How's things in South Africa?

Tickell  is no snake oil salesman. He truly "believes" in his fuel. I'm not trying to vilify a guy who has simply developed an excessive emotional attachment to an idea that has turned out to be 180 degrees wrong, no fault of his own. I was hesitant to write this review because I mean him no personal harm. But these fuels are truly a disaster for our biodiversity and biosphere, pouring gas on a flame consuming the world's last carbons sinks at ever increasing rates.

The film wasn't just about using waste grease. The preview is, like the rest of the film, misleading. Several of the scenes were shot in fields of soybeans or rapeseed and many more scenes have them in the background. If we were to stop using those crops for biodiesel, 90% of biodiesel production would disappear, leaving mostly palm and a smidgen of waste.

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

The American Solar Energy Society is slowly starting to sober up from it's biofuelishness --
this month's issue of "Solar Today" is available free on line for a while -- they've got a story that indicates that they've still got a long way to go, but at least they've dropped the biohype a bit.

http://www.solartoday-digital.org/solartoday/20080708/

The 5% Project

Whoa, hold on there! While your assertion that Tickell's film veers towards sensationalism is partially true, it's still a valuable film and contribution to the larger debate/public education surrounding biofuels.

But there are a few things in here I can't let you get away with in this article:

"Tickell uses everything he can get his hands on to promote biodiesel: The attack on the Twin Towers (actually the result of religionists with a righteous cause), the Iraq war (actually the result of a religionist with a righteous cause), our children, school buses, you name it."

What is the basis for "religionists" righteous cause? They don't just grow up that way... Last time I checked, US military geopositioning, esp. bases in the middle east, were a prime reason Osama gave for the 9/11 attacks. I'm not going to make a case here, since it's been made elsewhere already, but I think you've got to give the film
credit for pointing out the root cause of a lot of these problems: oil.

"We were told that emissions inside our children's school buses are four times higher than outside the bus. As you might guess, along with being the answer to human conflict, biodiesel will also eliminate emissions inside school buses. In reality it would reduce soot 50 percent, while increasing NOx 10 percent."

Double check your facts on this one and be specific. Different blends of biodiesel put out different emission levels, and B20 doesn't raise them, but does cut soot significantly. Also, NOx isn't what kills people in diesel exhaust, it's particulate matter (soot: http://gas2.org/2008/03/27/how-diesel-exhaust-affects-you ...).

B20 reduces air toxics (the most damaging pollutants for human health) by 20-40%, while B100 reduces them by as much as 90%.

"He tells the audience that a diesel Golf gets 55 miles-to-the-gallon whereas the gasoline version gets only 30 -- which is a bit of an exaggeration, to put it mildly -- and that biodiesel is 78 to 98 percent carbon neutral, and
on, and on."

That's no exageration from the people I know who have diesel Golfs. They all seem to get 55 mpg, as most older VWs do. Biodiesel made from cooking oil offsets diesel fuel usage by using a recycled source. Even biodiesel made form soybean oil can decrease greenhouse-gas emissions by 41% when compared to diesel.

"He finally gets to the "well-funded media" conspiracy theory and tells us that the real motivation behind one of the conspirators, the Grocer's Association, is to lower the cost of food! An uncomfortable silence followed that
comment, suggesting that not everyone in the audience was brain dead."

Not a conspiracy: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mo-grocers-etha ...

That's all I have time for right now. For more on biodiesel: http://gas2.org/2008/04/10/biodiesel-mythbuster-20-twenty ...

Lead Writer for Gas 2.0 (http://gas2.org)

"...its still a valuable film and contribution to the larger debate/public education surrounding biofuels."

How can you call a film that deliberately deceives the public, valuable? To who? The 0.1 percent of the world's population who call themselves American farmers? The American consumer who subsidizes them? The biodiesel refiners who make the fuel from Canadian crops, take the dollar a gallon subsidy from American taxpayers and then ship the fuel to Europe? The biodiversity of the planet?

