Ethanol Fuels Crisis

Financial Times - A plan to increase the use of biofuels in Europe, to be outlined next week, may do nothing to help fight climate change and incur costs that outweigh the benefits, says an internal European Union report.

The unpublished study by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s in-house scientific institute, was prepared ahead of the commission’s meeting next Wednesday when it is set to endorse plans for biofuels to account for 10 per cent of transport fuels in the 27-member EU by 2020.

“The costs [of the target] will almost certainly outweigh the benefits,” says the report, a copy of which has been obtained by the Financial Times. Taxpayers would face a bill of €33bn-€65bn between now and 2020, the study says.

“The uncertainty is too great to say whether the EU 10 per cent biofuel target will save greenhouse gas or not,” it adds.

EU leaders called for the target last year as part of a move to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020.

However, some commissioners have expressed concerns about the knock-on effects of using plants for fuel. Indonesia has seen large street protests this week over record soyabean prices triggered by US farmers opting to grow corn to supply the biofuel industry over soyabeans.

Green groups are also concerned that forests could be cleared for food crops displaced by biofuel plantations, although the commission says it would introduce measures to avoid this. Corn and palm oil are among the most popular biofuel sources, though sugar from Brazil is considered the most “green” by the JRC as it grows quickly and produces a lot of energy.

A commission spokeswoman said the JRCreport had not been peer-reviewed. She said: “It is a contribution to the debate, we are looking at the whole picture and we will have sustainability criteria.”

The JRC suggests that it would be more efficient to use biofuel to generate power rather than fuel cars. It also suggests that the separate transport target be scrapped. It is even doubtful about the merits of using plant waste, such as straw, since transporting large quantities to biofuel factories itself requires fuel.

Adrian Bebb, of Friends of the Earth, said: “The report has a damning verdict on the EU policy. It should be abandoned in favour of real solutions to climate change.”

Key Words: FoE, Agrofuels, Biofuel Famines

Environmental Disaster

Where most people occupy themselves with the inner cave society, I prefer to watch the earth we live on. I pay attention to what is happening around me. I observe the seasons by watching the ground. I observe how the weather effects the ground under our feet. I study moss and treebark, or how the forests regenerate.

Small is beautiful, in my world and I pay close attention to the planet. Over the last few years I have noticed something easily overlooked by people - unless you pay attention to the details. Each year the fall of leaves in the local forests totally disappear [extracted by humans], leaving a bleak - well hoovered - disturbed and exposed soil.

It used to be that some remnant of leaves were left behind, but technology has improved and now all of the leaves disappear in the yearly gathering of fuel. Who is doing this? Well, the forest is a National Park and so there has to be local government involvement. Now the disappearing leave syndrom has spread to all local parks, green zones and anywhere inside and around the town.

These organisations are removing dirt and waste, every last particle of cut grass, every last leaf (from under the bushes even); and it is done with surprising last of the leaves type greed as though these dead and decaying leaves are some kind of green-gold.

They are green-gold to the environment. "The environment" is anything under your feet and above your head that existed long before mankind arrived on this planet, including the trees! Environmental green-gold is the billions of year old self-renewal process. Trees create leaves, a blend of sunlight and water. The leaves fall to the ground in Autumn and decay back into the earth, creating nourishment for all aspects of the forest, woods, fields and parks.

The nothing-is-left-behind policy will have a long term environmental impact in a world where biofuel-grass, biofuel-leaves and biofuel-hay are no longer part of the self-renewal cycle of the earth. With ethanol fuel production increasing, poorer nations will go hungry as the price of basic foods continues to rise. The land around us will also go hungry as the nutrient rich cycle is broken, and the food-of-the-earth is burned as fuel.

"Ethanol is an agribusiness get-rich-quick scheme that will bankrupt our topsoil. Fertile soil will be destroyed if crops and other "wastes" are removed to make cellulosic ethanol." Peak Soil

Keywords: Deforestation, Extreme Weather, Deforestation Fuel,
Wiser Earth

The Biofuel Illusion

The statistics are showing that Europe and America do not have the land to grow enough corn to meet their fuel consumption demands, so that explains why they are all investing in palm oil plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia. China is investing heavily in removing the virgin forest in Malaysia and Indonesia for their palm oil plantations, and as a result are making a killing through the timber they are removing.

In a few years from now there is going to be some disaster in which scientists will report that if these countries had not cut down the forests the disaster would not have had such a terrible effect. The mono-plantations will either have been washed away or destroyed, or even better! An alternative is discovered through which the world does not need palm oil... That will happen. Meanwhile, they have totally destroyed their forests and as a result the bio-diversity crashes and the effect it has on the human population in Asia, will be as equally devastating as the current effect human behaviour is having on the Urangutan.

