Comments turanga leela has made
Aha--you've called me out of the socialist closet. ;)
According to the conservative view of economics, the government acts in the best interest of its people by ensuring the health of industry--making jobs available for all, so that everyone who wants to work has the opportunity to do so. But according to this view, government should not intrude unduly on competition, because the marketplace is the best decider of what industries and individual economic entities succeed or fail. It's kind of like social Darwinism, actually. But from a humanist perspective, the result of classical conservatism has been that the laissez-faire approach has allowed industry to game the system, tilting everything in their favor at the expense of workers. The result? Longer working hours, fewer jobs, a high unemployment rate, captains of industry making huge profits while the masses struggle to get by. This is not merely rhetoric, especially when magazines like The Economist have been following these social trends for some time. And the other result is the tragedy of the commons--nobody is responsible for what happens to externalities--soil, air, water quality, resource depletion.
Enter the Farm Bill. From a basic Enlightenment era view of human existence, on which this country was founded, there are such things as basic human rights. And food is a basic human right. To a certain extent the US government has modernised and agrees with this statement. The Farm Bill is actually a holdover to the era when our country courted socialism--the 30s and 40s. This thinking is therefore a strange fit for our government's generally conservative approach to economics (which holds that we should ensure jobs so that people can buy food). But food is an area where we run up against our favorite national myth--American exceptionalism. Not everyone can work, after all, because not everyone in a family is a wage-earner (children, for example, and the disabled and the elderly). And there are even a lot of people who do work but can still barely afford to feed themselves because they earn so little. And if we allowed some of our own people to starve, meaning the ones who can't work or whose wages are too low for them to adequately feed themselves, we would not be exceptional. Thus we subsidize the production of food.
Imagine what would happen now if we dismantled the Farm Bill entirely. It would still be built on a commodity system, because the commodity system pre-dates the Farm Bill. It's more similar, in fact, to the cash-cropping system we started with as slave-owning colonists. But now we have the ability through technology to treat farming like any other business--that is, maximize profits in the short term while minimizing concern for externalities like soil and water in the long term--to strip the soil dry of nutrients and pollute our own waterways, with no oversight at all. People would continue to grow commodity crops--getting the biggest return for the smallest amount of input--only now there would be no incentive to place any limits on what they grow or how it's grown. You could say goodbye to all conservation lands in the Midwestern agricultural landscape. There would be no incentives to consider nutritional needs whatsoever, or any ecological considerations, which are also now mandated by the Farm Bill. It is for all of these social and ecological reasons that food production cannot be dealt with in the same way as aluminum siding production, if we want to do right by society and the rural landscape.
As to your final point, as I understand it, the critique coming from developing nations who are members of the WTO is that the US and Europe produce food too cheaply because we subsidize our farmers, so that there is no market for food commodities coming from those developing nations, which lack both economies of scale and the ability to subsidize their farmers, because their GDPs are too low. (Of course, some of these nations are also corrupt and allow the upper classes to embezzle their tax revenues, but that's another matter...)
On The EPA holds corn ethanol accountable ... sort of posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago 18 ResponsesThe farming industry is like a lot of other industries--there are a small number of huge and highly profitable operations that still manage to get fat government paychecks in addition to the paychecks they're already getting. But it's unfair to assume that all farmers are getting money they don't need just because there's a few who are. That said, the subsidy system is horribly inefficient and horribly structured. What sense does it make to pay farmers to grow crops that nobody really wants, like GMO corn? A lot of smaller scale farmers do need help--or they go bankrupt. But what they should be getting is income support, not price support. Income support would free them up to grow whatever they want, and I know a lot of people who grew up in farming towns who are friends with people who are still farming who would like to grow organic vegetables and whatnot but feel that making the switch is too risky. The conservative, ideological ones prefer price support because income support feels too much like welfare to them. But the pragmatists realize that income support would be far more efficient and would not allow debacles like highly profitable and huge operations getting government checks on top of their earnings to happen. But those highly profitable operations are also well connected in the Farm Bureau, which is well connected in DC, and is going to lobby like hell to make sure a switch from price support to income support never happens. The thing to do, as I see it, would be to organize all the Farmers Unions, which are usually made up of the smaller and more progressive operations, to lobby for income support. That might have some effect on the next Farm Bill.
As a side note, it is just as unfair to characterize Midwestern agriculture as run by greedy agribusiness profiteers as it is to portay a romanticized, 19th century pastoralist enterprise. Neither is true. There are lots and lots of farmers who produce commodities that are then purchased by ADM. ADM is not a farmer. They purchase commodities that are grown by farmers. That's why every small Midwestern farming town has a grain elevator and silos in the middle, so that the farmers can bring their corn in at the end of the season and sell it to ADM. But these small farming operations use big diesel tractors, ammonia fertilizer, and all the other stuff that is harmful to the rural landscape as a whole. So it's not a monolithic, evil agribusiness system versus the noble small scale organic farmer. It's one mindset versus another, perpetuated by a broken government funding system. Farmers both organic and non will tell you this themselves.
On The EPA holds corn ethanol accountable ... sort of posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago 18 ResponsesBioD-
I tried to reply yesterday but I had technical difficulties with my browser.You are right. There are no LCA models that have "zero" as a number for indirect land use change, and the biofuels industry is going to pay some kind of GHG penalty for it, as other industries already do (such as the carbon offsetting/afforestation/reforestation industry, which pays for ILUC, or as they call it, "leakage"). You are also right that I was perhaps overly snarky with my "corn toadies" comment. I have been called that, but not here on Grist, simply because I don't see the value in environmentalists going out of their way to be verbally insulting and frightening to farmers, as though farmers were their enemies. It's important to speak politely to the people who grow your food, and if you want to suggest that they grow it differently, then make those suggestions as gentle and pleasant-sounding as possible. ;)
I know lots of life cycle modelers, and they all say that Searchinger's conclusions were a bit "out there," simply because they placed too much language of certainty on what is still uncertain. He worked with a team of researchers at the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD) at the University of Iowa for the commodity-value portion of the model, and there was a lot of internal strife there about whether or not the report was ready for prime time. They don't think he's too far off the mark, but generally it's considered bad form to present inconclusive findings as conclusive--precisely because people can come back and challenge you on them later on, which is exactly what happened. Just know that you don't endear yourself to life cycle modelers, or to the biofuel industry, when you cite Searchinger. If you want to build bridges and get a good national climate policy package passed sometime this century, cite CARD or FAPRI. The ag industry getting behind a climate policy in general is going to be the tipping point--and they've got lots of incentive to do something about climate change, being that their industry is the one that is the most dependent on the availability of rainfall, and the latest climate projections for 2100 out of NOAA are enough to give the director of the National Farm Bureau nightmares.
