: there are fundamentalists out there, who refuse to be tech-neutral. They either have stocks in solar companies, or they are being paid by the oil industry to do everything to boycott biomass, knowing that biofuels are the biggest threat to oil.

Seriously, the selective rage against biofuels sometimes looks pathological.

-I expect a study on the subsidies for wind and solar, as compared to those for biomass

-I expect a study on the sustainability of wind and solar, including the social sustainability and the indirect social costs of mining key minerals (which would point to the 5 million dead people in Congo, which have fallen for these industries - but this is kept under the carpet, perhaps because these are mere French-speaking black people.)

-I expect a full study showing how the reliance on wind has been pushing up coal use because wind doesn't provide baseloads (there are small studies about this, I now demand a full study, including one covering China, where this link would be very apparent)

That would be most welcome.On Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

Greyfalcon: still don't understand the basics?

Jonas,
Would you please quit assuming that

   1. CCS is viable
   2. Carbon fixation for meaningful periods of times MUST involve burning the carbon you're trying to keep from entering the atmosphere.
   3. That there's even enough biomass to go around
   4. That most biofuels reduce emissions at all, once you factor in their land use change "carbon debt", and N2O emissions.

Greyfalcon, not to be annoying, but from what you write, you show, once again, that you have not understood the basics of carbon-negative bioenergy.

I've been with you over this several times. I'm not going to do the effort again. Please check the earlier comments in which I try to explain the kernel of the concept to you.

Carbon negative bioenergy comes in many forms. Combustion is the single least useful one - and in fact, in many carbon-negative energy concepts, it can't be used at all, because it would precisely ruin the carbon capture option. So clearly, you haven't grasped what we are talking about.

There are many other bioconversion forms.

Google for: "bioconversion".

As far as N2O emissions are concerned: biochar has been shown to lower N2O emissions by 5 to 10 fold in Australian highly weathered oxisols. That's why its being increasingly recognized as a key to sustainable agriculture.

All carbon-negative biofuels obviously take CO2 out of the atmosphere, else they wouldn't be called that way. No biggie, I think. If you (as in CCCS) sequester 50% of the C of a biomass feedstock, and use the other half to replace fossil fuels, you obviously go negative. In CCS you can use entirely decarbonized fuels and sequester all the C, that is 100%.

Solar, wind, hydro etc... all remain carbon positive. They add CO2 to the atmosphere.

The advantage of CCCS is that not only the 'carbon debt' is cancelled out, it also cancels out the carbon debt of non-energy farming.

But anyways, it seems like the concept remains too complex for you, because you still assume, entirely wrongly, that combustion is the core of carbon-negative energy, while the exact opposite is true.On Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

And there is plenty of land too

Seems like some people do not really follow the debate or studies about biofuels.

There's a big new synthesis report out. You can find it over at IEA Bioenergy Task 40 (Copernicus Institute authors, reports used by the very FAO for its new framework on food and bioenergy, etc.).

The problem (for Mr Fromm and others) is that it is rather optimistic.

But then, these are scientists. They try to be objective. They're not bloggers.

IEA Bioenergy Task 40.

June 2008
Biomass Assessment: Assessment of global biomass potentials and their links to food, water, biodiversity, energy demand and economy - Main Report [2.653 KB]
Authors: Veronika Dornburg, André Faaij, Hans Langeveld, Gerrie van de Ven, Flip Wester, Herman van Keulen, Kees van Diepen, Jan Ros, Detlef van Vuuren, Gert Jan van den Born , Mark van Oorschot, Fleur Smout, Harry Aiking, Marc Londo, Hamid Mozaffarian, Koen Smekens, Marieke Meeusen, Martin Banse, Erik Lysen, Sander van Egmond. Study performed by Copernicus Institute - Utrecht University, MNP, LEI, WUR-PPS, ECN, IVM and the Utrecht Centre for Energy Research, within the framework of the Netherlands Research Programme on Scientific Assessment and Policy Analysis for Climate Change. Reportno: WAB 500102012, January 2008. Pp. 85 + Appendices.

Biomass Assessment: Assessment of global biomass potentials and their links to food, water, biodiversity, energy demand and economy - Supporting Document. [11.086 KB]
Authors: Veronika Dornburg, André Faaij, Hans Langeveld, Gerrie van de Ven, Flip Wester, Herman van Keulen, Kees van Diepen, Jan Ros, Detlef van Vuuren, Gert Jan van den Born , Mark van Oorschot, Fleur Smout, Harry Aiking, Marc Londo, Hamid Mozaffarian, Koen Smekens, Marieke Meeusen, Martin Banse, Erik Lysen, Sander van Egmond, , Study performed by Copernicus Institute - Utrecht University, MNP, LEI, WUR-PPS, ECN, IVM and the Utrecht Centre for Energy Research, within the framework of the Netherlands Research Programme on Scientific Assessment and Policy Analysis for Climate Change. Reportno: WAB 500102014, January 2008. Pp. 202.On Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

Biofuels are the single biggest wedge

Strange how opinions can differ.

Let's look at two rather authoritative sources:

1. James Hansen.

2. For those who know the debate in Europe, let's look at the wedges presented in the Bellona Foundation's most recent report on mitigating climate change.
   

James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, David Beerling, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Mark Pagani, Maureen Raymo, Dana L. Royer, James C. Zachos, "Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?", March 2008.
========

Now let's look at the Bellona Foundation, which aims for an 80% reduction of carbon emissions by 2050.

The Bellona Foundation, so far, is the only organisation taking bio-CCS and bio-CCCS into account. Thus it can be easily considered to be the most up to date on the technologies.

These are its wedges (roughly sketched, more details in the link):

1. Carbon-negative biofuels: 22%
   
2. All other renewables combined: 10%
   
3. CCS: 10%
   
4. Land use change: 8%

========

Obviously, biofuels are "the" most important technology to mitigate climate change.

There is basically no discussion about this, is there? The numbers speak for themselves: biofuels are the single biggest wedge of the future.  (+100tonCO2/GWh versus -1000tonCO2/GWh... add Hansen...).

But apparently, the news still has to cross the pond. If there's anything else we can help our American friends with, let us know!On Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

Ron and Rynn, some objectivity please

Please also include the Wageningen University report.

It is the most authoritative to date on rising food prices, written by researchers from the world's most authoritative agricultural science organisation. And it is also the least ideologically burdened (let's not forget that the World Bank does have a well known agenda, as have the other organisations that have produced similar reports.)

But apparently nobody cares about objectivity and scientific rigor any longer in this dead end debate.

It makes me wonder why Gristmill does jump on this World Bank report but hasn't mentioned Wageningen's once?

@Ron, since the report isn't public, anyone can write whatever he wants about its context (namely that it was written for the World Bank, one of the world's most problematic and dangerous institutions, with a horrible track record in development history.)

So if you do the post, please include the Wageningen study.

Here's the widely distributed press release (even though none of right wing media used it, only some left-wing blogs like my own):

Several factors influence world food prices
A complex of factors underlies the current, high food prices. The effects of speculation around food crops should not be overestimated nor should the influence of biofuels on world food prices. In time, food prices will again decline. These are some of the recent and most important conclusions in an economic analysis of the development in world food prices from experts at Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands.

Wageningen UR asked a number of experts to contribute to the national and international discussion by offering analysis from different perspectives. A first memorandum on the analysis of the recent price increases has already been presented.

Influence on price formation
The long-term trend of world food prices is declining. This is happening because, among other things, technological developments are pushing up the production per hectare and that, in turn, is pushing the prices down, researchers argue. Now and then brief peaks occur in food prices. It seems that the current wave of price surges is such a peak. The current peaks in the prices are lower than the peak in the food prices in the 1970s, which was the result of the oil crisis. Of course, the trend can change, but the expectation is that the response to the current, high prices will again cause a decline.

The effects of speculative investments in food crops should not be overestimated. On the one hand, they can lead to a quick increase in prices. However, on the other hand, if a decrease in prices starts, the same investments will lead to a quick fall in prices.
A large number of factors influence the current price development:

• Poor harvests have caused low wheat and barley yields in Australia, the Ukraine and Europe. The stores of these grains are running out, and the current barley and wheat prices are high.
  
• High maize yields led to a world-wide increase of the total grain harvest in 2007. Because of this, maize prices remained relatively low. Only very recently have increases in maize prices been detected.
  
• High energy prices lead to high costs for artificial fertilizers and fuel, among other things. Higher transport costs lead to price effects for transport over long distances.
  
• Argentine, Kazakhstan, India, Vietnam and Egypt have levied export taxes to protect their own food supply. This has pushed up prices on the world market.
  
• The production limitations for food products in the EU have pushed up prices.
  
• In the past, the low prices for food production were not an incentive to invest in technology that increased production.
  
• The demand in Europe and North America is stable, but the demand is growing in Asian countries as a result of income developments and changes in diet.
  
• The demand for agricultural products for the production of biofuels has a small effect:
  

-- Only 5 per cent of the oilseeds goes to biodiesel or directly to the transport sector;
-- 4.5 per cent of the grain production is used for ethanol.
Although this is a marginal demand, it still has an influence on the development of prices on the world market because the supply of food products on the world market is relatively small. At the same time, the increasing prices cause a decreasing demand from the biofuel sector because biofuel production is increasingly unprofitable.

Price pressure
In the opinion of the Wageningen UR experts, a number of developments will appear in response to the high prices. These developments will, most likely, cause a downward push.

• The high prices will lead to the use of agricultural land that is currently not in production. Huge potential exists particularly in Brazil and Russia. In other countries, production will be intensified, and this will lead to a decrease in prices.
  
• Because of the high prices, investments in R & D and technology will again become profitable.
  
• To dampen price instability, strategic stocks are indispensable.
  
• The influence of the biofuel directives on the development of world food prices is relative and depends on the technological developments around the production of biobased commodities. The investments in second generation biobased production are important because the production of second generation biobased products does not use the direct food product but the whole plant.

The development of the oil price is significant in predicting the demand from the biofuel sector. In the current price relation between oil and biofuels, biofuels are not profitable. With this price relation, the volume of the biofuel market will be limited to the commitments in the biofuel directive. With a relatively high oil price, biofuels can become competitive: the food and fuel markets will then be further integrated and the food prices will be determined, to a greater extent, by the oil price.

Unpredictable movements in food prices can still provide problems in the future. With high prices, the consequences in terms of hunger or malnutrition especially in poor areas will surface, and with low prices, the consequence for poor farmers will be large. In poorer areas of the world, the expenditure for food makes up, on average, about 50 per cent of an individual's disposable income. As such, price increases in these regions have dramatic effects. This percentage climbs to 65 per cent if the food prices rise by 30 per cent. In the wealthy lands, these effects, on the other hand, will be limited to 1 to 2 per cent of an individual's income.