Why is Palm Oil Replacing Rainforests?
Surveys of the region commissioned by WWF found that much of the land is poorly suited for oil palm. Mountainous terrain combined with inappropriate altitude and climate for oil palm means that only 10 percent at most can be considered adequate for cultivation and lends credibility to claims by environmental groups that the entire plan may be a cover for a massive logging scheme to harvest the area’s rich timber resources.

Greenomics, an Indonesian forestry non-governmental organization, has calculated the timber value in the border region at $26 billion. Logging the area set aside for oil-palm plantations would net substantial amounts of revenue for logging firms and considerable tax income for the Indonesian government.

AlterNet July 7, 2006
There's been a lot of talk lately about the promise of biofuels -- liquid fuels like ethanol and biodiesel made from plants -- to reduce our dependence on oil. Even President Bush beat the biofuel drum in his last State of the Union speech.

Fuel from plants? Sounds pretty good. But before you rush out to buy an E-85 pickup, consider:

-- The United States annually consumes more fossil and nuclear energy than all the energy produced in a year by the country's plant life, including forests and that used for food and fiber, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Energy and David Pimentel, a Cornell University researcher.

-- To produce enough corn-based ethanol to meet current U.S. demand for automotive gasoline, we would need to nearly double the amount of land used for harvested crops, plant all of it in corn, year after year, and not eat any of it. Even a greener fuel source like the switchgrass President Bush mentioned, which requires fewer petroleum-based inputs than corn and reduces topsoil losses by growing back each year, could provide only a small fraction of the energy we demand.

-- The corn and soybeans that make ethanol and biodiesel take huge quantities of fossil fuel for farm machinery, pesticides and fertilizer. Much of it comes from foreign sources, including some that may not be dependable, such as Russia and countries in the Middle East.

-- Corn and soybean production as practiced in the Midwest is ecologically unsustainable. Its effects include massive topsoil erosion, pollution of surface and groundwater with pesticides, and fertilizer runoff that travels down the Mississippi River to deplete oxygen and life from a New Jersey-size portion of the Gulf of Mexico.

-- Improving fuel efficiency in cars by just 1 mile per gallon -- a gain possible with proper tire inflation -- would cut fuel consumption equal to the total amount of ethanol federally mandated for production in 2012.

Rather than chase phantom substitutes for fossil fuels, we should focus on what can immediately both slow our contribution to global climate change and reduce our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels: cutting energy use. Alternet.org

The Biofuel Illusion

Europe and America do not have the land to grow enough corn to meet their fuel consumption demands, and then comes the question of where do they grow their food? That explains why they are investing in palm oil plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia. China is also investing heavily in removing the virgin forest in Malaysia and Indonesia for their palm oil plantations, and as a result are making a killing through selling the timber they are removing.

In a few years from now there is going to be some disaster in which scientists will report that if these countries had not cut down the forests the disaster would not have had such a terrible effect. The mono-plantations will either have been washed away or destroyed, or even better! An alternative is discovered through which the world does not need palm oil... That will happen. Meanwhile, they have totally destroyed their forests and as a result the bio-diversity crashes, and the effect it has on the human population in Asia will be as equally devastating as the current effect human behaviour is having on the Urangutan.

Why is Palm Oil Replacing Rainforests?
Surveys of the region commissioned by WWF found that much of the land is poorly suited for oil palm. Mountainous terrain combined with inappropriate altitude and climate for oil palm means that only 10 percent at most can be considered adequate for cultivation and lends credibility to claims by environmental groups that the entire plan may be a cover for a massive logging scheme to harvest the area’s rich timber resources.

Greenomics, an Indonesian forestry non-governmental organization, has calculated the timber value in the border region at $26 billion. Logging the area set aside for oil-palm plantations would net substantial amounts of revenue for logging firms and considerable tax income for the Indonesian government.

At some point these countries are going to be left high and dry, no one will want the oil from their plantations. The potential for political swing back from this is such that the plantation oil products may even be banned. People wont want this product. Would you tank with blood? This turnaround will come eventually, maybe faster than one can imagine. The current destruction of the land and the forests, and the way the animals are being treated will backfire on the people who are doing it.

Even worse, no one knows the effect this is going to have in the region when the forests are gone. It could have potentially catastrophic effects for the people in that part of the world stretching back all the way to China. I am not talking about CO2. The air currents could be altered, the precipitation and rainfall could be drastically altered. The winds could change increasing the periods of drought in China and other regions. I also consider that if Spain, Italy, France and Britain had a greater percentage of forest cover that they would be better off now and in the future. The problem is that most of the trees are long gone.