On The EPA holds corn ethanol accountable ... sort of posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago 18 ResponsesRacje- Don't forget there are radically different economic and social realities between the US and the developing world--a night and day difference. In the US it's true that the rich are more likely to go to health food stores and the poor to McDonald's, but the poor in this country are like the rich in other countries. The poor in developing nations are starving less now than they were a few years ago, but according to the big development programmes the #1 problem for them now is malnutrition. And don't forget about economies of scale--when you have 4 billion people, eating just one additional meal with meat and dairy per week is going to have a huge impact. But unfortunately it's not enough to just say "reduce the surplus population" because population growth is exponential, and humans (ideally) live past their teenage years, so something has to be done to feed the population we have until the birth rates have been lower than the death rates for long enough to have made a difference in the overall population. This is part of why people are so incensed about using food for fuel, because the population is growing so much. However, it is also true that the GMO foodstuffs we have become experts at making in this country are woefully inadequate in terms of total nutrition. Nutritious food--that is, organic food enriched with natural fertilizer--requires a much larger land area to grow than do agribusiness food crops, which have been bred for maximum yield, but not for maximum nutrition. So it seemed like a good idea to use up that GMO stuff for cars. But tying the food commodities market to the fuel market made foodstuffs more valuable for investors, which radically raised the price of food faster than real wages were going up. Of course there were other things going on in the marketplace, like commodities being a safe bet for investors when other markets like housing were more volatile, and in the end it may take a while to understand and separate how much of an effect each factor had. What we do know is that the biofuels boom played its part in the food price explosion, and that combination is too dangerous for anyone to any longer consider biofuels made from food as a long term solution for reducing fossil fuel use. This is why government incentives for corn ethanol and whatnot are being frozen where they are right now--not as much because of GHGs. And the risk of volatile market response is enough of a reason why we can't grow our way out of society's needs for, as the industry says, "food, feed, and fuel"--because it isn't a volume issue, it's a market issue.
You say, "Farmers will continue to work hard and earn little." That is true for most farmers. And that is why farmers have to be incorporated in some way that is beneficial to them in our society's plans to reduce society's GHGs. The trouble is, how to include them. My understanding of farmers is that whatever can increase their earning power will be seen by them as a good thing, so it shouldn't matter whether they're selling corn for ethanol or carbon offsets or biogas or cellulosic biomass or whatever, so long as they get some kind of economic boost for doing the right thing. But it's imperative now that we are setting a 50+ year plan in motion for those of us who are writing policy to think about how to make sure farmers who are struggling get an income boost from a low carbon economy instead of additional financial woes, but do so in a way that actually solves the problem of global warming rather than a way that does nothing to reduce GHGs, or worse, exacerbates the problem, because it's not their job to be experts about what are truly effective GHG-reducing policies--it's ours.
On The EPA holds corn ethanol accountable ... sort of posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago 18 ResponsesI ♥ wonkery. Bring it!
On Energy efficiency vs. neoliberal economics posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago 28 Responses"A scientific account of the world is no more and no less than an explanation proffered at a particular place and time that is judged by a particular community of researchers to be true. Nonetheless, at some future time almost any scientific belief may find itself to be perfectly apropos of nothing. This does not mean, of course, that scientific truth does not exist, or that we are caught up in a world of vicious relativism, where whatever anyone says is true just because it has been said. Rather it means that scientific truth exists relative to a community of practitioners who have created a variety of procedures that guide research and criteria by which truth claims are evaluated." --Max Oelschlager, Postmodern Environmental Ethics
No one can lay claim to an absolute scientific truth, especially when one's own ends are intimately tied to it. Scientific research, even models that incorporate the data of a multitude of studies, is never exhaustive enough to make a comprehensive, far-reaching claim about the whole of an industry, or a community, or a culture. There are always bits that escape its reach, for one reason or another, and that is why consensus is so important, because it allows us to be sure enough to make decisions with far-reaching consequences. There are scientists who understand this and scientists who don't, and most scientists will jockey to be seen as "right," even (perhaps especially) when their conclusions fall far afield from where the rest of the scientific community is. And the public especially loves scientists who are seen as contrarians because it's a great story. Be wary of succumbing to that narrative. Searchinger is seen as an outlier by most life cycle modelers, particularly because he is so "sure" in his claims. People from institutions as diverse as the U of MN, Stanford, Argonne National Laboratory, NREL, and MIT have said this. Alex Farrell was a good scientist because he understood this as well--that consensus is building around the need to consider indirect land use change for all manner of things, not just corn ethanol, and it's an idea that will transform all of life cycle analysis forever, but it is not a subset of life cycle analysis that has reached maturity yet. Not even life cycle analysis itself has reached maturity yet. No one can be "sure" about something until it has been studied and demonstrated hundreds of times. That's how the scientific method works. So you can't draw a clear, bright line that says "anyone who is 'for' Searchinger's analysis is a 'true' environmentalist and anyone who isn't is a toady for the corn people," because it just isn't that simple.
One more thing to keep in mind: that "voice in the wilderness" quality Searchinger has may be sexy, especially for environmental journalists, but that same quality makes Freeman Dyson sexy for the climate change deniers. So be careful when you use it for your cause, because it can easily be used against your cause. It's what eggheads like me call a slippery slope. Even I can see that, and I have only one eye. 0-)
On The EPA holds corn ethanol accountable ... sort of posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago 18 ResponsesMike Judge is a writer, not a propagandist. Writers take the broad view and look at humans of all kinds, warts and all. That way, we can learn to laugh at and empathize with and love ourselves and others, warts and all. I hardly see what's wrong with that. Turning people into hated pariahs generally doesn't lead to social cohesion and cultural transformation, and yet that's often what people do who are crusading for change, both on the left and on the right. Let's not forget that before we're eco-warriors or culture warriors or justice crusaders or whatever else, we're all human, and in the words of Red Green, we're all in this together. I'm not siding with the badgers and trees against my fellow humans (well, not anymore, at least). I'm not taking sides at all, because there are no sides to take. That's why I like writers like Mike Judge. People aren't good or evil, and everyone can be right or wrong sometimes.
On "The Goode Family," a new cartoon, makes enviros cringe posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago 19 Responsesoh, grist, grist, grist...my dear lovely grist, you've gone and ruined your beautiful face with cosmetic surgery. what the ILVTOFU where you thinking??
you were once unique and special, truly a gem in the online community, unlike all other websites and blogs. now, in the interest of making us, your individual members, feel unique and special by allowing us to add photos of ourselves, you've gone and made yourself look like a wordpress blog. you're like jennifer grey after the nose job.
not only that, these colors...oh, what will we do with these colors? they look like a college football team color scheme. specifically i am reminded of the university of nebraska. did you have some sort of bogus "rebranding" consultation with out of work designers looking for a few quick bucks? how many nonprofits will fall prey to these "creative industry" scam artists? what exactly was wrong with all the muted greens and blues you had before? not "zingy" enough for the millenials?
all i can say is...well, thank goodness you've earned the love and respect of so many who will continue to remain devoted and put up with your antics, midlife crisis or no.
