Today, The LA Times ran a good editorial debunking the benefits of ethanol.  

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-ethanol20aug20, ...

was better than the one in Science. And it isn't just ethanol they are talking about. They are also talking about biodiesel. The only reason woody biomass (switchgrass and forests) comes close is because in theory, you would not destroy the ecosystem to harvest the biomass. Never mind that cellulosic fuels are still lab experiments along with fusion power, coal sequestration, and algae.

This article should prove helpful in arguing against agrofuels, but rational argument has little impact on people when profit/status is at stake. We can rationalize anything to suit our personal preferences. Laying this argument on the guy who drives up and down my street blowing soy biodiesel smoke out the ass of his old Volvo would do nothing to change his mind because he has obtained status in his circle for doing so, all based on erroneous data of course, but until those in his circle start to question the validity of his symbol, he is going to cling to it for all it's worth.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

This is one of the weakest 'studies' ever allowed to appear in Science. The bioenergy community is bombarding the journal with letters pointing out the amazingly high number of errors.

It's amazing Gristmill can't spot them! :-)

Temperate, high and mid-latitude forests are net carbon contributers. The authors refused to take this into account, invalidating their entire case.

The entire study is based on the flawed idea that forests outside of the humid tropics are carbon sinks.

In fact: all biofuels are better than all forests. The greatest taboo: palm oil sequesters more carbon than pristine rainforests! (Of course this doesn't mean we should chop down forests, because they deliver other ecoservices). But still:

Livermore, Carnegie: Study: Temperate Forests Could Worsen Global Warming

DOE: Growing more forests in United States could contribute to global warming

University of Michigan: Soil fertility limits forests capacity to absorb excess CO2

Duke University: Duke open-air experiment results could deflate hopes that forests can alleviate global warming

Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) program: Experiment suggests limitations to carbon dioxide 'tree banking'

FACE: Temperate forests not a fix for global warming - Carbon offsets based on northern plantations may be bunk

Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology: High-latitude forests increase warming

The science proving this study wrong on virtually all fronts is overwhelming.

Sad to see conservationists making themselves so irrelevant in the biofuels debate, because they could have played an important role.

"Temperate, high and mid-latitude forests are net carbon contributers. The authors refused to take this into account, invalidating their entire case."

Your seven references represent just three studies and none of them claim that temperate, high and mid-latitude forests are net carbon contributors. I am curious where you got that idea. Two show that trees in a high carbon atmosphere won't grow faster unless also fertilized and watered better. One shows that trees in high latitude forests might cool the planet for the first few decades but would begin to absorb heat as they got older, even as they continue to absorb carbon, resulting in a net heating of the planet after many decades.

I think you are trying to say that the one study that says higher latitude forests could warm the atmosphere invalidates this new study. However, this latest study in Science does not say that we should run out and plant forests instead of food crops at high latitudes. It says that planting agrofuels is worse than leaving the existing forest intact because agrofuel crops "are not, by and large, grown in" high latitude areas. It also shows that letting forests reclaim agrofuel cropland (in the lower latitudes where most is grown) would release less carbon than continuing to grow the agrofuels.

"In fact: all biofuels are better than all forests. The greatest taboo: palm oil sequesters more carbon than pristine rainforests!"

An exclamation mark makes a poor substitute for valid sources. All biofuels are better than all forests? Right, mow down the Amazon and cover it with neat rows of corn and soybeans. Once again, I think you are confusing the fact that an old growth tropical forest does not absorb carbon with the fact that a palm oil plantation displaces fossil fuels.

Neither one pulls more carbon out of the air and neither one adds carbon to the air.

The palm plantation keeps more from being added by displacing fossil fuel, but if you let it go fallow, the regenerating tropical forest would pull more carbon out of the air than the palm biodiesel would have displaced. Get it?

The study didn't include palm oil. But it did include cane ethanol and you can see that even if palm oil contains twice as much energy per acre than cane ethanol (which it doesn't) it would still fall far short of letting tropical cropland return to forest.

 http://environment.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn12496/dn12496-1_650.jpg

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

As Mongabay points out, not only is tropical forest land bad.

But if it's tropical forrests situated ontop of Peatland Bogs, then the negative impact is numerically doubled.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/7/19/111413/890

"So you see, where it reads 'temperate cropland to forest', we should see a negative bar, going somewhere to -50."

I am repeating myself here, but none of your references to date have claimed that temperate forests don't sequester carbon. Your claim above that the "temperate cropland to forest" bar should be fifty units to the left makes no sense whatsoever.

Their model shows that the trees remove carbon from the atmosphere while they grow but after several decades the absorbed sunlight from the dark trees would heat the atmosphere. The new study covers a 30 year span before the trees would lose their ability to cool by absorbing carbon, at which time we could choose to harvest them in a manner that would not release their stored carbon. That is a long time away. And again, as I said before, the study does not propose converting existing food crops into forests. It suggests not converting them into agrofuels.

"The study is flawed, because temperate forests as such as net carbon contributors. The science is pretty clear on that (see the studies mentioned above)."

Once again I am repeating myself but go read those three studies again. None of them say that temperate forests are net carbon contributors. Only one study shows that after several decades a temperate forest would have a heating effect because of its dark color, not because it does not absorb carbon. Have you got your hands over your ears again?

You are the perfect example of what I said earlier. A person who wants to believe something is immune to rational argument, as anyone who has debated a creationist knows all too well.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

The study is flawed, because temperate forests as such as net carbon contributers. The science is pretty clear on that (see the studies mentioned above).

Not, "net carbon" it's "net heat"

Catch being that the timeframe is over hundreds of years.  And in the meantime they would actually be worthwhile.

http://www.llnl.gov/pao/news/news_releases/2005/NR-05-12- ...

Jonas, you said:

"Unless you harvest such a temperate forest after a few years"

The Livermore study says that planting a forest in the United States could actually cool the Earth for a few decades. The walnut tree in my back yard is only two decades old and it is fifty feet tall. From Greyfln's link:

"On time scales longer than a few centuries, the net effect will actually be warming in these regions," said Govindasamy Bala of the Livermore team."

I find it interesting how so many people put so much confidence in this one study. When you look at the time scales in the study, you realize that even temperate forests in the mid-latitudes could be used to fight global warming as long as they were harvested before they get large enough to cause warming. One way to do that would be to displace fossil fuel with it but who knows what technology will be available thirty years from now. It does not advise us to cut down our temperate forests as a way to cool the planet.

All of the above is a rebuttal to your distracting side argument. The study in Science is about agrofuels grown in mid to low latitudes, not upper latitudes where few agrofuels can be grown in comparison.

In addition, you said:

"The bioenergy community is bombarding the journal with letters pointing out the amazingly high number of errors."

Right, a collection of biodiesel distributors, refiners, and enthusiasts take Science to task. This suggests to me that you hang out in places like the Biodiesel Now forum where, like in a church or mosque, "believers" congregate to reinforce one another's "beliefs." When Monbiot first wrote an article bashing biofuels this same "bioenergy community" (a collection of biodiesel enthusiasts and the profiteers using them) buried him in hate mail.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world