Considering Biofuels

Even the NYT gets it, finally.  Scientific studies indicate that when you consider the process of creating the biofuels, they produce more greenhouse gases than traditional fuels.  Hah!  Congress’ great hope for not drilling anywhere in the continental U.S. and ending our foreign oil dependence has a few holes in it.

“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. “Previously there’s been an accounting error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis.”

Of course these scientists haven’t quite figured out that temperatures are dynamic, not static, and that the models just don’t fit reality.

Then there is the “unintended consequence”. 

For instance, if vegetable oil prices go up globally, as they have because of increased demand for biofuel crops, more new land is inevitably cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in on the profits. So crops from old plantations go to Europe for biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.

Likewise, Dr. Fargione said that the dedication of so much cropland in the United States to growing corn for bioethanol had caused indirect land use changes far away. Previously, Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.

Increasingly, that elsewhere, Dr. Fargione said, is Brazil, on land that was previously forest or savanna. “Brazilian farmers are planting more of the world’s soybeans — and they’re deforesting the Amazon to do it,” he said.

Once again we run after the elaborate, seemingly attractive solution at the expense of the simplier solutions or really understanding if there really is a problem.  So, due to the radical environmentalists and global warming alarmists have tied our hands behind our backs.  As a result of their demands, we continue to export way too much oil, which drives down the dollar, increasing the price for gas, and all the things we ship using it, shift to alternative fuels further driving up the cost of grains and all other products that rely on grains … it is a vicious cycle. 

Yes, I’m sick of the stupidity.

HT: The Institute

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