Water Scarcity And Biofuel

[RestoreGore]

I am against ethanol as an alternate energy source. I have always been against it because it takes more energy to make it than it saves using it. It also uses corn which is a very water intensive crop, and in this age of drought and a soaring population that will need water resources to sustain itself it is neither ethically nor economically feasible in the longrun to continue to push ethanol as the savior alternate energy source.

But it is then no wonder that the U.S. government is subsidizing this to the tune of 3 billion dollars to corporations who mix it with gasoline to keep the oil companies in play. That while 40 million Americans are without healthcare, millions more slip into poverty every year, and our world also gets closer to that ten year window on our environment closing.

And the process of fermenting ethanol is a big water waster. In the fermentation process of ethanol you have 8% ethanol and 92% water that must be distilled and separated before the product is made. To my knowledge I have read nothing thus far that relays what is done with that water once it is distilled from the corn in the fermentation process, but I would think it could and should be reprocessed in some way to be of use in the growing of crops that people can use to eat. Any research on that will of course be posted here as I find the information.

In the following article this position regarding water scarcity and biofuel is also shared by Fred Pierce, author of:

"When The Rivers Run Dry":

Water Scarcity Seen Dampening Case For Biofuel
By David Brough
Thu Oct 19, 11:30 AM ET

GENEVA (Reuters) - Water scarcity harms the case for using food crops to make biofuels, a leading environmental author and journalist said on Thursday. "The downside of growing food for fuel is water," said Fred Pearce, author of the book "When the Rivers Run Dry." Surging crude oil prices have strengthened the argument for green energy created by cultivating food crops such as sugar cane to make ethanol fuel and vegetable oils to make biodiesel.

The politics of water will become critical as demand for water from rising populations and the needs of industry increase, said Pearce, editor of Britain's New Scientist magazine. About one billion people lack access to clean drinking water, Pearce said in a keynote speech to the two-day Sugaronline conference in Geneva.

Vast quantities of water were needed to cultivate crops, with two-thirds of the world's water used in agriculture, Pearce said. "Sugar is one of the thirstiest crops in the world," he said, estimating that 600-800 tonnes of water were required to grow one tonne of cane.Brazil, the world's biggest sugar producer, has a thriving biofuels industry, converting about half its cane into fuel ethanol to power vehicles.

Pearce said the booming sugar business aimed at powering cars for the affluent had become a key component in water politics because of concerns over water scarcity. In the past 30 years world food production had doubled to meet food demand from a growing population, but the amount of water used had tripled. Part of the answer was to boost the efficiency of irrigation infrastructure. "You can't irrigate the world's ethanol needs without huge gains in irrigation efficiency," Pearce said.
The Sugaronline conference ended on Thursday.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Also See:

David Pimental, a leading Cornell University agricultural expert, has calculated that powering the average U.S. automobile for one year on ethanol (blended with gasoline) derived from corn would require 11 acres of farmland, the same space needed to grow a year's supply of food for seven people. Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion into ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make one gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTUS. Thus, 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in it. Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs.

Mr. Pimentel concluded that "abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuels amounts to unsustainable subsidized food burning". Neither increases in government subsidies to corn-based ethanol fuel nor hikes in the price of petroleum can overcome what Cornell University agricultural scientist, David Pimentel, calls a fundamental input-yield problem: It takes more energy to make ethanol from grain than the combustion of ethanol produces.

At a time when ethanol-gasoline mixtures (gasohol) are touted as the American answer to fossil fuel shortages by corn producers, food processors and some lawmakers, Cornell’s David Pimentel, one of the world’s leading experts in issues relating to energy and agriculture, takes a longer range view.

"Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized food burning", says the Cornell professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Pimentel, who chaired a U.S. Department of Energy panel that investigated the energetics, economics and environmental aspects of ethanol production several years ago, subsequently conducted a detailed analysis of the corn-to-car fuel process. His findings are published in the September, 2001 issue of the Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology.

Among his findings are:
Ethanol Fuel from Corn Faulted as ‘Unsustainable Subsidized Food Burning"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are more efficient ways to sustain our planet and in the process also save water which is our most precious natural resource. Hopefully, the ethanol process can either be refined to save water and or streamlined regarding the fermentation process wherein less energy is used to produce it. Otherwise, it is a wasteful fruitless exercise only meant to be used as a political wedge issue to bring profits to corporations beholding to the government not the people.

For my money solar energy is the only answer and one that does not use water in the process of it's production, and it needs to be pursued much more vigorously by the United States. The 21st Century is one where innovation and technology can lead us to a brighter and more productive future, but only if we take into account the moral and ethical codes that have existed for all times that must guide our choices. And we must not allow governments such as our own to use this crisis to exploit this issue for their own gain.

However, I could get behind this:

Cellulosic Ethanol: Spinning Straw Into Fuel"

All I can say is that I hope we aren't too late. This is going to be a HUGE undertaking, and at the rate this country is going in moving on this it is absolutely frustrating. While I do not believe ethanol made from corn is viable economically or environmentally, celulosic ethanol does not seem to use as much water in the process of conversion and is better for the environment, especially switchgrass which can be used for other purposes as well.

Unfortunately, farmers won't grow it unless they see it as economically viable. Which means we have to get going with planning this and getting serious about giving them incentives to do this and making changes in our own lives. The question is, will people switch to cellulosic ethanol as long as they can get oil in their tanks?

Perhaps creating cars that have no combustion engine at all would be a good way to go to keep that temptation from people. I long for the day when we can see cars running on solar power exclusively. I don't see that as impossible in this technological age and have seen some models. However, we all know that isn't about to happen as long as oil companies like EXXON have a stranglehold on automobile companies, their lobbyists in Washington, and the politicians that sell their souls for their own gain to keep us from progressing to a better and more productive future.

IT'S TIME FOR A CHANGE... AN OIL CHANGE.

And look at this:

The First Solar Powered Car

It is possible.

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. Ethanol has its place

Ethanol can be substituted for the toxic fossil-fuel derived Methanol in processing of biodiesel.

Renewable energy is easy. Portable renewable energy is less so.

[RestoreGore]

2. It only has its place

When efficient management of its processing has been achieved. The waste now involved in producing it is counterproductive to the desired result.

[madrchsod]

3. new process

http://research.aces.uiuc.edu/biennial2/abe_singh.html
abe_singh.html

[RestoreGore]

4. And as this market grows...

Where do we plant the corn that will be needed to satiate the desire for it, and how is that to be balanced against what we will need for food? The major acquifer in Kansas (a major corn producer) that supplies other states as well is already drying up due to drought. We need water to grown the corn in the first place.

[Chemical Bill]

5. To begin with...

>it takes more energy to make it than it saves using it.

Did you know that Pimental's studies are not published in peer-reviewed journals? That points to a reluctance to have his methodology put under scrutiny. He is also a partner in a study with Tad Patzek, the head of the UC Petroleum Consortium, an oil industry funded group. That may show a bias in his results that you hadn't figured on.

http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/UCOil/structure.htm

Here's a good place to start reading about Pimental:

There have been several critiques of Pimentel’s methodology and numbers. Here is a brief one - http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/pdfs/EthanolfFuelsRebuttal.pdf
Another much more extensive, indeed exhaustive, analysis is available here.
http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/pdfs/energy_balance_report_final_R1.PDF
To my knowledge, Pimentel has not responded to his critics nor done a detailed critique of studies that come to different conclusions.

http://www.newrules.org/agri/netenergy.html

Here's a little thing from repug controlled NPR:

"Do you include the lunch that the farm workers eat as an energy input?" asks Dan Kammen, a physicist and energy expert at the University of California at Berkeley. "Do you include the energy to build the factory, the tractors? You can spend a lot of time on stuff that is sort of secondary, but it boils down to a critical thing: Do we do better from a national security perspective and greenhouse gases and global warming perspective by burning gasoline or by growing a biofuel and putting that in our tank?"

Kammen and his colleagues at Berkeley think the nation does benefit from using biofuels. His team reviewed the main studies on ethanol and energy, updated the figures and tried to standardize the energy inputs -- things like the energy needed to make fertilizer or electricity and everything else needed to refine gasoline or ferment ethanol.

"We found unequivocally that it does not take more energy than you get out of the amount of ethanol. So it's a net good if you grow ethanol and use it," says Kammen.

<snip>

The Berkeley and Cornell groups do agree on one thing -- corn isn't the best way to make ethanol. Plants with higher cellulose content like switchgrass or sugar cane are much better. Kammen says high cellulose plants are the future of ethanol, not corn.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5173420

You might want to look at what the USDA has to say about ethanol:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer721/AER721.PDF

Personally, I drive a diesel car powered by biodiesel. Eight or nine months out of the year I run 100% biodiesel fuel. The USDA says that my fuel returns 3.6 gallons of fuel for every gallon equivalent of petroleum energy used. But only 0.36 gallons of actual petroleum are required, the rest of the energy comes from other sources like coal and natural gas. So I get 240 miles per gallon of petroleum, and meanwhile, while coal isn't clean, nobody dies in Iraq for it.

Bill

[JohnWxy]

6. YOU ARE HARDLY WORTH BOTHERING WITH. But for the record:

I didn't think there was anybody left who didnt' know Pimentel is a fraud. Patzek used to be an Petroleum engineer for SHell oil.

Pimentels bull has been debunked by a group from University California Berkeley headed by Farrell et al. Their review was published in the journal Science (this along with Nature is one of the premier scientific journals in the scientific community) in the January isssue of 2006. They stated Pimentel's and Patezeks supporting data were in some cases lacking in documentation so they could not judge the validity of it. I have addressed this here several times before. Pimentel's and Patzeks conclusions are out of line with all actual researchers and results are very suspect. Nobody takes them seriously.

The claim that it takes more energy to make ethanol than is found in the final product is just plain bullshit. The US Dept of Agriculture, US dept of Energy (Agonnne Natioonal Laboratory), Michigan State University, Colorado State University among other institutions of actual scientific research have found the energy return for ethanol from corn is postive. Cellulosic ehtanol will be even better. Water usage data from Pimentel is unrealiable, old or not representative. Farmers are using techniques such as low-till no-till farming to reduce water losses due to evaporation and runoff. As engineers get more experience designing and building ethanol plants they are continually making them more efficient and able to reduce water consumption.

ethanol is not the complete answer to dependance on fossil fuels. Nobody ever claimed it to be. It is however, the most readily available and most cost effective means of replacing up to 33% of the fossil fuel (Oak Ridge National laboratory study). However recent developments on improving alcohol gain from corn will improve that situation. Iowa State University has appied for a patent on process which uses ultra-sound to boost alcohol output from corn by about 30%. Another scientist is applying a completely different process (derived from plastics manufacturing) for producing alcohol from corn which dramatically reduces the water requirements (I'd give you link but check with jpak's postings).

fuel cell vehicles will be the most significant development in reducing dependence of fossil fuels. But it will take a couple of decades before they become practical. In the mean time, rather than do nothing we can be producing ethanol from corn and then from cellulosic sources (which grow with less water needs) which will be a step in the right direction. REducing GHGs is critical.

But there is another reason for reducing our dependence of fossil fuels and that is energy security. Producing ethanol from corn (or sugar cane, sugar beets or soy beans) and developing bio-diesel are the quickest and most cost effective ways of alleviating that problem. We don't have to replace ALL the gasoline to improve the energy security situation. 10% of the fossil fuel demand will help a lot (this would be a significant portion of what we import from the mid-East). 20% to 30% will be very significant and it will have a stabilizing affect on the geo-political situation.

And one more thing about ethanol-- You won't have to pay for it with lives. That, as much as any other reason demands we build production and use of ethanol and bio-diesel as fast as possible. Or are you ready to volunteer to go to IRAQ and fight for EXXON-Mobil's revenue stream?

[NNadir]

7. Really? With your insight into what is and is not a scientific journal

you have determined that corn farming with fossil water is infinitely sustainable?

Environ. Sci. Technol., 40 (6), 1744 -1750, 2006, which may or may not have garnered your august scientific discernment - such as it is - certainly didn't announce that Pimentel's work was "bullshit," although I don't know that "bullshit" is a scientific term.

What's the John Waxy analysis of this piece of scientific literature? Never mind. Don't tell me. I really, really, really, really don't want to know.

I'm sure many people will be equally surprised to learn that Cornell University is not a "real" scientific institution. I guess the implication that Cornell is not "real" explains the John Waxy opposition to the ideas of Hans Bethe, who (in the John Waxy "School of Learning to Talk Science Good") was not worth taking seriously even though he won the Nobel Prize in Physics while working at that institution.

http://bethe.cornell.edu/about.html

Of course, the question of whether ethanol is real could easily be answered by publishing a study showing an ethanol farm operating as a closed system, which regrettably never happens, even though it is easy to do. It would seem to me that the corn lobby would be willing to take a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars in subsidies it gathers to do this simple experiment. I'd guess funding it would take at most, even for a statistically significant sample, a few tens of millions of dollars.

I suspect that this (again, simple) experiment doesn't garner much ethanol lobby support because well, it's a threat to the - to use the technical term - bullshit used to justify the lobby. That lobby has been funded almost for three decades now, and we've been hearing all sorts of promises about what ethanol will do someday, but somehow that 33% figure (down from higher percentages promised in the 1970's) never comes close to being realized.