Apart from this, the researchers state in their report that the hunger issue is, however, only partially attributable to the demand for biofuels and is much more attributable to bad policy and the poor performance of the markets.

And the actual report:

Why are current world food prices so high?

Authors: M. Banse, P. Nowicki, H. van Meijl
Den Haag, LEI, 2008, Rapport 2008-040; ISBN

Reason must rule.On Economist says biofuels have pushed up global food prices by 75 percent posted 1 year, 4 months ago 37 Responses

Why don't we stick to science?

So far, there has been only non-ideologically burdened assessment of the contribution of biofuels. The report was produced by the Wageningen University (the world's leading agricultural economics institution).

It concluded that the contribution of biofuels has been "marginal". No overall percentage, because the picture is rather complex.

But "marginal" is a pretty straightforward word.

Wageningen UR: biofuels not to blame for high food prices; decline in world food prices to continue -
June 17, 2008

I don't trust either the left or the right on this.

-The left says: "resisting biofuels is like commiting a crime against the world's poor".

-The right says: "producing biofuels is a crime against humanity".

It's not a good debate.On Economist says biofuels have pushed up global food prices by 75 percent posted 1 year, 4 months ago 37 Responses

But eating healthy food is environmentally smart

Wolverine, the point is that eating healthy food is more environmentally friendly than eating the poison one gets served in America: fat, sugar and meat. Now fat, sugar and meat are all pretty environmentally problematic.

About localism: the question is whether you are willing to survive on a diet solely composed of nuts, beets and potatos, when you're living in some Northeastern U.S. state. I think most Americans are not willing to do this. They will want to have fresh vegetables and fruits at all times. And this obviously means food will be traded and transported over long distances.

Our best bet is to mix efficient localism (the potential of which is limited), and to science-up agriculture in other places so that it becomes more sustainable. Use wind and biofuels to transport the food.

In any case, Wolverine, I just don't believe in your call urging us all to become cave-men again. As I have told you earlier, there are not enough caves for your scheme. You go ahead, though, find a cave with a good internet connection, so we can keep in touch.On Sen. Grassley: Screw conservation, let's grow more corn! posted 1 year, 4 months ago 33 Responses

Demographic transition first please

First things first, please. Organic agriculture holds the future by force: when potash reserves have been depleted (within 150 to 200 years) and nitrogenous fertilizers become excessively expensive, we can only go organic.

But going organic will be difficult as long as global population levels stay high.

In Europe, the U.S. and Japan, the demographic transition to low fertility rates has happened because of a modernisation process based on the abundance of cheap food and energy.

So we now need to continue to make as much cheap food available, to make this transition in other regions, most notably in Africa and South Asia. Cheap food implies the good old industrial farming  style we're accustomed to.

If we succeed, we can stabilize global population levels at 9 billion by 2050. From 2075 onwards we can hope to see a gradual decline.

It is from this moment onwards that we can begin to take organic farming seriously. Not earlier.

Obviously, this will all happen in phases, with wealthy bourgeois niches of people without children and lots of money to spend, buying organic food first. This niche will then spread as  other classes become wealthier and less fertile.

But the great challenges can be found in developing countries. It is here that we must help make the demographic transition succeed. We must in fact aim to speed it up by growing cheap food the old 'Green Revolution'-style way. On How the organic movement can regain its relevance posted 1 year, 4 months ago 24 Responses

GrameenPhone founder backs biomass stirling

Iqbal Quadir, the founder of GrameenPhone, which revolutionised communications in developing countries, has created a company called Emergence BioEnergy which will use Infinia's stirling engine for micro-CHP amongst farmers in poor countries.

The stirling can be powered by a high range of biomass sources, from biogas to syngas.

Infinia partnership with Emergence Bioenergy.

They will use Grameen-type distribution models to reach millions of people. Since biomass is so widely available and dirt-cheap, this is probably the winner amongst small-scale energy systems.

(Provides reliable baseload, overall systems efficiency is very high because CHP, and the entire concept can even be turned carbon-negative, when the feedstock is gasified and a high char fraction sequestered in soils which get more fertile as a consequence.)

Others names investing in Infinia's stirling micro-engines coupled to biomass are Paul Allen, Vinod Khosla and Bill Gross.

I can imagine poor farmers in the poorest countries 'leapfrogging' us: they generate heat and power more efficiently than us, in a decentralised, offgrid manner, grow biomass to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, use gasification/slow pyrolysis to char it and sequester it in soils, receiving carbon money for doing so, and boosting crop yields...

It all seems to be coming together nicely.On Development in waste-heat-to-electricity technology posted 1 year, 5 months ago 11 Responses

Very few people depend on American corn

Where do people, even editors at Gristmill, get their strange ideas from?

The reality is that "global food market" is very small. There are no "billions of people" depending on it. A few hundred thousand are.

95% of all produced rice is consumed locally. 85% of all produced maize (corn) and wheat is consumed locally.

Please, common, if you are writing about this type of sensitive topics, at least get the bottom basics right. You're making yourselves look like fools here really.On As corn and soy fields drown in rainwater, the food crisis deepens posted 1 year, 5 months ago 19 Responses

Cool

Let's recap Hansen's points.

According to him, we need to invest in the following four things:

1. an end to coal without CCS
   
2. reforestation/afforestation in the tropics
   
3. biochar (agrichar, terra preta) and soil carbon sequestration; a transition from slash-and-burn to slash-and-char
   
4. biomass coupled to CCS

Wolverine, what is "more natural"?

Wolverine, it depends a bit on what you understand as 'simplified' and 'more natural' lives.

For example, the internet has simplified my life, I can enjoy online banking and buy stuff online. But the backbone is a highly complex technology.  Simplification does not always mean more efficiency or it doesn't mean that what's simple on the surface is so on the backbone.

Take the 'cradle-to-cradle' design paradigm. It can take on extremely refined, smart and highly complex forms, but it is certainly more sustainable than the simplified tricks of the current petrochemical industry.

Simplicity should not equal an aversion to science or technology or to progress.

Likewise, "more natural" can mean anything. What does it mean to you? To me it can mean making use of nature in very smart ways - but to make use of nature's resources in any case. There is no 'pristine' nature anywhere (terra preta would show this nicely: large tracts of the 'pristine' Amazon rainforest are actually man-made). Nature has been denaturalised long ago. The result of a new smart reliance on nature could be very different from the quite natural lifestyle we live today. It could, on the contrary, be very un-natural and highly complex. Nobody knows.

There's an interesting philosopher in Europe (Slavoj Zizek) who has some lectures on why we need to "denaturalise" ourselves in order to live sustainably and to "save the environment" (which actually means "saving the human race", because nature doesn't give a damn about what we do; we don't have to protect nature, we have to protect ourselves).

His ideas go against most of what you will hear basal environmentalists say.

The calls for a move 'back to nature' and for 'reterritorialisations' of all kinds ('re-localisation', 'autarky', 're-gression') are very dangerous. There's no escape from globalisation and deterritorialisation, we must just use it to our advantage (like Deleuze would say: in order to beat deterritorialisations, you have to deterritorialise even more and faster...). It might be much smarter to jump forward and alienate ourselves far more from nature, because that would allow us to develop hyper-technologies that make the human race much more performant in its environmental caretakership.

Check it out:

Slavoj Žižek - Ecology: A New Opium for the Masses (1/10) (starts at minute 9.30, plz skip the boring Lacanian woman at the start; or start with part II).

Note, for those who don't know Zizek: he hisses a bit and is hyper-neurotic (being a psychoanalist), but aside from this, he's currently probably Europe's most influential thinker. A Lacanian neo-stalinist. On A look back at James Hansen's seminal testimony on climate, part one posted 1 year, 5 months ago 9 Responses

A good resource

A good resource to track worldwide and daily energy protests is:

Energyshortage.org.

102 regions and territories are seeing energy protests today.

They range from Nepalese farmers who can't ship food to market, with urban hunger as a consequence, to students in Cameroon getting killed during protests over their energy bills.

Pretty scary.

And then there's the indirect effects. High oil prices are causing famine and hunger for 100 million new people, potentially.

Maybe the doomers are right after all: Peak Oil will wreak serious havoc.On Protests erupt worldwide over fuel prices posted 1 year, 5 months ago 25 Responses

Good initiative

America's brightest scientists, as well as more than 35 Nobel prize winners, are currently working on biofuels. From Steve Chu to Craig Venter - you name them.

It's good to point to some of the problems with first-generation simpleton non-fuels. Nobody is saying they are the fuels we need to invest in.

But it would be rather silly to throw first generation fuels on the same heap as second, third and fourth generation fuels.

That would be like saying that 1950s solar panels which were 3% efficient are the same as modern CSP plants.

None of the Nobel prizes is "wrong" about biofuels or has to "admit a mistake" about their work, because they're only beginning to work on biofuels.

Biofuels are most obviously the only bet we have to avoid economic and social breakdown on a planetary scale. There is no alternative.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't be critical about current practises.  But it also means we have to be patient and let the brilliant minds do their work.

The students, who seem to be the real biofools (as in: they don't know much about biology), must simply be more nuanced. Yes, first-gen fuels encounter some minor problems; fourth-gen fuels will encounter fewer problems. Give it some time.On ASUW student body transcends State and Federal legislators posted 1 year, 5 months ago 14 Responses

Good, but by no means good enough

Good of you to have it right on the wrong goal.

The target is 350ppm, not 450ppm.On I've got the 450-ppm solution about right posted 1 year, 5 months ago 3 Responses

Subsidies pay themselves back

The only renewable energy technology currently capable of surviving without subsidies is biomass.

But no matter where you get the money from needed to finance the subsidies for other, less commercially viable renewables, giving credits or feed-in tariffs really results in a boost to the industry which pays itself back very rapidly.

The German government just recently renewed subsidies for renewables (low amount needed for biomass, higher for wind, very high for solar), but this time was already capable of putting a phase-out mechanism into it.

Meanwhile, the huge number of jobs this sector has created has already paid back the subsidies of the past (more than 400,000 green jobs today; extrapolate this to the U.S. and you'd have 1.6 million new jobs...). The R&D in renewables has made big progress in Germany (see REpower or biogas), and foreign investments have received a boost.