We cross over to Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil... and the same is happening there. Canada is no different, they are also happily hacking away: Canada's forests are vast carbon reservoirs that store 12 times more carbon than the entire world emits annually from fossil fuels, says a report that calls for a new green business model for the Canadian forest industry.

The report, released Wednesday by the environmental group ForestEthics, says the carbon stored in Canadian forests totals 84.4 billion tons. Of that, 47.5 billion tons is stored in the country's boreal forests alone, which stretch from Yukon to Labrador in a band almost 1,000 kilometres wide.

Forest protection crucial to counter climate change
The report says natural, intact forests store up to 50 per cent more carbon than managed forests planted after logging. And old forests can store significantly more carbon than young forests, it says.

Protecting Canada's intact forests is an essential part of a national strategy to counter the impact of climate change, ForestEthics says. Yet at present, Canadian logging removes 33.4 million megatons of forest carbon stores every year - more than is emitted annually by all passenger vehicles in the country. Canada.com

People are not taking into consideration that the forests are protecting them. Only once the forests are gone will people begin to understand this in the negative, because they will suffer from the removal of these virgin forests. No one knows what the effect will be to Indonesia, Malaysia, China and India once those trees are gone. The nature of the climate in those regions could be such that they really cannot afford to lose those forests. Later, humans will suffer the same fate that the animals, birds and trees suffered. Where they go we follow. A good maxim for taking care of our bio-sphere and surrounding habitat.

AlterNet July 7, 2006
There's been a lot of talk lately about the promise of biofuels -- liquid fuels like ethanol and biodiesel made from plants -- to reduce our dependence on oil. Even President Bush beat the biofuel drum in his last State of the Union speech.

Fuel from plants? Sounds pretty good. But before you rush out to buy an E-85 pickup, consider:

-- The United States annually consumes more fossil and nuclear energy than all the energy produced in a year by the country's plant life, including forests and that used for food and fiber, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Energy and David Pimentel, a Cornell University researcher.

-- To produce enough corn-based ethanol to meet current U.S. demand for automotive gasoline, we would need to nearly double the amount of land used for harvested crops, plant all of it in corn, year after year, and not eat any of it. Even a greener fuel source like the switchgrass President Bush mentioned, which requires fewer petroleum-based inputs than corn and reduces topsoil losses by growing back each year, could provide only a small fraction of the energy we demand.

-- The corn and soybeans that make ethanol and biodiesel take huge quantities of fossil fuel for farm machinery, pesticides and fertilizer. Much of it comes from foreign sources, including some that may not be dependable, such as Russia and countries in the Middle East.

-- Corn and soybean production as practiced in the Midwest is ecologically unsustainable. Its effects include massive topsoil erosion, pollution of surface and groundwater with pesticides, and fertilizer runoff that travels down the Mississippi River to deplete oxygen and life from a New Jersey-size portion of the Gulf of Mexico.

-- Improving fuel efficiency in cars by just 1 mile per gallon -- a gain possible with proper tire inflation -- would cut fuel consumption equal to the total amount of ethanol federally mandated for production in 2012.

Rather than chase phantom substitutes for fossil fuels, we should focus on what can immediately both slow our contribution to global climate change and reduce our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels: cutting energy use. Alternet.org

Blood of The Amazon Fuels

The United Nations have released a report on the dangers of destroying the world's eco-systems which presently remove carbon from the atmosphere. As a result of increases in the demand for Food Bio-Fuels the prices of food, land and agricultural commodities could increase creating hardship and suffering in poorer countries. The destruction of virgin forests to create Bio-Fuel plantations will also lead to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions (obviously).

The report, concerned that large scale mono-crops plantations lead to biodiversity loss, soil erosion and soil nutrient loss, also states concerns for fresh water supplies at a time when the growing world populations are rapidly increasing their consumption of meat and dairy products, putting an even greater strain on dwindling water supplies.

The increasing demand for Bio-Fuels is accelerate the illegal clearing of forests for the planting of palm plantations. This destruction is being financed and is being fired by the demand of rich industrialised countries for Bio-Fuel, while no care is being taken as to the effects it is having on the poorest people on this planet.

We are all perfectly aware of the damage this destruction is doing to the earth, the damage it is doing to the eco-system, to our lives and the disaster it will create for future generations. People today are destroying their grandchldren's future. Knowing this and seeing this, why are political and corporate institutions pushing ahead?