One needs to be careful with "appeal to authority" arguments - and Pimentel always elicits the usual invective when he is appealed to as an authority. I'm agnostic on the value of Pimentel's conclusions, but I do think he's asked the right questions. Of course, one can get demonized for asking the right questions. This is the time of political science - and I'm not talking about the "social" sciences here so much as I'm talking about the situation with people like Galileo - those who take risks for asking questions.

It happens in science that debate is good at least if one is interested - as neither George W. Bush nor JohnWxy - in discovering the truth that may conflict with dogma.

The fact is that one of the primary assumptions of the biofuels rap - and biofuels do not provide 10% of internal combustion energy anywhere on this planet after decades of talk - is that the climate will remain consistent for big agriculture.

There are some people who nonetheless concerned about that claim, sort of an elephant - corn fed or not - on the table, whether that element of the climate which involves water will prove sustainable.

I am not as familiar with RestoreGore as I am with you John, but I have noted that his or her focus on water issues is far more relevant to the future of the world than anything you have ever produced here. I hope that he or she will "consider the source" when reading about your judgement.

[Chemical Bill]

8. What is "fossil water"?

My basic question concerning the OP would be "Have less people have died of dehydration in the US than have died in Iraq in our war for oil". While issues such as water (and plant selection for maximum ethanol output) should be addressed, I believe that the OP is not advocating any studies that you advocate, he is dissing ethanol based on easily disproven opinions from so-called experts such as Pimental. You claim to be agnostic on the value of Pimentals conclusions. Have you reviewed his methods? How often does he suggest that farmers replace their tractors? His answer to that question has a bearing on his energy balance for ethanol.

Bill

[NickB79]

11. Fossil water is aquifer water

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x69661

Before they tapped this aquifer, they practiced dry-land farming in most of the Plains states, which was mainly wheat and cattle ranching. Without it, corn farming becomes much more difficult and much less profitable as the yields fall off.

[Chemical Bill]

12. That's a facinating name for it.

Thank you. I recognize the importance of the issue, and agree that ADM should not set our energy policy.

Bill

[NNadir]

13. I am agnostic in the sense that I do not offer an opinion on the methods.

A healthy scientific inquiry will of course debate methods in trying to ascertain whether or not the conclusions are valid.

I don't know that Pimentel is right or wrong. I suspect that he is right for some of the sample and wrong for other parts of the sample. It is not true that the situation on the Ogallala aquifer is quite the same as a corn field in Ohio.

I do know that people like JohnWxy don't want the question asked at all. They just want the subsidy handed to them without question.

I've looked into David Pimentel to see about who he is. He's the author of 590 scientific papers in refereed journals. The ethanol crowd wants you to believe he is Satan's representative at Cornell university.

The conceit is that the oil companies are afraid of ethanol. That's nonsense. Oil will sell in huge amounts because there is not now, nor will there ever be, enough biofuels to displace current consumption of oil. If this were a serious worry on the part of Exxon-Mobil for instance, they could simply take over ADM by acquisition. They don't need an elaborate conspiracy.

Now personally, I think oil should be banned on environmental grounds and I wouldn't object if the ethanol group found a way to make their pet project a part of the equation - provided ethanol itself doesn't impoverish the future and destroy the environment. Whether or not this is the case need continuous scientific evaluation, now, then and forever into the future, because conditions do change. I've been hearing about ethanol since Jimmy Carter was in the White House. For all that talk, it still does not produce a single exajoule of energy. Thus if it burns an exajoule of oil to produce one exajoule of ethanol, or 1.2 exajoules, or 0.5 exajoules, it makes no fucking difference whatsoever in the grand scale of things. It's still inadequate, vastly so. The last I looked, ethanol was providing less than 0.3 exajoules of US energy demand. In 2004 the US consumed well over 100 exajoules. Zero point three percent is just not that significant. Irrespective of whether it displaces or consumes oil, it's not going to affect vast changes in the oil problem, and it is a problem, the oil, not the ethanol.

Is ethanol thus providing billions and billions and billions of dollars of benefit in the time of energy and global climate change? No. Not at all, and Pimentel's work has nothing to do with that. He didn't demand an end to the ethanol industry, he merely offered an interpretation based on data he offered, the source of which he made obvious and open to debate. Some people have questioned his conclusions on scientific grounds. Good for them. That's fine. One can -and should - inquire about how that data was collected, whether it is representative, whether it is up to date, and whether the methods of interpretation are valid. That's just good science.

On the other hand, claiming that Pimentel is an Exxon (or other oil company) demon is asinine. A lot of what you hear around here about Pimentel is demonetization, mostly by people who don't know their ass from the moons of Neptune when it comes to interpreting science.

Note that the paper I referenced in my original post here suggests that Pimentel's work is an "outlier." It claims that ethanol has a net positive return on the energy invested. So what? It's not like ethanol is anywhere near reducing the demand for oil. There are zero ethanol farms operating as closed systems. If oil was cut off tomorrow to the US, it's not like the US ethanol industry would be able to function.

Like most of the politically popular renewable energy schemes about which everyone loves to wax romantic, ethanol's long and talk and short on delivery. The same apologists for the failure of renewable energy to arrest global climate change check in regularly with their dogmatic denial. Ethanol doesn't produce an exajoule of commercial energy annually. Neither does solar power. Neither does wind. (In the latter case, wind energy, though, I think an exajoule will come in the near term. Good, we need it.)

For the record I believe that the only practical and safe approach to getting rid of oil is to produce dimethyl ether, with the main source (but not the only source) of the primary energy being nuclear. It's technically feasible and it could involve only a tiny fraction of the earth's soil, air, and water resources, because of the high energy/mass density of nuclear fuels. Probably that will happen - in Asia - but that's neither here nor there. The fact is that anything we do - including making DME with nuclear primary energy -is very, very, very, very likely to be far too little, far too late.

The mere fact that this subject is up for passionate debate some thirty years after Jimmy Carter first proposed ethanol as a serious strategy for energy production in the United States shows precisely how dubious the question is though. Every Presidential candidate for the last 30 years has passed through Iowa's caucuses strewing alms at the Temple of Ethanol. Still the ethanol God has yet to deliver. Given this political reality, I am very skeptical as to whether the question of ethanol as a "renewable" practical fuel can be taken very seriously.

[Chemical Bill]

14. Good to know where you've made up your mind.

>I don't know that Pimentel is right or wrong.

Follow my previous links to see how he was wrong.

>...there is not now, nor will there ever be, enough biofuels to displace current consumption of oil.

What were you saying about healthy scientific inquiry?

>For the record I believe that the only practical and safe approach to getting rid of oil is to produce dimethyl ether, with the main source (but not the only source) of the primary energy being nuclear.

For the record, I don't for a second buy the shit that nukular power is safe. I have studied the situation since my father started working for the nukular industry industry 30 years ago. Sure, in theory it could be well run and not have any problems, but in practice we have accidents and releases of radiation and waste that I don't hear anybody volunteering to put in their basement. The one thing we don't have is controlled studies of how we are already affected by the nukular industry. After all, how do you isolate the people affected by nukes when we all are exposed to the radiation?

I mean, since you like theoretical situations like safe nukes, how about this one? Theoretically we could replace all the oil used for transportation with algae derived biodiesel using much less land than we devote to meat production in this country, and costing less than half the war in Iraq. The land could be unsuitable for agriculture. It could just be a few acres attached to every sewage plant in the country. All it would take is money, and a changeover to diesel engines in cars. You on board? There are already people running biodiesel full time, all over the country, and there are already people growing algae for it.

Bill

[NNadir]

15. Scientific inquiry is different than production capability.

Maybe you haven't heard that global climate change is occurring now and not in some distant future where maybe there will be algae based biodiesel. No one can talk about biofuels withoout using the big word "could," as you do frequently:

Theoretically we could replace all the oil used for transportation with algae derived biodiesel using much less land than we devote to meat production in this country, and costing less than half the war in Iraq. The land could be unsuitable for agriculture. It could just be a few acres attached to every sewage plant in the country. All it would take is money, and a changeover to diesel engines in cars. You on board? There are already people running biodiesel full time, all over the country, and there are already people growing algae for it.

All over the country? On what scale?

Your entire unsafe system is pure speculation and nothing else. One can always point to some pilot plant somewhere in California or Missouri that shows what could happen. This is very different than stating what is happening. You cannot produce any evidence at all of algae based biodiesel plants under construction that will produce enough fuel to provide 5% of US transportation means. In fact, you can't do it for 0.5%!!!


For the record, I don't care what you think about nuclear safety. There are inevitably leaks of toxic compounds from both fossil fuels and biofuels. It's called combustion.


Right now, DME plants on a scale that will dwarf the entire US renewable energy industry are under construction. Regrettably most of these plants are fossil fuel based, but a few are based on biomass. Probably all of these plants - especially the biomass ones - biomass burning being responsible for about 4 million deaths annually around the world, will be much less safe than nuclear plants.

There is not one person in the United States who has died from the storage of spent nuclear fuel. Knowing this, I would have no problem having it stored in my community. I am on record many times here on this website saying that I would be thrilled to have a nuclear facility in my neighborhood. In the meanwhile hundreds of millions of people have died from the exposure fossil fuels and biological fuel waste in the same period that nuclear plants have operated. I would probably be less than thrilled to have an ethanol refinery here, an oil refinery, or a coal fired power plant. As it happens, coal waste from the midwest rains continually on my home, and it is known that many people in my area suffer serious health effects as a result of this unrestricted waste dumping.

Your inability to spell the word and use the rote sarcastic spelling shows exactly where you get your information, probably from self referential anti-nuclear websites. Do you guys really believe that spelling nuclear with a "k" makes you seem more thoughtful and witty? Why not just tell "knock knock jokes?" They're about as original and informative.
The matter of energy is not a matter for clowning and thoughtless wishful thinking or malignity.

I don't buy for a second the shit that you know what "safe" is. In any case, it doesn't matter what you think. The world nuclear capacity is expanding very rapidly. Reactors that will come on line in the next four or five years alone around the world will easily outstrip the entire supply of non-hydro renewable energy in the United States. If you want to build algae plants in the meantime, to reduce the factor by which new nuclear capacity will exceed all non-hydro renewable energy, by all means do so. But this is not the first time in my life I've heard such representations. And it's certainly not the first time that I have expected that all such "could" statements are probably just empty talk.


Since you are uninformed about what safety actually is, I refer you to a report in which it is systematically analyzed. One doesn't need to know anything about science to look at the picture in figure 10 to determine that nuclear energy is safer than burning wood by a factor of more than 10.

http://www.externe.info/expoltec.pdf

In fact, nuclear energy is safer than solar power, if you look at figure 9.It's slightly less safe than wind, but in contrast to wind (and solar), nuclear power is available continuously.

You seem to believe that a form of energy that is without risk exists. It doesn't. Nuclear doesn't have to be perfect to better than everything else. It just has to be, well, "better than everything else."

But again, it doesn't matter what you think. The world is expanding it's nuclear capacity, even, now, in countries ruled by rich kids with provincial nonscientific outlooks, countries like the United States. My guess is that the nuclear expansion is too little, too late, and certainly no one would object if the biodiesel industry became important enough to provide what little assist it might in the fight against climate change. On the other hand, excuse me for saying - after decades of listening to this shit - that I insist that I'll believe it when I see it.

[Chemical Bill]

18. I am using biodiesel today.

How about you?

Bill

[NNadir]

24. Good for you.

No, I am not using biodiesel today. And your point is what? That your experience implies something about the billions of other people who are using energy on the planet today?

Suppose we took a poll of Americans who could use biodiesel if they wanted to? Do you think the number would be better than 0.5%?

Should I feel better because Arnie, the steriod crazed governor of California drives a hydrogen powered Hummer? I don't think so.

Should we take a poll of how many Americans besides Arnie have access to a hydrogen station?

One of the most irrational arguments put forward by the "renewable energy is the future crowd" over the last thirty years is that some specific case proves the general case. (Note that we are now in the future that these people were talking about 30 years ago - and nope, the biofuels industry still doesn't dominate the energy industry.)

They teach against "hasty generalization" in most logic courses, but it seems to make no difference. Your biodiesel car is irrelevant to the broad experience.

[jpak]

100. Good for you! You are relevant...

As are people who walk/bike/bus to work...

As are the people that use E-85 or purchase hybrid automobiles...

As are the people who purchase Energy Star appliances...

As are people who purchase pellet stoves...

As are people who subscribe to Green Electricity programs..

...or use PV, solar hot water or wind power at home...

They are the ones that are actually doing something about global warming.

These people are all relevant.

Unfortunately, there are those who do nothing but whine about global warming and do nothing about it.

These people are irrelevant...

[Chemical Bill]

19. And another thing.

>For the record, I don't care what you think about nuclear safety.

That is the understatement of the year. You don't care about what people thousands of years in the future think about our nukular waste. At least the toxic compounds we make with our combustion kill us quickly enough that we invent particulate traps and catalytic converters. The thinking that generations ahead of us can deal with our nukular waste is the hight of presumptuousness.

[NickB79]

26. How many millions of years will global warming be with us?

The most toxic chemical we are releasing, CO2, has the potential to disrupt the Earth's climate beyond the natural norm for tens of thousands if not millions of years before being reabsorbed.