Subsidies, if clearly tied to a mechanism for their re-evaluation and phase-out, do make sense here. On Renewables industry fears for future if Senate doesn't extend tax credits posted 1 year, 5 months ago 2 Responses

Seriously, though

Why don't the critics put their money where their mouth is?

Get together with some friends, create a fund to protect the Amazon, and buy a plot of rainforest.

You will have to pay around $100,000 to $200,000 per acre.

The Brazilian people and government will welcome you.

Let's not forget that the fact that you are now a 'green sensitive' person is merely the result of the fact that you deforested Europe and the US centuries ago for your own development.

If you don't want poorer nations to develop along the same pathway, then offer them the funds to avoid it.

Good luck. On Say goodbye to the lungs of the earth posted 1 year, 5 months ago 11 Responses

Chirac says capitalism is bankrupt

For your information: Europe was shocked yesterday when Jacques Chirac - the notoriously blue neoliberal capitalist - inaugurated the launch of the 'Chirac Foundation', which focuses on preserving biodiversity and cultural diversity.

In his opening speech the old man said that capitalism has been the greatest catastrophy ever brought about by mankind. He urged people to look at other cultures and their economic systems, which allow for a far more sustainable economy.

Back to the gift economy? Potlatch anyone? :-)On Gus Speth chats about his new book and increasingly radical green views posted 1 year, 5 months ago 28 Responses

Wind and solar power have killed millions

Q. Recent studies have suggested that devoting American land to growing biofuels instead of food is causing massive deforestation in carbon rich tropical forests. How can switchgrass and cellulosic ethanol be viable if it's just causing food to be grown in these highly sensitive ecosystems thousands of miles away

What?

I mean this scandalous piece of junk science is like saying that the metals used to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels, have led to the death of 5.5 million Congolese who got caught up in a natural resource conflict of unprecedented proportions.

It's absurd.

Let's stick to what we can prove, please.On U.S. Senate candidate Scott Kleeb and the clean energy roundup posted 1 year, 5 months ago 2 Responses

The good thing about fuel subsidies, though

Fuel subsidies have an immediate impact in the market, keeping prices for all types of goods (e.g. food) and services low(er).

If you phase this out and allow the government to keep the money to instead invest in poverty alleviation or health care or other social services, you make a detour via the government. This means money gets wasted, because government programs are less efficient, and, in developing countries, money sticks onto corrupt bureaucratic hands.

The fuel pomp and the kerosine vendor are two points where consumers have direct access to subsidies. Government programs are not that transparent.
On Five nations agree to think about ending oil subsidies posted 1 year, 5 months ago 16 Responses

Wolverine, put your money where your mouth is

So you actually know better what to do with the Amazon than Lula, who is confronted with this complex issue on a daily basis.

Why don't you put your money where your mouth is?

Get together with some friends and buy up a piece of rainforest.

Here's the cost you are looking at:

-you will have to compensate the Brazilians for refraining from modernity
-you will have to compensate them for mobility and for the very large economic benefits brought about by roads and access to markets
-you will have to pay them because modernity - which you are denying them - leads to social justice and progress
-you will have to pay for social, health, and educational policies from which they have to refrain
-you will have to compensate for reduced international and geopolitical power (because Brazil's agriculture makes it very powerful on the world stage)
-etc...

So you are looking at a bill of perhaps $100,000 to $200,000 per hectare of rainforest.

In return you get a plot that contains many valuable ecosystem services and that shows an amazing biodiversity.

If you're lucky you will find a cure for cancer somewhere deep in your patch of rainforest, and you'll get your money back instantly.

You willing to put up the money?

Go ahead, I'm sure the Brazilian government will welcome you.On Vermont-sized area of Amazon may be protected posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

For lack of intellectuals

Look, Matt Damon is a symbol for Americans. Since the U.S. has no culture of public intellectuals who move debates, it has to rely on movie stars to set examples. It's a highly primitive communication technique, but it is not necessarily ineffective.

On substance: electric cars are they way forward for wealthy parts of the West, because we can hook them up to 'negative emissions electricity' (that is: carbon-negative bioenergy). This way, you can drive a car and remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

Obviously this is only a concept, and electric cars offer no real advantages as long as the energy mix is dominated by fossil fuel sources. But at least, these cars signal what could be possible (negative emissions instead of zero emissions).

The challenge now is to reduce costs fifty-fold so we can sell $2000 electric cars to developing countries.

Damon should go to India, China, Brazil, Africa and other developing regions to show off EVs.

Because after all, it is in the developing world that the climate fight will be lost or won. 75% of all new energy consumption will come from these countries; 75% in the growth of mobility infrastructures and vehicles sales will occur in the Global South.

In short, Matt Damon, go South. Go make some impact!On Oceans of love for the Tesla-driving Matt Damon posted 1 year, 5 months ago 11 Responses

Wolverine, on action and discourse

Wolverine, again, I am merely referring to the discourse on climate change. It is the top issue in social and political debates over here.

As you rightly point out, action is something totally different. So my reference to Europe wasn't intended at all as a way to show off, because we don't have much to show off.

The point merely illustrates what I was trying to say: the climate debate has been reigning politics and social discussions for over 10 years now. This has allowed climate skeptics and vested interests to launch a 'war' against those who call for action on global warming, and who say the world will cease to exist if we don't act now.

In short, sometimes I feel that if we were to put climate change in a larger perspective on international policies and priorities, this would demine some of the minefields laid out by the climate skeptics. If you relativize the urgency of action on climate change, then you might get more people on board.

I'm a bit 'Lomborgian' on this. We have to put more emphasis on solving problems that can be tackled with limited means, resulting in huge benefits to humanity. Allowing climate change to dominate the international agenda could be counter-productive and it could even get many ordinary citizens turning away from the issue altogether. On Bizarre talking points of WaPo columnist Krauthammer posted 1 year, 6 months ago 18 Responses

Mmm, there is a global warming church

Not to credit Krauthammer or to criticize Romm (who's a physicist), but you can't deny that there is a bit of a global warming "church", in the sense that this topic has been pushed to the number one spot of global discourses on development, economics and ecology.

It can be argued that fitghing climate change should not be the priority of humanity, because there are many far more urgent matters that give us far more value for our buck.

Some (like Lomborg) go so far as to say that out of a long list of priorities, the climate fight ranks at the very bottom. Bringing energy to people (in the form of food and fuels), nutrition, and fighting diseases like aids and malaria are far, far more urgent. And far, far more efficient as a way to better the biggest number of lives.

So there should at least be room for a debate about priorities.

Then perhaps we don't have to deal with people like Krauthammer, and you will even find today's climate skeptics ready to concede that it is a problem that needs our attention, but that needs to be seen in perspective.

I just feel that by pushing each conversation into the direction of this relatively low priority, is pretty damaging.

This is not to say climate change isn't important; it's only saying that spending money on mitigating it is probably very inefficient compared with other causes we can use this money for.On Bizarre talking points of WaPo columnist Krauthammer posted 1 year, 6 months ago 18 Responses

Clean coal is ok, but there's better

Geosequestration is cool and certainly necessary, but if it were up to Craig Venter, we'll soon have a synthetic bacterium that turns CO2 into fuels.

He says it will take less than 2 years to develop it.

He jokingly added: the limiting factor for this bacterium's expansion is the availability of CO2...
On Obama & Clinton shill for coal in Montana posted 1 year, 6 months ago 3 Responses

Brihannala: palm oil eradicates poverty

Brihannala, I think you are reducing reality to a bit of anti-palm oil propaganda. There are countless palm production models, not simply these two. And the big ones you're referring to bring very important social and public services, access to markets and modernity.

In West and Central Africa, virtually all palm oil is produced by entirely independent small holders.  But these small holders actually make more money when they are so lucky to be able to participate in outgrower schemes for large companies. That's why, when such a company arrives in West Africa, the local farmers rejoice, because their incomes improve instantly and a whole range of key infrastructures comes along.

But even in the two models you refer to for Indonesia and Malaysia, smallholders are making more money than in any other agricultural sector (aside from benefiting from the crucial development infrastructures which bring health, education, mobility, etc...). Which explains why there are so many people taking up palm oil farming, indepentently, but preferrably as outgrowers.

Moreover, the palm oil sector as a whole has been the key driver of Malaysia's economy, contributing more than any other economic sector except oil and gas. So on the macro-economic scale, palm oil has helped the society there as a whole.

Maybe an interesting perspective:

Palm oil boycott an unrealistic approach to conserving biodiversity
Rhett Butler, mongabay.com
April 15, 2008

Boycotting palm oil produced in Southeast Asia in an "unrealistic" and "ineffective" approach to conserving the region's fast-disappearing rainforests, said a Princeton University researcher speaking at a conference on the sustainability of palm oil. Instead, NGOs should focus on engaging and working with the palm oil industry to reduce its impact on the environment.

Addressing the first International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, Princeton biologist Dr. David S. Wilcove said that the palm oil industry is too important to the economies of Indonesia and Malaysia to justify blanket import bans on the edible oil used in food, cosmetics, industrial products, and biodiesel. The palm oil industry contributes to health, education, and infrastructure in rural areas.

"In the context of its tremendous economic importance, it must be recognized that the notion of boycotting palm oil is impractical and unrealistic. It is simply not an approach that will work."

While the economic gains from palm oil are substantial, Wilcove said they come at the expense of biological diversity. Still Wilcove was hopeful that increasing awareness of environmental issues among oil palm producers and innovative partnerships could reduce the worst outcomes for biodiversity in the region. He said that small measures to increase species richness could have unintended benefits for palm planters, although such measures would not be sufficient to prevent the loss of many species.

Mongabay.

The rest of the article shows on how to possibly go about.

Palm oil is just too important economically and socially.

Just imagine Malaysians or Indonesians calling for a boycott of American or European goods key to their economies, just like that, an entire sector.  It's outright paternalistic.

I refuse to be a green imperialist. Sorry, I'm with the people from the developing world here. On New website shows which shampoos, foods kill lovable primates posted 1 year, 6 months ago 25 Responses

Canis, which "best minds" exactly?

Sure, you're right about that, but I don't agree with your feeling that the 'best minds' amongst us actually present concrete, socially sustainable alternatives. Scientists tend to disagree (the really brilliant scientists, that is).

Think of it, you have to relocate people, build a brick wall around the forest, invest in highly efficient agriculture and cities... else there is no way to protect these forests.

I don't buy the utopian ideas about idyllic agroforestry schemes now being pushed by the brilliant minds you seem to be referring to. The people on the ground reject them en masse.

You have to be able to offer them at least as much as they can make by being palm oil farmers, an activity that is a guarantee for staying out of poverty permanently.