On Welcome to the new Grist! posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago 106 ResponsesAnd how do you know when you've won?
What constitutes a milestone, what constitutes a victory? It's important to know these things, as important as it is to not be dismissive of milestones. They lead up to a victory.On Voting has ended: Grist readers have chosen top eco-hero and eco-villain of 2008 posted 9 months, 1 week ago 10 Responses
I can tell...
that some of you are not tacticians that are a part of any movement, or that you know little about social movement theory, or about what kinds of pressures are effective in what specific instances. There's the wedge model, which is what the Sierra Club operates under, which uses mass support as the weight that gets thrown behind a single team of professionals, or a single individual. When I made my first comment I should have brought more nuance into it. The lawyer alone would get laughed at in the boardroom without the grassroots support in the streets or on phones or in the newspaper creating a PR nightmare for the company. The people with signs making general comments would never get into a boardroom to sign the papers. They wouldn't know which papers to sign. There's also the grasstops/peer influence model, which involves using peer pressure, science, and other rhetorical devices to pressure leaders and decision makers to act in the public interest instead of in their own self-interest, or convincing them that the public interest IS in their self-interest. There are other models as well. But there isn't a single model that works well in every instance, and a good tactician knows in which instance to apply which model. A good coalition, moreover, has many partners with many different models, so they know which member of the coalition to bring to the fight in the appropriate circumstance.On Voting has ended: Grist readers have chosen top eco-hero and eco-villain of 2008 posted 9 months, 1 week ago 10 Responses
All this yelling about hydrogen
is so beside the point. The point is the vehicle technology--the fuel cells. Fuel cells can "burn" a lot of things: ammonia, methane, natural gas, even ethanol, which is perhaps the only efficient way of using ethanol. People get so wrapped around the axle about hydrogen. Pardon my pun.
One thing I don't know, though, that perhaps some of you do know, is whether or not a single fuel cell can handle multiple kinds of fuels?
As someone who is admittedly not an engineer, it does seem a little weird to me that people who live in glass houses (advocating technologies that are neither cheap nor commercial in the sense of widespread infrastructure) are throwing so many stones. I realize the tanking economy is scaring the hell out of all of us, i.e. where is the money for investment going to come from when we're in debt, but we can't allow that to waste our precious time fighting amongst ourselves.On L.A. Times: 'Hydrogen fuel-cell technology won't work in cars' posted 9 months, 1 week ago 77 Responses
Shutting down conventional coal
No one has been more effective at shutting down conventional coal plants in the Midwest than Bruce Nilles. No one. Persist in the delusion if you will that people with cardboard signs are more effective than lawyers, and he will just keep plugging away.
Okay, so he missed one, Big Stone II. A big one. A really big ugly one that will take us decades to shut down again. But there are so many successes that we can (almost) forgive him for that, right?
And he's an eco-hottie. I just made that term up.On Voting has ended: Grist readers have chosen top eco-hero and eco-villain of 2008 posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 10 Responses
Oh come on
Angelina Jolie hangs out in Davos during the World Economic Forum--and not with a protest sign, but with all the other Hollywood glitterati who go there to soak up the glitz and camera flash...How eco-friendly is that??On Read about six couples who turned their eco-love into an eco-venture ... posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 15 Responses
typos
My typos don't make me look "to" good either...On DFHs take over, threaten Big Agribusiness posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 8 Responses
Be fair, BioD
Michael Wang, Tim Searchinger, Joe Fargione, Mark Delucchi, Alex Farrell, Dan Sperling all used the GREET model as well. And they are not corn ethanol boosters. In fact, the GREET model is generally hated and feared by the corn ethanol lobby because it is not designed to give a certain outcome. It is designed to calculate life cycle GHG emissions, and like any modeling tool, the modelers can add or update any dataset s/he wants to reflect new information. That's how Delucchi and Searchinger and Fargione et al made the first stab at calculating indirect land use change which, the last I checked, didn't make things look to good for any kind of biofuel.On DFHs take over, threaten Big Agribusiness posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 8 Responses
Ha!
This one never passed the BS test for me.On Scientists doubt efficacy of sea 'fertilization' posted 10 months ago 6 Responses
However....
...in my neighborhood there are a lot of people who currently need cheap or free food. There's a Denny's down the street and those people have been waiting in line all day for a free meal that's tastier than what they serve down at the shelter. Any discussions that critique cheap food for the masses should also contain a hefty dose of economic liberalism (progressive income taxes, job development, food aid, etc), otherwise you could be accused of wanting to starve people to death. Because what we all really want, unless I miss my guess, is a world where everyone can afford to eat healthier food that doesn't require the destruction of the planet to produce.
Or maybe a middle ground: funnel lots of money into groups like Food Not Bombs or that free cafe in Toronto to serve up a free organic meal every day so that people don't have to take their kids to fill up at Denny's.On Denny's serves up a plate of petroleum posted 10 months ago 1 Response
Exxon influence map
Was this the tool you were using for the map?
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php
It's fun to play with, although it's been out for a while and couldn't find the newest crop of skeptics last time I used it (that's Exxon's modus operandi--changing the game, and the skeptics they fund, once the public gets wise to them).On Revealing skeptics as sock puppets in a few quick clicks posted 10 months ago 6 Responses
One more
The fact that this article is called "snuffed film" isn't clever. It's gross.On Did NBC squash PETA corn-porn? posted 10 months ago 44 Responses
Dumb, tasteless, crass: That's not TV, is it?
- The medium is the message. We are not talking about opera here. We are talking about the Super Bowl.
- Frat boys aren't the only ones who watch the Super Bowl.
- Women were clearly not the intended audience for this commercial.
- Let's be honest here. Sexism has long held a comfy, and at many times dominant, position in the environmental movement. The next time I see yet another "resistance is fertile" T shirt or poster I think I'll hurl. Women are not Mother Earth. They are individual humans with thoughts and feelings, not symbols, just like men are. Learn. Accept.
- Vegetarianism/veganism and feminism are connected semantically according to Carol Adams and Carolyn Merchant--women are oppressed by being "naturalized," nature is oppressed by being "feminized." But that doesn't mean that all feminists and all vegans are (or should be) aware of the semantics.
- The director of PETA is a woman who considers herself a feminist.
- Was no one offended by the sprawling, McMansion-esque setting or the copious waste of water? Think of all the energy used to make that vast space comfy for a naked body. The horror!
- What specifically was sexist about this particular commercial? The body size of the woman? Weight is not a feminist issue. The setting of standards for one person by another is partly feminist, but is mostly about control and censorship of lived experience via the Panopticon (Foucault) in an image obsessed culture. Was it the sex? What is sexist about sex, specifically autoeroticism and exhibitionism? Humans desire one another sexually. That's about it.
