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Hi all,<br>
<br>
This is the best condemnation of biofuels I have seen yet.<br>
<br>
Scientific American Article Cites Studies Which Drive A Stake Into
Heart Of The Biofuels Illusion<br>
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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=biofuels-bad-for-people-and-climate&print=true">http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=biofuels-bad-for-people-and-climate&print=true</a><br>
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<h1>Scientific American<br>
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<p><a href="http://www.sciam.com/section.cfm?id=news">News</a> -
February 7, 2008</p>
<h1>Biofuels Are Bad for Feeding People and Combating Climate Change</h1>
<h2>By displacing agriculture for food—and causing more land
clearing—biofuels are bad for hungry people and the environment</h2>
<p> By David Biello </p>
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<p>Converting corn to <a
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=is-ethanol-for-the-long-h">ethanol</a>
in Iowa not only leads to clearing more of the <a
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fragmentation-quickly-des">Amazonian
rainforest</a>, researchers report in a pair of new studies in <em>Science,</em>
but also would do little to slow global warming—and often make it worse.</p>
<p>"Prior analyses made an accounting error," says one study's lead
author, Tim Searchinger, an agricultural expert at Princeton
University. "There is a huge imbalance between the carbon lost by
plowing up a hectare [2.47 acres] of forest or grassland from the
benefit you get from biofuels."</p>
<p>Growing <a
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-spend-10-years">plants
store carbon</a>
in their roots, shoots and leaves. As a result, the world's plants and
the soil in which they grow contain nearly three times as much carbon
as the entire atmosphere. "I know when I look at a tree that half the
dry weight of it is carbon," says ecologist David Tilman of the
University of Minnesota, coauthor of the other study which examined the
"carbon debt" embedded in any biofuel. "That's going to end up as
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when you cut it down."</p>
<p>By turning crops such as corn, sugarcane and palm oil into
biofuels—whether ethanol, biodiesel, or <a
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=turning-whole-plants-into-fuel-in-four-simple-steps">something
else</a>—proponents hope to reap the benefits of the carbon soaked up
as the plants grow to offset the carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>)
emitted when the resulting fuel is burned. But whether biofuels emit
more or less CO<sub>2</sub> than gasoline depends on what the land they
were grown on was previously used for, both studies show.</p>
<p>Tilman and his colleagues examined the overall CO<sub>2</sub>
released when land use changes occur. Converting the grasslands of the
U.S. to grow corn results in excess greenhouse gas emissions of 134
metric tons of CO<sub>2</sub> per hectare—a debt that would take 93
years to repay by replacing gasoline with corn-based ethanol. And
converting jungles to palm plantations or tropical rainforest to soy
fields would take centuries to pay back their carbon debts. "Any
biofuel that causes land clearing is likely to increase global
warming," says ecologist Joseph Fargione of The Nature Conservancy,
lead author of the second study. "It takes decades to centuries to
repay the carbon debt that is created from clearing land."</p>
<p>Diverting food crops into fuel production leads to ever more <a
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=combating-climate-change-farming-forestry">land
clearing</a>
as well. Ethanol demand in the U.S., for example, has caused some
farmers to plant more corn and less soy. This has driven up soy prices
causing farmers in Brazil to clear more Amazon rainforest land to plant
valuable soy, Searchinger's study notes. Because a soy field contains
far less carbon than a rainforest, the greenhouse gas benefit of the
original ethanol is wiped out. "Corn-based ethanol, instead of
producing a 20 percent savings [in greenhouse gas emissions], nearly
doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse
gases for 167 years," the researchers write. "We can't get to a result
with corn ethanol where we can generate greenhouse gas benefits,"
Searchinger adds.</p>
<p>Turning food into fuel also has the unintended consequence of
driving up food prices, reducing the access of the neediest populations
to grains and meat. "It's equivalent to saying we will try to reduce
greenhouse gases by reducing food consumption," Searchinger says.
"Unfortunately, a lot of that comes from the world's poorest people."</p>
<p>"We are converting their food into our fuel," Tilman notes. " The
typical driver of an SUV spends as much on fuel in a month as the
poorer third of the world spend on food."</p>
<p>The studies do find some benefit from biofuels but only when <a
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=grass-makes-better-ethanol-than-corn">planted
on agricultural land too dry or degraded</a> for food production or
significant tree or plant growth and only when derived from native
plants, such as a <a
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=amber-waves-of-gas-gasoli">mix
of prairie grasses</a>
in the U.S. Midwest. Or such fuels can be made from waste: corn stalks,
leftover wood from timber production or even city garbage.</p>
<p>But that will not slake a significant portion of the growing thirst
for <a
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-happening-effects-severe-what-cost-fix-it">transportation
fuels</a>.
"If we convert every corn kernel grown today in the U.S. to ethanol we
offset just 12 percent of our gasoline use," notes ecologist Jason Hill
of the University of Minnesota. "The real benefit to these advanced
biofuels may not be in displacement of fossil fuels but in the building
up of carbon stores in the soil."</p>
<p>Of course, there is another reason for biofuels: energy
independence. "Biofuels like ethanol are the only tool readily
available that can begin to address the challenge of energy security,"
Bob Dinneen, president of industry group the Renewable Fuels
Association said in a statement. "The alternative is to continue to
exploit increasingly costlier fossil fuels for which the environmental
price tag will be great."</p>
<p>But the environmental price tag of biofuels now joins the ranks of
other, cheaper domestic fuel sources—such as <a
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=pumping-coal">coal-to-liquid
fuel</a>—as <a
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=worse-than-gasoline">major
sources of globe-warming pollution</a>
as well as unintended social consequences. As a result, 10 prominent
scientists have written a letter to President Bush and other government
leaders urging them to "shape policies to assure that government
incentives for biofuels do not increase global warming."</p>
<p>"We shouldn't abandon biofuels," Searchinger says. But "you don't
solve global warming by going in the wrong direction."</p>
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