And real brilliant minds (those who publish in such journals as Nature and Science) have said that your best minds have it all wrong.

Conservationists should become palm oil farmers themselves, according to scientists in Nature: Cashing in palm oil for conservation

These scientists, as several others, have said that this type of anti-palm oil campaigns is actually pretty dumb, anti-productive and could result in social misery on a very large scale.

The people of "the problem with palm oil" don't seem to have clue about the complex development issues surrounding this economic sector.

The same is true for proposals to protect rainforests by valueing their carbon content. Such  top-down schemes like "avoided deforestation" (AD) or REDD literally threaten to destroy entire communities. And these communities are already resisting these Euro-American schemes, coming from some abstract outside entity, managed by some corrupt state.

People will only except realistic alternative livelihoods that offer them just as much wealth as they can derive from palm oil farming.

I'm a realist, and I get angry when the worst best minds out there want to protect Urang Otans at the expense of human beings.On New website shows which shampoos, foods kill lovable primates posted 1 year, 6 months ago 25 Responses

Wolverine and waste

Wolverine, do you mean "waste" as in "bagasse", the waste-stream from sugarcane processing?On Swedish company will vend verified sustainable ethanol posted 1 year, 6 months ago 9 Responses

Sugarcane grows 1000 miles South of the Amazon

Let's quickly dispell the myth which says that sugarcane destroys the Amazon. Cane grows 1000 miles South of it. (Check the report published by WWF-Brasil two days ago, in which it dispells these dangerous myths.)

But on substance: the global potential for sugarcane ethanol is quite large. Several hundred million hectares in Africa, Latin America and the Indian subcontinent are available.

Knowing that by 2050, explicitly sustainably produced bioenergy can yield around 1500Ej of energy (which is 6 times the total amount of all oil consumed today), and knowing that sugarcane can be grown on approximately 25% of the landbase deemed suitable under this scenario, we can assume that there is enough potential to replace all oil with sugarcane ethanol.

Of course, this only works when one doesn't deny the existence of a continent like Africa, which some people seem to be willing to do.

According to Brazilian experts, Brazil alone can replace all worldwide gasoline consumption, without cutting a tree.

Luis Cortez, Vice-Coordinator on a project for the expansion of ethanol production in Brazil and a professor at the State University of Campinas:
Brazilian biofuels can meet world's total gasoline needs - expert.

There's still a lot of education to be done about bioenergy. And also about geography (like teaching people of the existence of a strange continent called Africa.)On Swedish company will vend verified sustainable ethanol posted 1 year, 6 months ago 9 Responses

Subsidies

@ Ron Steenblik: I am against all subsidies for agriculture, except in developing countries where they make sense to kickstart improvements in input and output markets. (The case of Malawi's fertilizer and seed vouchers for small farmers would nicely demonstrate why subsidies make sense there.)

I am not against subsidies for certain new technologies (like cellulosic ethanol or solar concentrated power), provided there's clear provisions for their phase-out after certain objectives have been achieved.

The case about the subsidies for American grassland farming is similar to the case of European Union farm subsidies, in that they are both very old and obsolete, showing the stubbornness of subsidies. The EU's farm subsidies date back from the post-WWII era, when food insecurity was a real problem in Europe. Ten years later (1960s) they should have been abandoned because Europe became a food exporter. Today, they still exist, make up the bulk of the EU budget, cost us €40 billion a year. They benefit wealthy farmers only, and keep poor third world farmers out of the market.

Luckily, with record grain prices (partly due to biofuels), they are being phased out.

In its latest health check, the Commission suggests a 15% cut in direct payments by 2013 (or thereabouts).

So if reason doesn't do the trick, irrational market movements can often cause a revolution.

The rising grain prices are creating a large shift in contemporary agriculture: rich farmers in the West spend heaps on improving their technologies (just read that precision farming is now seeing a boom because farmers have plenty to spend); subsidies are being phased out; and massive investments are flowing into third world agriculture, where farmers are already benefiting slightly from the increased prices.

On substance I agree that subsidies in agriculture no longer make sense for producers that already make huge profits; the instrument should only be used to protect weak farmers, to combat food insecurity, and to protect access to certain strategic resources (such as mineral fertilizers). On Lost amid the crop-subsidy battle, a new biofuel regime posted 1 year, 6 months ago 18 Responses

The tariff on ethanol is retained

Which makes me wonder why the Farm Bill prolonged the tariff on imported ethanol.

It's pretty sad, because American consumers could have enjoyed the opportunity of driving on sugarcane ethanol which costs a third of corn ethanol, which is highly sustainable, and which is 5 to 8 times more efficient on a seed-to-tank basis (even after export).

Why don't American citizens protest?

(Sorry about my multiple posts, I should have put them in one answer; but he farm bill is pretty large on biofuels, bioenergy and biomass.)On Lost amid the crop-subsidy battle, a new biofuel regime posted 1 year, 6 months ago 18 Responses

Luckily it's only about the movie

Thank God it's only about the movie and not on substance.

Wind is probably not going to make up a significant part of our energy future. Which is sad because this movie looks really good!On Wind energy ad wins Cannes award posted 1 year, 6 months ago 9 Responses

The world is a very large place

Ron Steenblik, I'm not sure whether you realise that the world is a very large place, with many different economies and infrastructures.

Some people 'split up' the world into two socio-geographical zones: the highly developed world, and the developing world.

(This is probably the reason why you subconsciously use the word 'split' - because subconsciously you are aware of the world's social geography).

So I ask you, what is so bizarre about argueing in favor of (1) liquid biofuels in the underdeveloped world, where people can afford cars that cost $2000, and (2) arguing in favor of more optimal uses of biomass in the highly developed world, where economies can afford these infrastructures because the existing ones needed for such a concept are already in place, and because you people's purchasing power is a tad higher.

One - two. One - two.

One: Tata Nano Flex Fuels for the Congo
Two: EV's plugged into carbon-negative bio-electricity in Brussels.

One - two.

I've been over this with you in the past. I seem to recall that you could agree then that it doesn't make sense to build a bio-hydrogen infrastructure in Central Africa, but that you can begin to think of one in the Low Countries.

In some senses, yes, one's personality should be split in order to understand the world a bit better. I suggest you try it!On Lost amid the crop-subsidy battle, a new biofuel regime posted 1 year, 6 months ago 18 Responses

Baseload, peakload and energy storage

If you look at this from a practical point of view, one shouldn't underestimate the problem of solar's lack of base- and peak-load capacity.

Molten sands are certainly interesting for energy storage but haven't been proven on a commercial scale.

So unless a viable energy storage technology becomes available, such large solar plants remain dependent on fossil fuels for their baseloads and peakloads (or biomass).

That's why its often difficult to compare these technologies from a practical point of view.

One should look at how big a solar plant's minimal baseload/peakload requirement is (that is, its minimal reliance on coal, gas or biomass), add this to the equation, and then compare with pure coal, which does always deliver base and peakloads.

Leaving this crucial context out of the equation, it does seem like solar-thermal plants like the one mentioned are quite efficient when it comes to the amount of space they take up. But is this really even an argument?

It seems to me that stored energy sources (coal, oil, gas, biomass) have many other advantages that make them so attractive: they can be physically moved and traded. Solar power cannot. Can't ship concentrated solar power from one continent to another. You're stuck in a rather inflexible local context. But then that's probably the context many of us want to move to: one of more locally rooted energy self-reliance, instead of energy interdependence.On Nevada Solar one is a better and smaller neighbor than a coal mine posted 1 year, 6 months ago 80 Responses

Mmm, dubious

Isn't it a bit dubious to hear wealthy people living in monocultural landscapes the destruction of which made them wealthy, dictate the world's poor on how to value ecosystem services, landscapes and cultures - things for which there is no market?

What if these people want to do what we do, that is: have enough to eat, drive cars, and become wealthier through capitalism, just like we've done for over 200 years (a good part of which on their backs, as colonizers)?

Aren't the undertones of this report - a report that is clearly directed at nations that still have a lot of 'pristine' ecosystems left - a bit dubious?

"Poor people should do what wealthy people didn't succeed in doing, i.e. protect the environment and its ecosystem services.

What these poor people should especially not do is become wealthy monocultural farmers who can compete on a global market currently dominated by the US and Europe."

Sometimes discourses about "sustainable development" can become a new form of imperialism or simply economic protectionism.

This is the feeling I got when reading the BBC-debate about development versus conservation in the Amazon (I think you can still participate, here: Can the Amazon be exploited without being destroyed?). The Europeans taking part in this discussion were all projecting their feelings on Brazilians and were blaming them for not doing enough. The Brazilians of course responded by telling the Europeans that they have more than 80% of their original forest cover left, while Europe has less than 10% left.

Upon which they said: if you're so fond of "sustainable" development, the preservation of cultures and the protection of the Amazon, then pay for it or create a market for it. If you don't, we'll just do as you did: we will develop the routine way.

I understand the growing frustration of many people in the South. They are tired of being the eternal object on which Europeans can project their desires. They are tired of hearing they should especially not follow European lifestyles and economic models, but remain forever exotic cultures trapped in their beautiful, valuable landscapes which we Euros want to preserve.On Agriculture produces more than just crops -- and it's time for policy to reflect that posted 1 year, 6 months ago 6 Responses

Speculative reason is not science

Let's just start with the two articles in Science. Neither the Fargione et al. nor the Searchinger et al. articles concluded that "all biofuels have a big carbon debt."

I said the media concluded this. And many blogs. Scientists have tried to respond to the irresponsible conclusions based on these controversial articles.

What they concluded was that the biofuels they examined could have a big carbon debt -- a finding with which I had thought (up until now) you would agree with.

It's not difficult to agree with this because it is stating the obvious. The question is: is it relevant to the debate? The answer is a square no, because the vast bulk of biofuels is produced on low-carbon land, and actually may even act like carbon sinks. Sugarcane would be the example. The crop alone (not the ethanol made from it) as it is currently planted on several million hectares in Brazil, actually stores more carbon in its roots than the ecosystems on which sugarcane "could" be planted.

It's like saying you "could" grow potatos in Greenland to make biofuels. But it would be irrelevant to the debate, because these potatos would obviously not make for very efficient ethanol.

I'm a realist looking for solutions. Not a speculator paralysed by baseless fear or by an agenda that is putting many people at risk.

Another example. We already knew that you "can" destroy peatlands for palm oil and pump GHGs into the atmosphere if you do so. But do we need outspoken anti-biofuels advocates to create an image based on this basic knowledge, so that they can falsely conclude that all palm oil grows on peatland? No, we don't. But that's what's happened.