He continues to claim biofuels are 78 to 98 percent carbon neutral. The film fails to mention the following:

1)    An international team of researchers led by a Nobel laureate has found biodiesel made from rapeseed releases up to 70% more GHG than diesel. He followed that paper with a point-by-point rebuttal to the critiques leveled by biofuel missionaries (George Monbiot's term).
2)    Two studies in Science and one in he Journal of Conservation Biology have found that all crop based biofuels are releasing more GHG than fossil fuels because farmers are (predictably) clearing land to make up for what is going into our gas tanks. And in case you didn't know it, because the film makes no mention of it, land use change (deforestation) is a close second behind fossil fuel use as a cause of global warming, but unlike fossil fuels, biofuels also pour fire on the extinction event by immediately and directly destroying biodiversity. The destruction of the Cerrado and Amazon reached new levels last year, in part because of increased demand for vegetable oil and the same thing is happening in Southeast Asia thanks to palm, all exacerbated by biofuel demand.

He joins venture capitalists and Bush in downplaying the role biofuels are having in the food crisis.

3)    America supplies most of the world's corn. Last year 25% of our corn crop went into our gas tanks-- an area the size of Indiana to increase liquid fuel supplies barely 2%. This year over 30% is expected to go into our tanks. Admittedly, his film is about biodiesel. Rapeseed based biodiesel would have taken and area the size of Indiana and Ohio to produce that much mileage and soy based biodiesel would have taken an area the size of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and part of Kentucky.
4)    Rather than promote the retrofitting of school busses with modern air pollution controls (now feasible with the introduction of low sulfur fuels) he has crafted a scheme to divert valuable food oil from the mouths of poor children across the globe.

"What is the basis for the "religionists" righteous cause?" ...I think you've got to give the film credit for pointing out the root cause of a lot of these problems: oil."

Obama had nothing to do with Iraq. Hussain had nothing to do with the twin towers. The association between Iraq and the Twin Towers is the result of Bush repeating the lie over and over again until most Americans came to believe it, including you, apparently. It is intensely naïve to believe that biofuels will limit human conflict. Your response to my review is an example of human conflict, caused by biofuels, as is the food crisis, as is the biodiversity crisis.

"Double check your facts on this one and be specific. ....B20 does not raise them but does cut soot significantly. Also, NOx isn't what kills people in diesel exhaust, it's particulate matter [soot]."

He insinuates biodiesel will eliminate air pollution inside the busses, not simply reduce soot 10 to 50%. Soot and NOx are both problems. B-20 reduces soot only 10%. B-100 only 50% (http://www.epa.gov/otaq/models/analysis/biodsl/p02001.pdf ... page 69). Installation of air pollution controls reduces soot 50-90 percent, which is more than B100, without destroying one carbon sink or causing a single food riot. See the soot pouring out of Tcikell's B100veggie car? I saw and smelled the soot pouring out of the parade of biodiesel cars before the film. If that had been a parade of hybrids I would not have seen or smelled anything.

NOx is a health hazard pollutant regulated by the EPA. Visit the EPA website to learn about their decades long efforts to control it.

That's no exageration from the people I know who have diesel Golfs. They all seem to get 55 mpg

Everything in this film is exaggerated or flat out wrong. I'm sure he can occasionally milk 55 out of one but most will not. The EPA says 31/41, average = 36, Edmonds 37/44, average = 40 ( http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/Index.do and http://hffo.cuna.org/12433/article/1456/html ).

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

They would if we hired Tickell to do the film...

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

algae oil is the biodiesel equivalent of ethanol's cellulosic. It's a lab experiment being used to justify the continued government support of food-based biofuels.

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

That's no exageration from the people I know who have diesel Golfs. They all seem to get 55 mpg, as most older VWs do. Biodiesel made from cooking oil offsets diesel fuel usage by using a recycled source. Even biodiesel Seks HikayeleripornopornoTeknoloji made form soybean oil can decrease greenhouse-gas emissions by 41% when compared to diesel.