Nuclear waste, on the other hand, has a half-life that will reduce the hazard it poses in a more rapid pace.

[Chemical Bill]

28. So utilize plant based fuels...

that take CO2 out of the atmosphere as they grow.

Bill

[jpak]

91. 100,000 years

That's how long it will take for crustal weathering and other natural geochemical processes to remove (all) anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere...

[NNadir]

27. Your understanding of the nature of waste is apparently not clear.

I happen to know the half-lives off the top of my head of most fission products, and their neutron capture cross sections. I understand radioequilibrium, and you don't. Thus it is you who are presumptuous since you wish me to buy into your unsupported claim that generations ahead of us will be unable to deal with what you call, "nukular (sic) waste." I was born in 1952, when fission products were already accumulating. Since then there has not been a single generation that has not gotten better at containing spent nuclear fuel.

It is well known to anyone who understands physics that in a continuous nuclear recycling procedure which is well characterized and industrially practiced in many countries around the world, it is possible to reduce, in about 1000 years time, the total radiotoxicity of the planet. Thus in opposing nuclear power, the opponents are insisting that the planet remain more radioactive than it would if uranium and thorium were fissioned.

I also understand catalytic converters very well and I understand immediately that you are unfamiliar with their limitations and what they can and cannot do. In appealing to them you must be laboring under the absurd pretense that carbon dioxide is not a fossil fuel waste. Moreover no one knows how to deal with carbon dioxide waste. Moreover every generation in history is getting less able to deal with carbon dioxide waste than the previous generation. The appeal for particle traps, much like the appeal for biofuels is more notable for the cases for which they are irrelevant than those in which they make a difference. Fossil fuels have been used for hundreds of years and still particulates are a huge problem.

Your concern for future generations is completely ill focused and counter productive and completely arbitrary. You may think your clever, but actually you are a part of the problem of uninformed denial that accounts for the intractability of the crisis before us.

[Chemical Bill]

29. A half life is defined as...

the time it take for the reaction or degradation to convert half of the material. By definition, half is left. The next half life leaves one fourth of the original material. And so on. That means it's never all gone.

When you say things like: "It is well known....", you make me guess as to your source. I'll bet it's the nukular industry. How'd I do?

>I also understand catalytic converters very well and I understand immediately that you are unfamiliar with their limitations and what they can and cannot do. In appealing to them you must be laboring under the absurd pretense that carbon dioxide is not a fossil fuel waste.

I'm the one supporting renewable biofuels here and yet you accuse me of this?

Bill

[NNadir]

34. In fact I read the primary scientific literature, which is extensive.

You read web-sites. There's a vast difference between us.

Cerium-144 is a fission product with a half-life. It was produced in the first commercial nuclear reactor at Shippingport in 1957. You say it is never gone. Do you care to demonstrate by calculation, or is your high school definition of "half-life" supposed to impress someone?

How does the danger from Cerium-144 produced in 1957 in Shippingport compare to the danger from coal mines that operated in the 1920's. Any idea? I didn't think so.

In the way you decry "sources" and make assumptions about whence people's knowledge comes, you are about as poorly informed on the nature of source material as you are about energy. That's hardly surprising. I've been talking to guys like you for years here. One is the same as another. Here's what, some of the things in general they can't do: Show an exajoule of their touted form of energy. Produce a single case of a person who has been injured by the storage of so called "dangerous nuclear waste." Recognize that their their ideas are not new but are tested by time. Recall that carbon dioxide is a dangerous waste that no one knows how to store for time. Understand basic physics. Stop congratulating themselves for discovering some special case where a renewable form of energy is in use. Avoid confusing a particular case with a general case...

So what?

The world doesn't care what people like you think, actually. You're irrelevant. The use of nuclear power is expanding not contracting, on an international scale.

[Chemical Bill]

44. Hmmmm...

>The world doesn't care what people like you think, actually. You're irrelevant.

I would never be proud to say this to anyone.

Bill

[Name removed]

48. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Chemical Bill]

46. >In fact I read the primary scientific literature, which is extensive.

So you must be able to answer my question about Pimental's study. How often does he suggest that farmers buy new tractors?

Bill

[Chemical Bill]

21. BTW...

>Since you are uninformed about what safety actually is, I refer you to a report in which it is systematically analyzed. One doesn't need to know anything about science to look at the picture in figure 10 to determine that nuclear energy is safer than burning wood by a factor of more than 10.

I said nothing about burning wood to generate heat. I am talking about burning biofuel to power transportation. If the rest of your argument is as much of a straw man as this, you'll have to forgive me for not putting stock in what you say.

Bill

[Chemical Bill]

22. >All over the country? On what scale?

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5374

http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3414

[NickB79]

25. So how many millions of barrels of biodiesel is algae producing TODAY?

All your links are theoretical, full of "could" and "possibly", just as NNadir pointed out in previous posts. The first one is a paper on the theoretical possibilities of algal biodiesel and the other two are small at-home facilities that produce enough for the family's station wagon.

There are no large-scale biodiesel-from-algae facilities in operation today, and no plans to build any in the near future.

[Chemical Bill]

31. You sound very certain of this:

>There are no large-scale biodiesel-from-algae facilities in operation today, and no plans to build any in the near future.

What is your source?

I happen to have spoken to Mike Briggs at UNH. He is working on proprietary technology (since there is no public funding for this) and his view is different from yours. Maybe you could push for public funding instead of dissing the whole idea. Please?

Bill

[NickB79]

39. Please list one algae-to-biodiesel plant that is currently running

And producing biodiesel on a commercial scale. Not a backyard setup like your links showed, or a propriety system that Mr. Briggs is currently working on. Working on implies it is not up and running on a commercial scale.

Since it takes several years to build any kind of industrial plant, biodiesel included, that means that even if ground for a plant were broken tomorrow, it would still likely be 3-5 years before biodiesel production were to commence. So, as I said, no large-scale biodiesel from algae production in the near future.

[Chemical Bill]

45. I didn't see how ...

you define the near future as 3-5 years. Forgive me if I assumed you meant something different. However, I'm willing to wait and see before I believe your blanket statement. That was my point, that you sound certain of the future, and your future will not include biofuels. I thought you would have to train with tarot cards and astrology before you could see the future.

Anyway, I don't know of any large scale biodiesel production from algae at present. In this country we use excess soy oil, left over from meat production. When that is all used for biodiesel and none is being discarded, we will need a source to meet the increased demand. I'm hopeful that algae is one source we could use, even if you refuse to consider it. I didn't know about biodiesel before * invaded Iraq, even though Rudolf Diesel ran engines on peanut oil before his death. However, as soon as I saw that it was possible to drive to work without petroleum, I jumped at the chance. I'm sorry that there are people who think differently.

Bill

[NNadir]

30. Oh, a bunch of "could" links.

How many exajoules worth of biodiesel plants are now under construction?

I am quite sure that there are some biodiesel aficinados who make biodiesel. Esterification reactions are not new, they've been around for years. Indeed the first diesel engine ran on biofuel and so if it were really a great idea, there would have been no impetus to change to fossil fuels.

Most people who argue as you do, you are completely lacking in a sense of scale. You think a cute website answers the question. The Returntoforever website, similar to "biodiesel now" has been linked here for years. Biodiesel - and let's be clear, I think it's great stuff - is not much closer to providing a significant portion of the world's energy than it was when people here were arguing about whether Howard Dean or John Kerry should be the Democratic nominee.

Here. Let me help you with the concept of scale:



I'm sure your biodiesel car is very cool. It's just that it's a rather esoteric and not relevant to the emergency at hand. 500,000 guys or gals just like you - and there aren't 500,000 - would not equal the total energy output of even one nuclear power plant or one coal strip mine or one major oilfield. I'm sure you're very impressed with yourself, but you can't even scratch the surface of the problem.

If biodiesel and ethanol can answer 20% of our petroleum requirement - and I for one don't believe they ever will do so - that's great. But the laws of mathematics still dictate that leaves 80% of the problem untouched. There are only a few sources of primary energy that do not involve climate changing carbon dioxide. One of them is nuclear. Another is hydroelectric power. Together, these two forms of energy outstrip biodiesel, ethanol, solar, wind etc, etc, by a huge factor. Unlike hydro, nuclear is readily expandable. Unlike the other postulated forms of renewable energy -mostly trivial in scale to date - the scale up of nuclear energy is well characterized and is known to be safe from thousands of reactor-years of experience. We know that nuclear power can be scaled by a factor of ten and become safer in the process. How? We've done it.

[Chemical Bill]

32. OK, you win...

I'll park my biodiesel car and go back to Iraqi oil. Who cares how many die in Iraq, because I'm here. We don't need to start somewhere on alternative fuels, because the oil companies are good.

:sarcasm:

BTW, do you have a graphic presentation in full color about how much of our transportation was powered by petroleum in, say, 1900? Just askin'.

I get the scale, do you get the fact that there was no nukular energy in 1940? 30 years later, it was all over the place. It took government policy and taxpayer money to push that one. Maybe because the private sector wouldn't touch it with their own money? Meanwhile we could push for our money to provide renewable energy, but Cheney won't budge on that one, so I have to do it myself. Please join me.

Bill

[NNadir]

36. Again, you have a very high opinion of your private contribution.

No, I don't have a graphic showing what the world's energy sources were in 1900. So what?

Most of you guys are rich kids who don't think very far beyond their own parochial lives. It doesn't make a difference in the grand scale of things what the fuck you do. Fuel your car with biodiesel or with oil, and it won't be but a blip. You overestimate your contribution, but that's not surprising either.

I understand the history of nuclear energy quite well, thank you. The reason that nuclear energy was not available in 1940 is that it had just been discovered. This was exactly 14 years before the solar PV cell was discovered. Unlike the solar cell, the nuclear reactor has been critical to industrial performance. All of the world's solar cells could disappear tomorrow and no one would notice. Not so, nuclear plants. They supply about 10% of the world's primary energy.

In fact nuclear energy is the only form of new primary energy discovered in the last 100 years that has been scaled to an exajoule. Your attempt to ridicule the efforts of some of the finest scientific minds of the last century says infinitely more about you than it does about them.

When you make assertions about tax money and government policy you are showing that your understanding of these things is about as poor as the rest of your understanding of issues in general.

I am a liberal. This means that I believe that public policy, including the expenditure of tax money, should result in the greatest possible good. In the field of energy, the greatest possible good is associated with nuclear energy, not that I would expect you to know that. Serving the pedestrian renewalbe fantasies of rich kids who wax romantic about the ethanol subsidy doesn't qualify as "greatest possible good." I think we've established for instance, that the ethanol subsidy is probably not producing energy at a rate comensurate with its cost. I am quite clear in advocating that trillions of dollars be invested in building a larger nuclear infrastructure. This is because nuclear energy works on scale. Given the nature of climate change, we must use it.

[hunter]

16. Coal is killing us but we worry to the point of helplessness about nuclear

It makes no sense.

This is waste from a nuclear plant:



It just sits there doing nothing. You could walk away from this waste for a couple of hundred years, and it would still just sit there, doing nothing.

Someday we are going to want to use the contents of these casks to make more nuclear fuel, but for now procrastination is not unreasonable.

Meanwhile people are breathing and drinking and bathing in the wastes of coal fired power plants and dying every day.

Where's the outrage? Where's the common sense?

[Chemical Bill]

17. You'd need more than a couple of hundred years. n/t

[hunter]

20. Oooooh. I'm scared.

:scared:

Sorry, I forgot. Nuclear waste is like an evil spirt. If you don't say the prayers just right your head will spin around and you'll spit pea soup.

[Chemical Bill]

33. Please enjoy making fun of me....

The point is, you can't be certain for the generations to come of the safety of your nukes. I know you may find it hard to believe, but the government has been known to lie about safety issues, like the NYC air after 9/11, or depleated uranium weapons.

Bill

[hunter]

37. I used to be a hard core anti-nuclear activist.

I've met both Helen Caldicott and Amory Lovins... a long time ago. My own specialty was dumpster diving, I could always claim to be a homeless guy looking for food, and astonishingly, people would believe me.

Now I'm just a hard core cynic.

I don't offer details because I've got old friends who would rather I didn't.

Or maybe it's just me.

:blush:

Picture a crazy naked guy body surfing San Onofre... (BTW, that's me making fun of myself!)

I do suspect our reliance on coal is turning out to be an unprecedented disaster. The shifting of earth's climate into a hot no-ice phase will probably kill billions of people. The many hazards of nuclear power are negligible in comparison to that.

[JohnWxy]

74. Pimentel is a retired professor of entomology.

"Pimentel publish n articles in journals". Pimentel is a retired professor of entomology. Were these articles on entomology? I believe he was one of the researchers who warned that the dust from genetically altered corn made monarch butterflies infertile. Some good work. But we are concerned with his statments on fuels research. Are the articles you referred to pertinent to that???


Speaking of journals. The journal Science published a study by Farrell and kammen, et al, of University of California Berkeley that was quite critical of both Pimentel's and Patzek's published stuff (on ethanol). they said that data included in their "studies" were so poorly documented that they could not evaluate it as to it's quality (reliabililty, appropriateness). I would submit that any so called study that has data in it that is so poorly documented that a reviewer can't determine it's appropriateness shouldn't even appear in a peer reviewed journal.

Some strange 'science' if you ask me.