I can guarantee you that if you ask 100 people in The Netherlands where the vast bulk of palm oil plantations can be found, 99 of them will say: on the peatlands in Borneo. While in fact only a tiny fraction can be found there, in that highly specific ecosystem.

So clearly, there's a lot of propaganda going on, that could push millions of people into poverty in  South Eas Asia and Africa. If the Dutch give a blank "no" to palm oil, they are causing a hecatombe.

In short, I agree with speculative conclusions like "you can grow potatos in Greenland". But I simply think they should not dominate the debate, when they are irrelevant to it.

Second,you have clearly missed their point, especially in the article by Searchinger et al., which was that the distinction between direct and indirect land-use effects is largely irrelevant: biofuels have an effect on land conversion through pressure on prices.

Again, nobody denies this. But the point is irrelevant.

The authors represent speculative thinking that cannot be expressed in scientific terms. It has some value as a vague warning, but not as a basis for a science-based debate.

Again, they either stated the obvious (biofuels induce land use change; humans breathe) or they stated the impregnable.

Nobody can empirically pinpoint the extent of the land-use changes induced by the price pressures resulting from changes in biofuel output.

There are so many factors at play, that it is too simplistic to point at biofuels as the leading factor of, e.g., the recent increase in deforestation rates in the Amazon - the context in which their article was clearly placed.

Their point is as weak as saying that the metals used in wind turbines 'may' have caused 5 million deaths in Congo, where these metals are mined and resulted in a resource conflict (even though the metals used in wind turbines are also mined in many other countries).

With the same speculative mindset as that of Searchinger and Fargione, I can prove that biofuels have saved tens of millions of lives of people who would otherwise have succumbed to hunger. (In fact, this counterintuitive idea is even easier to prove than what Searchinger et al did, because Goldman-Sachs recently did so - biofuels in the U.S. have helped combat poverty by pushing down the cost of liquid fuels by up to 15%).

We have seen that most strongly in the market for vegetable oils. Already, around half of the EU's rapeseed crop is used for the production of biodiesel, and in the U.S., increased planting of corn (largely at the expense of soybeans) in the 2006/07 season, combined with increased use of soybeans for biodiesel in the USA, has helped in the doubling of the price of all vegetable oils over the last two years, and an expansion of soybean area in Latin America and palm oil in south-east Asia -- some on previously forested land.

Exactly, and the assessments as to the price effects of these changes in biofuel output range widely.

That's the point. Let's take corn. Some analysts say corn ethanol has contributed only 2% to the increased in world corn prices, others put the number as high as 30%.

The EU says it devotes less than 1.5% of its acreage to biofuels, which is why they can never explain the huge increases in food prices.

Finally, yes the Argonne scientists have posted a critique. But according to one of the authors of the Searchinger et al. article (with whom I have been in correspondence), after Searchinger provided Science with a rebuttal of their points, Science decided not to publish the Argonne letter, as they thought it did not meet their standards for publication.

Well, the four other letters that did debunk Searchinger were published in Science. Enough said.

In conclusion, I have nothing against those who try to caution for potential future risks with biofuels.

But it is time we also start to write about the major benefits (like saving the planet from social collapse as a result of skyhigh oil prices; the fact that they can save the world's last remaining rainforests by combating the climatic changes that could turn these forests into deserts; the fact biofuels can alleviate poverty in the rural third world on an unprecedented scale; the fact that high food prices, partly caused by biofuels, are already making the world's poor, 75% of who are farmers, jubilant; etc...).

I feel the one-sidedness in the debate is not very productive. There is a true "war" on biofuels and I don't really like the weapons used. To paraphrase Fargione and Searchinger: these weapons "could" be killing a lot of innocent people in the future, especially the poor. On Wall Street Journal editorial mischaracterizes both my position and biofuels posted 1 year, 6 months ago 15 Responses

What a waste

Seems like Terra Preta and biochar are the answer here. Terra Preta soils are the most fertile in the world. They can be replicated today by biochar. Biochar has shown extreme efficiency in nutrient retention, increased CEC, and much more efficient use of mineral fertilizers.

Why don't the Brazilians look back at the smart techniques of the ancient Amazonians? Biochar could slash fertilizer consumption and open an era of sustainable tropical agriculture.

The economics seem to go in favor of Terra Preta more and more as ag inputs get more expensive and GHG emissions from deforestation and agriculture become a bigger and bigger worry.

With biochar you can both sequester C and slash fertilizer use. The thousand year old human-made black soils in the Amazon, which are still exceptionally fertile today, show the way.On South America's industrial-ag powerhouse eyes rainforest potash deposits posted 1 year, 6 months ago 2 Responses

It's just a metaphor, Archigeek

Archigeek, over here in Europe, it's very fashionable to call for a return to Stalinism.

Our most hip continental philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, continuously interjects his lectures with references to Stalinism. Marx is bourgeois and mainstream coopted literature, Lenin is for contratian capitalist Wall-Street bankers, so we have only Stalin left to make a point.

I just follow the latest fashion.On Coming to terms with the reality of a world of refugees posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses

Greyfalcon, we've been over this many times

Greyfalcon, we've been over this many times. It surprises me that you still don't grasp the basics, which, we've explained to you several times here and at other forums.

But we'll answer your question, just once again.

Reason requires patience.

If we're trying to biosequester carbon.
Why must it involve combustion?

Can't we perhaps grow long-lived plants, and then just leave them alone.

No, that would be a rather bad and inefficient idea for a few very basic reasons.

1. trees only sequester carbon once during their growth stage. At maturity they remain carbon-neutral at best, or they become carbon emitters.

2. it's much smarter to use the woody biomass for a purpose that serves humans. Use it as a building material. Or much better still: use land to grow these same trees, short coppice them and use them as an energy source; you cut them down, use their biomass instead of fossil fuels and sequester the C permanently. Then you repeat this process continuously.

3. This is obviously a much more efficient use of land. It allows you to sequester a much larger amount of C/CO2.

4. you also considerably reduce the risk of wildfires, one of the very large GHG-sources.

The hysterics at it again

Lol, everyone wants to have something to say about biofuels. As long as it's done in a totally hysteric way.

Proposed biofuel crops are almost never invasive species.

And this type of reports generalises continuously. It takes a very narrow look at a few species suggested for use in the U.S., then extrapolates and says the world is at risk. It's been the same with virtually all studies critical of biofuels - they've seldom made a point because they were unscientific and quickly compiled to get a headline out.

The vast bulk of biofuels that will be produced between now and 2050 will be based on totally native species: sugarcane in sugarcaneland, eucalyptus in eucalyptusland, acacia in acacialand, sweet super sorghum in sweetsupersorghumland, etc...

But okay, the war against biofuels must continue. And the the anti-social conservative conservationists are pulling all possible strings.

Luckily the scare mongering doesn't work any longer. Just as with the food price issue. Today we know that biofuels' contribution has been extremely marginal. But the hysteria was excessive.

I almost read nothing anymore against biofuels when it comes from anti-social sources. Because, in the words of Lula, these sources are committing "crimes against humanity" by destroying the economies of the poor.

Lula: Discarding biofuel would be 'crime against humanity': Lula.On Biofuel-bound grasses are often invasive species posted 1 year, 6 months ago 8 Responses

Urban myths and the new bourgeoisie

I find this kind of urban myths about peak everything very obscene. In them one can read a desire for decadence, resulting from the fact that ordinary suburban life has become boring to opulent people. This type of people has nothing to live for, nothing to survive for. So they want some action, and they project it into a vision of a grim future.

Go tell the 4 billion people in the developing world about this depressing, luxurious game of thinking about cataclysms. They will rightly kick you out - because these people know what survival really means, and they are modernists with a vision of progress, not bored post-modernist twits from Europe or America.

Most of the 'peak' stories and eco-hysteria is groundless and purely the result of opulence, intellectual laziness and the dissipation of any life strength in the late modern bourgeoisie.

The billions of people who are living a survivalist lifestyle out of necessity, would be shocked to hear some in the wealthy West fantasizing about emulating their instincts just because it's fashionable or because it's a way to get rid of boredom.

We need a new form of Stalinism and Optimism to crush these crazy spoiled Euro-Americans who celebrate macabre fantasies of 'mass die-off' and decay. I'm sure the people of the South will bring us this new bright vision on the world.

I've been thinking a lot lately of leaving that dead, sick, pessimistic, bourgeois chunk of culture called Europe. Nowadays, life can only be found in the Global South.On Coming to terms with the reality of a world of refugees posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses

Saline aquifers, depleted fields

Nearly all carbon sequestrion projects and proposed projects have the sequestered carbon being used to help enhance oil and gas field production.

That's like saying all wind turbines have been built and will be built near coal mines to provide power for digging up more coal. That's simply not true, only a few wind parks provide electricity for coal mining operations.

But besides that, it's also a dumb suggestion, since the hundreds of coal plants on this planet are all far away from oil and gas reservoirs, which constitute only a fraction of the much larger number of potential geosequestration sites.

Of the currently working CCS projects, none is used for enhanced oil or gas recovery.

Ironically, the only full-scale project that has years worth of CCS experience, uses... a saline aquifer.On Wind power: a core climate solution posted 1 year, 6 months ago 36 Responses

Amazingdrx, wow, what a ramble!

Amazingdrx, do you even read what you write?

[Wind] It provides GHG free baseload power.

You're wrong twice in one short sentence:

1. wind does not provide baseload and peakload power, unless you have a storage medium. And you don't. Show me one wind farm that offers baseloads.

2. Wind emits between 30 and 50 tons of CO2eq per GWh of electricity over its lifecycle.

It is cost competitive with coal

No it is not - stop fantasizing - and most certainly not in the US, where coal is much cheaper than in the EU.

In the EU, the difference is as follows (bigger in the US): cost €/MWh:

-coal, pulverized fuel with flue gas desulphurization: €30 - 40
-coal, circulating fluidized bed combustion: €35 - 45
-IGCC: €40 - 50

-wind, offshore: €50 to 170
-wind, onshore: €40 to 110

In practise, wind is most often twice as costly as coal. In the U.S. the difference is even larger.

The only renewable capable of competing with coal, is biomass:

-biomass, circulating fluidized bed: €25 - 80

Check the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan for the numbers.

So get your numbers straight, and stop pulling them out of thin air. You're doing those who take wind power seriously a disservice.

CCS has never worked.  Projects have been abandoned.

