[SGVLUG] Should we use biofuels? Was ...Tom & his Prius....

[Dustin Laurence]

Folks, this thread now appears to be growing rather than dying down.  It
may need to move off of SGVLUG.  I realize that, but I'm going to
respond to at least this one, at least once.  Sorry.

On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 03:29:06PM -0700, David Lawyer wrote:

> seduced by the biofuel scam.  While I could be wrong, from what
> evidence I've looked at so far, it seems to be a scam.  An example of
> a biofuel is ethanol or biodiesel, made from corn, soybeans, and/or
> switchgrass.  David Pimentel, a professor at Cornell, has analyzed the
> energy costs of producing ethanol and biodiesel and claims that it
> takes more energy to produce than is returned when you burn it as a
> fuel.

It has been claimed, yes.  I think he's wrong, but have not had the
patience to review every claim ever made.  However, his research may
well be the old news people are no longer using.  The numbers I've been
seeing have revised the ethanol return from negative to modestly
positive (maybe 1.3 or something).  I don't believe any of them,
actually, but you can always choose which inaccurate numbers you
prefer. :-)

> I'll talk about ethanol, but I think that the situation is similar for
> biodiesel.

They are *very* *very* different.  For one thing, the energy return is
several times higher for typical US crops.  (It's also very location
dependent--Brazil does very well on ethanol but they grow a lot of
sugarcane, which is a much better ethanol crop than corn.)

It is also nice to note that since most farm machinery burns diesel it's
possible to produce oil crops using the very thing being produced.  This
isn't possible with ethanol without re-investing in trucking and
agricultural equipment with spark-ignition rather than
compression-ignition, and mostly I suspect no such replacement is
available.  (Where, pray tell, can I buy semi tractors, combines, and
farm tractors that can burn ethanol?)

> ethanol.  This is mainly because the government is subsidizing such
> production to the tune of a few billions of dollars each year and
> there is a lot of money to be made from erroneous science.

That is (unsubstantiated off-the-cuff estimate) dwarfed by the enormous
petro subsidy--you have to count the energy costs and emissions (I'm not
even counting money here) of military transports and various wars, for
example.  I've never seen anyone count military fuel usage and hardware
production as part of the extra production costs for petrofuel.  Nor the
cost of disrupting the climate using carbon sequestered over geological
time rather than last year (yes, there is still some impact in
production).

Nor, if money is an issue, do people count the cost of driving up the
price of petroleum as a raw feedstock for plastics and other industrial
chemicals.  The best quick comment in this regard is (strangely enough)
somewhere in the Stainless Steel Rat series, where the hero cannot
fathom that anyone in the past would have burned something as valuable
as natural hydrocarbons.

Hmm--given that (barring NOx, which can be scrubbed with emissions
equipment we'll start having now that we're to have ULSD) most toxic and
smog emissions are much lower with biodiesel, you have to count health
costs (this should be pretty obvious to anyone who has lived in LA for a
long time).  Health care costs not only money but energy and, of course,
human suffering.

> Another effect is to increase the price of food and take land out of
> cultivation that was once being used for food production and convert
> it to fuel production.  The means more deaths from malnutrition
> (perhaps in some cases even starvation).

I have no time to read most of what you wrote, but this is nonsense.
There is *no* global food shortage.  There are many local distribution
shortages, and they can kill a great many people, but that is
fundamentally a problem of bare-knuckle realpolitik (willingness to let
people starve for various reasons) and not one of global supply.

I grant you, the inability of the environmental movement to face
population growth squarely means the threat is there, but the nature of
exponential processes is such that this will be true for *any* amount of
food.  Nothing can be solved that way without dealing with the exponent.

Anyway, this common argument is a simple fraud for other reasons.
First, there is a certain amount of waste oil which can be recycled--not
anything like enough to supply our diesel demand, but quite significant
for our current biodiesel consumption.  This is "free" in the sense it
was already produced for other reasons.  More importantly, the reason
people use food crops for biodiesel is that the biodiesel demand is so
small that no one grows a crop specifically for it.  It has to piggyback
on some crop intended for another use.  Some of the most effective oil
crops are not food crops anyway (the highest yield per acre is
apparently oil palm--the major problem is that it's exploitation would
encourage deforestation since it grows precisely where rainforests grow
or something).  There are also some oil-bearing algaes which can be
grown on non-arable land anyway (it doesn't matter where you put a tank
of water).

The key is that we have to create an actual biodiesel demand to work
with any of those sources.

> have published angry message opposing it.  One person equates biofuels
> with genocide, saying that it will kill poor people due to less food
> being available at low prices..

It's best to ignore such people--they're quite happy if they are
contradicted as long as they get attention, and I learned long ago that
they are impervious to reason.

> I just don't think there is a technical fix for our energy problem.  I
> heard all kinds of tecnical fix proposals during the energy crisis of
> the early 1970s.  They don't seem to have worked out as we now use
> about 1/3 more petroleum as we did in 1970 and imports have about
> quadrupled since then in spite of the proposals in the 1970's to
> decrease imports.  

While I agree to some extent, to suggest that we even tried to fix it
technically is ludicrous.  We didn't.  Not at all.

You have also not taken into account that to some extent particular
problems don't matter.  I can argue for or against any biofuel by
choosing the grounds for argument.  The only thing that is inarguable is
that we won't have the option to continue with fossil fuel forever, and
doing so for as long as possible will cost us bitterly.  But first you
have to create a visible demand for alternative fuels, and maintain that
demand long enough for investors to decide that they might see a return
on investment.  There is no other way.

Doing "nothing" is a choice too, and the one guaranteed to fail over the
long term.  Choosing to be certainly wrong rather than making a choice
and possibly being wrong is irrational.  Human, yes, but irrational.

With global warming we're getting to the point where we should give up
on avoiding nukes and build as many nuclear plants as we can to charge
fully electric cars.  I'd not like to be that desperate, though we
probably already are.  Nuclear plants are also inherently a big, big
industrial solution.  By contrast, individuals can decide to use
biofuels and demonstrate that there is a willingness to use something
besides the one guaranteed failure.  With enough demonstrated
willingness, there is enough safety for elected officials to be willing
to make harder choices.  So opting out of petrofuels is probably more
important than any particular choice of biofuel you can make.

Dustin

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://www.sgvlug.net/pipermail/sgvlug/attachments/20060719/b414b386/attachment-0001.bin