Holding Down The Price of Oil
It is a really perverted twist of self deception to call food for fuel a Bio-Fuel. Destroying prime forest to plant mono-culture palm oil plantations has nothing to do with ecology nor has it to do with Bio, unless it is Bio-Destruction. The sad reality is that the Bio-Fuel the Europeans will put into their tanks is more aptly to be labled "Orangutan Extinction Fuel" or "Amazon Destruction Fuel."

The focus and growth of Bio-Fuels has nothing to do with the conservation of the earth's bio-systems, it has nothing to do with counteracting Climate Change or Global Warming and it has nothing to do with preserving the ecology of the planet... It has to do with money. The drive to increase the production and consumption of Bio-Fuels has to do with keeping down the price of oil, maintaining current market economic policies, maintaining a control on oil prices, the fuel of the corporate economy. Why do humans have to control the price of oil in this way? To maintain the Global Economy. There is another more efficient way to control the price of oil, and that is a decrease in demand.

The Global Economy creates wealth by shipping products all over the planet. You have Europe selling goods to China and China selling goods to Europe. A return to local production of food and service goods would in itself make a dramatic impact on the demand for oil, because it is Globalisation that is driving the increase in the demand for oil. If petrolium does not stay below a certain price, there is no global economy, there can be no global market, there will be no global corporate profits. With high oil prices it wont be worth it to export and import all these foods and products between countries. The price will be too high, forcing countries to operate locally. With high oil prices it will be cheaper to consume local food and local goods and services. It will also be better for the planet.

Take all the import-export shipping off the high seas and already the production of CO2 will be drastically reduced. Reduce the import-export air traffic and road traffic and the production of CO2 wil be drastically reduced. If you want Bio-Fuels then have backyard operators producing local Bio-Fuels from waste and leave them to do it tax-free. Leave people to produce their own fuels and you don't need to transport it all the way from Brazil. You don't have to cut down forests to convert local waste into fuel. Give small companies tax free incentives and grants to create more efficient systems. Allow people all over the country to plant Industrial Hemp, the most wonderful Bio-Fuel plant on the planet.

The problem is that governments are addicted to taxation, and they are heavily addicted to the taxation of petrolium. If local backyard producers start meeting local fuel demands with innovative waste transformation technologies, Governments lose taxes. However, when you cut unemployment through the local production of goods and the production of tax-free Bio-Fuels then the creation of employment offsets the loss in taxes. A local waste Bio-Fuel industry could create sustained local employment oppertunities rather than create employment oppertunities for those destroying the Amazon.

Rather than finance the destruction of the Amazon and the extinction of the Urangutan, why not invest the money into local waste transformation schemes that would reduce European dependance on petrolium? Why not create local fuel production that would reduce the demand for oil as well as reduce the price of oil, and at the same time local production will increase tax free benefits to the local economy? That way you don't need import taxes, and fuel taxes, and sales taxes, and company taxes, because you are doing the right thing to save the planet.

Food energy crops bring food shortages and increase poverty
Winners and losers in huge biofuel industry
Oil price will stabilise but small farmers at risk

Global production of energy crops is doubling every few years, and 17 countries have so far committed themselves to growing the crops on a large scale. Last year more than a third of the entire US maize crop went to ethanol for fuel, a 48% increase on 2005, and Brazil and China grew the crops on nearly 50m acres of land. The EU has said that 10% of all fuel must come from biofuels by 2020. Biofuels can be used in place of petrol and diesel and can play a part in reducing emissions from transport.

On the positive side, the UN says that the crops have the potential to reduce and stabilise the price of oil, which could be very beneficial to poor countries. But it acknowledges that forests are already being felled to provide the land to grow vast plantations of palm oil trees. Environment groups argue strongly that this is catastrophic for the climate, and potentially devastating for forest animals like orangutans in Indonesia. Guardian Unlimited

Fueling Extinction

How many times can you cut down a tree?

The next insanity of the industrial human race is the development of technology to transform forestry resources into bio-fuel. The developers of the industry are looking for efficient ways to process wood chippings into ethanol. The industrial definition of efficiency is monetary, it has to be economically efficient. This means the industry will process wood, corn, wheat or sugarcane into bio-fuels if it is financially profitable to do so: What you pay for the bio-fuel has to generate a profit for the industry and investors. So, the price for creating the supply of ethanol have to be lower than the price of petrol, and the production costs have to be efficient enough to leave the industry with a substantial profit.

The cost of habitat destruction to the earth, and to the human beings on the earth will be the price paid by the next generations. Not the price you pay for your gas when you fill the tank, but the price your grandchildren pay in terms of higher populations and rapidly decreasing resources to feed and sustain those populations. Industry in non-economic terms is the development of extraction of resources multiplied by the current world population at any time in human history.