What are you babbling about? One project after the other is coming online.

In Norway, in France, in Germany in Algeria, in Australia. All these countries have either fully-fledged working CCS-projects or demonstration projects.

-CCS in deep saline aquifers has been implemented full-scale at Norway's Sleipner field for many years now

-full-scale CCS in Algeria's In-Salah field has been up and runnig too

The development of carbon capture technologies is making breakthrough after breakthrough, each month, driving costs down with big leaps.

Clearly, you don't know what you're talking about, not even knowing Sleipner, In-Salah or the projects coming online.

Biochar increases GHG.

What are you babbling about? If applied on a global scale, biochar, with its ability to withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere and its ability to slash methane and N2O emissions drastically, is "perhaps large enough to mitigate climate change alone".

Currently, the atmospheric C levels are increasing by about 4.1 Gt/yr, with 7.2 Gt/yr being put into the atmosphere by fossil fuel combustion and cement production, and 3.1 Gt/yr being removed from the atmosphere by the ocean (2.2 Gt/yr) and terrestrial processes (0.9 Gt/yr). The uptake by terrestrial processes can be increased significantly by management of the 60.6 Gt/yr of biomass C that is fixed by photosynthesis (i.e., net primary productivity), of which 59 Gt/yr is decomposed and 1.6 Gt/yr combusted. Biomass pyrolysis converts about 50% of the biomass C to char. Of the other 50% that is converted to bio-oil and bio-gas, the net energy production is about 62% efficient. Thus, pyrolysis of 1 Gt of biomass C would provide energy equivalent to about 0.3 Gt of fossil C and could be used to offset that amount of fossil C, while sequestering 0.5 Gt as biochar. Of the 60.6 Gt/yr of biomass that is fixed in usable form, we estimate that perhaps 10% of it (6.1 Gt/yr) could become available in one form or another (crop and forestry residues, and animal waste) for pyrolysis. This level of pyrolysis would offset 1.8 Gt/yr of fossil C, and sequester 3.0 Gt/yr as biochar, enough to halt the increase and actually decrease the level of atmospheric C by 0.7 Gt/yr. Even at half this level (i.e., 5% of annually fixed biomass), pyrolysis would be sufficient to decrease the global C cycle imbalance by 2.4 Gt/yr and in combination with other sequestration options help to achieve the minimum goal of C neutrality. Clearly, the potential contribution of biochar technology is large, perhaps large enough to mitigate climate change alone.

American Geophysical Union report.

Or read James Hansen.

But you don't even know what biochar is, do you? You have read a paper about a bag of humus in a Swedish boreal forest, the last place where you would ever think of creating biochar soils. That would be like placing wind turbines in an underground parking lot.

Energy conservation (efficiency, Hansen got that right) is least expensive

Least expensive to do what? To generate (or avoid using) energy? Or to offset emissions?

Please at least learn to formulate a basic question, before trying to answering it.

In his 350ppm texts, Hansen does not talk about efficiency. You haven't even read Hansen.

wind is next, solar furnace thermal cogeneration is next, solar PV/heat cogeneration, then farm and waste stream biogas.  In that order of cost.

Least expensive to do what? To generate energy? Or to offset emissions?

Please at least learn to formulate a basic question, before trying to answering it.

When it comes to power generation costs, you are a total fantasist. The order is (cost per MWh):

-biomass (by far the least expensive, and able to compete with coal): €25-80 per MWh
-large hydropower: €25-90
-pulverized coal with desulphurization: €30-40
-natural gas:combined cycle gas turbine: €35-45
-coal, circulating fluidized bed: €35-45
-onshore wind: €35-110
-light water reactor: €40-45
-coal, IGCC: €40-50
-natural gas: open cycle gas turbine: €45-70
-small hydropower (smaller than 10MW): €45-90
-onshore wind: €50-170
-diesel engine: €70-80
-photovoltaic: €140-430

Please do check the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan for the numbers.

So you're not even close and have everything mixed up.

CCS doesn't work with coal, so how is it supposed to work with biomass?

Why do you assume CCS won't work? It is working today in numerous projects, and there is no reason to assume that some of the world's leading scientists are wrong.

Even if there's some leakage, when applied to biogenic CO2, there's no addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, because the original CO2 is biogenic.

But I think you simply do not understand the basics.

None of the renewable energy technologies (except biomass with CCS) can withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere.

Photovoltaic adds a whopping 110 g CO2eq per kWh; wind adds 30 g CO2eq per kWh; even nuclear adds 15 g CO2eq per kWh.

So none of the renewables, nor nuclear, have any substantial role to play in a 350ppm scenario. Only technologies capable of withdrawing atmospheric CO2 can.

That's logical wouldn't you say? Once you start talking about a 350ppm scenario, you must look at carbon-negative technologies, since we're currently at 387ppm.

So you don't want to add technologies that add more carbon dioxide (i.e. wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, coal, oil, gas, solar-thermal, wave, etc...).

So no matter the cost of CCS, its true value can be found in its capacity to implement technologies capable of withdrawing CO2 from the atmosphere.

I'm sure you understand now.

Sequestration of carbon needs to happen in carbon sinks, like a living soil ecosystem.  With biomass returned to the soil, not burned as a fuel.  Combustion is the enemy.

Again, you show that you don't have even the most basic grasp of chemistry or physics.

In order to return biomass to soils or to prevent its C from becoming CO2, you need to make it (quasi) inert.

That is: you either use it as a building material, hoping it lasts for centuries.

Or you char it and thus make it sequestrable for millennia. If you choose the char option, it would be unwise not to make use of the gases (via combustion) that are released during this process.

Again, you are elegant at demonstrating your ignorance with every line you write. Just returning biomass to soils where it oxidises into CO2, N2O and CH4 is stupid, and a mere carbon-neutral strategy.

We are talking about carbon-negative strategies - a concept which is perhaps still too difficult for you to understand.

I admit elemental cycles (carbon, nitrogen, methane) can be complex and the chemistry of bioconversion can be so too. Still, it's all rather basic science.

Solid oxide fuel cells extract 50% of the energy from biogas directly and another 20% or more can be recovered from waste heat.

That is irrelevant in the debate on how to sequester carbon.

You are referring to an alternative to combustion.

Whether you use offgases from biochar production in an ICE, a fuel cell or a gas turbine, is only of secondary importance. The key is making biomass inert, ready to be sequestered.

Evidently being a climate expert does not necessarily make one an authority on green technology.

Well, Hansen surely knows a tiny bit more about green energy technologies than you do. There's ample, ample empirical proof of this now! ;-)

I noticed Hansen mentions non-CO2 GHG as imortant.  he seems to have skipped nitrous oxide (296x GHG effect as CO2) from chemical fertilizer and manure run off though.  It's a huge factor in climate change.

Since you obviously haven't read Hansen, let me help you.

Biochar reduces N2O emissions by a factor of 5 to 10.

Check the talk with Dr Van Zwieten at Beyondzeroemissions, people who are rather knowledgeable about carbon-negative energy (alternatively, check the papers on N2O reduction via biochar).

You didn't know. Now you do.

Amazingdrx, just a word between us: it would be nice of you to actually do some basic reading before you pull things out of your thumb. It's so much more interesting to engage in a debate then. Much of the studies and references can be found online, nowadays. So they're only a click away. You can do it.On Wind power: a core climate solution posted 1 year, 6 months ago 36 Responses

Can the dollar weaken forever?

The OPEC chief added his own prediction: $200 per barrel 'soon', thereafter, we don't know, but things don't look good.

OPEC claims the main cause is speculation, fueled by the weak dollar.

Suppose they're right, then the simple question to ask is whether the dollar will remain forever weak and keep growing weaker.

The dollar has been falling against the Euro since 2002 - non-stop. Today, it is a virtually worthless piece of paper, worth half of what it used to be worth.

It seems like there are many factors that will keep this trend going, as America's structural economic fundamentals are quite weak. No new president can change these fundamentals - they have become the essence of the American economic system (spend more than you are worth; become the essential incarnation of the concept of debt).

So unless OPEC decides to switch from dollars to Euros, the speculative factor which is pushing up oil prices is not likely to go away anywhere soon.

Add real economy pressures (rapidly growing demand in Asia, some peak oil amongst important producers), and we do have a problem.On What we don't know (but think we do) about oil prices might hurt us posted 1 year, 6 months ago 6 Responses

No scarcity

Saskatchewan alone can supply enough potash for several hundred years.

Potash reserves are large enough to feed the 9 billion people at which level we max out in 2075, and to grow biomass to replace all fossil fuels for the centuries to come.

There's really no potash scarcity whatsoever.

There is however a serious lack of investment in new production capacity. 85% of the world's capacity is more than 25 years old.

According to the USGS the oligopoly of producers has succeeded in driving prices higher by producing less (1.1 million tonnes less) - they can fool around like OPEC.

However, the potash boom is creating new entrants, from exotic places. Two new large projects (1.2 million tons) are coming online in the Republic of Congo and Thailand.

In any case, there's no scarcity, the reserves are plentiful.

There's a lack of capacity. That's all. On One big corpration dominates the soon-to-be-prized potash market posted 1 year, 6 months ago 7 Responses

Economist addressing his wife

2.00am. The cost-benefit economist addresses his wife in bed: you there, object X, my spending 30 Kilojoules of energy on you tonight has led to a loss of 2 working hours tomorrow, worth $600. Forget about us going out to that fancy restaurant this Friday.

Cost-benefit economists suck!On Lisa Heinzerling responds to Richard Revesz on cost-benefit analysis posted 1 year, 6 months ago 38 Responses

We're doing well

This just in today:

World carbon dioxide levels highest for 650,000 years, says US report

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to the latest figures, renewing fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control.

Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14ppm - the fourth year in the last six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm.

The Guardian.

1. a moratorium on coal without CCS
   
2. biomass + CCS
   
3. reforestation/avoided deforestation
   
4. biochar

Owning land

Ron, another example would be that of Brazil inviting the Indian government to "buy and own" farmland for sugarcane in Brazil. This is a privilege agreed to on a bilateral basis (at last year's IBSA summit).

But even a government "buying" land in another country never becomes the true owner of this land, unless that's formally agreed upon (but no country  in the world would simply hand over territorial sovereignty to another government).

If I'm not mistaken, the only country in the world where a legal entity or an individual can actually own land, in the true sense of the word, is the USA.

In all other countries, the State or the Crown owns the land.

--

On another and purely informative note, it will be interesting to see whether these Chinese government-owned companies who are buying up land in Congo for palm oil plantations, will actually monitor and honor the Chinese government's own law against tropical deforestation for plantations.

