Turns out Biofuels cause worse pollution than Oil or Coal

[Darwin333]

Land is land... you grow something else to make ethanol, you are still using land that could be used for food. How is this not obvious to every human being? Do people just lack common sense?

Ok, this may come as a shock but certain crops are suited for different types of lands and environments. Land that wouldn't be suitable to grow something like corn may be suitable to grow something else. Now for the real shocker, certain plants require more water, nutrients (chemicals), and pesticides than do other plants.

So in a nutshell, the grownups are talking about using plants that either readily grow on land that isn't suitable or economically feasible to grow stuff like corn, grow with little or no effort, require substantially less water, require substantially lest fertilizer, require substantially less pesticides, or any combination of the above.

For example, switchgrass (you know, that stuff that grows along highways all by its damned self) from Wiki:

" Switchgrass is both a perennial and self-seeding crop, which means farmers do not have to plant and reseed after annual harvesting. Once established, a switchgrass stand can survive for ten years or longer.[2] Unlike corn, switchgrass can grow on marginal lands and requires relatively modest levels of chemical fertilizers.[2] Overall, it is considered a resource-efficient, low-input crop for producing bioenergy from farmland."


Edit: I know there is also the efficiency of the plant material involved but considering the comment I was replying to I was trying to keep it simple.

 

[Darwin333]

As for the corn ethanol debacle....blame the US farmers and big agribusiness lobby.

No offense but I am starting to get damn tired of "blaming the lobbyists". The only reason they have any sort of influence is because the assclowns in DC allow them to be. Of course a representative of the corn growers are going to try to get favorable treatment for the people they represent but its Congresses job to do what is in the nations best interests. Basically, one party is doing their job and the other party (the one representing US) is not.

 

[hal2kilo]

Probably not a big surprise. That point of biofuels was not reducing polution as much as using a renewable form of carbon based fuel.

Think algae farms. Oh crap, no big ag mid-west farmers involved in that. Probably will be on the back burner then.

 

[Darwin333]

We're not dependent on the Middle East for oil anymore. We export records amounts of refined gasoline right now. Our shale drilling potential dwarfs even all the oil in the middle east.

The first part simply isn't true and the 2nd part has nothing to do with increased domestic oil production. Most of our gasoline exports go to Mexico who is also our largest oil importer. They send us a metric fuckton of oil and in return we refine some of it and sell it back to them because they don't have the refining capacity to meet their needs. There are quite a few other reasons we export a lot of refined product that we use too but I won't go into all of them.

As far as shale oil, we have so much of our coast that hasn't even been half seriously explored yet. If we made a serious push to get off of ALL ME oil I have no doubt that we could do it without going after the expensive and hard shale oil. On top of that we should (and I guess we kinda are for the time being) leading the way on ultra deep drilling techniques and technology where we have already discovered huge fields.

If we stopped bullshitting and let Canada exploit the hell out of their oil and built the necessary piplelines we'd be even better off. There are a lot of ways for us to keep using oil without getting it from the cavemen.

While I agree that the pipeline SHOULD be built and I agree that its one hell of an insurance policy should our oil supply be interrupted the pipeline in and of itself won't be feeding much oil to the US. The pipelines primary purpose is to export both refined and unrefined product to Asia.

 

[ShawnD1]

Biofuels does indeed a worse polution than Oil/Coal, nothing new here

but the problem is this:
Oil/Coal polution take Millions of years to become oil again
Biofuels polution take 2-4 years to become a plant again

<--- Ex- Environmental Engineer student

My thoughts exactly. The race to find alternative fuels has nothing to do with how clean it is. Oil is a limited thing that eventually runs out, and we've been talking about this for decades. It might not make any sense to jump to bio stuff right now, but serious effort and money should be put into R&D.

If we stopped bullshitting and let Canada exploit the hell out of their oil and built the necessary piplelines we'd be even better off. There are a lot of ways for us to keep using oil without getting it from the cavemen.

Good luck with that. Canada currently has major problems withspread drug abuse, especially PCP and meth. The drugs cause intense hallucinations that make oil pipelines look terrifying. To a sober person, an oil pipeline is literally just a pipe, and they look like this:

Notice that nature doesn't seem to care about the pipe being there. Trees and grass still grow around the pipe.

To someone high on PCP, an oil pipeline looks like this:

Notice how trees and grass don't grow around the pipeline.

When you're high on PCP, everything changes. PCP was used in hospitals due to it being an extremely powerful anesthetic and analgesic, but hospitals stopped using it because it would also throw people into a psychotic rage. My neighbor from the old Soviet Union has permanent scarring in his stomach because he had PCP rage when they had a tube in his stomach. PCP is a very strange and interesting drug because it combines the energy and psychosis of meth, the painkilling effects of heroin, and the hallucination effects of LSD. People on PCP are completely gone from reality, but they are cognitive enough to get naked in the street (see youtube videos) and organize fairly large groups of protests like this:

The Canadian PCP addicts in the above picture are so blitzed that their protests in Canada have an Obama logo, and their plea is to Obama. They probably don't know what country they are in or what year it is. Of course, the liberal media in Canada conveniently forgets to mention anything about protesters being high on PCP.

 

[K1052]

We're not dependent on the Middle East for oil anymore. We export records amounts of refined gasoline right now. Our shale drilling potential dwarfs even all the oil in the middle east.

If we stopped bullshitting and let Canada exploit the hell out of their oil and built the necessary piplelines we'd be even better off. There are a lot of ways for us to keep using oil without getting it from the cavemen.

That's mainly because we have a shitload of refinery capacity. Other countries (particularly Central and South American ones) ship crude here and we return it as refined product.

Canada wants the pipeline to move that crude further than the upper Midwest and into the Port Arthur refineries (where almost all of it well end up exported). They're already doing it over rail but they want the long term shipping costs to come down. Selling Canadian pipelines to the Gulf as creating energy independence for North America is a total fiction.

 

[K1052]

No offense but I am starting to get damn tired of "blaming the lobbyists". The only reason they have any sort of influence is because the assclowns in DC allow them to be. Of course a representative of the corn growers are going to try to get favorable treatment for the people they represent but its Congresses job to do what is in the nations best interests. Basically, one party is doing their job and the other party (the one representing US) is not.

Such is the imperfect nature of any political system. The elements of corruption and self-interest can never entirely be eliminated.

I suspect this problem will eventually solve itself as cellulosic ethanol moves into commercial scale production.

 

[ShawnD1]

Canada has something like the second largest oil reserves in the world, so it's possible to rely on Canada for oil. I think most of USA's oil comes from Argentina. Cave dwellers still benefit from the US because US comsumption of oil drives up global oil prices. Same thing with China. Chinese people buying Saudi oil makes Argentinian and Canadian oil more expensive.

Solution: kill all of the cave dwellers then take their oil.