B
Bob Adkins
Hmmm... you just lost YOUR credibility.
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Hmmm... you just lost YOUR credibility.
M
Mel
Bob Adkins a écrit :
Everyone would buy it if the price was equal or better. There would be
no issue if the price was equal or better.
I hate it when people get all righteouse and start saying "hey
everybody, I'd really be ready to go out on a limb and support something
different if the price was equal or better!".
Like people saying "I'm a real ecologist! I'd install solar on my home
like a shot if the price was equal or better" No you aren't! Your just a
person trying to feel good about their self-percieved adventuresness and
tolernce for new ideas. You want to show off and realy feel good? DO
SOMETHING EVEN IF THE PRICE ISN'T EQUAL OR BETTER. then tyou can start
gettign pats on the pack for your personal contribution to
cleaner/greener/healthier lifestyle.
Everyone would buy it if the price was equal or better. There would be
no issue if the price was equal or better.
I hate it when people get all righteouse and start saying "hey
everybody, I'd really be ready to go out on a limb and support something
different if the price was equal or better!".
Like people saying "I'm a real ecologist! I'd install solar on my home
like a shot if the price was equal or better" No you aren't! Your just a
person trying to feel good about their self-percieved adventuresness and
tolernce for new ideas. You want to show off and realy feel good? DO
SOMETHING EVEN IF THE PRICE ISN'T EQUAL OR BETTER. then tyou can start
gettign pats on the pack for your personal contribution to
cleaner/greener/healthier lifestyle.
W
William P.N. Smith
Mel said:
Sure, but not all of us have an infinite supply of money, and there's
an economic efficiency argument to be made for making an intelligent
choice of alternative technologies such that you won't look back in
five years and say "Gee, I'd really like to buy a 50MPG diesel hybrid,
but I spent all my money on $10/watt solar panels."
S
steamer
--FWIW you can't beat the good old Excel spreadsheet to do the
what-if calculations. That's how I'm making the decision re: cost
effectiveness of hybrid car vs solar panel purchase.
what-if calculations. That's how I'm making the decision re: cost
effectiveness of hybrid car vs solar panel purchase.
D
Derek Broughton
Bob said:
Huh? Not to diss Fox, but to hear something on a single media outlet and
believe every word of it is extremely naive. Fox is no more likely to make
up a story from whole cloth than any other corporation, yet they _will_
attack a story from their own, sometimes biased, perspective. To hear a
_technology_ story from _any_ reporter, and believe they even got the facts
straight, is something that requires considerable experience with the
source.
G
Guest
What Fox did not tell you is that they cut down massive rain forests to
plant Palm Oil Trees so they can sell you Bio Diesel/Palm Oil...shipped on
tankers using Oil ....back here....and the Bio-Diesel Kings make a killing
with their incentives from the Government....That is what it is about....
Yes I agree Fox is full of half truths...Wolf leading the Sheep Channel.
Except Fox sound sleeker and nicer I guess. Fox News = Wolf News
plant Palm Oil Trees so they can sell you Bio Diesel/Palm Oil...shipped on
tankers using Oil ....back here....and the Bio-Diesel Kings make a killing
with their incentives from the Government....That is what it is about....
Yes I agree Fox is full of half truths...Wolf leading the Sheep Channel.
Except Fox sound sleeker and nicer I guess. Fox News = Wolf News
G
Guest
The most destructive crop on earth is no solution to the energy crisis
by George Monbiot RELATED
Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most
environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our
energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise
that I have entertained a belief in magic.
In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we
burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44 x 1018 grams
of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the
planet's current biota". In plain English, this means that every year we use
four centuries' worth of plants and animals.
The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy - and the
extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff
of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But
substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at
the climate talks in Montreal, by states - such as ours - that seek to avoid
the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one substitute is
worse than the fossil-fuel burning it replaces.
The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from
vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent for my
stance on the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as
vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to
admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I
was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact.
Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat
into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in
vats of filth are performing a service to society. But there is enough waste
cooking oil in the UK to meet a 380th of our demand for road transport fuel.
Beyond that, the trouble begins.
When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused
by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land use. Arable land that
would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow
fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel
industry has accidentally invented the world's most carbon-intensive fuel.
In promoting biodiesel - as the EU, the British and US governments and
thousands of environmental campaigners do - you might imagine that you are
creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown
in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most
destructive crop on earth.