- The medium is the message. We are not talking about opera here. We are talking about the Super Bowl.
Kind of like rabies
Once you're showing symptoms, it's too late for a cure.
Ugh.On NSIDC: Arctic melt passes the point of no return posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 2 Responses
Anybody seen Ergo Proxy?
I highly, highly suggest it before clamoring for clathrates...although science fiction has not always been an accurate bellweather for what's to come.On Lots of natural gas is chillin' on Alaska's North Slope, says USGS posted 1 year ago 3 Responses
carbon tax
would be cheaper and simpler to administrate than a cap and trade system. That's the main advantage from where I stand. However, unless you do cap and tax, you cannot set a hard limit on total global emissions, so there's some fudging and uncertainty. The important thing is having a revenue stream that can be divided into 1) an energy assistance fund for those hurt by rate hikes (btw, they already exist; they just need more money, as a low income person i benefited from my city's energy fund myself one year) 2) funding for renewable energy that hasn't been proven to be a loser's game. Let's not get pessimistic, folks--just because many have been outed in the past year doesn't we have exhausted all the options that the evils of Science can provide us.
So...just as soon as we can convince the American people that another tax would be a good idea, the big enviros will change their strategies straightaway.On A guest essay from Environmental Defense posted 1 year ago 41 Responses
Good book, Russ
:)
Maybe instead of yakking away anonymously on Grist, I should be writing my own book...uh, anonymously...On With little oversight, BP, Chevron, ADM, and Cargill cook up next-gen biofuels posted 1 year, 1 month ago 16 Responses
Yep--phytoremediation to biofuel
This is a huge and virtually unexplored topic, and will remain unexplored as long as the discussion is dominated by aggie profiteers and dogmatically anti-biomass-anything environmentalists bashing each other ad infinitum.
Using plants to remediate contaminated soils/neutralize toxins and then turning the plants into fuels or pellets for stoves--this is not a big potential cash cow but it's hard to see how it wouldn't be one of the few sources of fairly benign biofuels. No one's growing food on contaminated soils right now. And if they are, I wouldn't eat it.On With little oversight, BP, Chevron, ADM, and Cargill cook up next-gen biofuels posted 1 year, 1 month ago 16 Responses
But they don't like algae either
It's in their position paper, along with the weird cartoons, seemingly random charts, and citing of primarily editorials as "sources."On With little oversight, BP, Chevron, ADM, and Cargill cook up next-gen biofuels posted 1 year, 1 month ago 16 Responses
Less bogeymen, more analysis, please
Important concept and important work but I must say I am not impressed thus far with the ETC Group. As much as I hate to say it (having been a punk rock kid myself at one time) it does nothing for your credibility to lard your publications with caricatures of Corporate Fat Cats and the Scary Mad Scientists of Academia. I would rather not have an "emotion vs. reason" debate over this--I do not see them as mutually exclusive--but I will say that especially the belittling of scientists' contributions to the research of biofuels (even just to find out whether or not the fuels will do what proponents say they'll do) feels like an attempt by those who don't have a deep enough understanding of the issues to cut their opponents off at the knees. It is a tactic employed all the time by right wingers in the "God vs. Science" debates of the culture wars, and I feel very strongly that such tactics do not belong in the environmental movement. There are plenty of good science-based critiques of biofuels out there--like this one (http://www.e2.org/jsp/controller?docId=16033§ion= ...) and this one (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081002172607 ...)--but they don't lead to the kind of all-or-nothing, good-vs-evil conclusions that provide people with the justification they're looking for to chain themselves to the doors of Scary Mad Scientist Inc.
It was also rather frustrating to find at least one misrepresentation in their report. Coskata is not using bioengineered microorganisms--their "proprietary microorganisms" are actually rare organisms that got to their current state the way most microorganisms have--through evolution. This was confirmed by a Coskata principal--quite emphatically--on an educational webinar I participated in about 4 months ago. One thing I do wonder about with any of these companies that are working with microorganisms is whether or not any type of "conventional breeding" of bacteria and yeasts (the ability to manipulate successive generations by selecting and isolating individuals with desirable characteristics not by bombarding them with other species' DNA as Monsanto does) is playing with fire, due to the fact that we know so little about them and because of the rapid process of evolution these organisms undergo. But here again, this question can only be answered by a scientist, which they'll be less likely to do if you open dialogue with an insult of academia. The reason I can't stand fearmongering of any kind, whether it be by the Bush Administration or by my fellow environmentalists, is that it has a chilling effect on dialogue and it turns complex human beings into caricatures and monsters. If that's what you're trying to do because you are a militant who can only understand things through the thought and language of warfare, then you should understand that by purposely making positions intractable and considering the people who view things differently than you do as being so alien and "other" than you are that the mere thought of dialoguing with and understanding them is utterly repugnant, you will never achieve your results until your "opponent" is completely destroyed. And you can't wage war on an ideology because the moment you destroy one opponent, another one pops up. Look at the War on Terror--how's that been going lately? The only way to successfully change an ideology is by convincing people of your viewpoint through respectful dialogue. On With little oversight, BP, Chevron, ADM, and Cargill cook up next-gen biofuels posted 1 year, 1 month ago 16 Responses
Broad side of barn
But still funny. Kind of like the Flat Earth Society (yes, they're real, but they apparently don't believe in the Internet, either, because all the FES pages on the web are, naturally, parodies. I saw a mailer once from the FES, typed on a typewriter and badly misspelled).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society On Inhofe digs deeper posted 1 year, 1 month ago 6 Responses
Additionality, Verifiability, Transparency, Limits
A cap and trade system would require offsets to be additional, verifiable, and transparent (not double-counted as something else somewhere in the system). It has to be used once and then "retired." It would also set up limits on how much GHG can be mitigated through offsets--and we're all hoping, not very much. The most significant portion of GHG reduction has to be made from getting utilities and companies covered under the cap to actually change their practices in the not-too-long term, and not rely indefinitely on offsets to keep them square with the law.
Even with limits in place, though, I agree with you--flaring landfill methane (or CAFO methane) is a waste of resources. It could be used to generate heat and power. It's better than nothing, sort of like an aspirin is better than nothing when you've got a bacterial infection.On Bogus offsets merely ease emitter's remorse posted 1 year, 1 month ago 8 Responses
Fattening
Not sure how this could be good for pets. DDGS are desired by CAFO operators because it's a cheap way to fatten livestock. I have a hard enough time keeping kitty's weight down as it is without the addition of something designed to make animals fat.On The pet-food industry takes a serious look at distillers grains posted 1 year, 1 month ago 3 Responses
Sorry, I meant BioD's advice
:)
The foremost rule in attribution is accuracy.On In 2008, did temperatures drop as much as they rose over the whole 20th century? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 71 Responses
McIntyre and McKitrick
represent an extreme minority view. So the question is not McIntyre and McKitrick vs. Michael Mann, but rather M&M versus the vast majority of the scientific community. This should not come as a surprise because neither one of them are climate scientists--nor are they any kind of scientist whatsoever. McIntyre is a "semiretired minerals consultant" who does not have an advanced degree and McKitrick is a libertarian economist.