I remembered this from Mongabay:

In a surprising move, China has developed guidelines for the establishment of sustainable forest plantations abroad by Chinese firms, according to the International Tropical Timber Organization's (ITTO) April 1 Tropical Timber Market Report. The move comes as China faces increasing criticism from environmental groups for pillaging the world's forests to feed its rapidly growing economy.

The State Forestry Administration will soon begin the process of selecting companies to implement the guidelines, which include bans on illegal logging and clearing of natural forests for plantations, on a "trial basis," according to ITTO.

The guidelines are significant as China plays an increasingly important role in resource extraction in forests around the world. Chinese firms are aggressively investing in oil palm plantations in Indonesia and logging operations throughout Asia and Africa.

Mongabay.

But about the land in Brazil

The original Grist article mentions something like "unfortunately much of that land is located in the Amazon".

That's not true. 120 million hectares of unused pasture, located far away from the Amazon, is available.

We should be more honest when talking about Brazil's case.

We are obsessed with the Amazon, and rightly so, but it clearly clouds our view on reality.

Just like the Congo: the DRC has 100 million hectares of explicit non-forest land available for agriculture.

But everyone who dares to venture there to grow a maize plant, will be accused by some mindbogglingly obsessive green organisation from Europe. Even if you grow your maize 1000 kilometers South of the nearest rainforest tree.

So let's be a bit more objective on this. It can only strentghen the case of those who really want a realistic solution to the threats posed against the remaining rainforests.

If we're not careful, we receive the cynicism of a man like Maggi, whose only purpose was to laugh at Euro-American conservationists, in an obscene way. On More hidden costs of our love affair with cheap imported goods posted 1 year, 6 months ago 27 Responses

Uganda, here we come! Conservation cruelty

Here: forcing people out of their forests, with machine guns, so the imperialist bourgeois of the West can get their 'conservation' area.

Green cruelty.

I have nothing against this green imperialism, as long as it doesn't destroy the natives.

Batwa face uncertain future
By Thomas Fessy
One Planet, BBC World Service

Just after dawn, as the fog slowly leaves the slopes of the Muhabura volcano, some Batwa people make their way to the neighbouring farms hoping to get a job for the day.

The Nyarusisa community is landless. Families are squatting on other people's land or live in shabby camps with no sanitation.

The Muhabura volcano is one of the three inactive volcanoes that make the south-west Ugandan border with Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Right next to the Mgahinga National Park's boundaries, the slopes of these mountains are intensively cultivated and settled by dominant Bufumbira and Hutu people.

Nearly two decades ago, the Batwa lived in the mountain forest of Mgahinga as well as in the deep forest of Bwindi, called the Impenetrable Forest.

In these two places, where a small area of forest is surrounded by large numbers of poor rural farmers trying to scrape by and live off the land, conservation is a tricky issue.

"It is a question of trying to balance the protection of the forest with the needs of the local communities," says Alastair McNeilage, from the Wildlife Conservation Society, who works at Bwindi.

When the area was divided into three forest reserves - Mgahinga, Echuya and Bwindi - in the early 1930s, the Batwa stayed where they had been living for generations.

However, when the Ugandan government decided to reinforce the protection of the mountain gorilla habitat, the Batwa were moved from their lands to make way for national parks.

They have become conservation refugees. Anthropologist Chris Sandbrook explains that in the early days of conservation "local people were excluded from protected areas and kept out with some kind of law enforcement, which has been called fortress conservation".

Up on a hill, between the Echuya forest and the Bwindi Park, community leader Sembagare Francis recalls: "One day, we were in the [our] forest when we saw people coming with machine guns and they told us to get out of the forest. We were very scared so we started to run not knowing where to go and some of us disappeared. They either died or went somewhere we didn't know. As a result of the eviction, everybody is now scattered."

Conservationists, back then, saw local communities as a major threat to wildlife. John Makombo from the Uganda Wildlife Authority says that they aimed to achieve "sustainable conservation".

"Originally, when the Batwa were living in the forest they were hunting down all the fauna and that was eradicating almost all the animals: the gorillas were in danger, the chimps were in danger," Mr Makombo said.

"So, it was not wise to leave [the Batwa] inside the forest. I think it was better to manage them when they are outside the forest."

Conservation outcasts

It seems that the Batwa have suffered more than other people from the creation of the parks because they were the people whose livelihoods were most closely related to the forest.

Even now, they tend to be the poorest and most marginalised people who have fewer opportunities to benefit from tourism and other development programmes that have come along with the parks.

They live in unsanitary housing conditions, typically mud huts where the rain comes through.

According to the United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU), most are unable to invest in permanent structures as they fear being removed by the owner of the land on which they are squatting.

UOBDU co-ordinator Penninah Zaninka says that the government "should really think of resettling the Batwa and give them better shelters so that they could benefit from development projects that the government is doing for other citizens of Uganda".

The government seems to have handed over its responsibility to the few organisations and church groups looking at the plight of the Batwa people.

Minister of State for Tourism Serapio Rukundo told the BBC that it is for "their future that the government told them to leave the forest". [Sounds like the typical colonialist: I enslave you for your own freedom.]

He added: "The question is also: what is the quality of life you would like the Batwa to live? And what rights are you going to guarantee for the animals?"

However, the quality of life of the Batwa does not seem to be taken into account by conservation programmes.

UWA's John Makombo defended their approach: "Their conditions of living are not our responsibility. Questions of poverty are not our responsibility."

Eroding culture

Targeted worldwide by the many tribes evicted from protected areas, big conservation NGOs have now made it clear that they do not support the creation of protected areas that displace indigenous people.

WWF International director general James Leape says mistakes have been made in the past.

"I think that we have, over the last 20 years, learnt case after case that it's a mistake to see conservation and development as opposed to each other.

"It's clear that we will only be successful in conservation if it works for local communities." [yea, yea, Greenpeace, the criminal organisation, tries to red-wash itself, as always]

Nevertheless, hardly any of the staff working for the parks is from the Batwa communities.

"They don't give us a chance to work for the park, when they select people they forget the Batwa," a member of the Batwa community said.

The Batwa also complain that they cannot access the forest to practice their traditional culture. Most of them fear the park rangers.

"They told us that if anybody goes in the forest to carry out any activities they would be killed," says Bernard, an elder.

"We have all our traditional equipment here like things to help us collect honey, bows and arrows for hunting - but we haven't taught our children.

"Even if we wanted to teach them, we can't in this community as we would need to practice in the forest. I'm really not happy that our children cannot learn our culture."

While their forest-based culture is eroded, the United Nations passed a declaration at the end of last year on the rights of indigenous peoples. It says they cannot be forcibly removed from their lands or territories.

Margaret Lokawua, board member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, says the Batwa have a case for compensation but it will take some time.

"The Batwa can use this declaration to defend their case and I think they will win; the government will give them a piece of land," she explained.

"But looking at the governments that we have in Africa, it takes time. Meanwhile the Batwa will continue to be squatters on other people's land."

There may be some hope, but this declaration is non-binding and Uganda was absent when it was adopted.

You can listen to One Planet, or download it as a podcast, by visiting the BBC World Service's One Planet website

BBC.

This is going on across Africa, SEAsia and Latin America.

The newest trend is for billionaires from Europe and the US to buy up entire forests, and kick out the millions of people who depend on these forests.

I find this cruelty more perverse than that of the traditional colonialist. Because a traditional colonialist always faced physical danger when kicking out the natives. So he had to take real risks. There have been many succesful resistance movements against the colonialists' terror.

Today's green imperialist, however, just needs to push a button on his computer and leaves it up to the black and the yellow and the brown locals to kick out their fellow natives.

Then the billionaire cashes in his carbon credits, and gives a round of champagne.

We need a new breed of Stalinists or Maoists to expose this green terrorism.On Unprecedented land conservation deal posted 1 year, 6 months ago 4 Responses

Horses

By the way: you mention horses.

Sometimes I don't understand what all the fuzz about biofuels is about.

In the past, we fed huge amounts of biofuels to horses. I once read that up to a quarter of all agricultural output went to feeding inefficient traction animals (both for use in agriculture and for transport).

Only today, internal combustion engines and the processing of biomass into biofuels is far more efficient than feeding horses. Or electric cars powered by 90% efficient cogeneration biomass plants are also more efficient than these poor animals.

The Congolese go hungry, not because they don't have enough room to grow food, but because they don't have trucks (horses) and fuels with which to import basic inputs for farming and with which to bring their products to local markets. On Goldman says oil 'likely' to hit $150-$200 by 2010 posted 1 year, 6 months ago 58 Responses

Ron, it is palm oil from the tree, not the pot

Ron, the case in question is the Equator Province of the DRC.

Palm oil production there is artisanal. Only 30% ends up on "formal markets"; another 30% is used locally; and 30% is considered spoiled, because of the highly inefficient processing technique (manual press above a fire).

It is this spoiled fraction, which is now being used by the Centre de Développement Intégral Bwamanda.

CDI Bwamanda is an integral development project dating back to early post-colonial times. It now is a "state within the state", with hundreds of thousands of farmers in the Province as members of the cooperatives, the well organised agricultural initiatives and the mutualité (not sure how you call this in English, but it's a kind of collectively organised health care system).

The people living under CDI Bwamanda are the only ones in Congo to have come out of the most deadly war since WWII, which raged there for 10 years. They did so in part because this is the only functioning region in the entire Congo.

As you may recall, the founder of CDI Bwamanda, Leonard Van Baelen, was called one of Time Magazine's men of the year in 2003, because of this project. His organisation really knows what it's doing; it knows how to organise social and economic justice. Part of that is using palm oil for development.

CDI Bwamanda now uses filtered palm oil, waste from the many farmers who harvest and process it, in diesel engines. So it is not waste cooking oil.

They fully acknowledge that they don't want to turn this into an industry, and that the palm oil is only used because hyper-high oil prices are problematic.

However, they see the planting of palm oil trees as a great option to prevent the encroachment of the savannah. And they are planting lots of trees, as well as taking the huge decayed old plantations back into operation (these date back from colonial times).

An interesting technical report shows that palm oil can be used straight into diesel engines, without much problems.

I can imagine this makes sense in such local contexts.

It also shows that not all palm oil is as destructive as it is often portrayed.

It's only when you scale things up to a mad level that you get into trouble. And that's where fear is legitimate, because the Chinese have already bougth licences for a few million hectares of palm oil land in Congo.On Goldman says oil 'likely' to hit $150-$200 by 2010 posted 1 year, 6 months ago 58 Responses

Let's not confuse things

I'm thinking more of augmenting what I understand is a decent rail system that is already up and running in Africa, but I'm sure you have a better perspective on that than I.

