Biofuel not so green after all - no better than fossil fuel

[deeps]

Biomass power - such as burning wood for energy - could do more harm than good in the battle to reduce greenhouse gases, the Environment Agency warns.

Ploughing up pasture to plant energy crops could produce more CO2 by 2030 than burning fossil fuels, if not done in a sustainable way, it said.

At its best, biomass could produce as little as 27kg of CO2 (equivalent) per megawatt hour - 98% less than coal, saving around two million tonnes of CO2 every year. However, the study also found that in some cases overall emissions could be higher than those of fossil fuels.

Oh dear.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7997398.stm

[The Excession]

We're doomed I tell yah.

Only today I had to endure some Gaia Earth fanatic on the car radio (my radio car radio only receives one station - how green is that?).

Anyway, this muppet was saying that the Earth can only support one billion people, and sea levels and carbon and polution and people and food and sea level and ice caps and glaciers and famine and pestilance and sea level and Gaia means we're all doomed.

YAWN.......


Thankfully, at least one sentient being actually texted in to the show and even had their text read out on air. It went along the lines of 'When are you going to get one of the many esteemed scientists that don't agree with man made global warming on to to your program in order to give a balanced view?'

[thinfourth2]

Pretend Environmentalism
lesson 6

Tell everyone to stop doing X and tell them to do Y instead as Y is expensive and silly and slightly pointless and only done by treehuggers

This gives the treehugger a sense of superiority as the have been doing Y for years

If everyone starts doing Y and some money can be made from it tell them to stop and start doing Q instead as Q is expensive and silly and slightly pointless and only done by treehuggers

This gives the treehugger a sense of superiority as the have been doing Q for years

If everyone starts doing Q and some money can be made from it tell them to stop and start doing R instead as R is expensive and silly and slightly pointless and only done by treehuggers

This gives the treehugger a sense of superiority as the have been doing R for years


As the basic message behind pretend environmentalism is money and civilization is bad

[Dogwatch]

We should close down all those nasty polluting power stations and drive around in 'leccy cars run off wind power 'cos the wind always blows.

Doesn't it?

[Odie]

Pretty obvious really that burning anything produces carbon.

I could never see how switching your internal combustion engine to burn something different was ever any better for the enviroment...


We need to take a naturally occuring for constant force (gravity, light, sound) and convert it into electricity.

Im not say that green taxes are right but i am saying that releasing large quantities of anything into the atmosphere that isnt oxygen or nitrogen is bad mmmkay.

[mrmr96]

Hold on a moment... I'm pretty sure burning a tree doesn't "produce" CO2. Surely it just releases the carbon stored in the tree? And the carbon got there becasue tree's respirate? So isn't the net "production" of CO2 over the tree's life (i.e. planted/grown/burnt) going to be nil?

Or have a missed something crucial? (I've not studied geography or biology for many years now.)

[JagLover]

mrmr96 said:

Hold on a moment... I'm pretty sure burning a tree doesn't "produce" CO2. Surely it just releases the carbon stored in the tree? And the carbon got there becasue tree's respirate? So isn't the net "production" of CO2 over the tree's life (i.e. planted/grown/burnt) going to be nil?

Or have a missed something crucial? (I've not studied geography or biology for many years now.)

Your statement is correct but ignores the co2 used in converting 'biomass' into a useable fuel.

[ZeeTacoe]

mrmr96 said:

Hold on a moment... I'm pretty sure burning a tree doesn't "produce" CO2. Surely it just releases the carbon stored in the tree? And the carbon got there becasue tree's respirate? So isn't the net "production" of CO2 over the tree's life (i.e. planted/grown/burnt) going to be nil?

Or have a missed something crucial? (I've not studied geography or biology for many years now.)

since oil used to be trees burning it is also carbon neutral.Woo

[XitUp]

Some biofuels are really good, some are really bad. Hardly new news...

[skwdenyer]

The Excession said:

Anyway, this muppet was saying that the Earth can only support one billion people, and sea levels and carbon and polution and people and food and sea level and ice caps and glaciers and famine and pestilance and sea level and Gaia means we're all doomed.

Gaia theory is no more or less unproven than Christianity - I'm happy for both to carry a health warning. Perhaps Gaia should be on next week's Coronation Street?

In the mean time, the idea that the planet is overpopulated simply gets a "no st, what took you so long" response from me. I suspect 1 bn is a slightly lowball estimate, but I think knocking 20-30% off the global population would be an exceptionally good thing. For a bit more on this see the Optimum Population Trust.

Just as an example of population problems: London on its own requires more acres of pasture land to produce its annual supply of meat than the whole of the UK has available for production.

So, err, yes, we are doomed

[deeps]

skwdenyer said:

Just as an example of population problems: London on its own requires more acres of pasture land to produce its annual supply of meat than the whole of the UK has available for production.