McIntyre on SourceWatch: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stephen_McInty ...
McKitrick on SourceWatch: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ross_McKitrick ...I see that the skeptics have targeted Mann for political reasons, similar to the way they have pilloried Al Gore. The difference being, of course, that Mann is not saying anything different than the majority view on climate change. But in selecting and singling out a particular person, one can create a bogeyman/straw man (in this case with a particularly unfortunate name--he has been called Michael "Piltdown" Mann in a number of the right wing blogs) that is easy to caricaturize and attack.
By the way, the comment about Ian Jolliffe is taken out of context. He claims in this blog (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3601) that he is no climate change skeptic but feels that there is much more important and persuasive evidence than the hockey stick graph, with which I tend to agree. Most people will not be affected by a rise in the global mean surface temperature. They will be affected by a change in climate--such as no more rainfall on their crops or no more drinking water in their aquifers.
This is where I would like to follow David Ahlport's (seeming) advice and bow out of this discussion, because it is clear that every attempt to discuss issues gets dragged into a discussion of personality and I am seeing such disingenuous manipulation of the facts that it is clear that no one can ever convince people for whom science is a matter of "belief." It does feel like an exercise in futility. However, it is for those who have a fingernail's depth of knowledge of science that I keep doing this--those who would like to understand but are constantly being lied to and manipulated by cherry picked information. And it becomes more clear to me all the time that unless people are truly convinced that we may be slowly killing ourselves with the continued release of GHG, we are going to hit a wall in about 10 years in regards to what we can accomplish in our GHG reduction strategies. On In 2008, did temperatures drop as much as they rose over the whole 20th century? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 71 Responses
Please! The time lag?
I have a tendency to hit upon the most silly of arguments. And I just couldn't let this one go.
Why is it that the only people who use the "time lag" graphs, the one in which temperature rises precede CO2 rises, are those who get it from the Junkman's site or those who frequent it? You would think that if this were truly a smoking gun, NOAA would have found it long ago. But the fun thing about conspiracy theories is that they speculate ad infinitum and can therefore speculate answers to tie the ends off of every conceivable argument, thereby remaining in their hermetically sealed chamber of speculation. So you can claim that NOAA, IPCC, and all of those are the ones who have doctored the graphs, moving the CO2 curves behind the temperature curves, instead of in front where they belong--and meanwhile, the Junkman, rather like the Templars, represents the small group of people who keeps representing the truth in the face of 99% of the scientific community's attempts to silence it. At this point it is painfully clear to most of us that climate change denial is less about climate science, or any kind of hard science really, and more about soft science--specifically psychology.
Saluki--You showed your stripes when you used the word "believe" to talk about modeling. Science has nothing to do with belief. What NOAA and others are trying to do is share information about their modeling, which shows the likelihood of a variety of scenarios from negative feedback to no feedback to positive feedback, through the use of probability curves. So, you are right--there are error bars around feedback cycles, which is part of the reason why climate model projections are communicated in terms of probability, which is the language of science, and not prediction, which is the language of belief. Nobody is arguing that the worst case scenario is the most likely to happen--although if you look at the fact that there is equally a 10% chance of midcentury warming being 2 degrees C and a 10% chance of it being 10 degrees C, with the most likely scenario being around 5 degrees C, then you can see roughly how the probability curves are graphed. And that is why if you extend the error bars just a little out from that likely 5 degree C scenario, your high estimates are more worrisome than your low estimates with an equal degree of uncertainty. And that is why people are taking action--because the consequences of being wrong on the high end are worse than the consequences of being wrong on the low end. And that is because the costs of doing nothing are higher than the consequences of mitigation.
Besides, with the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels, energy costs are going to go up anyway--whether we mitigate or not.On In 2008, did temperatures drop as much as they rose over the whole 20th century? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 71 Responses
my apologies if this is a repeat...
...but would all the skeptics in the room please care to explain where all the CO2 in the atmosphere that came from fossil fuels/land conversion/etc is going, if it's not causing warming? And if you can't, and you must admit it is all still in the atmosphere, then can you explain how this particular CO2 is not managing to warm the earth, when it already did so millions of years ago when there was 3000 ppm CO2 (we're currently around 400) and much of the earth's surface was desert? What magic have we evoked this time around to keep CO2 from being a heat trapping gas?
Before you tell me that it's going into the ocean because the ocean is a carbon sink (which is true), I would like to point out that the ocean has also warmed by 1 degree centigrade as much as a mile deep over the last 30 years.
The best response will earn you a cookie made with vanillin and high fructose corn syrup.On In 2008, did temperatures drop as much as they rose over the whole 20th century? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 71 Responses
Low carbon fuel standard
A low carbon fuel standard means reducing the carbon content of the fuel system, not reducing the carbon content of liquid fuels. Electricity is part of the fuel system too.
A policy that makes mandatory annual reductions in the carbon content of the fuel system is the best means of accounting for carbon in transportation. The best means of reducing carbon from the transportation system is still reducing fuel consumption, through efficiency standards and mass transit. And maybe enacting laws that limit the number of cars allowed into the urban centers, like the one they have in Amsterdam.On Efficiency now, 10 percent renewables by 2012, and one million plug-in hybrids by 2015 posted 1 year, 3 months ago 9 Responses
GM Watch
is a good source on the political strong-arming with a friendly face that Monsanto has been known for over the past 10+ years. The whole Golden Rice thing stands out as a shining example of this. You would have to eat about a truckload a day of Golden Rice to prevent blindness from Vitamin A deficiency, if that was all you were eating. And yet it was touted as the thing that would save the poor. That's what they call a Trojan Horse strategy--and fortunately the EU wasn't buying.
I can't wait to see what wonder-crops they proffer next...On Industry report touts potential for biotech crops to combat climate change posted 1 year, 4 months ago 13 Responses
Argh...the curse of sleep deprivation...
"because none of them to make expect very much of that for quite a while"
I think I meant something a bit more coherent than that...On Short, medium, and long-term solutions to phase out oil posted 1 year, 4 months ago 46 Responses
Patience
Considering the media blow-out over the Searchinger et al. paper (and considering that most of the stories were written by journalists who were English majors with no science background) it's not too surprising that a vast misunderstanding about the carbon cycle is now percolating through the blogosphere. One of my favorite quotes, from science journalist Paul Rogers: "Here's the problem at newspapers: almost all newspaper editors got Ds and Fs in science. They think stories about nanotechnology and dark matter are boring. But what they don't realize is a lot of people have degrees in this stuff. There's a disconnect between editors and their audience."
source: CJR, http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/vision_quest.php
The problem with biofuels and GHG emissions is not that liquid biofuels somehow disrupt the carbon cycle--including, for some reason, pyrolysis from what I've been able to gather on this board, despite the fact that it makes a stable solid form of carbon--while biogas doesn't. The problem is that food-based biofuels, and even cellulosic feedstocks grown on agricultural land currently used to grow food, disrupt the economy. This results in the increased value of food crops on the global market, leading to land clearing in poor countries to grow more of those crops. My first thought (a brief, very fleeting thought, fortunately) was that international agreements about land use could curb that problem. But we can't even get international agreement to stop torture, let alone land use change. I'm guessing an international agreement to ban land use change will work about as well as laws to protect the rainforest in South America and Southeast Asia currently are...
One thing I must comment on is the caricature that's being created about people in cellulosic biofuel companies as greedy corporate fat cats just salivating at the opportunity to rape Mother Nature for profit. I know people at next generation biofuels companies and they don't really fit that profile. Especially when it comes to the profits part, because none of them to make expect very much of that for quite a while. So, misinformed some of them may be. Evil profit mongerers--well, not really. Misinformation is much easier to correct than evil is. Even the most stubborn people can be convinced with respectful dialogue. If you talk to the biofuel proponents instead of about them, behind their backs, in lampooning and insulting terms, you might find that they share your concerns. (I mean some of the smaller startups with full staffs of about 10 people and operating budgets of around $1m, not the Khoslas of the world.) Just maybe.On Short, medium, and long-term solutions to phase out oil posted 1 year, 4 months ago 46 Responses
For more on what GMOs are good for
...see my post on the bottom of "Industrial food and fuels forever!"
In summary: pretty much nothing, verifiably, other than making the GMO companies rich from taking control of the world's food supply and charging extortionist prices to growers through terminator technology simply because they can. Taking a cue from the oiligarchy playbook and putting an intellectual property stamp on living things.
http://www.percyschmeiser.com/
The water junta tried it in Bogota. Let's never forget that environmental politics are never "just" about the environment. They're about monolithic corporations taking control of the things people need to survive in order to rake in profits.
But you all knew all of that already...right?On Study: transgenic soy brings lower yields than conventional posted 1 year, 4 months ago 25 Responses
The Monsanto business profile
50% PR hogwash, 40% political and economic Machiavellianism, 9% fairy dust and 1% yield improvement.
Honestly, any public sector agronomist will tell you that genetic modification has done practically nothing to improve yields compared with 100 years worth of research and conventional plant breeding in the land grant schools. But it's all shiny and new in terms of technology (or at least techno-speak) and that's why investors keep lining up. Really put them to it, and the GMO boosters will show you the graph of crop yield improvement over the last 100 years, in which the "GMO revolution" appears as a tiny blip.
The biggest problem I see with the Monsantos of the world is the one Vandana Shiva so unflaggingly points out, time and again: corporations being able to gain complete control of the world's food supply. It is the same kind of imperialist machination that got a small percentage of oiligarchs control of much of the world throughout the twentieth century. These GM folks aren't dumb. They've seen the writing on the wall and are aware that peak oil is going to give them the power vacuum they need to push terminator technology onto the world's food producers and force them to buy seed year after year. None of this is really about fuel, or the environment--it's first and foremost about money and power--using the power that comes from taking complete control of some basic human need to extort money out of the entire world.
The environmental problem of GMOs is, in my view, a smaller one compared to the geopolitical dangers. However, the environmental problem with GMOs is, in large part, the same problem with all plant breeding: namely, narrowing an entire species down to a single genotype with the most desirable traits. The less genetically diverse your crop is, the more susceptible it is to disease. Of course the chemical companies can then exploit this vulnerability by selling farmers a fleet of petrochemicals to "protect" their vulnerable crops. But Tom, I am sure, is our resident expert on all of this. ;)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
Population is a factor too
The fact that California is cutting peak demand at the same time as its population is growing merits some attention. It's an example of how to pinpoint the biggest demand areas and design policy to target those points. From what I understand about efficiency (and I'm not the biggest expert on that issue, I admit), commercial buildings are a big and easy-to-manage point source for reduction. California has had some of the most progressive efficiency coding for new buildings in the nation. San Fransisco is one of the cities that has implemented LEED requirements for all new construction. That's pretty darn important. Here in MN we just passed the Architecture 2030 guidelines as law. I can still hardly believe we managed to pull it off.
However...once the commercial sector is well in hand, I can foresee a plateau coming with efficiency standards in residential buildings...and a huge fight with the individual property rights types.On Energy efficiency, part 3 posted 1 year, 4 months ago 4 Responses
Protesting the airline industry
At some point the American activists are going to get the cajones that British activists have had for a while and start occupying airline runways in an attempt to shut down the air travel industry. George Monbiot has been a point person for this (ironically enough, considering how often he jets around the world himself...). If we are advocating for the end of the ICE, then the logical conclusion is an end to air travel, and a kind of neo-tribalism that would logically ensue. Which would suit us Americans just fine, as we're not too interested in people who live differently than we do anyway, except maybe when it comes to killing them...And if we no longer have any liquid fuels, we won't have anything to fuel our military anyway.
Or maybe we American activists can opt for a compromising half measure (boring as it sounds) and get laws passed to limit the amount of business travel companies are allowed to utilize, forcing them to use webinar software and such instead, leaving the airlines free to fly students from Podunk Iowa to Borneo to see what the biofuels industry is doing to the forest there...On Aviation industry is into greening, to an extent posted 1 year, 4 months ago 2 Responses
if soy was primarily eaten by humans, not cows
was what i meant above. :)On Why that organic label on your milk doesn't tell the whole story posted 1 year, 6 months ago 25 Responses
sources on soy?
thinkagain,
could you provide some sources to back up your claim or is this an assumption? vandana shiva is not a fan of soy from both an environmental and human health standpoint, and she is certainly not funded by the dairy industry.
doctors will tell you that the jury's out about how much soy is good for you if you're a woman--the phytoestrogens may be a contributing factor to estrogen-receptive breast cancer in postmenopausal women.
most soy is grown in an extractive and environmentally damaging way. of course, most of that soy is used for animal feed--if it was eaten by humans there would be a lot more to go around for vegans.
also, some soy milks, such as silk, are made with palm oil. in fact there's more palm oil being used in food products than in any biofuel. so do your part to stop the destruction of ourang-outang habitat by boycotting both palm oil biodiesel AND palm oil food products.
but given conventionally grown soy and grass fed dairy, for all the reasons listed above, i'll take the grass fed dairy any day. we've got a great company in the midwest that sells grass fed cow milk in glass bottles to all the co-ops, and you can return the glass bottles to the dairy for a credit.On Why that organic label on your milk doesn't tell the whole story posted 1 year, 6 months ago 25 Responses
feeding animals
with my remains. i have always liked this idea.On Dissolving your corpse is the green way to go posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses
450 ppm
co2 in the atmosphere. we are there already. we will have to mitigate AND adapt. catastrophes are already occurring close to the equator and in the arctic. it's not so much that rich countries need to adapt--we'll survive pretty well up to the max, around 600 ppm, then the floods, fires, and droughts throughout the midwestern US will make us sit up and take notice. but by then hundreds of millions of the poorest, most vulnerable people on the planet, most of them children, will be dead. point being, the world can level off at 450 if the developed nations act now. we absolutely have to. but we also have to help the people who are already dying from floods, droughts, fires, and loss of traditional ways of life around the world, because it's our fault they're suffering.On Pielke labels adaptation what is actually mitigation posted 1 year, 6 months ago 4 Responses
wiscidea - i think you may have missed my point
so i repost the second half here:
"and yet...i fight against these feelings every time, because first and foremost, i am a compassionate humanist (well, actually, post-humanist) and a pacifist. we activists have an obligation to prevent suffering for all forms of life, including our own species. this kind of schadenfreude is absolute poison, for ourselves and for our movement.
i haven't seen the film yet, by the way--i too am speaking from a general tendency i have noticed in activists, myself included."
i wonder if you've spent a lot of time in activist communities, because if you did, you would see how these sorts of vitriolic ideas about suburbanites are almost a part of the very air we breathe. we all struggle with stereotypes. please don't attack me for actually having the guts to admit to my own.On New peak oil documentary fluffs the faithful posted 1 year, 6 months ago 29 Responses
guilty of anti-suburbanitism, and yet...
as much as it pains me to admit it, i despise suburbia and everything it stands for. i lived in a suburb for the most trying 6 years of my life (junior high and high school). it thrills me to think of suburbanites facing real financial hardship instead of what color to paint the kitchen during the fifth redecoration. the idea of a soccer mom in a bread line instead of a three martini lunch at chili's is very exciting to me. and yet...i fight against these feelings every time, because first and foremost, i am a compassionate humanist (well, actually, post-humanist) and a pacifist. we activists have an obligation to prevent suffering for all forms of life, including our own species. this kind of schadenfreude is absolute poison, for ourselves and for our movement.
i haven't seen the film yet, by the way--i too am speaking from a general tendency i have noticed in activists, myself included.On New peak oil documentary fluffs the faithful posted 1 year, 6 months ago 29 Responses
I mean probable.
;)On The 14 wedges needed to stabilize emissions posted 1 year, 7 months ago 28 Responses
There's always VC money
for financing new energy projects, as long as you can convince them that what they're investing in will fatten their wallets.
Of course, then, if you've got sizeable investments from a big monolithic equity firm, you've still got the problem that the energy system is controlled by large and powerful interests. A lot of people would like to see this transition to low carbon energy systems as a way of democratizing the energy system, considering the large influence energy companies have on our political system. But I am starting to wonder if, given the large investments we need, doing both simultaneously is even possible.On The 14 wedges needed to stabilize emissions posted 1 year, 7 months ago 28 Responses
True
There is no such thing as the "politically impossible." If we humans limited ourselves to thinking about ANYTHING in terms of possible/impossible we would probably not have many of the technological advances we have today. Which would also mean we would probably not be on the brink of ecological disaster. But I digress...
The clincher is always figuring out a plan for accomplishing what you want to do, and lay it out, step by step. If you hit a stumbling block, you map out scenarios for how to get around it. And that' what I think we have trouble with most of the time in policymaking. We run into a boulder on the path and think that if we just beat our heads against it for long enough and hard enough it will eventually break. What we need to do is figure out how to get AROUND the boulder in enough time that we can still beat the ticking doomsday clock.On The 14 wedges needed to stabilize emissions posted 1 year, 7 months ago 28 Responses
8 thousand smackers
is what this electro-motorcycle costs. See my post above.
It's sort of annoying that these all-electro vehicles don't put the price on their promo websites. You actually have to find a dealer like Eco Auto Inc in order to see prices. http://www.ecoautoinc.com/On Electric bike zips up Berkeley hills with ease posted 1 year, 7 months ago 11 Responses
It's also unenforceable.
That's why the Bushies love it.On The 14 wedges needed to stabilize emissions posted 1 year, 7 months ago 28 Responses
The point about voluntary action...
...isn't that it's unimportant. It's that its unquantifiable. You cannot determine how much GHG you are reducing through voluntary action. You could have huge reductions or an eyedropper's worth, and there is no way to tell the difference.On The 14 wedges needed to stabilize emissions posted 1 year, 7 months ago 28 Responses
Indeed, Jon...
I was responding to the suggestions that things like voluntary lifestyle changes and encouraging people to switch to a vegetarian diet should constitute wedges.
Now, maybe if the government mandated lifestyle changes and a vegetarian diet through power rationing and high taxes to price meat out of people's budgets...there might be some possibilities. But the political backlash against such proposed policies would probably be mind boggling.On The 14 wedges needed to stabilize emissions posted 1 year, 7 months ago 28 Responses
Bike link
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/upgrade/425397 ...
Sorry--meant to link that in my previous post.On Electric bike zips up Berkeley hills with ease posted 1 year, 7 months ago 11 Responses
Tesla is also
a 95K investment.
I am guessing most of the car drivers in the world are not going to be able to afford that.
The Zenn (much more modestly priced at 15K, but still out of reach for anyone who's looking at used car prices of 2 to 5K) seems to be the kind of car people in my home state (ridiculously cold northern latitude state, flat land) would buy if they bike 8 months out of the year and drive 4 months because of the weather. Also useful for hauling things too heavy for bikes (i.e. the monthly trip to the co-op to stock up, gardening tools, piles of huge bags of compost, etc).
At 8K, I am not sure what greater purpose a Vectrix serves other than a need for speed. Personally I would rather slow things down a notch (plan ahead, leave with ample commute time) and take a self charging electric bike like the Giant Twist Freedom DX (2K).On Electric bike zips up Berkeley hills with ease posted 1 year, 7 months ago 11 Responses
no voluntary wedges
None of the wedges can be voluntary action by people. It's too uncertain, too unquantifiable. That's the point.
Never forget that the industries causing the climate problem are the biggest fans of voluntary action. Hence we get things like the Clear Skies Initiative from the Bush Administration--all founded on voluntary action.
450 ppm is a very definite, hard line, and it has to be reached through quantifiable reduction. That is why NGOs are pushing for either a cap and trade system or a carbon tax in which CO2 is regulated as a pollutant by sovereign governments in cooperation with an international monitoring system like Kyoto. So we can measure how much GHG is going up the smokestack and into the atmosphere and determine whether or not the world as a whole is on the right track. People voluntarily driving less or putting up personal wind turbines is not going to be quantifiable in a broad based sense. So focusing on those things as a "strategy" will kill us.
