[big_rc]

Hey Lorenzo,

Is the "beginning still near" for your precious biofuels now?

Nobel scientist in biofuel warning

[efarmer]

I think biofuels will shine in niche usages, but I cannot get my simple mind around how they can stand in for more than a two digit fraction of fossil fuels. Lorenzo carries the torch for biofuels, it is true, but this is a necessary mission for our purposes here of debating / exploring the topic. Having said that, this article may cause him to tremble like a hound dog passing peach pits.

[highlander]

I'll have to dig around to find his research. It doesn't pass the laugh test. The hydrocarbons being burned don't contain nitrogen, certainly not 3-5% of the nitrogen input to raise the plants the oil/ethanol is extracted from.
but heck, he is a chemist too and won the nobel prize, so we musn't argue, right?

[jbeckton]

Biofuels will not allow us to go on as usual.

Transportation must be met with other methods such as mass transportation and EV's.

However, biofuel will be important to applications where EV's are not viable, such as farming and other heavy equipment operations.

Biofuel is very important, just not for the reasons most people think it is.

[dissident]

highlander,

You are totally clueless. The ***NITROGEN FERTILIZER*** leads to the formation of N2O (nitrous oxide) which is a powerful greenhouse gas by itself. CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas and not the most potent either.

http://www.igac.noaa.gov/newsletter/hig ... /batge.php

[billp]

Avatar reminds me of PNM
http://www.prosefights.org/pnmelectric/pnmelectric.htm

[efarmer]

Billp,
Not familiar with PNM before, look like nice folks. Avatar is an exponential / bell curve of distribution with a startled person sliding over the top. Drew it with a sharpie about 4.5 x 9 inches and scanned it and then reduced it so the avatar gobbler on this site would accept it. Being severely art challenged, this is about as close as I have ever got. Keep coding on that venerable old Big Blue iron.

[xrotaryguy]

I have heard so many people claim that bio-diesel is more viable than ethanol, and I still do not know why. From what I have read, both fuels are equally incapable of replacing fossil fuels. However, I would not be surprised if bio-fuels could be used to extend the ranges of electric vehicles. Such a fleet could be used to commute about town with batteries only, and then use biofuels for longer trips. People could even have an "out-of-town" trailer that housed a bio-fueled electric generator.

I also think that electricity could be effectively used on vehicles where batteries are not very practical, so industrial farming may not actually necessitate the burning of fuel.

[highlander]

dissident:
so we should quit using fertilizer for food 'cause it makes NOx?

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('efarmer', 'L')orenzo carries the torch for biofuels, it is true, but this is a necessary mission for our purposes here of debating / exploring the topic. Having said that, this article may cause him to tremble like a hound dog passing peach pits.

[retiredguy]

I find that Lorenzo's posts, especially on population, closely mirror emanations coming from the Vatican.

Could it be that Lorenzo is a priest??

[billp]

Efarmer

Yes. The pnm folks are nice, intelligent, many engineers, and are hopefully getting some input from you peak oilers.

Many have not read what peak oil and the oil drum have posted.

As a senior citizen who needs visibility for our legal project, I am hopefully bringing to their attention what YOU GUYS are posting.

About the normal. Are my differentiations correct or not?

http://www.prosefights.org/pnmelectric/ ... stribution


Us peak oil seniors post our concerns.

[efarmer]

The general concept of something being exponential instead of linear is a big concept to get across to many people and the bell curve does it well and of course Hubbert's math represents a useful petroleum recovery plot even more faithfully. But the real plot of recovery is actually very different with plateaus from economics or other demand destructions, wiggles from geopolitics, and smaller oscillations from speculation and market factors. Lately, there is a large amount of unanticipated growth in usage within oil producing countries that is changing their anticipated export profiles.
Personally I see the math as good for approximations but not for pinpoint calculations. If this is a labor of love, enjoy, but don't bet the cookie jar money on the results.

Here is a place to view the math further:

http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/subpages ... maths.html

Also Kenneth Deffeyes has written several books on the subject and I believe he has a Hubbert method that is almost pure simple algebra published. Try Google searching on this one.