[RestoreGore]

40. Firstly, I'm not a "he"

And I am basing my opinion regarding ethanol on my own thinking. I merely added the article written by him to augment my own thoughts. I didn't know I had to get clearance here to do that.

http://www.phil.uga.edu/eecp/Old%20Website/feb99web.pdf#search='David%20Pimentel'

And from all of my reading about him, he seems well respected regarding his work.

[Chemical Bill]

47. I'm sorry if I offended you by calling you "he".

>And from all of my reading about him, he seems well respected regarding his work.

So you ignored my links?

Bill

[JohnWxy]

64. "well respected regarding his work."?? LOL. What have you been reading? try the journal Science:

The journal Science is a "pretty well respected" journal, in case you haven't heard of it.

Here is a link to an article published in the January issue of this year (scroll down to "Journal Science Ethanol Energy Balance Report: January 2006." and click on that.)

To better understand the energy and environmental implications of ethanol, we surveyed the
published and gray literature and present a comparison of six studies illustrating the range
of assumptions and data found for the case of corn-based (Zea mays, or maize) ethanol
(11–16). To permit a direct and meaningful comparison of the data and assumptions across
the studies, we developed the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) Biofuel Analysis Meta-
Model (EBAMM) (10). For each study, we compared data sources and methods and parameterized
EBAMM to replicate the published net energy results to within half a percent. In
addition to net energy, we also calculated metrics for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
and primary energy inputs (table S1 and Fig. 1).

Two of the studies stand out from the others because they report negative net energy values
and imply relatively high GHG emissions and petroleum inputs (11, 12). The close evaluation
required to replicate the net energy results showed that these two studies also stand apart from the
others by incorrectly assuming that ethanol coproducts (materials inevitably generated when
ethanol is made, such as dried distiller grains with solubles, corn gluten feed, and corn oil) should not be credited with any of the input energy and by including some input data that are old and unrepresentative of current processes, or so poorly documented that their quality cannot be evaluated.
~~

Notes:
11. T. Patzek, Crit. Rev. Plant Sci. 23, 519 (2004).
12. D. Pimentel, T. Patzek, Nat. Resour. Res. 14, 65 (2005).

NOw, any "study" which includes "data" which are "so poorly documented that their quality cannot be evaluated" should not appear in a peer reviewed journal (and perhaps they never did. In case you don't get my drift, there are journals out there that accept and publish articles WITHOUT REVIEWING THEM. They are just glad to have something to publish and the authors of the 'studies' are glad to find someone who will publish their stuff.)

on that same page are three more studies which show a positive net energy balance for ethanol. This really is not news anymore except to people who haven't been paying attention adn those on an anti-ethanol jihad. I am only speaking in favor of ethanol because it is the most cost effective means available to us right now of reducing use of fossil fuels in transportation. It is not the whole answer, but we should not wait until fuel cell vehicles are practical to start doing something about GHG contributions from transportation sources. Any other practical replacement of fossil fuels I am all for developing and using. this is not a contest to see who wins. We all lose if we don't develop every clean energy alternative to fossil fuel we have.

Net Energy Balance of Ethanol: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2005. This most recent study by the USDA finds ethanol's energy balance to be positive - an average 67% more energy in a gallon of ethanol than it takes to produce it.


The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol - An Update: U.S. Department of Agriculture, July 2002. This study analyzes many of the previous studies on the energy balance of producing ethanol. The conclusion by the study's authors is that there is 34% more energy in a gallon of ethanol than it takes to produce it.

MSU Ethanol Energy Balance Study: Michigan State University, May 2002. This comprehensive, independent study funded by MSU shows that there is 56% more energy in a gallon of ethanol than it takes to produce it.

( I didn't include direct links to these articles because they are all .pdf files and sometimes links to them don't seem to work.)

Here is a link to a report by someone who is highly regarded in Governmnent, private industry and the academia on fuel evaluation matters: Michael Wang of the Argonne National Laboratory ( apart of the U.S. Dept. of Energy).
www.ncga.com/ethanol/pdfs/Wang2005.pdf


http://www.transportation.anl.gov/publications/transforum/v5n2/ethanol_expert.html

"Since 1997, Argonne researchers have been studying the energy and GHG emission impacts of fuel ethanol as part of their overall efforts to evaluate the well-to-wheels energy and emission effects of various advanced vehicle technologies and transportation fuels. They use the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model, developed by researcher Michael Wang. This peer-reviewed model employs the most current and accurate data to conduct life-cycle analysis for more than 100 vehicle-fuel pathways.

The results of Argonnes ethanol analysis — like those of many other recently completed ethanol studies — reveal that corn-based ethanol achieves energy and GHG emission-reduction benefits relative to gasoline. In fact, Wang and his colleagues concluded that corn ethanol requires 26% less fossil energy because it contains "free" solar energy that ends up in the corn. The fuels energy and environmental benefits accrue primarily because of (1) improved productivity by U.S. corn farmers in the past 30 years, (2) reduced energy use in ethanol plants over the past 15 years, and (3) appropriate treatment of ethanols co-products in the analysis."

[hunter]

10. I've had it. The ethanol lobby is as toxic as the coal lobby.

:eyes:

[JohnWxy]

38. Pimentel is a retired entomologist. That's the srudy of bugs. He's not

trained, nor can he claim to have any expertise or qualifications for evaluating energy sources. HE is speaking outside of his area of expertise. This of course, doesn't mean he can't have an opinion on anything he wants to. It's just not a professional opinion and he has not undertaken any study of ethanol that could be characterized as 'scientific'.

My statement re the journal Science is not what makes Science a well respected journal. I made the statement that it is a respected journal because it is just that. I was merely reporting what everyone already knows.

Sad to say, there are many journals out there and there are those which publish 'studies' without any review. These journals are just glad to have something to publish and the individuals submitting studies which would not be accepted elsewhere are very glad to have someone publish there 'stuff'. They may appear to be peer reviewed pubications but no review is in fact done.


NOw, here is the report of the study by Farrell, et al, published in the Journal Science this last January.

This excerpt refers to the studies by Pimentel and Patzek. Mssrs Pimentel and Patzek have been widely criticized for using out-dated data or non-representative data and for not providing adequate documentation for someof their numbers. I can give more links to thorough critiques of their stuff if needed. (don't really want to take time, nor do I think it necessary, to go into more detail here) P & P's stuff has beeen widely discredited and is not taken seriously by researchers interested in finding genuine answers to the fossil energy problem.

Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals Alexander E. Farrell,1* Richard J. Plevin,1 Brian T. Turner,1,2 Andrew D. Jones,1 Michael O’Hare,2 Daniel M. Kammen1,2,3


(all emphases, my own)

Two of the studies stand out from the others because they report negative net energy values
and imply relatively high GHG emissions and petroleum inputs (11, 12). The close evaluation
required to replicate the net energy results showed that these two studies also stand apart from the
others by incorrectly assuming that ethanol coproducts (materials inevitably generated when
ethanol is made, such as dried distiller grains with solubles, corn gluten feed, and corn oil) should
not be credited with any of the input energy and by including some input data that are old and
unrepresentative of current processes, or so poorly documented that their quality cannot be evaluated.

(11. T. Patzek, Crit. Rev. Plant Sci. 23, 519 (2004).
12. D. Pimentel, T. Patzek, Nat. Resour. Res. 14, 65 (2005).

I submit that any "study" which is "so poorly documented that their quality cannot be evaluated." does not belong in a peer reviewed journal.

[hunter]

51. And JohnWxy is ???

Ah, at least I know who I am... an alternative energy curmudgeon.

Too often these alternative energy schemes are offered up as false hopes with the deliberate intention of keeping things the way they are.

I've been driving an E85 capable vehicle for many years, but mostly it's burned gasoline, which was always the intention of Big Oil.

"Flex-Fuel" vehicles are, and always have been, a carrot dangled in front of our noses so we wouldn't change direction, so we'd keep buying the same old cars and the same old gasoline. Farm subsidies were merely a side benefit for various political powers -- companies like ADM are the oil barons' bootlicking evil minions, scurrying about underfoot, wagging their little tails when they get a small scrap of the action.

Ethanol has always been a political scam. If ethanol really was a viable solution to some part of the energy equation then we wouldn't even be talking about it here. Private industry would just do it.

Archer Daniels Midland, at your service!

[JohnWxy]

53. "PRIVATE INDUSTRY WOULD JUST DO IT"?? LOL, ,, LOL

[hunter]

54. I think we should get rid of the Air Force too.

:P

[Nihil]

63. Ouch!

There are times, dear Hunter, when your rapier is a trifle too sharp!

:hi:

[JohnWxy]

67. It's more like a mere trifle. A remark is only taken as seriously as its source.

Also, a remark is not a rational argument. a childish comment doesn't make a 'rapier'.

[hunter]

73. DU is such a nasty wicked place.

I love it.

I always did like a man in a uniform. That one fits you grand...

[JohnWxy]

87. you flatter yourself. Never said wicked - I said childish, trivial and a sentiment does not

make an rational argument.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=69965&mesg_id=70486

[hunter]

109. I said DU was wicked.

And it is. Nasty smart wicked sometimes, despite my own sometimes pathetic contributions.

[hunter]

9. My own bias is that I'm against industrialized agriculture.

Bad enough that we do it to grow food, but the idea that we are doing it to feed our automobile habit makes me angry.

Using any sort of agricultural crop for fuel decreases biodiversity and further erodes our standard of living.

The most environmentally responsible thing we could do would be to electrify our transportation systems, and increase the density of our cities. We should be striving to make automobile ownership unnecessary for the average person.

There are uses for biofuels, but they should remain on the farm. Using biofuels for general transportation is a bad idea.

[RestoreGore]

23. I hope those CAPS weren't meant for me

Ethanol takes too much water to produce ( and that's NOT BS), and in this country, especially in areas where drought is now more prolonged, it will be much harder to balance the amount needed for sustinence with what will be needed for fuel. It is also the issue of WATER involved in the process that I am most concerned with, not any GRUDGE you may have with a scientist noted in my post. I am also more than entitled to my opinions here, and will not change my mind about this no matter what you call BS. When it comes to ethanol, cellulosic ethanol is a much better choice for the planet, which was what my post was about in relation to WATER SCARCITY.

[hunter]

35. Cellulosic ethanol vs. synthetic fuels such as DME.

Both can be made from biomass, but it's not clear to me which way is best. I suspect some synthetic fuel such as DME is going to work out better, mostly because the waste streams of cellulosic ethanol production will be more troublesome than ethanol promoters are claiming. The sludge these plants produce probably won't make good compost or animal feed. Currently even the higher grades of brewery wastes can be troublesome to dispose of -- a lot of it simply gets dumped as sludge.

[RestoreGore]

41. I'm still learning about all of this

And really in my heart, solar energy is where I see the future of alternate energy. No waste worries there. Thanks for your responses.

[Chemical Bill]

49. Of course you are entitled to your opinion.

Who said "Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts"?

>Ethanol takes too much water to produce ( and that's NOT BS)...

This is an opinion, stated as a fact. I don't necessarily disagree, but I recognize it for what it is.

>I am also more than entitled to my opinions here, and will not change my mind about this no matter what you call BS.

Fair enough.

>When it comes to ethanol, cellulosic ethanol is a much better choice for the planet, which was what my post was about in relation to WATER SCARCITY.

Sorry if I misunderstood. I saw in your OP the statement:
>I am against ethanol as an alternate energy source. I have always been against it because it takes more energy to make it than it saves using it.

I didn't see the qualifier that you support cellulosic ethanol. I also disagreed with the second sentence, and posted my disagreement, with links. Perhaps my short attention span is to blame, but I jump on anyone who uses the Cornell study to support anything.

Bill

[JohnWxy]

61. Pimentel uses old data which is heavily weighted to Wet-mill process plants.

Most of the newer ethanol plants use the Dry-mill process which uses much less water. Farmers are adopting low-till, no-till farming techniques which cut down on evaporative losses.

Pimentel routinely uses old non representative data.

http://purdueresearchpark.com/newsreleases/2006/060915ChenLicense.html

New ethanol process offers lower costs, environmental benefits


WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. —

Purdue Research Foundation has licensed a technology to Bio Processing Technology Inc. for the development of a new environmentally friendly method to produce ethanol that also costs less than current methods.

A Purdue University team led by professor Li-fu Chen and research assistant Qin Xu, both from the Purdue food science department, discovered a new method to create ethanol from corn. The method also produces biodegradable byproducts that could be safely eaten.
~~
~~
Using a machine originally designed to make plastics, the Chen-Xu Method grinds corn kernels and liquefies starch with high temperatures. The water input required by wet milling is reduced by 90 percent, Chen said. Wastewater output is cut by 95 percent, and electricity use is reduced by 47 percent.

"The total operating cost of a Chen-Xu Method ethanol plant should be much less than that of a wet-milling plant, and total equipment investment is less than half," Chen said. "And with proper planning and management, total equipment investment should be less than that of a dry-milling plant."

Funding for the work came from industry donations and one year of support from the Value-Added Grant Program of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture.

[4dsc]

66. More lies from JONNIE

Sorry jonnie but your lies won't work here anymore.. Ethanol is NOT the most COST EFFECTIVE means of replacing fossil fuels!!! This is pure BS!!! With an EROEI of 1.20, how is ethonal the most cost effective means of replacing fossil fuels??