In those simplistic terms industry is the organisation of human populations to extract and utilise resources, currently for economic gain. The way human populations organise the utilisation of resources can either harm the local and planetary environment, or it can harmonise with the environment. At this point in time we harm the natural environment, unfortunately to the point that we are literally fuelling extinction.

The key words are bio-fuels, habitat, petrolium, population growth, industrial expansion, mono-culture, rapid growth, extinction. The current marketing technique being used to increase consumer interest in the expanding production of ethanol is: bio-fuels. In the future the bio-fuel industry is know as the extinction-fuel industry, but as we are talking about market economics the word extinction is not a good marketing symbol for a rapidly expanding market. The first rule of marketing is to give your product a good image. What better propaganda than: You buy this product and you are going to save the planet.

All across the earth the industrialised world banks, the European Union and now Asian banks are financing extinction through a massive funding of economic production in ways that create local environmental loss of habitat, or an unnatural extraction of resources in excess of normal standards. For example, the funding and subsidies given to the vaccum-fishing industry. The funding of mono-plantations, the extraction of planetary resources and the industrial process required to convert those resources into energy or consumer products.

More than half Portugal's wildlife has come under threat of extinction since the country joined the European Union 20 years ago - and massive redevelopment made possible by EU cash is at least partly to blame. The Portuguese Institute of Nature Conservation's list of all the species either in grave danger or on the brink of extinction amounts to nearly half of the country's wildlife. And environmentalists say that the threat has come from the impact of years of intensive development, funded by grants from the European Union. BBC News

Eucalyptus as Far as the Eye Can See Native to Australia, the eucalyptus is ideal for pulpwood production: It grows quickly and is accomplished at scavenging large amounts of water at the expense of other plants. Foreign-owned large-scale plantations of the fragrant trees now occupy more than 700,000 hectares (2,700 square miles) in Uruguay, estimates María Selva Ortiz of the REDES- member of the Friends of the Earth non-governmental environmental network.

Botnia of Finland has planted trees on 60,000 hectares (232 square miles) of prime land, while ENCE of Spain already owns 50,000 hectares (183 square miles) and plans to purchase even more, according to Ricardo Carrere, spokesperson for local environmental group Guayabira.

The plantations and mills, meanwhile, enjoy powerful and richly funded backers. Large-scale eucalyptus plantations were introduced in Uruguay in 1988, promoted mainly by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), with the active participation of forestry companies.

Our current levels of greed are exceeding the planets ability to provide us with resources. The emphasis is on fast growing trees, cows have to produce twice as much milk, bees have to produce more honey and pollinate faster before they are moved to the next location, apples have to be bigger, wheat crops have to produce more grains per head, Europe needs more births (fast), fishing vessels target fish stocks faster using sonar and modern satellite technology. Species all over the earth are reaching extinction faster than we can count them out.

Could it all be done differently? Of course it could all be done differently. Those who control the financing control the development. Today rich institutions are financing habitat extinction industries and projects according to their methods of expanding the supply and demand based on their technologies. Those institutions are the catalyst behind the financing of and therefore the rapid spread of mono-culture plantations to meet the increased demands for certain industrial resources, and for the financing of bio-fuel technologies and extraction of resources to fire those technologies: Palm Oil Industry Fuels Extinction of Orang Utans
Biodevastation Fuelling Deforestation - Why Save Trees?

Ethanol Is Not "Bio"

The grain required to make enough ethanol to fill an SUV tank is enough to feed a person for a whole year.

The boom in the biofuel industry is impacting the whole world significantly. Brazil, the most impressive success story in biofuel production so far, is using 50% of its yearly sugarcane production to satisfy its 40% of automobile fuel needs while fast felling down trees to grow more soybeans and sugarcane.

Indonesian and Malaysian rainforests are being destroyed for the plantation of oil palms, proving life-threatening to endangered rhinos, tigers, orangutans, and innumerable other species to serve the burgeoning European market for biodiesel.

A recent report of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for the International Energy Agency (IEA) raises serious concerns about this new approach to achieve energy liberalization in future. It has been found that 80% if the greenhouse emissions in Brazil come not from vehicles, but, shockingly, from deforestation the release of embedded carbon dioxide during deforestation and burning of forests. [Biotech.org]

Bio-Fuel?
Humans can be incredibly stupid when it comes to being taken for a ride by a consumer oriented society run by big corporations and their puppet-governments. There is nothing Bio about ethanol. To get ethanol or any bio-fuel, you have to process wood, or grain, or corn... and you have to turn this organic substance into ethanol.