[lorenzo]

What about this very old news? I reported it two months ago and I fully agree with Crutzen. In fact, I make a living out of agreeing with Crutzen. I love Crutzen! Read this, and you will understand why.

It was a non-peer reviewed paper about which he said that it still has to go through the review process, and he added he is only talking about dumb first generation liquid biofuels. Not about biofuels proper or bioenergy.

But that aside, lets look why Crutzen strengthens my case:

1. Crutzen says nothing new, and talks about biofuels I have always described as dumb: namely those primitive biofuels based on crops grown in temperate climates and of which only the easily extractible sugars and starches are used: corn dummy fuel and canola dummy fuel. Of which only the seeds are used and 80 percent of the biomass is wasted.

2. Why do you think I make a case for (and a living out of) biofuels made in the South and for second, third and fourth generation fuels? Precisely for the reasons Crutzen outlines: sugarcane makes a substantial reduction (up to 80% total emission reductions compared to gasoline).

All the other crops I promote, namely grass species like sweet sorghum (an even better balance than cane) or trees like Eucalyptus, all have the same strong energy and GHG balance.

Unlike biofuels from the North.

3. For those who still don't know it, I will repeat it: I make a living from promoting a North-South relationship based on bioenergy, in which the EU and the US stop all their nonsensical biofuels and start importing from the South, where their production contributes to mitigating climate change, to poverty alleviation and to rural development.

This of course requires CAP reform in the EU, a massive destruction of the filthy US subsidy policies, and trade reform (Doha). But we're getting there.

4. Last but not least, Crutzen not only merely looks at first generation biofuels, he doesn't look at carbon negative bioenergy and bio-hydrogen either. You know, the carbon of which you geosequester.
You can get -1000 grams of CO2 per kWh of carbon negative bio-electricity based on Eucalyptus or Acacia. Yes, you read that right: *minus* a thousand grams. Wind power, solar, and all other renewables have a positive balance ranging from +30 to +800 grams.

Only biomass can deliver negative emissions energy. But that is too complex to discuss in here.


In short, I am a strong supporter of everything Crutzen says: liquid biofuels made from food crops grown in photosynthetically weak places like Europe and the US must be banned and instead replaced by biofuels made in places where they lead to GHG reductions and have a strong energy balance. That is: the vast tropics and subtropics, who have an explicitly sustainable theoretical potential of 900Ej by 2050 (Africa alone more than 400Ej, after meeting all local food, fiber, fodder, fuel and forest products services of rapidly growing populations and without deforestation).

Best of all, however, would be a transition towards carbon-negative biohydrogen or bio-electricity for cars. But this is too radical and futuristic for most ordinary people.

Because it would be a strange world, in which - each time you drive a car, you would be taking historic CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere. Read that again, and think of it. You will be shocked.

So indeed, me luvs Paul. Cheers!

The organisation for which I work even celebrated Crutzens informal paper. We drank champagne over it because it entirely makes our case.


PS: Crutzen is a nice guy, but even he has made some serious mistakes in the past. He once proposed to a NASA workshop on geoengineering to seed the atmosphere with sulphur, so as to create a cooling blanket with which to stop global warming.

Luckily, his collegues did the math and showed Crutzen's idea was insane and would kill us all (because it would destroy agriculture).

Crutzen is a typical whacko, a genius: sometimes he's very right and makes brilliant observations, the next day he's acting like a loonie. Typical of some Nobels.

But on biofuels he's right: say NO to lobby-fuels made in the US/EU. Say YEA to biofuels that save mankind and all the creatures on the planet.

[kublikhan]

I agree with Lorenzo, grain based ethanol is not the solution to the gas problem and is only being pushed in the US because of powerful corn lobbies. But sugar cane based ethanol from the southern hemisphere is a more attractive alternative. And cellulose ethanol(2nd generation ethanol from switchgrass, miscanthus, etc.) is a better option for the northern hemisphere than grain based ethanol.
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0808-biofuels.html
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0711-miscanthus.html

Of course, cellulose ethanol doesn't have a powerful lobby pushing it and has higher upfront costs compared to grain ethanol so I am not sure how much traction it will get.