[JohnWxy]

70. Net energy balance (USDA) of 1.67, (MSU) 1.56. Name a more cost effective

replacement for gasoline. ONe available right now. IF its clean and renewable I'm for it.

I'm for any and all renewable replacements for gasoline. IF not practical now lets develop them for the future. I also support expansion of bio-diesel but we have a ways to go to reach the volumes of ethanol we currently produce. anyway it's most likely not going to be a case of one or the other but any and all that are practical and feasible.

So what's your alternative? I'm all ears. I interested in solutions. I'll listen to anybody.

[4dsc]

82. 1.67 is not CORRECT!!

Mr Rapier has debunked the false claim that ethanol has an EROEI of 1.67. Even your beloved Mr Wang has backed Mr Rapier's claims.

Anymore lies you wish to tell us??

[JohnWxy]

89. Rapier didn't debunk anything. HOw's the "Big Lie" approach going. Having fun?

Rapier didn't debunk anything. Provide link or quote to what you consider Wang's "backup" of Rapier. I addressed this before. You didn't understand it. I TOLD YOU, YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO YOU MOTHER AND NOT SMOKED SO MUCH POT. NOW YOU HAVE THE IQ OF A PARAKEET.

HEre is Wang's well known summary comparison of ethanol's energy balance to gasoline. It shows ethanol's is positive while gasoline's is negative. this is Wang's position. However in the years since his initial research was done farmers have become more efficient and ethanol plants have been built that are more efficient. Thus MSU's and USDA's later work show higher net energy gains. this is not an issue except among zealots and idiots who seem to be on a jihad against ethanol.(go figure!)

Wang's summarry comparison of Ethanol energy balance, positive - to gasoline's, negative

We believe a recent Argonne National Laboratory study (Michael Wang, Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory) has laid to rest some long-held misunderstandings about ethanol and its important role in reducing America’s reliance on imported oil and our greenhouse gas emissions. In terms of key energy and environmental benefits, cornstarch ethanol comes out clearly ahead of petroleum based fuels, and tomorrow’s cellulosic-based ethanol would do even better.

As you can see, the fossil energy input per unit of ethanol is lower—0.74 million Btu fossil energy consumed for each 1 million Btu of ethanol delivered, compared to 1.23 million Btu of fossil energy consumed for each million Btu of gasoline delivered.

Ethanol from corn has a postive energy balance that's why a number of fairly clever individuals like Bill Gates, Vinod Khosla and Richard Branson are investing many millions of their own money in it. Because they know it will help with Global Warming as welll as America's National security (by reducing oil imports). But I guess they aren't as smart as you or Robert the Rapier. LOL

YOU STILL DIDN'T MENTION YOUR ALTERNATIVE TO ETHANOL THAT IS AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW. Don't you have any?

I guess you stuck on repeating a "Big Lie" hoping someone will think it must have some truth to it. But can't produce a viable alternative to ethanol.


Hey, EXXON just turned in record profits. Guess that makes you happy, huh?

[4dsc]

94. Boy are you lost!!

ACtually Mr Rapier got Mr Wang to admit the discussion of ENERGY BALANCE is not a very good idea when discussion alternative energy sources!! And since I am on the road, I'm a truck driver, my ability to get the information you requested is limited. But wait, as I'll be home on the 2nd of Nov and I'll be glad to provide the information you requested. And it will show how WRONG you have been and continue to be!! 1.67?? LMAO!! That is so WRONG!!!

But I suspect JohnnieWYX is nothing more than a corporate hack for the corn growers association!!

[JohnWxy]

107. I really think you are sincere, I just think you aren't able to comprehend these concepts.

Wang has been stating for years that the energy balance measurement is not the only way to evaluate a prospective fuel. NOr is it even the most useful way of evaluating a fuel.

This doesn't change the fact that ethanol from corn is a better investment of energy than any other we have available to us right now. Later cellulosic sources will provide ethanol more efficiently than corn.

You got any alternatives fuels yet?? without providing an alternative that can be used right now, your arguments ring hollow. Ethanol works right now. There is no reason to not develop it. No reason to wait around until some prospective fuel in R&D stages is developed to start reducing GHGs and improving energy and national security.

That's why Gates and Branson and Khosla have put millions into it.


nor the most useful way of looking a prospective fuels. Most fuels require energy inputs to alter the physical characteristics of the fuel which enable it to be more useful.

Wang made this point back in the mid 90's. Now when speaking of ethanol versus gasoline it acutally takes MORE energy to ship and refine crude oil into gasoline than you get in the gasoline. The energy loss is about 19%. as it turns out ethanol is an energy gainer of 56% (MSU study) to 67% (USDA) using the latest data available. (unlike Pimentel these studies recognized the value of coproducts from the ethanol production process - as all legitimate researchers have).

Here is a more recent presentation from Wang:

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/transtech/v4n4/ethanol_analysis.html

Since 1997, CTR researchers have been studying the energy and GHG emission impacts of fuel ethanol as part of their overall efforts to evaluate the well-to-wheels energy and emission effects of various advanced vehicle technologies and transportation fuels. They use the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model, developed by CTR researcher Michael Wang. This peer-reviewed model employs the most current and accurate data to conduct life-cycle analysis for more than 100 vehicle-fuel pathways.

The results of Argonne's ethanol analysis — like those of many other recently completed ethanol studies — reveal that corn-based ethanol achieves energy and GHG emission-reduction benefits relative to gasoline. In fact, Wang and his colleagues concluded that corn ethanol requires 26% less fossil energy because it contains "free" solar energy that ends up in the corn. The fuels energy and environmental benefits accrue primarily because of:

Improved productivity by U.S. corn farmers in the past 30 years,
Reduced energy use in ethanol plants over the past 15 years, and
Appropriate treatment of ethanol co-products in the analysis.
~~
~~

Conclusions from Wang's presentation include the following:


Energy balance value alone is not meaningful in evaluating the benefit of ethanol or any other energy product. For proper evaluation, a product's energy use must be compared with that of the product it replaces.
Compared with gasoline, any type of fuel ethanol helps to substantially reduce fossil energy and petroleum use.
Ethanol produced from corn can achieve moderate reductions in GHG emissions.
Ethanol produced from "cellulosic" plants (such as grass and trees) offers even greater energy and GHG emission-reduction benefits than does corn-based ethanol. In fact, cellulosic-biomass–based ethanol reduces fossil energy use by 90%. GREET also showed that cellulosic ethanol offers an 85% reduction in GHG emissions on a per-gallon basis.

The consensus of analyses by Wang and many researchers supports the premise that corn ethanol can supply some of our motor fuel needs now, and cellulosic ethanol can provide a greater portion in the future. Currently, 88 ethanol plants operate in the United States, and 16 more are being built.

~~

Sponsor
U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Planning, Budget, and Analysis (PBA) and Biomass Program

I fully appreciate that you probably will never understand these matters. i think they're just a bit too much for you to grasp. Let me put it to yuo in terms maybe you will understand - as I asked before, are you ready to go fight in IRAQ (or whereever) for EXXON Mobil's revenue stream?

[4dsc]

115. you're so confused it hurts..

I wonder how much longer you're going to present OLD news that isn't relevent in today's discussions about ethonal?? You whole arguement is completely debunked by Mr Rapier here: http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_i-r-squared_archive.html

nlike Pimentel and Patzek, I am using Argonne's numbers to make my point. Your argument, "If continued /expanded use of petroleum was indeed feasible, sustainable, environmentally and politically acceptable…." is a different argument than the one you originally started off with. You are suggesting that there are other reasons for using ethanol. Fine. But you are not addressing the point of my argument, which is simply that ethanol is far less efficient to produce than gasoline, despite the proponent's claims to the contrary. Argue the sustainability issues. Argue the environmental issues. But don't mislead people by suggesting that it takes more energy to produce gasoline than to produce ethanol. That is an incredibly ludicrous claim.

My argument is not misleading at all. It does not convolute efficiency and energy return. It is a measure of the amount of energy that must be consumed to produce two different fuels: gasoline or ethanol. That is a very simple metric, and is not in any way misleading. Wang's metric is misleading, and I am sure that he is well aware that people are misusing it. When people say "ethanol is 1.2, but gasoline is worse at 0.8", they have compared two different metrics. When you write that you accept the authority of Argonne/DOE with respect to the net energy and greenhouse implications of ethanol, you are once again addressing a different argument. Please do not address Red Herrings, since I have accepted their net energy results for ethanol in my analysis.

Regarding Wang's communication with me, I still have it if he would like for me to refresh his memory. I pointed out the same thing I have pointed out here, and his response was essentially "Yeah, but you are looking at the total energy inputs, and there are many different ways to look at this problem." I do not regard the debunking of misleading claims as a waste of anyone's time. I would think that Wang would want to defend his work against critics like myself, especially given that most of it has not been subjected to scientific peer review. Again, I will debate Wang, Shapouri, or anyone else who wishes to argue that it is more efficient to produce ethanol than gasoline. If you want to argue about something else, then you aren't addressing the argument I am making. Yet this is exactly what you did in your second response.

Finally, I want to make it clear that my comments are not meant to defend the status quo. I want to see us move away from fossil fuels as quickly as we can. I am merely using the gasoline versus ethanol issue to show why these claims of higher efficiency of ethanol production are fallacious.


This response covers my biggest gripe about people who want to debate this issue. If I rebut a specific claim, they gallop off to a different claim. That is exactly what Tom did.

And we all know that when Mr Rapier was debating here you are ABSENT!! Like a little school girl, you ran!!

[RestoreGore]

42. Is Fred Pearce Wrong As Well?

"Water scarcity harms the case for using food crops to make biofuels, a leading environmental author and journalist said on Thursday. "The downside of growing food for fuel is water," said Fred Pearce, author of the book "When the Rivers Run Dry."

[hankthecrank]

43. Yes he is wrong

75 percent of all corn is raised without irrigation as per USDA. Kansas is on the edge of the corn belt. Not the heart of it. East half Kansas is quite different the western half of Kansas. Corn or beans are used every year.

Want to worry about something how about the amount of land that put into Micky dee parking lots every year. Travel around the corn belt and see the amount of land taken out of production. The amount of land that can never be used again because the topsoil has been hauled away.

One thing about corn used for ethanol if too much is used at least the next growing season we will use less for fuel(corn used as etanol because a high protein feed for cattle after the ethanol has been taken out) and more for food. Can't do that if it isn't crop land any more. I passed golf courses this summer that in 105 degree heat were pouring water on to try keep the grass green. Good use of water.

[RestoreGore]

50. No, he is right

And to my knowledge you cannot ferment ethanol without water. But you can at least be secure in the knowledge that you all agree with Bush on something. He LOVES ethanol. And this isn't only about wasting water, this is about the land being made so dry that corn can't be grown because of soil erosion due to prolonged drought. And yeah, keep telling people you will grown less in the next season and think that will be believed... it's all about the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ which is why this is being pushed so much, and why Bush loves it so much. His corporate pals will make LOTS of money from this too. Give me the sun any day.

[poopfuel]

52. bush lies about ethanol

He wants it as a 10 percent additive and figures to make political hay from it that way with farm votes. He doesn't want it sold in place of gasoline.

Re Hunter's blog: Too often these alternative energy schemes are offered up as false hopes with the deliberate intention of keeping things the way they are. (YES ULTIMATELY TRUE BUT WE CAN'T KEEP THINGS GOING THAT WAY OR WE'RE SUNK)

I've been driving an E85 capable vehicle for many years, but mostly it's burned gasoline, which was always the intention of Big Oil. (WE ALL DRIVE E85 CAPABLE VEHICLES, OLD CHAP. EVEN DIESEL ENGINES CAN BE MADE TO RUN ON IT. YOUR COMMENT IS APT.)

"Flex-Fuel" vehicles are, and always have been, a carrot dangled in front of our noses so we wouldn't change direction, so we'd keep buying the same old cars and the same old gasoline. Farm subsidies were merely a side benefit for various political powers -- companies like ADM (WHICH SELLS 27 PERCENT OF THE ETHANOL MADE, OTHERS COME FROM FARM COOPS) are the oil barons' bootlicking evil minions, scurrying about underfoot, wagging their little tails when they get a small scrap of the action. PERHAPS AND YOU'RE ALSO FORGETTING THE OIL COMPANIES GET A LOT OF THOSE ETHANOL SUBSIDIES TOO

Ethanol has always been a political scam. FOR MANY, YES If ethanol really was a viable solution to some part of the energy equation then we wouldn't even be talking about it here. Private industry would just do it. OOPS, THIS IS WHERE I DISAGREE. WHY WOULD OIL COMPANIES, THE MOST LIKELY CANDIDATE TO DO SO, MAKE IT PART OF THE EQUATION WHEN IT WOULD INTERFERE WITH MARKET CONTROL. ANYONE CAN MAKE ETHANOL. ONLY OIL COMPANIES CAN MAKE GASOLINE. AS YOU SAY OIL COMPANIES HAVE STIFLED AND REPRESSED ALTERNATIVES AT ANY INTERVAL. AND THE REST OF US DIDN'T JUST DO IT OURSELVES BECAUSE GAS WAS CHEAP. NO LONGER. THAT'S WHY WALL STREET IS GETTING IN ON THE ACT.