What do you need to grow the grain, food crops or the corn? You need oil in the form of petrol (gas). Non-organic farms require fertilisers and pesticides (petroleum products). The reason we have the intensive food production that we have in the world today is due to petroleum products: that black substance everyone is so dependant on - and for good reason.

An MSU scientist is claiming that, with cellulosic ethanol, there is no food vs. fuel debate. -- As more and more corn grain is diverted to make ethanol, there have been public concerns about food shortages. However, ethanol made from cellulosic materials instead of corn grain, renders the food vs. fuel debate moot, according to research by a Michigan State University ethanol expert.

The problem with this is the demand. The demand supply curve is the most basic form of economics. Really, most people are not paying attention to this, although it is the number one factor behind everything we see happening in the world today. In many ways the problem is not actually oil, or oil based fuels. The problem is demand. If people can begin to understand this simple fact then maybe we can begin to find solutions. Everywhere I look I see the trees and forests being cut down. The trees are already providing humans with more than the planet can afford, how on earth are they going to provide fuel on top of the already increasing demand for wood?

There is growing evidence that the oil problem is not so much that the reserves of oil are depleted over time. There is growing evidence that the earth actually produces oil in fields that are not being over-pumped. In other words, the oil-field problem is the demand. The fields are being pumped dry at a much faster rate than they are being replenished. In that respect free-energy is not the solution either unless human beings evolve onto a level where they transcend greed. More-and-more-and-more is not healthy, and it is not natural. In terms of greed and more the human race is mentally (spiritually) ill. In the ancient world the mind and the spirit are one and the same.

To make this clear, lets say that we just discovered that it is possible to convert earth (soil) into fuel. You just look out your window and you are sitting on it. The trees are growing in the soil outside your appartment, it's everywhere. Your house is built on it. Your food comes from the earth. The oceans cover the ocean floor (earth). Just for fun let's add sand (desert) to this marvelous technology. You don't need to convert plants and trees into ethanol, because you have found a way to convert earth and sand into fuel. That is how you will power your society, your world, your transport system...

Now you understand the problem. If only ten people on the planet are interested in your invention the impact wont be so large. You and ten other people convert earth and sand into fuel and you have energy to power your homes and cars. But if the whole planet is interested in your invention - you have a problem. It's called: DEMAND. All of a sudden, everywhere you look, people are digging up earth and sand. It is the same with corn, grains, trees, stalks... the problem is the extremely high demand. Just imagine in Africa, in the Middle East, in China, India, Russia, American and in Europe everyone is digging up the earth and they are converting it into fuel. The whole world is suddenly rich!

Out in the desert you have billions of people digging up the sand to convert it to fuel. The technology is easy, the convertion is cheap. The resource is plentiful, and the world has a problem... The problem exists because of the demand. Too many people - and the numbers are growing - are drawing on this resource. The more societies have access to this cheap fuel, the more the populations grow. The more the populations grow, the more demand increases. Very soon you have no earth (soil) and no sand. That is our current problem. Humans cannot feed the growing populations and now into the demand equation comes this very badly named "bio-fuel".

I am a purist in the traditional sense. To me "bio" is the energy from the sun, or free magnetic energy, the power of light or the amazing force that moves the unverse. When you have to go to so much trouble to produce fuel - and you need oil to do this (as in growing and harvesting the food), how can you call it bio? This is an international scam created by vested interests to make money. What is bio? Sun energy, wind energy, water or wave energy, magnetic force. The moment I have to dig up sand from the sahara and convert it into fuel - that is not bio, it is processed. I have to process the substance to get the fuel. The new bio-fuel.

Is The Problem Supply Or Demand?
How are human populations going to feed the demand of growing world populations for fuel? The human race is totally out of balance. The more the planet gives us, the more we want. The human race is breeding at such a rate that if we were rabbits governments would be killing us. Personally, I live a very simple life. I walk everywhere, and I eat a lettuce and some tomatoes during the day. But all around me the demand for energy (fun) is killing this planet. It is this senseless demand that is the real problem, and most of what humans do is senseless. Just stop and look at how we power our world. At night it is called light pollution.

World societies are not addicted to oil, they are addicted to demand (give-me-more). People no longer know how to live a simple life. The more one has the more one wants. Maybe we should create fuel-quotas? Those of us who use less than our yearly quota get a bonus at the end of the year, and those who use more than their quota must pay. The quotas are the same for everyone, and the quotas are based on need (and not on current self-gratification values). Why not?

