[BrazilianPO]

Hi everyone. Even though I have been checking this forum for the last two years this is my first post. About Brazil, sugar cane is grown mostly in the northeast of the country, which enjoys lots of sun and rain all year long.

The Pantanal and Amazon forest are being deforested for growing soy bean, wheat and for cattle as well. The workforce is almost slave, just like China. If you leave the large cities, the wages become ridiculously low, but you can still survive because living costs are also ridiculously low. Sugar cane will work for Brazil, India and some other countries, but not for everyone.

Also, soil depletion is a problem, but Brazilian farmers have been very cautious on that, using techniques that minimize (but not eliminate) it. The ethanol program has been going on for over 30 years and is now at its best.

[0mar]

Scale, people, scale!

The US produces more ethanol than anyone else in the world, even Brazil. And all that ethanol the US produces is enough for maybe a couple days worth of imports.

If everything about ethanol was absolutely perfect, it would still take decades before there was actually a significant amount of energy derived from ethanol (ie more than a few tenths/hundredths of a percentage point).

[BrazilianPO]

Scale is really the keyword. Whereas is Brazil, we use 40% of ethanol and 60% of petrol to move our cars, that proportion could easily grow in the next few years. But to save the world... it is a HUGE step. Ethanol will not save humankind . By what I have been reading, nothing can save the world, but the sum of all alternative energies might help reduce the effects of the oil crunch in the coming years. Still pretty bad, but survivable . In Australia, there is a push towards ethanol, as well, as the northeast of the country has a climate similar to the northeast of Brazil and already grows a lot of sugar cane.

[crapattack]

Hirsh report.
Hirsh report.
Hirsh report.

What part of 20 years for every 2% decline don't you get?

[Peak_Plus]

Remember the Sugar Bowl?
There are places in the US that can grow sugar - like Louisiana. The plantation houses there are just darling! Didn't see any slaves running around though, to hold back the hurricanes.

Besides, has anyone noticed that sugar has now taken the path of other commodities recently?
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/edito ... /0328.html
The price has doubled since last summer...

[Falconoffury]

Any energy source that is going to cut down the world's rainforests and perpetuate a growth based economy is only going to make the situation worse. Powering down is the only way out of this.

[hoplite]

When you doomers point out that ethanol can't replace petroleum in your doomer scenarios, you're correct; it cant. But what your neo-malthusian scenarios fail to consider is conservation. THe USA could cut our gasoline usage 50% or more in one DAY IF WE HAD TO- simply by carpooling. So, you see, We don't really need to replace 100% of of Petroleum usage we only have to supplement it. OF COURSE this requires PRICE rationing, all we have to do is make it expensive enough to force the proles into conservation mode. ($4.00/gallon, mas o menos, should do it).

There is abosolutely no good reason for the poor to even OWN cars, and the market will soon remedy that situation, thereby improving the standard of living for everyone!

--let them eat cake!

[TITAN]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hoplite', 'W')hen you doomers point out that ethanol can't replace petroleum in your doomer scenarios, you're correct; it cant. But what your neo-malthusian scenarios fail to consider is conservation. THe USA could cut our gasoline usage 50% or more in one DAY IF WE HAD TO- simply by carpooling. So, you see, We don't really need to replace 100% of of Petroleum usage we only have to supplement it. OF COURSE this requires PRICE rationing, all we have to do is make it expensive enough to force the proles into conservation mode. ($4.00/gallon, mas o menos, should do it).

There is abosolutely no good reason for the poor to even OWN cars, and the market will soon remedy that situation, thereby improving the standard of living for everyone!

--let them eat cake!

[Falconoffury]

Hoplite, the free market isn't going to fix anything. Poor people are going to be fighting for cars because of the credit that the free market affords them. The free market wants everyone to live beyond their means. The free market wants to grow. The only solution is to change the economy to a voluntary power down. Since that is impossible, we can expect another great depression. Ethanol production that displaces wildlife is only going to make this a worse planet to live on for future generations.

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hoplite', 'T')here is abosolutely no good reason for the poor to even OWN cars, and the market will soon remedy that situation, thereby improving the standard of living for everyone!

--let them eat cake!

[Backtosteam]

Brazil is doing so well. Let's follow their lead and take all of our common wealth to produce fuel from sugar cane. Then we too can become a 3rd world country. Gotta love it. Cars 'til the end man!

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hoplite', 'T')here is abosolutely no good reason for the poor to even OWN cars, and the market will soon remedy that situation, thereby improving the standard of living for everyone!

--let them eat cake!

[sicophiliac]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hoplite', 'W')hen you doomers point out that ethanol can't replace petroleum in your doomer scenarios, you're correct; it cant. But what your neo-malthusian scenarios fail to consider is conservation. THe USA could cut our gasoline usage 50% or more in one DAY IF WE HAD TO- simply by carpooling. So, you see, We don't really need to replace 100% of of Petroleum usage we only have to supplement it. OF COURSE this requires PRICE rationing, all we have to do is make it expensive enough to force the proles into conservation mode. ($4.00/gallon, mas o menos, should do it).

There is abosolutely no good reason for the poor to even OWN cars, and the market will soon remedy that situation, thereby improving the standard of living for everyone!

--let them eat cake!

[RG73]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('sicophiliac', 'D')oes anybody think genetic engineering might help us utilize biofuels more efficiently? Maybe make more cold/drought hearty strains of sugarcane?

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'B')razil Sugar Cane production shows a cursory postive energy return because several significant energy inputs, virtual slave labor and virgin soils, are externalized and not added into the energy calculations by the producers.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')arvalho told Regan that it's a good feeling to know that by the end of the year his country will no longer have to rely on the Middle East for oil. "(It's) extremely important," he said. "We feel very proud."

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hoplite', 'W')hen you doomers point out that ethanol can't replace petroleum in your doomer scenarios, you're correct; it cant. But what your neo-malthusian scenarios fail to consider is conservation.

[lorenzo]

Hello, as always, I'm here to put some people out of their misery. I am a compassionate person, so I do this for free. Let's roll:

1. sugar cane does not grow where rainforests grow. In Brazil, Sao Paulo State is where most sugar cane is grown.

Now check where that State is located, then check a map of where the tropical rainforest is:
The forest:

Sao Paulo State:

Enough said.

2. In most modern sugar cane operations, 50% of the residue is left in the field, the other residue is used to power the cane pressing and sap boiling operations. These residues deliver electricity to the Brazilian grid. So they are a bioenergy source in themselves.

3. This is no different than the traditional operations where the same ratio was used: 50% residue-to-field versus 50% residue-to-fodder. These cane fields have high productivities for 100, 200, even 300 years.

The EROEI of Brazilian sugar cane ethanol varies between 6 and 10.

4. About the rainforests: one can think of an ethanol future based on cassava, a crop which yields almost as much as sugar cane. Cassava *explicitly* cannot stand rainforest zones; it's agro-ecological zone is *explicitly* located outside rainforests.

So please let's stop this continuous desinformation once and for all.

[Falconoffury]

I would like to see an off the grid ethanol plantation that powers itself on the ethanol it creates. The only input from the outside would be spare parts to maintain the machinery. I am skeptical of an ethanol plantation even being able to power itself without pesticides and fertilizers manufactured by fossil fuels and grid electricity. If an ethanol plantation can't even accomplish this, I wouldn't even call it an energy source.