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Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels

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Re: Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels

#101

Post by lazide »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #88
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I see what you’re saying. You’re talking about the whole system. Take land and then plant trees, the trees sequester carbon as they grow, some of them fall to the forest floor continuing to sequester carbon. But, I think the issue with your argument is, this process isn’t indefinite. The natural cycle is that these trees will decay, fall, rot (releasing carbon naturally) or natural forest fires will burn them anyw…

The planet isn't infinite: by running the cycle more quickly, you knock the "baseline" atmospheric carbon up a few more ppm. This has knock-on effects.

Even if we converted all arable land in the United States to forest, best case we would take many years to sequester even a single years fossil carbon emissions. And we’d all starve to death in the process.

Any co2 released by harvesting a forest, is very shortly taken back up again by the forest regrowing. Within a lifetime for sure.

Trees are nice, I get it. But this is all in the noise.

Re: Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels

#102

Post by gadders »

zekrioca wrote: post #84
AngryData wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This why im still a huge advocate for building nuclear power. In order to synthesize this kind of stuff from air instead of wasting all our farmland on it to have carbon neutral liquid or gas fuels available, we need insane amounts of energy. For some things batteries and other tech are the better option to switch to, but petroleum is still king for many applications and farming it with plants is extremely land ineff…

Should we set nuclear facilities all over the country?

You mean like an SMR? Yes, if they can be secured.

If we went for full size nuclear reactors, though, I doubt we would need more than half a dozen more in the UK.

Re: Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels

#103

Post by meindnoch »

scotty79 wrote: post #98
meindnoch wrote: post #97

Corn is just a very inefficient solar panel.

But a pretty good battery.

Human-made batteries are much more efficient. Pumped hydro storage is more efficient. Heck, even electrolysing hydrogen from water has higher roundtrip efficiency than burning ethanol made from corn.

Re: Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels

#104

Post by raverbashing »

tzs wrote: post #40

> Why would growing corn for ethanol and burning it in an engine be any climate-friendlier than growing that same corn for food and burning an equivalent amount of gasoline in an engine? The carbon absorbed in the field wouldn’t change; neither would the carbon emitted from the car. If the only difference was that producing ethanol emitted much more carbon than producing gasoline, where were ethanol’s benefits? Where…

That being said, growing corn for fuel ethanol is stupid.

Other crops are more efficient

(Unless we find a way of turning the whole plant into fuel)

Re: Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels

#105

Post by lazide »

whatever1 wrote: post #66

Just because you can drive 2’ and casually get 100 liters of gasoline does not make fossil fuel infinite. People forget that oil is not like air. We waste a ton of resources for drilling, transporting and refining, creating in the process huge externalities, to ensure reliable production and supply. And it will only get worse as we are running out of easy to tap sources. Looking for cheap and viable alternatives to f…

The issue with corn ethanol is that while it could* be done without fossil fuels, it isn’t actually.

Which is why it is such a scam, actually, because in theory it could be done that way, but it’s cheaper to inject fossil fuels at every stage, and hence isn’t actually green. It was also done before electric cars were a thing, and now the whole thing is a pretty pointless give away to the ag industrial complex.

Re: Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels

#106

Post by lazide »

rpcope1 wrote: post #34
mlyle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yah. There's some reason for ethanol in the fuel mix. Having the ability to do it at some scale is good for security purposes, and it helps tailpipe emissions. But that's a lot less corn-derived ethanol than we currently make/burn.

> There's some reason for ethanol in the fuel mix. Uh, maybe from a "we can grow our own fuel perspective", but I've never seen a car run better on E10 or E85 than E0. Basically everything (including the newest and fanciest engines) runs like ass if you've got ethanol in there (and now you have to contend with your fuel having a component that's hydrophilic, which is a huge problem in and of itself, and brutal on nat…

It does have higher octane than gasoline, so with the right tuning it can run in higher compression engines and be beneficial, even offsetting the lower caloric density.

It usually requires an ECU flash though.

Re: Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels

#107

Post by dmbche »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #76
knappe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look dude, read the papers or read the book. I don't have much more to offer you. This isn't just about the forest itself but about the land used to grow the forest. "In the Carbon Costs of Global Wood Harvests, published in Nature in 2023, WRI researchers using a biophysical model estimated that annual wood harvests over the next few decades will emit 3.5-4.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year. That is mo…

So I see what you’re saying. You’re talking about the whole system. Take land and then plant trees, the trees sequester carbon as they grow, some of them fall to the forest floor continuing to sequester carbon. But, I think the issue with your argument is, this process isn’t indefinite. The natural cycle is that these trees will decay, fall, rot (releasing carbon naturally) or natural forest fires will burn them anyw…

Go look at the article about the effects of the introduction of wolves back in yellowstone that was frontpage yesterday.

That f'ing with one species.

Now imagine the impact of f'ing with the forest itself.

Could the capacity to sequester carbon be affected by second or third order effects?

Re: Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels

#108

Post by b112 »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #90
mschuster91 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, you almost always end up with a massive amount of overproduction. That either ends up diverted into fuel production, which raises ethical concerns on one side and prolongs the use of fossil fuels because it's "effectively free" and so stops people from switching over to electric mobility on the other side. And on top of that, many Western countries routinely dump their overproduction on Africa, where…

Grain overproduction is also a significant driver of climate change. Fossil fuels, meat, and GMO monocultures aren't ecologically sustainable in current form, they continue because of capture of factions of governments by corrupt lobbying interests who threaten elected officials into driving more cash and favorable regulations their way.

People need to stop pointing the finger at food production, with such massive blinders on. Food "overproduction", are you actually serious? Are people so removed from farming, and food production, that they think it's a simple thing?

Plant X food, get X food?

Absolutely not! Even with irrigation, there are years with drought, yes even in the West. There are years that are too cloudy, or too sunny (yes, too sunny is a thing). There are years with locusts, and no insecticide doesn't completely solve that. And regardless of global warming or not, some seasons have always been worse for hurricanes, tornadoes, and some events at harvest time can wipe out crops entirely!

Outside of all of the above, few nations feed themselves on their own output. External food production can wither and vanish in an instant, whether through war, or inclement weather too.

You must overproduce to ensure a continuity of food supply. It's the same reason that fallow farmland must be a thing, too. There must be extra, there must be a safety net.

Only people who have never starved, never been truly hungry would espouse such things.

Re: Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels

#109

Post by wizzwizz4 »

lazide wrote: post #101
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The planet isn't infinite: by running the cycle more quickly, you knock the "baseline" atmospheric carbon up a few more ppm. This has knock-on effects.

Even if we converted all arable land in the United States to forest, best case we would take many years to sequester even a single years fossil carbon emissions. And we’d all starve to death in the process. Any co2 released by harvesting a forest, is very shortly taken back up again by the forest regrowing. Within a lifetime for sure. Trees are nice, I get it. But this is all in the noise.

Where do these numbers come from?
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