Saying that Ethanol is not the answer is like saying: "The king has no clothes."

There is another reason that food-for-fuel is not the answer to the worlds energy problems. The limits of a Green Revolution?

How are we going to feed a world population that will rise from 6.6 billion today to more than nine billion people by 2050, when we cannot feed the people in the world today? There are more important factors to growing food for fuel. One of those factors is climate change. At the moment the world can still grow the food it needs without too much difficulty. When dramatic climate changes hit the food producing areas, reducing grain production, then you have a nightmare situation.

The potential future is a world where increasing demands of food-for-fuel pushes up the price people pay for food, as with the rising corn prices in Mexico. The demand for food to produce fuel is vulnerable to a global fall in production due to climate change and/or unrest in the Middle East (increase in the price for oil). In many ways the bio-fuel industry is like putting faith in a sinking ship that is so full of holes that the sinking of the ship is inevitable. If people go for this scam, then people get what they deserve in terms of what hits them later.

The way I see this is you have a road sign that reads "motorway ahead", when in fact the road you are driving on is leading to a dead-end. The drivers put their foot on the gas, and around the next curve is a wall. I wonder if the drivers will have time to break before they hit the wall (it's a short curve).

Biofuels Spurring Deforestation

Biofuels: Killing The Forests To Save The Earth

Indonesia's Biofuel Expansion on Rainforest Peatlands
to Accelerate Climate Change

Indonesia’s rainforests contain 60% of all the tropical peat in the world. Peatland rainforests are wet, swampy rainforests that when drained and cleared, their peat filled soils become highly susceptible to long burning, carbon and methane rich fires. Such rainforests on peat soils are one of the world’s most important carbon sinks and play a vital role in helping to regulate the global climate. They are also very rich in biodiversity and a refuge for species like orang-utans, since most of the non-peat lowland forests have already been cleared.

Rainforest peatlands are being destroyed fast; primarily by palm oil, timber, and paper and pulp companies. The Indonesian government has endorsed a massive biofuel program which foresees an increase in oil palm plantations from currently just over 6 million hectares to eventually over 26 million hectares. 5.25 million hectares have just been allocated for biofuel production, including one million hectares to PT SMART, one of the companies which was involved in agreements for a mega-plantation in the part of Kalimantan known as the ‘Heart of Borneo’ which has been halted for the time being, but is likely to reemerge at some point in some guise or other.

Indonesia's biofuel expansion spurred on largely by the European market is likely to be the death-knoll for most of Indonesia’s remaining rainforests and peatlands. Far from reducing climate change emissions, it will rapidly release up to 50 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. This is the equivalent of over 6 years of global fossil fuel emissions and could well make the generally accepted 2 degree C of warming that is considered "dangerous" unavoidable. This surge of carbon originating in cleared peatland rainforests alone could well take the planet to beyond the climate tipping point, releasing major feedbacks which worsen global heating such as large-scale methane release from permafrost and ocean clathrates, and causing the rapid break-up of the ice shelves and unstoppable mass extinctions.

Already, Indonesia’s carbon emissions from peat drainage and fires put the country in third place for CO2 emissions worldwide. A recent study has found that one ton of biodiesel made from palm oil grown on Southeast Asia’s peatlands is linked to the emission of 10-30 tons of carbon dioxide. Shockingly, this is 2-8 times as much carbon released as in production of a ton of fossil fuel diesel. Far from helping with development, monoculture plantations have been linked to increased rural poverty and hundreds of conflicts over land rights.

Biological Nitrogen Fixation

Ammonia & Bio-Fuels
I would like to complete the picture from David Cohen a bit by stressing the free use of bacteria in delivering nitrogen for all sort of plants in sufficient amount. The amount of artificial fertilizer used in the world could be reduced a lot, if the knowledge about Nitrogen fixing bacterias, which already exists, would be transferred to all the farmers around the world. What about spreading the good news via TV and the usually good broadcasts like the "Discovery Channel" or BBC documentations.

I'm only a software developer, but i learned a lot in the last two years about farming through the german forum about peak oil.

The solution for delivering enough nitrogen to the plants at very low costs is called "Biological Nitrogen Fixation".

Legumes such as clover or beans already use that process ever since. Today this process can be transferred also to non-legume plants like rice, wheat, maize etc... In Brazil this is used since a quite few years: (" Boddey, R. M., S. Urquiaga, V. Reis, and J. Döbereiner. 1991. Biological nitrogen fixation associated with sugar cane. Plant Soil 137:111-117.". by implementing the bacteria called Acetobacter diazotrophicus in the roots and stems. So this bacteria is doing now the work of the fertilizer refineries. Brazil already has a quite low demand for artificial fertilizer despite his huge areas of sugar cane.