Look Jon, obviously rail infrastructures are key to Africa's development.

But that doesn't do away the fact that you need to get goods and farm products from tertiary roads to secondary roads to, yes, a train or a river barge.

If you can electrify part of this infrastructure and couple that to rural electrification, via whatever renewable source, then all the better. I just don't think this scenario is for tomorrow.

All the while, we are dealing with oil prices that are truly catastrophic for these countries.

And that's where an urgent intervention is needed.

Let the West develop dirt-cheap and hyper-efficient vehicles for the future. Then transfer them to the South. That's much more realistic than the idea of "leapfrogging".

Just my two francs (taking into account a 200% inflation resulting from disastrous oil).On Goldman says oil 'likely' to hit $150-$200 by 2010 posted 1 year, 6 months ago 58 Responses

Or stronger bicycles

Picture of an every day scene:

Bicycles have become the primary means of transport for most Congolese ruralites.

But when they want to produce a surplus of goods or food, they need a motorcycle or a truck to transport that surplus over tertiary roads, to secondary roads, and then to a train or river boat. They will also carry a supply of diesel or gasoline with them (they will never carry batteries and a supply of electricity with them - no matter what Jon hopes).

I don't see TGV trains spanning 1000 kilometres, carrying grain and people up and down the country. Not here. Not now. Maybe later.On Goldman says oil 'likely' to hit $150-$200 by 2010 posted 1 year, 6 months ago 58 Responses

Jon Rynn to visit Congo soon

I find it mind-boggling that you are sitting there in Belgium, one of the most public-transit-drenched spots in the world, and you're still insisting that the developing world spend some of its precious capital on a soon-to-be outmoded form of transport, cars.

Jon, first off, I spend a good part of the year in Congo, so I can compare things.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for renewables-powered mass transit and superconductivity-powered maglev. This is feasible in areas with a high population density, like Belgium or Tokyo.

But please have a look at the population map of Central Africa, and then think of the development needs there.

Countries there are made up of 70% farmers who live in the country-side, dispersed in villages.

These people do not need let alone can afford solar-powered superconductivity-fed maglev trains. They need $5000 a piece Soviet trucks and cheap liquid fuels to get their products to market. They need $10,000 Ukrainian second hand tractors with diesel engines. Not hydrogen-powered autonomous harvesting robots coupled to GPS.

I invite you to take a step into the world to do a reality check.

Mind you, I'm the first to recognize the value of concentrating people in (high-rise) cities, because these allow for multiple efficiencies. And nothing is more urgent in the vulnerable ecosystems of Central Africa.

I would even go so far as to suggest that we could use an initiative to encourage and streamline urbanisation and population migration in Central Africa. Architects, urbanists, sociologists, tiermondists, and economists should be funded to design Curitiba-like cities across this region.

But the reality today is that you have large rural populations, dispersed across the continent, much needed to provide basic food, fodder and forest products to the vast slum-dwellers in the growing mega-cities. To better the lives of these people, you need Soviet trucks and (bio)diesel.

Unless you are willing to hand over 30% of your yearly income to help these countries leapfrog and built next-generation hyper-efficient mobility infrastructures that even we can't afford.On Goldman says oil 'likely' to hit $150-$200 by 2010 posted 1 year, 6 months ago 58 Responses

Infp: Why Hansen is so pressed to get CCS going

At Infp: the interesting thing about Hansen's stress on the need to develop CCS, is because CCS can be coupled to biomass, resulting in radical carbon-negative energy (energy that actively withdraws carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere and cleans up our past.)

Solar and wind - which add CO2 to the atmosphere - can never be scaled up fast enough to make a dent.

The difference between carbon-positive renewables and carbon-negative renewables is huge:

-solar: 100 to 150 gCO2eq/KWh
-wind: 30 to 50 gCO2eq/KWh
-biomass: 30 to 50 gCO2eq/KWh
-hydro: 15 to 30 gCO2eq/KWh
-nuclear: 10 to 20 gCO2eq/KWh
-biomass + CCS: -800 to -1000 gCO2eq/KWh (yes, that's right: minus, hence 'carbon-negative')

This is why Hansen is looking at technologies that withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere.

His list of priorities reads as follows:

-coal+CCS in order to facilitate
-a radical transition to biomass+CCS
-a transition from slash-and-burn to slash-and-char
-reforestation
-avoided deforestation

It's a matter of scaling things up fast enough. Wind and solar do not provide baseload power, so for the time being its irrealistic to attempt to build an economy on these intermittent source. You always need a baseload source to make society function. And the world's baseload power simply comes from coal, which is why you need an intervention there.

 On Preventing dirty coal plants is the most urgent climate policy posted 1 year, 6 months ago 7 Responses

DOE Awards $126 million for 2 CCS projects

DOE Awards $126.6M for Two More Large-Scale Carbon Sequestration Projects

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded more than $126.6 million to the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB) and the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) for the Department's fifth and sixth large-scale carbon sequestration projects.

These industry partnerships, which are part of DOE's Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, will conduct large volume tests in California and Ohio to demonstrate the ability of a geologic formation to safely, permanently, and economically store more than one million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). Subject to annual appropriations from Congress, this project including the partnership's cost share is estimated to cost more than $183 million.

The new projects will demonstrate the entire CO2 injection process--pre-injection characterization, injection process monitoring, and post-injection monitoring--for large scale injections of one million tons or more to test the ability of different geologic settings to permanently store CO2. DOE plans will invest the $126.6 million in the two projects over the next 10 years, while the industry partners will provide $56.6 million in cost-shared funds.

More information: GreenCarCongress

I think the DOE could do much more. The EU is spending more than €2 billion on CCS.

Every dollar not invested in CCS is one not invested in carbon-negative energy.

We must shift all our money away from polluting carbon-neutral or carbon-positive technologies (like solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear) and to carbon-negative ones instead.On Hawkins to industry: 'deal with it' posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses

Colonialists and imperialists and their racism

Ah, the green racists of Greenpeace killing tens of millions of poor people again. Nothing new there.

And Unilever, which made its colonial fortune by creating gigantic palm oil plantations in the colonies, is easy going: now that the billions in profit have been made, it's easy to call for a ban.

Now that palm oil producers no longer do so for their colonial masters, but for themselves, they are facing a boycott by their former colonial occupiers.

How perverse. How racist. How cruel.

But then, most of these pseudo-green organisations are the new imperialists of our time. Killing many poor people, the natives, the blacks.

By the way, scientists disagree with Greenpeace's racist, anti-social approach:

Boycotting palm oil produced in Southeast Asia in an "unrealistic" and "ineffective" approach to conserving the region's fast-disappearing rainforests, said a Princeton University researcher speaking at a conference on the sustainability of palm oil. Instead, NGOs should focus on engaging and working with the palm oil industry to reduce its impact on the environment.

Addressing the first International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, Princeton biologist Dr. David S. Wilcove said that the palm oil industry is too important to the economies of Indonesia and Malaysia to justify blanket import bans on the edible oil used in food, cosmetics, industrial products, and biodiesel. The palm oil industry contributes to health, education, and infrastructure in rural areas.

Mongabay

And, in Nature:

NGOs should use palm oil to drive conservation

Koh and Wilcove say the scheme would require collaboration between "large conservation donor groups to fund the initial investments and with local oil-palm companies for their expertise in running the plantations," but that the relationship could be a "win-win partnership... because NGOs would be able to protect forests using the oil palm revenue and the companies would be able to enhance their corporate image to satisfy environmentally-conscious consumers."

"We think NGOs can participate in such joint ventures without losing their integrity if they go into it with the appropriate level of caution. Afterall, there have been many examples of successful collaborations between environmental groups and industry leaders in the USA and elsewhere," Koh told mongabay.com via email. "Having said that, we certainly do not want all of the NGOs to embrace our idea, because we feel that some should remain well outside the partnership, serving as much-needed critical voices to pressure governments and oil palm companies to avoid further losses of pristine habitats.”

Koh and Wilcove believe that the development of a premium market could help entice producers into working with conservationists.

"Because such oil-palm plantations would be motivated mainly by conservation objectives, they could provide the industry with leadership for the sustainable production of palm oil through environmentally-friendly management practices," they write. "This could also drive the development of a premium market for sustainable oil-palm products and thereby generate economic incentives for more palm-oil producers to adopt sustainable practices."

Koh and Wilcove appear to be optimistic that this price premium, as well as the "green" marketing benefits, can overcome the inherent conflict of interest between the two groups. After all, why would producers want to help set up direct competitors and fund opposition to oil palm expansion unless they were sure to get something tangible in return?

CITATION: Lian Pin Koh and David S. Wilcove (2007). Cashing in palm oil for conservation. Nature Vol 448|30 August 2007

Source: Mongabay

Reason will rule.On Unilever supports rainforest destruction moratorium posted 1 year, 6 months ago 5 Responses

Some people are not very smart

Hi, I belong to a grassroots movement and we think CCS presents one of the few technologies to save the planet.

CCS can be coupled to biomass, in which case a carbon-negative energy system emerges. Leakage would be no problem, because if any CO2 escapes, it is biogenic CO2, not contributing to climate change.

Each time you were to recharge your battery-electric vehicle with electricity from such a system, you would be withdrawing CO2 from the atmosphere.

NASA's James Hansen and many other, rather smart people, support the grassroots movement in favor of carbon-negative bioenergy.

Here's the deal on emissions:

-coal: 800 to 1000 grams/KWh of CO2 eq
-coal + CCS: 200 g/KWh CO2 eq
-natural gas: 200 to 300 g/KWh CO2 eq
-solar photovoltaic: 100 to 150 g/KWh CO2 eq
-natural gas + CCS: 50 to 100 g/KWh CO2 eq
-wind power: 30 to 50 g/KWh CO2 eq
-biomass: 30 to 50 g/KWh CO2 eq
-hydro: 15 to 30 g/KWh CO2 eq
-nuclear: 10 to 20 g/KWh CO2 eq
-biomass + CCS: -800 to -1000 g/KWh CO2 eq

Yes, that's right: minus.

Some people are not very smart, especially if they claim to be from grassroots movements that have not the slightest clue what they're talking about.

Each dollar not invested in CCS is one not invested in an energy system that can provide a Kwh of electricity with minus 1000 g of CO2 eq.On Hawkins to industry: 'deal with it' posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses