That being said, the evidence so far suggests that corn ethanol, and perhaps other biofuels, have caused more environmental harm than they have prevented so far.

I once wrote that to college age greenie “Trees Are Bad!!!!”.

He of course responded with something like “you efin idiot, trees take CO2 out of the atmosphere!”. Of course he is right... about the CO2 and atmosphere stuff the jury is still out about the “efin idiot” stuff. I absolutely agree, trees do remove CO2 from the atmosphere while they are alive. When trees die of course, that CO2 is released back into the atmosphere. So, in order for trees to actually reduce CO2 over significant time periods (hundreds of years) the actual amount of forest, as in bio mass, must continually increase. That has in fact occurred in North American in a very dramatic fashion. Since 1950, the bio mass of forests in North America has increased by 40%. Great for CO2! However, for the full life of a tree, that tree will pull water out of the ground into its leaves. Most of that water ultimately evaporates into the atmosphere. If a tree lives to be several hundred years old, every year that tree will pump thousands of gallons of water into the atmosphere. And, when that tree dies, it will release both its resident CO2 and all of its resident water.

A few readers may not be aware that water molecules have the ability to absorb energy from roughly 70% more of of the infra red spectrum than that of CO2. Water vapour is a very important issue according to the IPCC. In fact, the IPCC 4th report references the potential for an increase in water vapour to increase global warming on thirty separate occasions in the 4th report.

What are you talking about you nutter? I heard that.

Well, if it was just one tree, or 100 trees or even 1000 trees, this would not be an issue at all. However, forests cover 1.75 Billion acres of North America. The following was written in a recent UN report “Today, the United States has about the same amount of land covered by trees as it did 100 years ago”. That's a heck of a come back since 1950.  Forests have also increased in bio-density since 1950.  As a result of mandated forest management practices which no long allow forest fires to burn themselves out so undergrowth has dramatically decreased.  As a result, forests in north America are now producing a lot more water than they were in 1950.  Some scientists have speculated that this is the explanation for the fact that Greenland is warming faster than Antarctica. Forests in the southern atmosphere have decreased since 1950 do to the clearing of land in developing nations.

One thing about water vapour which makes its behavior unique compared to most other greenhouse gases, is that water does not migrate globally. The cooling of rising water causes it to transform quickly from water vapour to rain or snow which falls back to earth. Its a science thing.  So, water vapour produced in North America, stays in the atmosphere for only about 2 weeks before it falls back to earth. However, while it is in the atmosphere for that portion of the world, water vapour does create a warming effect. The air currents coming off of North America, will carry water vapour and its resident heat over Greenland. So, if we are worrying about Greenland ice melting, and the oceans rising, perhaps we should, instead of plant a tree, harvest some trees?

Its not nice to mess with mother nature!

Just Grist for thought.

Plus, the argument is that if corn prices are allowed to rise, other countries will start growing it.  It's an economic argument, and it really has nothing to do with land.  By that account, anything that improves the market for corn or other grains is bad for the environment, our high-fructose corn syrup consumption, for instance.  So don't increase your Coke consumption, by all means.  You'll be tearing down the Amazon.

That is great point.

There is a whole bunch of hyprocrisy to hand out in all directions here, including the ARB and EPA who have no substitutes that can capture a low-carbon power source, especially for motor vehicle fuels.  The idea of "command and control" regulations to force new technologies is a sham and a farce, since there is nothing there but a few very expensive hybrid or electric commuter cars, and not many of them either. 

If you want things to continue on the present course, just keeping going at it like you are today - conventional crude oil transportation gasoline and diesel will be here forever and corn ethanol will be toast!  Hah, regulate it so there is no motor fuel and we'll all be sitting behind electron-gobbling computers until the money runs out because we can't work any more.  I would expect less from idiots, I guess.

Only about 1-2% of global liquid fuel supply is presently biofuel. Trust me, on a per gallon basis, nothing beats scraping the biosphere into our fuel tanks for pure destructive power on a per gallon basis.

Reality check. There is no way California will find corn ethanol unacceptable:

"...California's Air Resources Board "believes that corn ethanol will play an important role in helping California achieve the goals of the (low carbon fuel standard)," the state's top air quality regulator, Mary Nichols, said in a letter to General Wesley Clark, co-chair of biofuels association, Growth Energy and a former U.S. presidential candidate...."

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2227317720090423

Our stupid politicians are not going to save us. I saw a very interesting headline somewhere that suggested that a ruling against corn ethanol would be a boon for other biofuels and they are right. Corn ethanol is getting in the way of better things and it will never go down without a fight.

The UCS is chipping in:

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/scientists-urge-california-to-0223.html

I recenlty stumbled upon some evidence of land displacement effects in an old Oil Drum post that I adapted:

http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img29.gif

You can't base political decisions on science when the majority of your citizens don't believe in the theory of evolution.

Right, they claim, but are under no obligation to now, that they are going to look at indirect effects of other fuels in 2011, but they haven’t yet.  So let’s say in 2011, they find that gasoline should get an additional penalty for its indirect effects, and consequentially ethanol from the Midwest is indeed better than gasoline.  Great, but in the meantime, investment in ethanol has dried up, infrastructure development has completely stalled, and the oil industry has sucked up the ethanol production facilities at pennies on the dollar.  Great.  Thanks CARB.  They need to figure out every fuel's carbon footprint before setting the rules.

And this statement, “After all, where will they grow it? Not on existing land -- that's pretty much all in use,” is based on what?  This Stanford University study found a billion acres of idled crop land worldwide.  Who’s to say the rainforest is the best place to grow crops?  Doesn’t it make more sense to bring previous ag land back into production?

"The abandoned crop areas from HYDE and SAGE data had the highest concentrations over the Eastern United States, as a result of the relocation of cropland from the Eastern to the Midwestern region of North America.

The most extensive area of abandoned pasture was over the Midwestern region of North America, where HYDE data indicate that cropland has replaced pasture land. Australia, where pasture areas peaked in the mid-1970s and have since steadily declined, also had high levels of pasture abandonment in the data. We found that 99% of the land abandonment occurred during the past 100 years."

So your idea (and the idea of the ethanol industry presumably) is to bulldoze houses and shopping malls in the Eastern and Midwestern US and return that "abandoned agricultural land" to cultivation? That and farm more in Austrialia. The Australia that's currently seeing massive crop failures due to persistent drought and high temps (you know, from global warming)? Now that's a realistic policy proposal. As I said in my post, if you look at WHAT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING in the world (which is what the Woods Hole researchers did) rather than what a Stanford computer model says, you will see that in the last few years Brazilian rainforest was destroyed as a result of pressure from increased corn production for ethanol in the US.

And the idea that gasoline will suddenly be outlawed or something in California in 2011 is just silly. The total reduction in carbon required by the LCFS is only 10% by 2020 -- in 2011 car engines still won't be able to handle more than 10% ethanol in the gas anyway. I should point out, O friend of corn ethanol, that even President Obama and USDA chief Tom Vilsack want to get us to second-gen (i.e. non-food based) biofuels ASAP. Besides, in 2011 our best engine option will likely be hybrid or ideally plug-in hybrids. The fuel effeciency gains will far outweigh any effect of the LCFS by then. Nice try, though.

The research claims, but does not prove that corn ethanol was the cause of any of that deforestation.  Plenty of independent and respected scientists are on both sides of this issue.  175 recently sent a letter to CARB in support of their efforts.  111 sent a letter just before that against their ILUC efforts.  And they weren’t hacks, they were from UC-Berkely, UC-Davis, MIT, Amherst, etc.

At best, you can say the science community is divided, which is pretty poor for setting public policy.

And I never said gas would be outlawed.  I said it would be found to be worse than ethanol, so ethanol could then contribute to the 10 percent reduction.

I love cellulosic ethanol, but this regulation will kill the ethanol infrastructure improvements (such as installation of E85 pumps).  The vast majority of the cellulosic companies (those not currently in the corn ethanol business) came out AGAINST the land use theory because of that fact and the fact that “ethanol” is becoming a bad word and no one will invest any more.

This was from 12 cellulosic companies in written comments to CARB:

“The successful development, commercialization, and sustained production of second-generation biofuels is largely contingent upon continued market opportunities for the first generation of biofuels. Securing financing for second-generation biofuels projects in today’s economy is challenging enough; but the negative signal sent to potential investors by the enforcement of selective and questionable penalties against biofuels may be insurmountable.” 

You forgot to add this sentence to your critique of the study:

“However, the abandoned agriculture areas were reduced by only 3% when using the MODIS data to exclude urban areas.”

Clearly your statement about "bulldozing shopping malls" was over the top and inaccurate, even by your own followup comment about how you weren't really talking about urban areas.

And this isn't just a model, it's actual land use.

And claiming that grains are permanently out of production in Australia is an incredible leap to justify your shaky position. 

Finally, since you called me on not addressing all of your comments, tell me how you justify your previous statement that ILUC theory isn't about economics.  You said "that's not the effect we've seen."  I say, "exactly!"  We haven't seen this theory hold true.  Amazon deforestation rates have been cut in half since biofuels production ramped up.  Farming has been proven to represent .88 percent of the deforestation.  It's logging and cattle.

I apologize if I wasn’t clear.  When I say it makes more sense to put ag land back into production than convert rainforest land to crops, what I’m saying is that since no one has proven that ethanol has caused any land to be converted in the rainforest and this is simply a model predicting those effects, I contend that it is idled ag land brought back into production, not torn down trees.

And when you say “Somebody else will buy it if we don't. Your terrorists will get funded anyway.”  I disagree wholeheartedly.  America is by far the largest consumer of oil.  Corn and cellulosic ethanol could completely eliminate imports, plus provide the means for others to produce their own fuel.  We could render the Middle East obsolete.

We can't just keep importing oil because we think it's inevitable.

And you’re right that biofuels are in their infancy, which is why the efficiency gains in the last five years have been phenomenal, not that anyone gives the industry any credit.

If you really think this is happening, then why shouldn’t the actual polluter pay?

Last month, China suggested that America should have to pay for any carbon or pollution penalties attributed to Chinese manufacturing practices because America imports the goods.  There was universal outrage from Americans to this proposal.  Yet we now say ethanol producers should pay for carbon emissions from farmers growing FOOD worldwide.

The polluter should pay!  God forbid Brazil actually go in and arrest people for deforestation.  No, instead, we institute a policy that nullifies American ethanol and incentivizes Brazilian ethanol (which qualifies as low-carbon under California rules that include indirect land use change).

So if Brazil actually succeeds in stopping people from tearing down the rainforest, it will destroy the incentives for America using Brazilian ethanol (Brazil is the world’s largest ethanol exporter), since American ethanol will now be used to offset carbon. 

We’ve just created an incentive for the Brazilian government to encourage deforestation by soybean farmers.

First off, the CARB has released as part of its Low Carbon Fuel Standard program detailed lifecycle emissions profiles for every transportation fuel used in California . For gasoline and gasoline blendstocks, the CARB uses a 'well-to-wheel' footprint -- a well-established and encompassing calculation of gasoline's GHG emissions profile (although there's no line item for Shock and Awe...a bit too indirect for useful comparison). So I'm not exactly sure why the ethanol industry somehow feels like they've been singled out. Most likely, they're just unhappy that a more accurate -- and emissions heavy -- figure is being used at a time when the industry can't make money to save its life. 

I understand that the US only sees corn ethanol as a 'first-generation' biofuel, but the use of corn as motor fuel is flawed for so many reasons. And even as second-generation (cellulosic and non-corn-based) biofuels make their way into the system, the US biofuels production mandate still has corn providing 15 billion gallons of ethanol each year moving forward (For background: the mandate this year is 11 billion gallons -- essentially all corn--  and this ramps up annually until we hit 15 billion gallons. Then that stays flat and second gen pick up the difference as we make our way to 36 billion gallons by 2022).

Let's consider the economics. A recent study by the Congressional Budget Office looks at, among other things, the economic viability of corn-based ethanol. The CBO calculates that corn ethanol producers break even when the price of a gallon of gasoline is more than 90% a bushel of corn (for example, if gasoline costs $3.00 per gallon, then a bushel of corn must cost around $3.33 for producers to break even). If you take into account the $0.45 per gallon subsidy the US government gives to producers, the break-even ratio falls to 70%. Guess where that ratio sits now...around 38%!

With economics like that, ethanol producers like VeraSun and Aventine have gone bankrupt in the last six months and more are on their way. 

Now I have no qualms with government subsidizing a new fuel/technology in order to help industry get off the ground, but we really need to ask ourselves if it makes sense to dump those funds into a fuel sitting at the crossroads of two extremely volatile commodities (corn and gasoline). Ask yourself if we would really be using corn ethanol even as a first-gen biofuel if Iowa didn't hold the first primary.

But say you're cool with the economics not making sense and you're a fan of Iowa primaries. What about the environmental side of the coin? Surely corn ethanol is better than conventional gasoline?

The studies out there are too many to count, but here's a couple I've found particularly interesting:

The first I'll point to ran in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and came out of a joint study on the health costs (from fine particulate matter) of biofuels and conventional gasoline.

You know what it found? Corn-based ethanol is more harmful to public health than cellulosic ethanol and gasoline! The study also found that these detrimental health effects from corn ethanol are concentrated in the US Midwest where the bulk of our corn is grown.

And what about water needs? A study in Environmental Science and Technology looked at the water footprint of ethanol and found considerable regional variation in water needs due to differences in climate and irrigation practices. Corn ethanol produced in Ohio needed the least water - 5 liters of water for every liter of ethanol produced.

Guess who had the highest footprint? That's right, California. For every liter of ethanol produced in the Golden State, 2,138 liters of water are needed! California should keep that in mind given that they anticipate over 25 new biofuels facilities will need to be built as part of their low-carbon fuel initiative.

I read that study when it came out. Here is the full PDF:

http://www.growthenergy.org/2009/reports/2009 JIE Improvements in corn ethanol-Liska et al.pdf

"...the larger GHG reductions estimated in this study allow a greater buffer for inclusion of indirect-effect land-use change emissions while still meeting regulatory GHG reduction targets."

I am unaware of any critiques yet. They built a big spreadsheet than anyone can download to check their methodology or play with inputs. We need to see more of that.

It uses data from surveys given to refineries. If the refineries were sugar coating those surveys (putting their best foot forward so to speak) then the study is only as good as its input. I don't know how you can force a refinery to give you its actual gas, coal and electric bills. That would be tricky.

Take a look at this chart I adapted:

http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img29.gif

How would you predict the five variables that make the curves will change to keep them from crossing?

Something has to give. Improved crop yields are barely keeping up with population growth. Population growth is pretty much set. If cellulosic or algae never make it to commercial viability then the mix of crops won't change, unless we drop soy and corn fuels and start importing palm and cane. Doing that would short circuit most of the excuses for subsidizing biofuels. Assuming governments stick with their mandates, the thing most likely to give is land under cultivation. And as my post above showed, Brazilian farmers were torching the Amazon in anticipation of the big gold rush before the economic crissis slammed home:

"…24,932 square kilometers of Amazon forest was damaged between August 2007 and July 2008, an increase of 10,017 square kilometers -- 67 percent -- over the prior year. The figure is in addition to the 11,968 square kilometers of forest that were completely cleared, indicating that at least 36,900 square kilometers of forest were damaged or destroyed during the year..."

"…The surge in activity is attributed to the sharp rise in commodity prices over the past two years. While grain and meat prices have plunged since March, higher prices have provided an impetus for converting land for agriculture and pasture. Accordingly, the burning season of 2007 (July-September) saw record numbers of fires in some parts of the Amazon as farmers, speculators, and ranchers set vast areas ablaze to prepare for the 2008 growing season..."

"…falling grain prices early in the year coincided with a sharp slowing in deforestation. As food and fuel prices peaked through late 2007 and early 2008, it appeared that Amazon deforestation would climb to levels not seen since 2005 — more than 15,000 square kilometers were expected to be lost. The sudden downturn changed all that. When the final numbers came in for 2008, they showed that deforestation only increased a modest 3.8% to 11,968 square kilometers..."