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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

#111

Post by soco »

petre wrote: post #64
paganel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because is bs, pure and simple. Typical Brussels re-inventing the definition of words in order to push their political objectives.

I would agree if you'd be talking about branding gas as sustainable , which Germany actually tried before the war in Ukraine and the sabotage of the Northstream pipeline. But in this context, it's pure hogwash. Burning wood pellets is actually sustainable and renewable and has been a net win for Eastern European counrties that joined the EU, mainly because little to no sawdust is discarded into rivers and streams any…

The issue with Eastern European woods is that they're being razed - for pellets, furniture, you name it. And rarely replaced. So yes in some places you'll have new growth, but most places there's soil washing and flash floods and destroyed habitats and all that. Is that renewable? Hardly.

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

#112

Post by MindSpunk »

b112 wrote: post #108
burnt-resistor wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We saw what happens when you use just-in-time manufacturing and keep minimal stock of material when covid collapsed supply chains a few years ago. Imagine if that was our food supply instead. The over production is the price we pay for food security.

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

#113

Post by rini17 »

lazide wrote: post #52
rini17 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The soil gets depleted when biomass is consistently taken away. It might be possible to avoid it but that's cost center.

Carbon comes from the atmosphere in this scenario. Crops can be rotated. Trees can be non-clear cut when harvested. None of this changes the definition of renewable.

In practice we want forest soil not eroded away after clear cut logging, but also not depleted nutrients like phosphorus, nor prone to wildfires[note], nor trees damaged by acid rain etc. Definition of "sustainable" in the law alone is not sufficient to cover all this and never will be, some discretion and responsibility is required.

[note] depends on the biome, part of said discretion

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

#114

Post by hibikir »

in_cahoots wrote: post #7

I read the whole article and I still don't see how Big Ag misled anyone. I may be misunderstanding, but it seems that the author is trying to differentiate between growing corn for food vs growing the same corn for ethanol. I assume the entire reason the lobby exists is that farmers want to grow corn for food and ethanol. But the researcher lost interest before proving anything around there. Maybe ethanol is actually…

It's also not the same corn varieties for different uses. Most of what we'd feed humans would be sweet corn, and that's not ideal for ethanol, or animal feed. If you look at total acreage planted, sweet corn is just 1% of the total crop.

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

#115

Post by jbstack »

scaramanga wrote: post #80
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…

It's explained in the article. People aren't going to starve to fill their gas tank so you need to grow more corn to offset that used for biofuel. To do that can require destroying other carbon sinks (wetlands are the example given, sometimes dried and then burned) to turn them into fields. But in any case, carbon from the ground is used to fertilize the fields to grow the corn. For every unit of energy produced by c…

"People aren't going to starve to fill their gas tank so you need to grow more corn to offset that used for biofuel. To do that can require destroying other carbon sinks (wetlands are the example given, sometimes dried and then burned) to turn them into fields"

This doesn't make any sense to me. With petrol, you are transferring carbon from a store to the atmosphere every time you use it for energy. With a wetland, you only destroy it once (thus releasing carbon from the store) the first time you use it to produce corn. Every time after that you're capturing carbon (in corn) and then releasing it again (when burning the biofuel).

Yes, it's an oversimplified analogy (there are many more subtleties such as the amount of carbon in wetland vs corn, the carbon requirements of the production and retail process of petrol vs biofuel, etc.). But even if we made the model more complex, it's still fundamentally two entirely different scenarios. One is just a continuous release from carbon stores while the other aims to restructure a carbon store so that it can release and capture in a cycle.

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

#116

Post by bravesoul2 »

motorest wrote: post #91
scaramanga wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's explained in the article. People aren't going to starve to fill their gas tank so you need to grow more corn to offset that used for biofuel. To do that can require destroying other carbon sinks (wetlands are the example given, sometimes dried and then burned) to turn them into fields. But in any case, carbon from the ground is used to fertilize the fields to grow the corn. For every unit of energy produced by c…

> It's explained in the article. People aren't going to starve to fill their gas tank so you need to grow more corn to offset that used for biofuel. To do that can require destroying other carbon sinks (wetlands are the example given, sometimes dried and then burned) to turn them into fields. The key point is that biofuel replaces fossil fuel. Meaning, instead of having a system that inputs carbon into the environmen…

Please reread tbe comment you replied to and address its points. It has already countered the "but it's replacing fossil fuels!" point.

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

#117

Post by hibikir »

sien wrote: post #35
in_cahoots wrote: post #7

I read the whole article and I still don't see how Big Ag misled anyone. I may be misunderstanding, but it seems that the author is trying to differentiate between growing corn for food vs growing the same corn for ethanol. I assume the entire reason the lobby exists is that farmers want to grow corn for food and ethanol. But the researcher lost interest before proving anything around there. Maybe ethanol is actually…

The EU does something impressively crazy burning 23 million tonnes of wood pellets in 2021. https://unece.org/media/press/372591 It's labeled as 'renewable' electricity.

There's a whole lot of buildings that were designed with a coal furnace in the basement which heats water, and all aparments getting a bunch of water radiators. A switch from that to, say, a typical American forced air system is a huge expense, and it might not be all that easy to design a system that is well balanced anyway given the small space for said ducts.

So when a building association finds themselves having to replace the old furnace, given that getting a new coal furnace is now illegal, the pellets are seen as the reasonable, if not wonderful alternative.

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

#118

Post by Cthulhu_ »

raverbashing wrote: post #104
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)

What crops are those, and do they grow in the same climates and soils as corn does at the moment?

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

#119

Post by Cthulhu_ »

fsflover wrote: post #95
LinXitoW wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly, but that would also indirectly de-subsidize the animal agricultural industry. People are addicted to their animal products, going so far as to pretend they're essential and not just a luxury.

Increased price would provide a clear message to these people.

Meat prices are way up in Europe due to various reasons (https://agridata.ec.europa.eu/extensions/DashboardBeef/Dashb...), but it doesn't seem to affect total consumption (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-eu28), just a slight adjustment in what types of meat are eaten.

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

#120

Post by dherikb »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #118
raverbashing wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

What crops are those, and do they grow in the same climates and soils as corn does at the moment?

Sugarcane, I believe.
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