In the last years scientist discovered other bacterias for the non-leguminous plants:

For wheat: : Azospirillum brasilense (=Spirillum lipoferum)
For soja: Bradyrhizobium japonicum
For rape (Brassica napus): Azorhizobum caulinodans (the transfer process is enhanced together with Naringenin, which you can find in simple tomato concentrate from your local supermarket ;-) )

To use these bacterias (you can buy them already per Internet) one just has to inoculate the seed with a solution of water and sugar together with a certain amount (from a bottle) a few hours before the sowing e.g. in a small mobile concrete mixer for a single field or in a big concrete mixer for a whole landscape.

The only restriction for the best results is a good soil. Like you can't beat an old horse to win the famous races in the world you can't get super yiels from a soil which has been "totured" by the massive use of artificial fertilizer.

A long crop rotation together with cover crops for green manure would certainly enhance the soil quality. Another possibility would be to plant trees in rows every 30-50 yards in the fields (for getting wood for constructions or for the oven and for getting a protection of sun, wind and too much transpiration in dry areas). This method is called Agroforestry and which is i think an ancient culture which is now revived e.g. in Europe (Project SAFE = Silvoarable Agroforestry For Europe). Very important is to cut the roots of the trees which are growing into the field by not squeezing the water for the plants.

Here are some links for deeper information. What really sad is, is that texts that are easy to understand are quite seldom in the net (Wikipedia e.g. has only few information about this biological "sensation"):

Food Shortages, Biofuels and Oil Wars

What are biofuels?
Wheat, corn and sugar processed into ethanol and diesel.

What does it take to create biofuel?
Oil

Biofuels are cheap and friendly for the environment, right?
It takes oil to produce (grow) biofuels. Farm subsidies, tractors and harvesting rely on oil.

What are biofuels?
They are the food we grow in order to survive. Wheat, corn and sugar. Extreme weather reduces the amounts of wheat and corn grown around the world.

Earth Policy Institute

Grain prices starting to rise.
- World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption.
- World grain consumption is rising as world grain production is falling.
- World population growth is rising as world food production is falling.
- Each year world farmers try to feed an additional 70 million people.
- Grain intensive products: Meat, milk and eggs.
- World meat production 1950: 44 million tons.
- World meat production 2005: 265 million tons.
- One-fifth of the US corn harvest will be used to produce fuel-ethanol.
- One sixth of the US grain harvest will be used to produce ethanol.
- The US subsidize ethanol production at 51 cents a gallon.
- Underground water reserves are being depleted by intense farming.
- World temperature increases are lowering rice and grain harvests.
- Drier than usual winters lowered the barley harvests.
- 70% of water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers are used for irrigation.
- Water supplies are decreasing in countries that contain half the worlds people: China, India and the United States.

- A recent study, authored jointly by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), forecasts an acceleration in world biofuel usage over the next 10 years that would raise demand for maize, wheat, oilseeds and sugar, the trade-offs between food/feed and non-food uses for specific crop sectors were still unclear.

Heatwave Crippling Europe
- A deadly heatwave gripping central Europe sent electricity prices rocketing in Germany and caused the suspension of shipping on major rivers as water levels dwindle. Europe's shops and supermarkets are facing a shortage of vegetables later this year as a result of the current heatwave, a leading industry group have warned.

Biofuel Demand Hits Food
- FOOD companies such as Unilever, Nestle and Cadbury could face higher commodity costs over the long term as rising demand for biofuels pushes up prices for raw materials such as wheat, corn and sugar, a report by Goldman Sachs says.

Get Ready For 'Peak Grain'
- To put the 57 days in historical perspective, the world price for wheat went up six-fold in 1973, the last time reserves were this low. Wheat prices ricocheted through the food supply chain in many ways, from higher prices for cereal and breads eaten directly by humans to the cost of milk and meat from livestock fed a grain-based diet. If such a chain reaction happens this year, wheat could fetch $21 a bushel, about six times its current price. It might cost even more, given that there are now two other pressing demands for grains that were less forceful during the 70s.

Those happy days predated modern fads such as using grains for ethanol, now touted as an alternative to petroleum fuels for cars, and predated the factory barns that bring grains to an animal’s stall, thereby eliminating grazing on pasture grasses. University ethics classes and church elders can ponder the moral dilemmas imposed on the wealthy when they choose fuel and meat while others starve.

- World's Water Resources Face Mounting Pressure
- Planet Ark
- Green Fuels Dirty Secret