So, err, yes, we are doomed

No offence, but that is utter nonsense.

[skwdenyer]

deeps said:

skwdenyer said:

Just as an example of population problems: London on its own requires more acres of pasture land to produce its annual supply of meat than the whole of the UK has available for production.

So, err, yes, we are doomed

No offence, but that is utter nonsense.

Sorry, in haste I didn't quite explain that very well or accurately

The average Briton consumes 1.6kg of meat per week. Metropolitan London has a population of 12m. That gives us around 1m tonnes of meat per year for London.

Beef production (hence my use of the word pasture) in the UK is 860k tonnes per year. So London consumes more meat in a year than the UK produces beef.

As regards total meat production in the UK, it is around 3.3m tonnes. So metropolitan London (20% of the population) consumes 30% of the UK production of meat.

Overall the UK consumes around 5 m tonnes of meat per year, yet produces only 3.3m tonnes. The UK does not have the capacity to produce sufficient meat to meet current demand. With rising populations, together with a shift towards organic meat (and a decline in dairy production, which has huge impacts on the production of ley to fertilise fields), the situation is worsening very rapidly.

Why is this a problem? Well, global meat consumption is rocketing, both per head and overall. Low-cost food imports will no longer be able to make up the shortfall. Sadly we will need to eat a lot less meat in the future in order to ensure sustainability.

[XitUp]

Another good reason for being vegan. I can tell you all off for ruining the country.

[skwdenyer]

XitUp said:

Another good reason for being vegan. I can tell you all off for ruining the country.

If everybody goes vegan, it isn't obvious that this improves land use much, but it does change things around a lot. Have a look at this link for a fairly good analysis.

[XitUp]

Land use in this country wouldn't be improved by a great ammount as most of our livestock feed is imported.

[skwdenyer]

XitUp said:

Land use in this country wouldn't be improved by a great ammount as most of our livestock feed is imported.

Which point rather reinforces the position that the current situation is unsustainable in the long term.

[deeps]

skwdenyer said:

Overall the UK consumes around 5 m tonnes of meat per year, yet produces only 3.3m tonnes. The UK does not have the capacity to produce sufficient meat to meet current demand.

I think you read too much into stats. The UK could easilly supply all of it's own meat, but if it's cheaper to import alot of it then that is what will happen.

skwdenyer said:

Why is this a problem? Well, global meat consumption is rocketing, both per head and overall. Low-cost food imports will no longer be able to make up the shortfall. Sadly we will need to eat a lot less meat in the future in order to ensure sustainability.

I disagree. We could easilly populate this country with many more cows than there are humans if we so desired.

[deeps]

XitUp said:

Another good reason for being vegan. I can tell you all off for ruining the country.

By all means eat what you like, but don't for one minute think your choice of diet is better for the country than someone elses. That would make you an arrogant prat.

Of course you were joking I know.

[s2art]

skwdenyer said:

XitUp said:

Land use in this country wouldn't be improved by a great ammount as most of our livestock feed is imported.

Which point rather reinforces the position that the current situation is unsustainable in the long term.

I dont see why. Look at 1940. The UK went from a similar position to today to nearly self sufficient in the space of four years. OK, it was a bit easier then, just moving to tractors instead of horses made a big difference. But the principle applies. There is loads of set-aside land which could be brought back into use. Its just a matter of cost/economics, cheaper to get NZ lamb than grow our own etc.

[skwdenyer]

s2art said:

skwdenyer said:

XitUp said:

Land use in this country wouldn't be improved by a great ammount as most of our livestock feed is imported.

Which point rather reinforces the position that the current situation is unsustainable in the long term.

I dont see why. Look at 1940. The UK went from a similar position to today to nearly self sufficient in the space of four years. OK, it was a bit easier then, just moving to tractors instead of horses made a big difference. But the principle applies. There is loads of set-aside land which could be brought back into use. Its just a matter of cost/economics, cheaper to get NZ lamb than grow our own etc.

First, in 1940, we had a smaller population, and we all ate very much less meat per head. The total requirement was far, far less than it is today.

Second, are you seriously suggesting that it is cheaper to import NZ lamb (where farm subsidies have been phased-out completely) than it is to buy from local, subsidised UK farmers? If that is the case then, frankly, there is something wrong somewhere - if only an out-of-kilter UK:NZ exchange rate.

You are quite correct, however; the UK could be self-sufficient for food, except that the cost of living as it is too high to be affordable, the tax burden too high, the cost of labour too high, the cost of land and housing far too high, and so on. As a consequence, it seems that it is not possible to operate on this basis. Are we all happy for food prices to go up another 18% this year, and again the next, to get us there?

Something is very, very wrong with this picture.