This old school thinking about voluntary action and lifestyle changes has got to stop in terms of reversing the warming trend. This is the biggest environmental problem the world has ever faced and as an activist community we've got to respond in kind--continuing with eco-platitudes like recycling and composting will not get us there. The problem is too big.On The 14 wedges needed to stabilize emissions posted 1 year, 7 months ago 28 Responses
sometimes...
...something is so wrong it's right.
And sometimes something is so right it's wrong. Earth Day is pretty much the greenwasher's token holiday. Well, except maybe in the kindergarten classroom, where it belongs.
I hate Earth Day for the same reason I hate organized religion--we'll all "get churched" one day a year, recycle a few cans, then go back to running 5 TVs in the house at once and driving of of our four SUVs. But I'm preaching to the choir here...On F*ck the Earth Day posted 1 year, 7 months ago 10 Responses
stepping into the fray
Well, I suppose I could have picked a better time to comment...if i may speak candidly about biomass energy without being accused of being either an industry hack or an idiot. I am certainly not the first one, and I hope I am not the second. What I am is someone who works for an NGO that works on energy issues--I can't disclose who I am or who I work for, just wanted to get that up front. Our goal is to reduce GHG 80-90% by midcentury. I have been scanning the Gristmill for quite a while and am finally prompted to say something because while many of you are in the ballpark, I think sometimes your batting average on the facts is a little low, and in the interests of the climate I think you need to get some of your talking points straight.
Completely from the standpoint of stopping global warming, there are huge uncertainties about the possible benefits of replacing fossil fuel consumption with biomass, be it for liquid fuels or gasified in a CHP (combined heat and power) operation. The most biomass we can sustainably remove in the US--that's not touching any land set aside for conservation purposes, only using crop waste, forest product industry waste, dedicated energy crops like miscanthus or forage sorghum or what have you, "used chip fat" as Monbiot says, etc.--is one billion tons. NREL did a study on this back in 2004, commonly known as the "Billion Ton Study." This would displace roughly 20-40% of our current fossil fuel use, and that % depends heavily on the efficiency of conversion. We really have no idea where it will fall along that continuum because there are few next generation biomass liquid fuel companies operating, and all of them are operating in an experimental capacity. Hence, as BioDiversivist says, there isn't yet a product that's entering the marketplace. The efficiency variable will only become clearer with time, but we need to get everyone's heads wrapped around the fact that NO MORE THAN 40% of our current fuel use will EVER be met with biomass in ANY form. Period. And probably considerably less than that.
That said, it's an important 20-40% if you subscribe to the Pacala-Socolow wedge model of climate change (maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here--I'd love to hear any objections to that model, though, because I haven't heard any yet besides objections to the inclusion of individual technologies, such as coal with CCS, nuclear, or biomass). Today, the world consumes a total of 350 quadrillion British thermal units (Btus) of energy per year. That's a lot of energy--and nearly all of it comes from fossil fuels. The wedge model is designed to help 1) stabilize emissions, meaning level off the use of fossil fuels, and then 2) reduce GHG emissions by at least half by midcentury, the goal outlined in the IPCC report--the "middle of the road" compromise between the low and high end. Most environmentalists, including my organization, take the high road--at least 80-90% by midcentury, and that's an important point to make. Pacala and Socolow point out that you need six wedges just to level off emissions and about a dozen more to bring the total GHG down by half. And each "wedge" represents the maximum capacity for each technology. Conservation and efficiency are one wedge--nuclear is another, wind is another, hydro is another, biomass is another, and so on. Hydrogen is not included, one because it's an energy carrier and not a producer, and two because it's not available today. Their biomass estimates include food crop based fuel and biomass gasification, not cellulosic ethanol. So what would happen if you removed all biomass from the model? You'd have to make it up with something else. The model assumes full capacity for solar, wind, conservation, efficiency, and geothermal--the best liked options, at least amongst the more strident in the environmental community. So if you max those out, what have you got left? Coal with CCS, nuclear, and various technologies that apply to those industries. Keep in mind, too, that this model applies to all energy needs--electricity, heat, and transportation fuels--and if you were to meet all transportation needs through electricity, as some advocate on this board, you'd be adding that demand to the grid. All of this is just to say that those who are advocating biomass energy strategies aren't necessarily in the pocket of some industry or other, nor are they dupes--some of them are taking a look at the energy system as a whole and trying to figure out how we're going to rebuild the darn thing from the ground up.
Now, to the point about all biomass energy increasing atmospheric GHG concentrations--to a point, that's correct. But it misses the point that the amount of carbon in the plant matter depends on the type of plant. In the case of annuals, especially domesticated plants like corn, that's true, because we've bred those plants to put as much carbon into the fruit as possible. They are not designed to be hardy or last more than one season. In the case of native perennials, over half of the carbon is sent down into the roots, where it becomes incorporated into the soil because of the deep root structure of those plants. This is also why corn and other food crops are highly prone to erosion, whereas native perennials are not. If you were to mow off those grasses, make bio-oil and char through pyrolysis, and then incorporate the char without a full tilling, you'd be returning most of the char to the soil. Now, of course that means that the more char you return, the less carbon is available for the fuel. But that's okay because we are looking at the low end of that 20-40% range anyway, and in the utopian future that all of us from Grist will implement through a hostile takeover, we will ration fuels and only allow liquid fuels to be used in situations where there are no substitutes (aviation, emergency vehicles, some shipping of vital goods to places where there's no rail infrastructure, etc). I would also highly recommend enforcing a policy in which any cellulosic ethanol plants that may be operating should be required to capture and geologically sequester the off-gassed CO2 from the fermentation process in deep saline aquifers.
Finally, you may have caught my facetious tone because we aren't running the world from our desktop computers as we type away into the blogosphere, much as we would like to. Those of us who are designing policies should look at the things that are most technologically feasible and cost effective and prioritize those for research and commercialization funds. In that scenario, biofuels may or may not make the cut--I for one am leaning towards the "maybe yes" side because I continually hear from researchers in the field that the main barriers to next generation fuels are cost-related and not technology-related. I also strongly encourage people not to give up at the first sign of technological difficulty--if we did, we would never have flexible PV cells and we'd still have 50 megawatt turbines for farm use only, and solar thermal would be a joke, much the way cellulosic fuels and hydrogen are today. Finally, as much as I've noticed you all love to hate Vinod Khosla, if it wasn't for easily-dupeable venture capitalists with lots of cash to throw around, we'd never commercialize any advanced technology--except maybe if we can get the military to spend some of its ginormous budget on things like PVs, hydrogen, fuel cells, and advanced biofuels. But then we'd have to deal with the military, and I'm not so keen on the idea.
Looking forward to your responses to my long winded and rambling post--and thank you, BioDiversivist, for keeping the discussion going about these vitally important issues, and for not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, then moving onto the next "magic solution," only to be disappointed that that one isn't 100% perfect either.On Thoughts from a cellulosic ethanol agnostic posted 1 year, 7 months ago 35 Responses