Biofuels may promote, not slow, global warming: report

Washington - The US rush to plant more corn for biofuel is already being blamed for soaring food prices. Now, two new US studies show that cultivated biofuel crops may actually increase instead of decrease the carbon emissions that ethanol and other biofuels were supposed to reduce. The studies used a worldwide agricultural model to calculate how corn-based ethanol nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years. Planting switchgrass and other wild crops on farm land, as advocated by US President George W Bush, would increase emissions by 50 per cent. The studies from the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy published Friday are the latest warning against an all- out US rush into corn ethanol at the expense of food for humans and tilling of uncultivated ground. The authors said their research is the most extensive yet to probe the environmental costs of producing biofuels. Ploughing up rainforests, peatlands, savannas and grasslands to plant corn, sugarcane and other crops for biofuel releases 17 to 240 times more carbon than the annual savings from replacing fossil fuels, the researchers at the University of Minnesota and the Nature conservancy warned. That's because the plants and soil are a giant carbon-storage system. During cultivation, the carbon escapes as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, the studies published in Science magazine this week found. Similar 'carbon debt' has already mounted up in Indonesia, where the authors calculated it will take 423 years to pay off the loss of peatlands to create palm oil plantations, the authors calculated. The second largest debt is in the Amazon, where it will take 319 years to recoup the carbon emissions to create diesel-soybean plantations, the study said. The projected debt figure for ambitious corn-biofuel production targets would be 167 years - the time it would take for biofuels to stop contributing to climate change, the authors said. 'We don't have proper incentives in place because landowners are rewarded for producing palm oil and other products but not rewarded for carbon management,' said one of the authors, Stephen Polasky, of the University of Minnesota. The big push for corn-biofuel came in early 2007 when Bush called for the US to displace 15 per cent of its annual petrol use with alternative fuels by 2017 - a vast increase over the current 3-per- cent level. He got congressional backing for his tax-incentive plan. Energy self-sufficiency drove Bush's interest, but he also benefited from the popular image of biofuel as environmental- friendly. The Washington-based Earth Policy Institute has predicted that ethanol distilleries would need 139 million tons of maize by the current year - almost half of the US harvest - to keep up with US demand, and that's just the beginning. That means not only rising corn prices, but the displacement of corn and other grain-growing to other countries, including the Amazon, as farmers chase rising prices, the study said. 'What they react to is an increase in price,' the authors wrote. The researchers said it made no sense to convert more land for biofuel production because 'all the biofuels we use now cause habitat destruction.' 'Global agriculture is already producing food for 6 billion people. Producing food-based biofuel, too, will require that still more land be converted to agriculture,' the Nature Conservancy's Joe Fargione said in a statement. The authors urged use of more agricultural and forest waste and native grasses and woody biomass from marginal lands. Affordable technology for conversion to ethanol from these sources is however still out of reach. The US is the second-largest producer of ethanol, after Brazil, which gleans more than 40 per cent of its transportation fuel from renewable sources, mostly sugar cane. Corn is a less efficient. Sugar cane produces 5.3 times as much ethanol as does corn: one unit of energy input produces only 1.5 units of ethanol from corn, but 8 units of ethanol from sugar. The studies challenge previous studies that show substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because the feedstock sequesters carbon as it grows.

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More WIMBFeb 9th, 2008 - 16:47:39

Weather in my backyard (WIMB) Means Global warming is real because i see it in my backyard. Heavenly ski resort above Lake Tahoe on the California/Nevada state border is reporting its snowiest ever month in January when an incredible 160 inches (four metres) of snow fell on the slopes. The resort's snowfall records go back more than 30 years to the 1975-76 season. Heavenly's snowpack is currently 23 percent higher than average.

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SP4: In other News...Feb 9th, 2008 - 17:38:48

...the world is round, the sky is blue and there are 365 days in a year.

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Frank BeanFeb 12th, 2008 - 18:12:30

Damned if you do - damned if you don't.
Where's Janie ?

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NoharnessFeb 15th, 2008 - 16:51:04

RE:'The authors urged use of more agricultural and forest waste and native grasses and woody biomass from marginal lands. Affordable technology for conversion to ethanol from these sources is however still out of reach.'

Converting such materials into methane, however, is not out of reach and we have a number of tried and true processes in hand that will convert methane into gasoline. The equipment for accomplishing this feat requires only a modest investment, is mostly low-tech and can be used nearly anywhere.

Bio-diesel from algae and animal waste is the only way we will ever produce enough liquid fuel to have an impact on our transport energy needs. Even with this agricultural friendly sources, it will be necessary to build electrical power plants to make up the shortfall The best way to take care of that is to build a mix of fission plants and breeder reactors.

Everything else is sheer folly.

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More hypocrisyFeb 16th, 2008 - 15:39:44

Now you tell us...Most of the prowarmers answers to solve anything have this unitended result, remember liberals are angry people and nothing makes em happy...

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SP4: How true!Feb 16th, 2008 - 20:08:22

Liberalism is the modern form of Christianity. The driving philosophy?

Original Sin.

All liberal solutions have some kind of self sacrifice or penance attached. Think about any liberal cause and then see what they propose as a solution. There is ALWAYS something you must give up or change, contrary to your lifestyle, in order to comply.

Only, in this way, can you really solve the problems of humanity. Never mind our history, of creating real solutions to these problems and advancing our lives, his is simply not acceptable.

No, your carbon footprint is just too big, you car is too big, you drive too much, you use too much energy, etc. They are never satisfied.

Global Warming is the gold standard. It is all-encompassing, and everyone must pay. Pay we will. Never mind the glaring holes in this.....ruse. The libnazis are determined to control your lives in order to achieve their goals.

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