Sep 22 2007
BioFuels Fueling Greenhouse Gases Increases
I knew this was coming – there are no short cuts to burning fuels and producing gases. Combustion based on oil or corn oil (to be too cute by half) are not going to be drammatically different in the final equations. And so I am not surprised that many biofuels made from plant material fermented to make oil and gas equivalent chemicals actually produce MORE greenhouse gases than petroleum based alternatives.
Rapeseed and maize biodiesels were calculated to produce up to 70 per cent and 50 per cent more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil fuels. The concerns were raised over the levels of emissions of nitrous oxide, which is 296 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Scientists found that the use of biofuels released twice as much as nitrous oxide as previously realised. The research team found that 3 to 5 per cent of the nitrogen in fertiliser was converted and emitted. In contrast, the figure used by the International Panel on Climate Change, which assesses the extent and impact of man-made global warming, was 2 per cent. The findings illustrated the importance, the researchers said, of ensuring that measures designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are assessed thoroughly before being hailed as a solution.
Both oil and these biofuels originate with biological matter, but the newer material (biofuels) have more impurities in them I suspect. What is important to take away from this is the incredibly poor science and engineering that went into the claim in the first place that biofuels were better for the climate. Clearly the more popular ones are not, and the increase in food costs (and therefore starvation that will result in) shows we are paying a high price to pollute more, not less. Thanks to the Chicken Littles on man-made global warming we have made things worse – not better. That is par for the course for these terminally error prone fanatics.
Yeah but I live in a rural area. In fact my neighbor raises corn. I would rather be depending on him for fuel than the ME. Now if the Democrats would let us go after oil in ANWR or go after all that oil in the west we might not need to worry about it so much.
I am not surprised. Too bad we still don’t have any alternate fuels viable for our market.
sad to say, but with current technology “alternate fuels” are a pipe dream, and will continue to be for many years.
The engineering solution to this “problem” is do the easy
stuff first. That’s all the sites that burn fuel and don’t move around.
They account for most of the so-called greenhouse gas emissions
anyways.
The good reason to do this is that sometime this century the
world will have run sufficiently out of oil so as to be a large problem.
If we get a jump on that problem, then it is better for us.
You power all the fixed sites with electricity. You generate the
electricity from nuclear energy, (like France), and you defend
the nuclear sites and speed up regulatory hassles by locating
them in military bases, and the military gets a new and important
job. I know arch-conservatives would hate the fact that
such an approach violates their sanctity of “private enterprise”,
but it works.
We have about 1000 year supply of fissionale Uranium and
that can be extended to 5000 years by using Plutonium as
well, in fast breeder reactors (like France has).
In 5000 years, we’ll have had enough time to figure out what
comes next, like hydrogen fusion for example.
Now cars. Given a plentiful supply of electricity, hydrogen can
be produced as a fuel and it is simple enough to run a car
on hydrogen. Liquid fuels are better though, because liquids
are always better than gasses when it comes to a fuel tank,
but mybe we can invent a way to synthesize a simple alcohol
from CO2, H20, and energy.
Planes last. They are only a small contributor to carbon use,
mostly in the news because of greenies whose real agenda is
class war, nothing to do with “the planet”.
Conservation is not a way forward. Conservation only has merit
if you are doing something else in parallel and you need a bit
more time, like if you break down in the desert with not enough
water. Conserve it if you have a plan to get out, otherwise you’re
going to die anyways.
Science and engineering got us this far. Let’s not romanticize
going back to living in tents. The reality will be brutal beyond
anyone’s worst dreams.