NOW FOR YOU, RESTORE GORE....
(First of all, death to corporate agriculture. now, to continue....)

Water waste is part of improper system design. From an upcoming book....

"Water typically leaves an alcohol plant in two ways. One is through the cooling towers that evaporate a percentage of water to cool the remaining water for reuse. The other major way is in the drying of the solubles and distillers grains. In order to mix the liquid solubles with the dried distillers grains, it's necessary to evaporate most of the water from the spent mash. All this drying is only necessary when plants become too large to use the byproducts locally, and must dry the by-products in order transport them. One could argue that the evaporated water doesn’t go to waste since it becomes rain somewhere downwind.

In a well designed system, the distillers grains would go to by-product use immediately, locally, still wet. Spent mash liquid with solubles should be used in its liquid form. The solubles and all that water can be returned to local farmers, either directly after distillation, or after running it though a methane digestor to produce natural gas. An inexpensive pipeline from a smaller plant, something that larger plants cannot easily engineer, would return the water and its nutrients to irrigate and enrich farmers’ soil. This is practical at a scale of 5 million gallons per year or less where the land producing crops is contiguous with the plant. "

ETHANOL IS SOLAR FUEL, MA'AM. IT IS THE BEST WE GOT, IF WE DO IT RIGHT. THE WORLD (not just U.S.) CAN MAKE IT ANYWHERE FROM JUST ABOUT ANYTHING, PARTICULARLY IF CELLULOSE ETHANOL COMES ALONG. THE MONEY WASN'T THERE BEFORE. IT iS NOW.

[hunter]

55. Now compare ethanol crops to oil crops...

The technology to extract fuel from oil crops is much less complicated and much less water-intensive than ethanol. Ethanol from corn is Rube Goldberg compared to simple oil extraction, and vegetable oil can be utilized directly in diesel engines, or easily converted to biodiesel.

Then let's talk about "cellulose ethanol." Just how valuable is the unpalatable waste stream from that going to be? As it stands now much higher quality brewers waste is being disposed of as sludge, in large part because of the expansion of the ethanol industry. It's simply not economical to dry it or make it into any other sort of useful product.

The cellulose ethanol process must be compared to other sorts of synthesis. It's very likely that it would be more efficient to simply burn various sorts of biomass in oxygen to make a carbon monoxide and hydrogen synthesis gas. This gas could be used to make dimethyl ether (DME) or even gasoline, and there would be mush less solid or liquid waste to get rid of in comparison to cellulose ethanol production. Such plants might also produce electricity.

Ethanol promoters tend to overestimate the value of brewing wastes and underestimate the energy inputs. Many current ethanol plants are simply a very convoluted process for turning natural gas or coal into ethanol.

[hankthecrank]

57. Waste stream will be used

I like both bio diesel and ethanol.

The more you rotate crops the less problems you will have insects and weeds. So beans one year followed by corn works well. Also if models of less rain are right you need both fuel types.

Animals do well on brewing wastes from corn. Brewing waste from cellulose production will go back to feed the soil. Need that circle. Unlike what we do with human waste. Which also needs to go back to the soil.

[poopfuel]

59. you're the man, Hank

and ddgs have a natural herbicide effect, did you know that?

[poopfuel]

58. how valuable?

Cellulosic wastes are largely landfilled and some are used for animal feed.  Some is turned into compost and some is burned to make electricity (as you said)
Some cellulose products are edible, i.e. rutabagas, turnips, apple pulp...

Your last sentence is correct but inputs can be quite low if the design is good. E3Biofuels is leading the way but other countries have been doing it this way as well. There's a learning curve with a lot of this. Farmers are used to doing things one way, that's that. They'll learn if it affects their bottom lines to change.

[poopfuel]

99. oops

more truth about waste stream and value

The "waste" from cellulosic ethanol production is primarily yeast which can be easily centrifuged out and used as extremely valuable animal feed or even human food. Just the yeast from a national cellulosic program would replace all the protein from corn in current cattle feed.

The by products of cellulosic ethanol production would be primarily liquid.  Almost all of it can be recycled.

[hankthecrank]

56. Very Funny did you read any of what I wrote

Bush home place was a pig farm now it does nothing no livestock. Bush's Pig farm is now as useful as he is. Nader zip unless.

Land is not being sucked dry. How do you come up with that. Places that have to rely on irrigation the fossil water is being used faster than its being replaced.

Land is being put out of use for farming for houses. Place with good water, soil, sun. A good part of America does not have all three things to grow good crops.

The Corn belt has good topsoil, good amount of rain, right ph level. Not all of the country has that. Models for global warming say that the amount of rain the corn belt will be less. So some of the crops might have to change. Maybe more sorghum like some of the dry lands do now.

But here it is again so you don't miss it. Land is being taken out of production and the soil hauled away. This land will never grow any thing again. Does not matter how much water you want to put on it.

For the amount of water used for fermenting the answer for that is better said in the poopfuel post.

[JohnWxy]

60. LOL. You've got the wrong industry. GOP is owned by OIL and GAS , along with

big Pharma.

Government subsidies to OIl and Gas (dont forget the cost of securing oil fields, "Can you say IRAQ? Can yuh, huh.") make the excise tax credit for blending ethanol (which goes to the oil refiners by the way) laughable by comparison. Also, subsidies to develop a knew and promising technology makes perfect economic sense (andin this case, good sense for National security too) but subsidies for a mature industry makes no sense, unless of course you are a stock holder of an oil company, or work for one (I guess).

Sorry if you own stock in Exxon-Mobil but your company is still gonna make billions, so don't feel bad. You will still be getting your dividends, even if the climate is going to hell.

[RestoreGore]

62. From Grist Magazine

http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2006/10/25/ethanol/

[poopfuel]

65. mr philpott needs to rechannel his energies

Mr. Philpott knows the answer lies within. He is a farmer at a small farm. His last sentences merely leave out a process that would increase his ability to produce food for neighbors to eat and give them a little clean burning fuel to run their machines with as well.

There are ways farmers can make much more profit for themselves, and work to cut out the middle man by providing fuel and food to neighbors. That would b e fine with Mr. Philpott,I suspect.

Philpot makes an assumption that ethanol will be more expensive than gas. Not gonna happen, it's $60 a barrel for good right now. And could shoot higher in the next few years if the peak has a sharp plateau rather than a wide one.

Corn is a transitional energy crop. Once ethanol is being made, people will figure out how to make more money and get more ethanol using other crops. Corn farmers need to see the bottom line before they will transition to other crops that don't need pesticides, herbicides

Making ethanol leads to a variety of coproducts: yeast ( for feed), carbon dioxide (for greenhouses to grow FOOD), the DDGs (feed and also, human food, natural pesticide/herbicide) and can help in cultivation of fish and mushrooms and earthworms for soil improvements.

To get ethanol to work to everyone's benefit, it all depends on how it's done and people like Philpott will have to be at the forefront of making it work! Not complaining about how others do it badly! The problem is the solution, Mr. Philpott!

[JohnWxy]

68. This really is old news. But the article you linked to has a further link:

And from the article you provided a link to: this link:

http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/agNews_050719crETHANOL.xml



"Pimentel has been routinely discredited by a growing body of government and academic research, including studies by the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, the Colorado School of Mines, Michigan State University, Agri-Food Canada and others," NCGA said in a release today. NCGA President Leon Corzine called the Pimentel study "a last-ditch effort to derail the Congress' positive momentum toward an 8-billion-gallon renewable fuels standard." "This is the goal line stand by the opposition," he said, using a football analogy. "It's the fourth quarter and we're pushing the RFS over the goal line. Their goal line stand is very predictable." The Senate has passed an energy bill with a renewable fuel standard of 8 billion gallons by 2012. The House has yet to vote on its version of the bill. "It's abundantly clear that both corn ethanol and cellulose ethanol displace crude oil and save liquid fuels," NCGA cited Bruce Dale, professor of chemical engineering at Michigan State University as saying. "Dr. Pimentel's net energy argument is bogus. What counts is whether we can displace imported oil, and ethanol certainly does so." Corzine says nine other energy balance studies conducted since 1995 all found net energy gains of at least 25%. NCGA called into question the credibility of Pimentel and Patzek. Pimentel is an insect ecologist in the department of entomology at Cornell University. He is one of the scientists who in 2000 famously found that milkweed leaves dusted with heavy concentrations of Bt corn pollen were toxic to Monarch butterfly larvae. Tad W. Patzek is a civil and environmental engineer at the University of California at Berkeley. Corzine says Patzek was a longtime employee of Shell Oil Company and founder of the UC Oil Consortium, which has counted BP, Chevron USA, Mobil USA, Shell and Unocal among its members.(and funders!__JW) He also is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. "I invite Dr. Pimentel to submit and publish his work in the International Journal of Life Cycle Analysis journal as we have done with our study on ethanol net energy," Corzine said. In June 2004, USDA updated its 2002 analysis of the issue and determined that the net energy balance of ethanol production is 1.67 to 1. For every 100 BTUs of energy used to make ethanol, 167 BTUs of ethanol is produced. In 2002, USDA had concluded that the ratio was 1.35 to 1. The USDA findings have been confirmed by additional studies conducted by the University of Nebraska and Argonne National Laboratory. Dale argues that researchers ought to be focusing on energy quality, rather than continuing to debate over BTUs lost or gained. "Every single energy conversion system we have - whether it is coal to make electricity, crude oil to make gasoline, solar cells to make electricity - they all have negative energy overall if you take everything into account. That's the laws of thermodynamics," Dale said. "But what we do is trade off a loss of energy quantity for increased energy quality. We can't light our homes with coal, so we lose some energy in coal to make the remaining energy more useful as electricity. Likewise we convert corn, using natural gas and coal, to make a valuable liquid fuel, ethanol, which clearly reduces our need for imported oil."

[hunter]

71. A multiplier of 4 would be interesting. A multiplier of 1.67 is not.

1.67 works if the inputs are oil, coal, or natural gas -- energy sources that have multipliers well above 4. It doesn't work if the ethanol must be recycled back into the process, for example if ethanol is used to make fertilizers and to power farm machinary.

An agricultural system that uses corn ethanol as it's primary energy source probably could not compete with one that uses animal power and manual labor.

[JohnWxy]

88. LOL.

[JohnWxy]

72. Export subsidies for Cotton: $4 billion per year. Brazil filed a complaint with

the WTO against our use of export subsidies to make our cotton competitive in international markets. WTO found against the U.S. Congress passed a bill stopping all the export subsidies for cotton and sent it to Bush in February, for signature.

If cotton farmers didn't get the subsidy for cotton they couldn't compete. they would look for a profitable crop. HEy, maybe corn for ethanol? The amount of acreage planted to cotton ALMOST EQUALS the acreage planted to corn for ethanol (well the starch content goes to ethanol, the protein content is recovered and sold as a feed supplement to dairy and cattle farmers). IF cotton farmers decided to grow corn for ethanol that would almost DOUBLE the acreage panted to corn for ethanol!

but wait! Some of the cotton is grown in areas that are suitable for sugar-cane(south-east U.S.). The farmers just might decide to plant that new variety of MOnster sugar cane, developed by the Japanese which they claim TRIPLES the yeild of ethanol vs typical sugar cane!.... and we save $4 Billion per year from terminated cotton subsidies!

If only Bush would sign that bill. (yeah, good luck!).

[hunter]

76. As ethanol production increases, the value of the waste stream decreases.

Eventually the value of the "protein content" (as you describe it) reaches a point where it is most economical to simply dump it. The cost of the energy required to dehydrate the waste stream becomes greater than the value of the dehydrated waste product.

But maybe you can simply plough it back into the ground.

I do not favor any sort of agricultural subsidies beyond those that prevent farmland being turned into low density suburbs. It is much easier to restore farmland to a natural state than it is to restore endless acres of micro-ranches and poorly constructed MacMansions...

[JohnWxy]

92. Dehydrate? waste stream? protein is hardly a waste biproduct . It's SOLD to

dairy farmers and cattle farmers as s feed supplement. Also, deyhration only appliees to wet milling. Most plants now being built are dry-mill.

[hunter]

101. At some point there is more than you can use as a "supplement."

Too much "supplement" and not enough cows.

This is a very common problem in manufacturing. A byproduct that is otherwise useful becomes waste because the market for it is saturated.

In ethanol production especially, if ethanol actually could replace a significant fraction of our oil imports then the value of the byproducts would become negative -- it would cost money to get rid of these bybroducts in environmentally acceptable ways. When that point is reached, ethanol (and bio-diesel) producers who have no concerns about the suitability of their waste streams as animal feed can significantly undercut producers who continue to produce feed supplements.

[poopfuel]

102. "But maybe you can simply plough it back into the ground."

you answered your own question earlier. When you make ethanol, all that gets removed is starch/sugar. All the nutrients can be safely put back into the soil.

Also, see my post #99

[JohnWxy]

105. even if the amount of Dried distillers Grain exceeded cattle producers demand

(which is unlikely), it actually is a very good fuel source. It could be used right now in the ethanol production process and replace a significanct amount of the fossil fuel input. they would do that now but it just seems the right thing to do to sell it as a feed supplement.

[hunter]

108. Well, that and a gallon of ethanol to dehydrate it...

Seriously, what's the final alcohol content of the fermented mash? Maybe 10%?

So you take the alcohol out, and what's left is a very watery stillage. It takes energy to dewater that.