Last week, the chairman of Malaysia's federal land development authority
announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant. His was the
ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in
Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam. Two foreign
consortiums - one German, one American - are setting up rival plants in
Singapore. All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil
from palm trees.
"The demand for biodiesel," the Malaysian Star reports, "will come from the
European Community ... This fresh demand ... would, at the very least, take
up most of Malaysia's crude palm oil inventories." Why? Because it is
cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.
In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impact of
palm oil production. "Between 1985 and 2000," it found, "the development of
oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of
deforestation in Malaysia". In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares
of forest have been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million
hectares are scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5 million in
Indonesia.
Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting
national park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The
orangutan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers,
gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go
the same way.
Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some
500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist. The forest
fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by
the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic
vegetable oil field.
Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest
trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt.
Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are moving into the swamp
forests, which grow on peat. When they've cut the trees, the planters drain
the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon
dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global
environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from
Nigeria.
The British government understands this. In a report published last month,
when it announced that it would obey the EU and ensure that 5.75% of our
transport fuel came from plants by 2010, it admitted "the main environmental
risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel
feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and
south-east Asia (for palm oil plantations)."
It suggested that the best means of dealing with the problem was to prevent
environmentally destructive fuels from being imported. The government asked
its consultants whether a ban would infringe world trade rules. The answer
was yes: "Mandatory environmental criteria ... would greatly increase the
risk of international legal challenge to the policy as a whole." So it
dropped the idea of banning imports, and called for "some form of voluntary
scheme" instead. Knowing that the creation of this market will lead to a
massive surge in imports of palm oil, knowing that there is nothing
meaningful it can do to prevent them, and knowing that they will accelerate
rather than ameliorate climate change, the government has decided to go
ahead anyway.
At other times it happily defies the EU. But what the EU wants and what the
government wants are the same. "It is essential that we balance the
increasing demand for travel," the government's report says, "with our goals
for protecting the environment." Until recently, we had a policy of reducing
the demand for travel. Now, though no announcement has been made, that
policy has gone. Like the Tories in the early 1990s, the Labour
administration seeks to accommodate demand, however high it rises.
Figures obtained last week by the campaigning group Road Block show that for
the widening of the M1 alone the government will pay £3.6bn - more than it
is spending on its entire climate change programme. Instead of attempting to
reduce demand, it is trying to alter supply. It is prepared to sacrifice the
south-east Asian rainforests in order to be seen to be doing something, and
to allow motorists to feel better about themselves.
All this illustrates the futility of the technofixes now being pursued in
Montreal. Trying to meet a rising demand for fuel is madness, wherever the
fuel might come from. The hard decisions have been avoided, and another
portion of the biosphere is going up in smoke.
by George Monbiot RELATED
Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most
environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our
energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise
that I have entertained a belief in magic.
In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we
burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44 x 1018 grams
of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the
planet's current biota". In plain English, this means that every year we use
four centuries' worth of plants and animals.
The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy - and the
extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff
of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But
substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at
the climate talks in Montreal, by states - such as ours - that seek to avoid
the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one substitute is
worse than the fossil-fuel burning it replaces.
The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from
vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent for my
stance on the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as
vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to
admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I
was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact.
Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat
into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in
vats of filth are performing a service to society. But there is enough waste
cooking oil in the UK to meet a 380th of our demand for road transport fuel.
Beyond that, the trouble begins.
When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused
by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land use. Arable land that
would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow
fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel
industry has accidentally invented the world's most carbon-intensive fuel.
In promoting biodiesel - as the EU, the British and US governments and
thousands of environmental campaigners do - you might imagine that you are
creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown
in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most
destructive crop on earth.
Last week, the chairman of Malaysia's federal land development authority
announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant. His was the
ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in
Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam. Two foreign
consortiums - one German, one American - are setting up rival plants in
Singapore. All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil
from palm trees.
"The demand for biodiesel," the Malaysian Star reports, "will come from the
European Community ... This fresh demand ... would, at the very least, take
up most of Malaysia's crude palm oil inventories." Why? Because it is
cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.
In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impact of
palm oil production. "Between 1985 and 2000," it found, "the development of
oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of
deforestation in Malaysia". In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares
of forest have been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million
hectares are scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5 million in
Indonesia.
Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting
national park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The
orangutan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers,
gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go
the same way.
Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some
500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist. The forest
fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by
the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic
vegetable oil field.
Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest
trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt.
Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are moving into the swamp
forests, which grow on peat. When they've cut the trees, the planters drain
the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon
dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global
environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from
Nigeria.
The British government understands this. In a report published last month,
when it announced that it would obey the EU and ensure that 5.75% of our
transport fuel came from plants by 2010, it admitted "the main environmental
risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel
feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and
south-east Asia (for palm oil plantations)."
It suggested that the best means of dealing with the problem was to prevent
environmentally destructive fuels from being imported. The government asked
its consultants whether a ban would infringe world trade rules. The answer
was yes: "Mandatory environmental criteria ... would greatly increase the
risk of international legal challenge to the policy as a whole." So it
dropped the idea of banning imports, and called for "some form of voluntary
scheme" instead. Knowing that the creation of this market will lead to a
massive surge in imports of palm oil, knowing that there is nothing
meaningful it can do to prevent them, and knowing that they will accelerate
rather than ameliorate climate change, the government has decided to go
ahead anyway.
At other times it happily defies the EU. But what the EU wants and what the
government wants are the same. "It is essential that we balance the
increasing demand for travel," the government's report says, "with our goals
for protecting the environment." Until recently, we had a policy of reducing
the demand for travel. Now, though no announcement has been made, that
policy has gone. Like the Tories in the early 1990s, the Labour
administration seeks to accommodate demand, however high it rises.
Figures obtained last week by the campaigning group Road Block show that for
the widening of the M1 alone the government will pay £3.6bn - more than it
is spending on its entire climate change programme. Instead of attempting to
reduce demand, it is trying to alter supply. It is prepared to sacrifice the
south-east Asian rainforests in order to be seen to be doing something, and
to allow motorists to feel better about themselves.
All this illustrates the futility of the technofixes now being pursued in
Montreal. Trying to meet a rising demand for fuel is madness, wherever the
fuel might come from. The hard decisions have been avoided, and another
portion of the biosphere is going up in smoke.
B
Bob Adkins
Eh? I'll go out on a limb and stick biodiesel in my expensive tractor and
car, not to "support" anything.
Well I'm not political at all. **** a bunch of SUV burning, tree bark
eating, smelly armpit motherfuckers that put politics ahead of the earth
and its inhabitants.
I don't want any pats on the back. I want cheaper fuel that smells better.
If it's ecologically friendly and saves non-renewable resources, so much
the better. I'm not environmentally conscious because of the "Ecologists",
but in spite of them.
Coffee? It's hot and fresh!
B
Bob Adkins
Dude-with-the-winky-smiley-face,
Everyone knows that biodiesel is not the answer to our energy woes. It
merely replaces 1 wasteful energy source with another. I submit that no 1
thing is the answer. I agree with the tree huggers that our appetite for
energy is simply too large to sustain.
Biodiesel can be part of the answer, but the real answer is to conserve,
and to develop <<many small sources of energy>>. When oil (of any kind)
becomes as expensive as good whiskey, it will become economically feasible
to utilize most all sources of energy. Gas from pig shit will be captured.
Weeds will be mown and converted to pellets or gasified. Every spare BTU and
free electron will be relentlessly hunted down and harnessed. If all the
emerging technologies are developed to their maximum, our grand children
will have adequate and only adequate energy.
I'm excited about the biodiesel plant not out of altruism, but because:
*You tree hugging fucks finally allowed a new refinery to be built
*It may spur the building of other refineries
*It may signal the start of development of other energy such as oil shale
and sand
*It may help slow down runaway diesel prices some day
*I may be able to actually buy some of that great-smelling biodiesel
Y'all take care,,,
P
Pooh Bear
;-){"@.COM said:
Yes, I was wondering about that. Not so great.
Graham
P
Pooh Bear
William P.N. Smith said:
You don't need hybrid technology to get 50 mpg from a diesel though.
Graham
B
Bob Adkins
True, Pooh. But diesel is ideal for hybrids!
See you on TBN,
Have_Blue
B
Bob Adkins
Duh? It was a headline, not a feature story.
FoxNews did an excellent feature on global warming. Scientists presented all
sides of the issue, and let you decide. They have no dog in that fight,
their job is to inform.
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