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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

#251

Post by lithocarpus »

RivieraKid wrote: post #225
lithocarpus wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point is charcoal doesn't decompose which is why we find soil with 5000 year old charcoal in it. It's basically permanently sequestered.

Is it something that commonly happens in forests? I think mature forests today are approximately carbon neutral.

It does sometimes in forests that burn. And generally, forests keep building up soil, it's disturbances and things like erosion (sometimes worsened by fires) that counter this buildup. But mature forests tend to do a lot better at resisting erosion and catastrophic (erosion-causing) fires.

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

#252

Post by RivieraKid »

lithocarpus wrote: post #251
RivieraKid wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it something that commonly happens in forests? I think mature forests today are approximately carbon neutral.

It does sometimes in forests that burn. And generally, forests keep building up soil, it's disturbances and things like erosion (sometimes worsened by fires) that counter this buildup. But mature forests tend to do a lot better at resisting erosion and catastrophic (erosion-causing) fires.

Forests do not infinitely accumulate soil. When we dig into the ground in a mature forest, the layer with organic remnants is not particularly thick. Dead organic decomposes and returns back above the ground.

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

#253

Post by spauldo »

patwolf wrote: post #161
motorest wrote: post #91

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. The key point is that biofuel replaces fossil fuel. Meaning, instead of having a system that inputs carbon into the environmen…

> Surely you are old enough to hear the comotion about switchgrass I hadn't heard "switchgrass" since GWB mentioned it in his State of the Union years ago. Did it end up becoming a significant source of biofuel?

No. My company did some work in that area.

It works fine in the lab, but there's a lot of engineering that needs to be done in order to scale it up to industrial levels. Some failures are going to happen along the way, and failures at that scale break companies.

That engineering only gets done is there's money in it - and oil's been cheap bar some temporary upsets. So the pilot plants were shut down or converted to biodiesel, which is much less risky.

Once the economics change again, you'll see movement in that area (assuming EV doesn't completely take over).

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

#254

Post by spauldo »

PaulHoule wrote: post #237
bluGill wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it can't work, but that looks like oil companies trying to kill what we have today with a promise of something better in the future so they can keep selling oil.

EVs make sense for passenger cars, not so much for heavy vehicles. People might still want to be driving classic cars in the future too. Hydrogen for any kind of vehicle looks dead in the water, though green hydrogen looks essential for chemical manufacturing. (Funny, as with carbon capture, some of the best economics are in the oil business ; there is a huge hydrodesulfurization plant in Saudia Arabia that lower its…

It's not surprising, really. Oil companies know green energy is going to supplant oil eventually, so at the same time they lobby against renewables they're also working to make sure they still have a place in the future energy economy. I'm not saying they aren't doing their share of greenwashing, but they legitimately are doing development in biofuels and hydrogen.

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

#255

Post by karolinepauls »

lazide wrote: post #245
karolinepauls wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's as ridiculous as the comparison of the most recent 12k years of the holocene to the age of plant life on the Earth. As for using lumber for timber, when eventually disposed it would have to be turned into charcoal rather than burned for energy or let decompose in conditions that don't sequester carbon. You also missed the point about using charcoal for soil enrichment.

There is zero chance this makes a difference at the scales required. That is my point. Or are you proposing somehow making billions of tons of lumber into charcoal a year, and stopping it from further decay? There isn’t enough room . Let alone equipment. and it sure isn’t what happens naturally.

The parent comment I'm responding to is literally:

> A forest or wetland is a carbon sink only in the growth phase. In a long-term equilibrium, it's carbon-neutral, like biofuels.

To which I'm stating that forests and wetlands are not carbon-neutral but carbon-negative.

Then you miss the parent comment's context and start in an inflammatory way:

> Bwahaha, this is so ridiculous.

And take it somewhere else (move the goalpost) - from whether forests are carbon neutral or not to how effective charcoal creation is at carbon capture, in our human timescale.

Meanwhile the only practical point wrt. charcoal creation from forests was:

> Humans could actually cut down old trees, dry them, and convert them to charcoal later used for soil enrichment.

Which doesn't propose an effective carbon capture solution. At most it's something like emission reduction - the key phrase is old trees. And soil enrichment.

Recommendation: don't argue against points people didn't make.

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

#256

Post by lazide »

karolinepauls wrote: post #255
lazide wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is zero chance this makes a difference at the scales required. That is my point. Or are you proposing somehow making billions of tons of lumber into charcoal a year, and stopping it from further decay? There isn’t enough room . Let alone equipment. and it sure isn’t what happens naturally.

The parent comment I'm responding to is literally: > A forest or wetland is a carbon sink only in the growth phase. In a long-term equilibrium, it's carbon-neutral, like biofuels. To which I'm stating that forests and wetlands are not carbon-neutral but carbon-negative. Then you miss the parent comment's context and start in an inflammatory way: > Bwahaha, this is so ridiculous. And take it somewhere else (move the g…

Sounds like you might want to actually read the thread? Unless there is a geological process involved (very rare, and obvious when there is), long term forests and wetlands are carbon neutral - or they would be sitting on massive quantities of carbon. The vast majority are clearly not.

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

#257

Post by karolinepauls »

lazide wrote: post #256
karolinepauls wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment I'm responding to is literally: > A forest or wetland is a carbon sink only in the growth phase. In a long-term equilibrium, it's carbon-neutral, like biofuels. To which I'm stating that forests and wetlands are not carbon-neutral but carbon-negative. Then you miss the parent comment's context and start in an inflammatory way: > Bwahaha, this is so ridiculous. And take it somewhere else (move the g…

Sounds like you might want to actually read the thread? Unless there is a geological process involved (very rare, and obvious when there is), long term forests and wetlands are carbon neutral - or they would be sitting on massive quantities of carbon. The vast majority are clearly not.

I was responding to as single comment. I do not have a responsibility to respond to the whole thread. I'm going to include it again, in full:

> A forest or wetland is a carbon sink only in the growth phase. In a long-term equilibrium, it's carbon-neutral, like biofuels.

Highlight: *In a long-term equilibrium*. The comment literally talks about long time periods...

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