Whatever process you use for dewatering, it cuts into your final energy return. Maybe you are better off digesting it and/or pumping it out to a neighboring sludge farm.

Which brings us back to the original post -- a question of water use.

[JohnWxy]

69. Regarding your reading list. Have you read Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"?.

It states in there somethhing who should know. Any Al Gore supporter should be aware of. He has been a supporter of ethanol and bio-diesel for years.

BTW. From the journal Science article I brought to your attention: what don't you get about Farrrell's research which stated that Pimentel and Patzeks "studies" include data "so poorly documented that their quality (i.e. reliability, validity) cannot be evaluated." (this may not be an exact quote but it captures the meaning of the statement.) No article containing unsupported input data should be published in a journal and it certainly wouldn't be published in a peer reviewed journal. It also cannot be taken seriously by real researchers looking for real answers. Pimentel and Patzek are side show acts. They're function is to spread dis-information for the intellectual light weights to swallow as truth.

[NNadir]

75. Really? 590 scientific papers makes "intellectual light weight?"

By whose criteria? The Iowa Corn Grower's Association criteria?

A full Cornell Professorship is "light weight?"

Here is a list of Professor Pimentel's honors and awards:

Honors
Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi, Organization for European Economic Cooperation Fellowship at Oxford University, NSF Computer Scholar. Invitational lectures at the following international congresses: XVI International Congress of Zoology (1963); XI International Congress of Genetics (1963); XII International Congress of Entomology (1964); Keynote Address Xth and XIth International Congress of Nutrition (1975, 1978); Marine Sciences Distinguished Lecture Series, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA (1979); Gustavson Memorial Lecture, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO (1980); The Fourth A.C. Neish Memorial Lecture, Nova Scotia Agricultural College, Truro (1980); Lectures on Science, Technology, and Society, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, (1981); Keynote Address American Institute of Biological Sciences (1982); Keynote Address Easter School of Food Sciences, England (1982); Keynote Address Italian Society of Genetics, Italy (1984); Keynote Address Biological Control Symposium Mainz, West Germany (1984); Keynote Address Conference of African Association of Insect Scientists, Monrovia, Liberia (1986); Keynote Address Agricultural Ecology and Environment, Padova, Italy, (1988); Keynote Address Agroecology and Conservation Issues, Padova, Italy (1990); Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar (1990-1991); Keynote Address Energy Strategies for Sustainable Food Production, Berlin, Germany (1991); Keynote Address Reducing the Nonrenewables in Agriculture, Nova Scotia (1991); Keynote Address Council of Biotechnology Centers, Washington, D.C. (1991); 1992 Award for Distinguished Service to Rural Life, Rural Sociological Society Council; Honorary Professor, Institute of Applied Ecology, Shenyang, China (1995); Keynote Address Microbial Control Agents in Sustainable Agriculture, St. Vincent, Italy (1995); Keynote Address International Conference on Pesticides in Developing Countries: Impact on Health and Environment, Universidad Nacional, Heredia, Costa Rica (1998); Keynote Address Wildlife, Pesticides, and People, Fairfax, VA (1998); Keynote Address Conference on the
Ecology of Sustainable Agriculture, Stuttgart, Germany (1998); Keynote Address International Conference on the Sustainable Use of Soils, Tutzing, Germany (1998); Keynote address
Entomological Society of Canada, Plenary Session on Managing the Millenium Bug (1999); Keynote Address Association of Applied Insect Ecologists, Santa Barbara, CA (1999); Keynote Address Population-Environment Balance ASAP Action Conference, Breckenridge, CO (1999); Keynote Address, British Soil Association, Cirencester, U.K. (2000); Entomological Society of America Special Symposium (2000); Keynote address Bora Conference on World Food Supply and Human Population, University of Idaho (2000); Keynote address, Tribeta Conference on Population, Food and Environment, Eastern Connecticut State University (2000); Keynote address, World Population Balance Conference on Population Carrying Capacity for the Earth (2000); Keynote address, Toxicology Conference, Guelph University (2001); Keynote address, Pesticide Conference, University of Colorado (2001); Keynote address, International Congress of Population, Food and Energy, Adelaide, Australia (2002); Keynote address, Celebration Honoring Rachel Carson, Baltimore, MD (2002); Keynote address, Congress on Sustainable Agriculture, Raleigh, NC (2002); Keynote address, International Vegetarian Congress at Loma Linda University, CA (2002); Keynote address, International Conference on Sustainable Agriculture, University of Wisconsin (2002); Rachel Carson Award, Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (2002). Keynote address, Aquatic Nuisance Species Symposium, Philadelphia (2003); Keynote address, Environmental Law Symposium, William and Mary School of Law, Williamsburg, VA (2003); Keynote address, International Workshop: Livestock, Environment and Sustainable Development, Havana, Cuba (2003); Keynote address, St. Philips College Literacy Conference on Fuel Cell Technology, San Antonio, TX (2004); Keynote address, International Conference on Area-Wide Control of Insect Pests, United Nations/ International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria (2005); Keynote address, Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, Bar Harbor, ME (2005); Honoree, Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, Wassaic, NY (2005).

http://www.entomology.cornell.edu/IthacaCampus/People/FacultyStaff/Pimentel.html

Included in this link are some entries on Dr. Pimentel's resume dating back to the ethanol question in Jimmy Carter's time:

...1975-79 Chairman, Board on Science and Technology for International Development, Office of the Foreign Secretary, National Academy of Sciences
1975-78 Chairman, National Advisory Council on Environmental Education, Office of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare
1975-79 Commission on International Relations, National Academy of Sciences
1976-77 Chairman, Study Team on the Interdependencies of Food, Population, Health, Energy, and Environment, World Food and Nutrition Study, National Academy of Sciences
1977-78 Chairman, U.S. Advisory Committee to IIASA Program "Food and Agriculture," International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria
1979-80 Chairman, Gasohol Panel, Energy Research Advisory Board, Department of Energy
1979-83 Chairman, Biomass Energy Panel, Energy Research Advisory Board, Department of Energy
1979-82 Chairman, Environmental Studies Board, National Academy of Sciences
1979-83 Member, USAID Research Advisory Committee, Department of State
1979-89 Member, AAAS Committee on Climate...

Bold and italics are mine.


Why does your level of scientific judgement remind me of that shown by the "Exxon Mobil" lobbyists who are paid to deny global climate change?

From what, pray tell, does the heaving of insults at a distinguished scientific career stem? Are you worried that someone will fuck with your subsidy?

Ethanol does not produce a single exajoule of energy. It has never produced 1% of US energy demand, and it is likely that it will be impossible to do so ever without enormous environmental cost. Even if it has a net positive energy balance, it is not earth shaking in its ability to address climate change. Over thirty years of talk on the subject has not impacted oil imports in a significant way. The billions and billions of dollars heaved at this claim offer next to nothing in return.

All the screaming about Pimentel cannot divorce you from your incompetence to understand even the most basic of scientific concepts. Indeed, there is no evidence that you can understand an iota of information about measurement, because you have no concept of scale.

I don't know that Pimentel is right about the energy balance of ethanol, but I do know that he, unlike you, has scientific credibility and integrity. I do hope that someone is paying you to be so obtuse. It would be frightening on some level if no one was doing so.

[hankthecrank]

77. The study of bugs

Are these same guys who say bumble bee can't fly

[hunter]

78. Don't mess with Entomologists

In my own experience they are some of the sharpest people you will ever meet.

[NNadir]

80. Post #79 was intended as a response to this post.

[NNadir]

79. He was studying gasohol in 1979, in the first Department of Energy.

Maybe you don't want to look at or read his resume.

Of course, I have been hearing about the wonders of ethanol since then too, the 1970's. I used to believe that crap in fact. Now I personally think that the lobby is full of shit. After thirty years of talk, one would think that the industry would be a significant contributor to the United States' energy production, but it's not. I mean, is it not true that every Presidential candidate since those days has had to go to Iowa for the caucuses and swear allegiance to the biofuel cause? After 30 years of such obeisance has the United States come any closer to that chimerical "energy independence," that started this whole conversation.

After all that, biofuels are at best a niche form of energy. No amount of money can make it otherwise.

As for Pimentel, a look at his resume certainly would not seem to suggest that he is unfamiliar with agriculture. The number of agricultural institutions that have given him awards is fairly impressive, and they include some interests that are popular in liberal circles. Johnny is saying he is a "light weight," because, well, Johnny is a light weight, knowing almost zero science. (Knowing zero science is almost a requisite for working a lobby.) The fact is that Pimentel has considerably more scientific heft than the Corn Lobby would like to believe.

Johnny, as usual - and maybe you'll jump up to support him - is engaged in the logical fallacy here of an "ad hominem" attack on Pimentel, and what's really, really, really, really amusing is that the basis of his attack is on "scientific" grounds.

Now it happens that you, unlike Johnny, have raised a legitimate criticism of Pimentel, which concerns the logical fallacy of "appeal to authority." If one points to an "authority" one should ascertain whether the authority in question has expertise in the area being discussed. It has some validity to assert that Pimentel's primary expertise is in entomology and therefore his conclusions about the energy balance of ethanol are somewhat less authoritative than say, a chemical engineer with expertise in the energy evaluation of separations between water and ethanol. (We had such an engineer here a while ago, Robert Rapier, and he wasn't especially enthusiastic about corn based ethanol.) Of course, entomology is peripheral to knowing the entire energy balance associated with ethanol. On the other hand, I don't suppose that you (or Johnny) have evaluated the energy cost of pesticide on the same level of sophistication that Pimentel has either. Further I really, really, really, really doubt that Johnny (or you) has ever engaged in any kind of scientific conversation of the type that have obviously informed Pimentel's career.

Sometimes scientists, even prominent scientists, are wrong. Sometimes scientists, even prominent scientists, do things for venal and corrupt reasons, although when they do so, they are often discredited by the scientific community. However, Johnny has not proved any such thing about Pimentel. He is demonetizing Pimentel because he doesn't like what Pimentel says. Note that Johnny is not doing this because he himself is scientifically competent to judge what is and is not science. He is doing it because he is asserting an element of dogma and Pimentel's scientific conclusion contradicts the dogma.

The question is whether Pimentel's scientific conclusions are correct.

As I read it - and I'm hardly an expert; I'm a lay person - I happen to believe that the scientific consensus on the subject is that ethanol does not indicate that ethanol is a net energy loser. I think Pimentel is probably wrong when he says that ethanol production consumes more energy than it delivers in the form of ethanol. Probably, ethanol has a net positive energy balance, probably it eliminates some oil importation that would otherwise take place. However, if the ethanol industry quadruples in size from what it was just a year or two ago, it will still not produce an exajoule of energy. US oil consumption is about 30 exajoules. So the matter is one of scale. Is it worth it to throw billions and billions and billions of dollars at ADM to get a small reduction in US oil imports?

It is most likely nonsensical to assert that "ethanol can replace oil," even a significant fraction of it, more than say, 20%. It seems to have a small net energy advantage. Moreover it has a very real environmental cost, only part of which involves water, RestoreGore's concern in originating this thread. If there's water, one gets slightly more energy than one puts in, but not all that much.

The number of farms operating as closed ethanol consumers and producers is effectively zero. If the world supply of oil, gas and coal were cut off instantaneously the ethanol industry would collapse almost immediately. As far as I can tell, there are still petroleum products being sold even in Iowa and in every other state in the corn belt. Heating oil in these states has not been 100% taken over by ethanol or biodiesel. If ethanol were as great as the subsidy squad claims it is, this would most definitely not be the case. Exxon or Chevron or BP would be seeking to buy ADM. Chinese energy interests would be taking field trips to Nebraska to secure long term contracts for ethanol, much as they are traveling to Australia and other countries to secure uranium, or as they seek oil and gas supplies in Iran and in Russia.

None of this is happening, so the case still depends on propaganda, hype and wishful thinking.

[hankthecrank]

81. I've read what other people in science have said about his work

I don't like what I have read.

When he wrote back to them he said that he got the erosion from crops wrong

Which matches what I've seen no great runoffs.

He also assumed that corn was grown under irrigation

As per the USDA 75 percent of all corn is grown with out irrigation.

Farm practice has changed from the dust bowl. With windbreaks and terrace for the steep parts. With greens strips 50 to 100 feet from streams to catch runoffs. Soil stays in place, pesticides stay in the greens strips not into the streams.

I wrote the part about the bees to say that just because he has science resume doesn't mean he will always be right.

I'm here for the farmers

Farmers have been getting the short end of the stick for very long time

Farmers with coop help will get part of this benefit of the Ethanol subsidy

I don't care if ADM gets some.

If the oil runs out then we can grow crops with Ethanol and bio diesel
You are going to need both so you rotate crops, so you get less weeds and less insects eating them.

I really don't care if there is enough left over for people's SUV's

They can walk, but at least there will be food to eat.

Water is not an issue, He was wrong about the crops being irrigated. less water used. Distilling has changed so less water is being used.

But if we don't stop changing good growing land into parking lots alot of people are going to starve. I also want some wild places left for nature. But man doesn't seem to able to see past his nose. So much for that big brain!!!

[NNadir]

83. If you could grow crops with biodiesel and ethanol, I submit...

...you would already being doing it.

How many tractors run on ethanol? How many run on biodiesel?

I'm sure you don't like what Pimentel says. I'm not saying his analysis is correct or his methods are valid. I'm saying he's not a stooge or a special interest as is constantly implied by people who are special interests. He's a scientist, with a long distinguished record.

Less water is used? You have evidence for this? You've systematically analyzed the water demands of ethanol distillation?

When did farmers elect you, by the way, as their spokesman?

Urban sprawl, by the way, has nothing to do with ethanol (or biodiesel) as fuel. They are different issues entirely.

[hankthecrank]

84. I speak because I want to how's that for you Okay

I speak for farmers because I want to and not as a spokesman. They won't me too because I not that good. If we got farmers who read this board to answer they could explain them selfs better than I do.

Where do you get off asking if farmers asked me!

Farms use bio diesel and ethanol now is right. I've got engine that use tractor gas and I have used both in it. I run engines now on both fuels.

On the farm boards they are talking about both fuels. So yes it is being done.
Want the amount you ask them.

Land use does matter alot more than talking about a non issue like water use.

Distillation is just a process not that hard to understand.

If you don't have the land to put the water on!! I guess it grows in mid air

I was right how crops looked this summer. Were your maps?

[NNadir]

85. You have a tractor and use biodiesel and ethanol. Why that's fabulous!

There is always someone on this web site who says "I have a biodiesel Volkswagen..." like they represent the general case.

I assume that your biodiesel and ethanol tractors supply 100% of your energy needs, and you have a closed system farm. Am I right? If so, your farm is the first such farm I've ever heard about, and you really should build a website to turn us on to that wonderful state of affairs.

Of course, if I have a big screen TV, it doesn't mean everyone has a big screen TV. If I have no big screen TV, it doesn't mean no one has a big screen TV. In fact, I'm not a trend setter at all, but apparently everyone who writes here about their biodiesel cars or tractors is such a trend setter. If one reads about such things, one discovers that only is biodiesel and ethanol saving the world, but all of our electricity is generated by solar cells.

Here are the state by state breakdowns of carbon dioxide emissions from various fuels:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/pdf/appc_tbl1.pdf

If we look at say, Iowa - and I don't know in which state your closed system farm operates - we see that Iowans released 41.9 million tons of coal related carbon dioxide, 25.6 million tons of oil related carbon dioxide, and 11.9 million tons of natural gas related carbon dioxide.

I guess biomass nirvana does need some more instruction about operating closed systems from you, since clearly the entire state of Iowa does not operate as a biofuel closed system.

Here's where I get off: You say "I'm here for the farmers," and my question is "what farmers?"
Farmers who run their farms on biodiesel? Farmers who know that Pimentel is an "intellectual lightweight?"

Nobody wants to hurt farmers. I think most Americans have a psychological attachment to the idea of the family farm and respect for the hard work, risk and suffering that such a business entailed and, to the extent it still exists, still entails. However family farming is not what it was. Farmers around here, in Western New Jersey object when people try to restrict them from selling their land to McMansion building companies. They want the personal right to "take the money and run." I agree with you on land use issues and I find it regrettable that this situation exists. But I'm not sure that you have anything special to offer but a complaint. You seem to have no public policy ideas on how to stop this trend.

Now it happens that in my town, Hopewell, New Jersey, people have been buying the development rights from farmers, giving them a cash payout so that they don't sell their land to build McMansions, but keep on farming. We're a relatively wealthy town though. I don't know that this approach would be affordable everywhere. It's not really all that affordable here. People bitch about their taxes, which, by the way, are high.

You say that you think the issue is just land, and that water is not a problem. Excuse me if I don't believe you. I'm not sure that modern farming practices are truly sustainable, and the fact that you have a farm has no special bearing on the issue, since you have a vested interest in that claim. You are in no different position than a person arguing that global climate change is not important because she owns a coal mine.

You see your biodiesel tractor. I see a huge fertilizer dead zone forming in the Gulf of Mexico, much of it from agricultural run-off. Something has to give, and something will give.

RestoreGore is focused on water issues. I appreciate his or her attention to this issue, and I appreciate his or her focus on it. You say, "ethanol is OK because only 25% of the corn is irrigated..." (Post 43.) Only?. (How much water does this "only" 25% represent in cubic meters or cubic kilometers of water?) According to this popular press report though, that 25% is almost exactly what is already devoted to ethanol:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0726/p02s01-usec.html

Thus no irrigation, no ethanol.

According to the article which admittedly discusses the work of those awful academics and not farmers with biodiesel and ethanol tractors, proposed ethanol refineries might soon swallow all of Iowa's corn. It will be interesting to see if when that happens, Iowa stops importing fossil fuels.

I am not an expert in farming, though, by any stretch. I have never been one. All I know is that I've been hearing the "biofuels will save us mantra" for thirty years and biofuels have not saved us. The "corn to ethanol," and "soybeans to biodiesel" system may be a great subsidy to keep farms afloat - but we should call it what it is. It is not, however, a rational energy policy. On the contrary, it is a trivial distraction from our energy woes, just as it has been for decades. Thirty years after the first ethanol subsidy, the situation has gotten worse with respect to fossil fuels, in fact and we are now committing wholesale murder in foreign countries to keep access to petroleum.

As for the USDA and whether or not water was involved in yields this summer, I can only find (in thirty seconds of googling) this note:

The turnaround in cash receipts for corn is being assisted by its use in ethanol, an alternative renewable energy source. Ethanol production is expected to increase by 34 percent in 2006. This corn demand is expected to keep corn prices over $2 per bushel even though corn producers are harvesting more corn (via both high yields and harvested acres) over the past 3 years than ever.

The forecast rise in cash receipts from wheat is the result of 20 percent higher wheat prices in 2006 relative to 2005. This price increase is due to lower expected production (down 14 percent) because of drought in the Great Plains and tight world supplies because of hot dry weather in Europe, Canada, and Argentina. Cash receipts for soybeans are expected to fall by $1.8 billion to below $16 billion for the first time since 2002.

The section which I have put in bold would seem to suggest that climate (and water use issues) can have an effect on agriculture. I'm sure that you're convinced that water is no problem. You won't be the first farmer to have said that. You haven't convinced me of anything, though. I think we have a climate problem, and I think it's going to have consequences everywhere, including the farm belt. I think everyone who operated a farm in Oklahoma in the 1920's was just as confident as you are about the future, but history suggests that their optimism was misplaced.

However, it would seem that the corn crop was higher than ever, thereby proving to your satisfaction that my maps were foolish. Actually they weren't my maps. They are provided by the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, in partnership with the USDA and the US Geological Survey, NOAA and other government types. The University of Nebraska, as you know, is a bastion of those awful academic types represented by the demon Pimentel.

http://drought.unl.edu/dm/about.html

[Chemical Bill]

103. .

>I'm not saying his analysis is correct or his methods are valid. ... He's a scientist, with a long distinguished record.

His record isn't distinguished unless you can say his methods are valid.

Bill

[Name removed]

104. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JohnWxy]

106. Legitimate studies, actual studies have been done by people who

are equipped to do them, - U.S. Department of Agriculture, Michael Wang - Argonne National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy, Michigan State university and others. Pimentel's claims differ markedly from all of them (same for Patzek). pimentel gets a negative energy balance for ethanol and all the legitimate energy researcher (not this is NOT entomology) get a positive energy balance for ethanol.

As the article in the journal Science said Pimentel and Patzek used data so poorly documented that it could not be evaluated as to it's quality. this kind of statement indicates Piimentel's and Patzek's stuff do not qualify as scientific emperically based, papers.

[NNadir]

110. Legitimate spell checkers, actual grammar checkers, have been used

by people trying to make reasonable arguments.

If one is trying to make a scientific argument, it is usually customary to cite the reference, not the Corn Lobby interpretation of the reference. One can even quote the reference.

Here for instance, are excerpts from Environ. Sci. Technol. 2006, 40, 1744-1750 discussing several widely variable studies on ethanol's energy return:

Lorenz & Morris’ work features an unusually generous allocation of gross process energy to the coproducts, in part because the wet- and dry-milling processes are confounded. However, generous estimates of agricultural and industrial energies mean that the resulting net energy inputs still fall in line with those of most of the other researchers. The large energy inputs reported by Pimentel & Patzek are due not to any single factor, but rather a collection of conservative assumptions regarding efficiency, the inclusion of a few upstream energy burdens not accounted by other analysts, and a very small energy allocation to coproducts...

...allocated 18-25% of the production energy to them. The unusually low agricultural energy input in Kim & Dale’s study is due to their choice to examine no-till corn agriculture in particular. Excepting Pimentel & Patzek, the values of rE range from 1.29 to 1.65 for current technology, indicating that corn ethanol is returning at least some renewable energy on its fossil energy investment. Pimentel & Patzek’s result of rE < 1 is an exception, implying that there is no renewable energy return on the fossil fuel investment.

The values for oil reduction calculated by two of the teams are intriguing. In both cases, the studies presume that ethanol displaces gasoline on a MJ-for-MJ basis, meaning that a driver who burns1L of ethanol would otherwise have burned about 0.65 L of gasoline, since gasoline has a higher heating value per liter. Because only a small fraction of the fossil energy used to manufacture ethanol is petroleum, even with this volume trade off corn ethanol consumes much less petroleum in the same amount of driving. Of course, this is offset by increased consumption of the other fossil fuels...

Of course, I assume that you haven't actually read any of the literature that you so prattle on about when you say, for instance, "Wang, Argonne National Laboratory" over and over and over and over week after week, month after month like it means something. It means nothing. Note that the literature does not insult Pimentel at Patzek, but simply notes the nature and possible sources of the discrepancy between their data and other data.

Note also that there are some questionable assumptions in the other data, including the assumption of no till farming in Kim's study for instance.

The big words in the paper I quote here are, of course, "at least some." The real question is whether this "some" is worth the billions and billions of dollars regularly dropped on the ethanol lobby. It's a marginal return.

There is still not one farm state that operates as a biomass closed system. Iowa burns oil and coal and natural gas. All farm states still use fossil energy. This speaks more eloquently to the question than all the papers (and insults of respected scientists like Pimentel) in the world.

[NNadir]

113. Any comment on Dr. Wang's publication note about his errors?

ERRATUM
www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE ERRATUM POST DATE 23 JUNE 2006 1
CORRECTIONS&CLARIFICATIONS

Reports: “Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals” by A. E. Farrell et al. (27 Jan. 2006, p. 506). Michael Wang of Argonne National Laboratory has raised interesting and important issues associated with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from corn (maize) ethanol production in this Report. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed that the data reported for lime application had been calculated incorrectly and kindly updated these values. The custom report and an updated version of the Supporting Online Material that discusses the issues raised in this errata in more detail are downloadable from http://rael.berkeley.edu/EBAMM. The corrected data are expected to be available on the USDA website in the coming months. In conducting a reanalysis, even larger uncertainties were discovered in the emissions factor of lime and the emission factor for nitrous oxide (N2O) resulting from nitrogen fertilizer application. With these refinements, the Ethanol Today case now yields a point estimate of net greenhouse gases for corn ethanol at 18% below conventional gasoline, very close to the initially reported value of 15% below gasoline, but with an expanded uncertainty band of –36% to +29%.
Post date 23 June 2006

My that's an awfully large uncertainty band. I suppose though, this in no way dissaudes from your contention that it is appropriate to throw billions and billions and billions of dollars of money that might address climate change at ethanol, though?

The next time you blurt, "An article in Science shows that Pimentel is...(insert insult here)" I am going to excerpt the actual article to address your credibility, not that there is much confusion about that subject.

[JohnWxy]

90. my "intellectual lightweights" comment was referring RestoreGore.'types'.

I said Pimentel is a retired professor of entomology. how many of those articles pertained to entomology and how many to energy-fuel issues? Can' t handle a simple question?


Or do you prefer to confuse the issue.

In the journal Science the article by Kammen and Farrell, et al, said theat Pimentel's and Patzek's study unlike all the others reviewed contained data so poorly documented that the data could not be evaluated as to it's quality (reliability, validity, appropriateness).


They were looking at P&P's papers on energy anaylisis of ethanol. Can we stick to the point here?

Got any response to that?

[NNadir]

95. My response is that you can read his resume.

He was discussing ethanol in the Carter administration in an official capacity.

You weren't.

Again, since you were unable to read it the first time, I will once again link his resume, which is quite clear:

http://www.entomology.cornell.edu/IthacaCampus/People/FacultyStaff/Pimentel.html

Here are some of the elements of his resume that speak to his long involvement on the subject of ethanol:

1979-80 Chairman, Gasohol Panel, Energy Research Advisory Board, Department of Energy
1979-83 Chairman, Biomass Energy Panel, Energy Research Advisory Board, Department of Energy
1979-82 Chairman, Environmental Studies Board, National Academy of Sciences
1979-83 Member, USAID Research Advisory Committee, Department of State
1979-89 Member, AAAS Committee on Climate

You are impugning his scientific credentials because you don't understand the first thing about science and because you insist - in defiance of all evidence and industrial experience - on repeating a thirty year old dogma that ethanol is a serious energy strategy. One may only guess on why you do so, but I note that the only subject about which you write is ethanol. Since you cannot make either primary or authoritative scientific arguments in support of your contentions, although you can drop vague references to the names of prestigious institutions well enough - and attempt to substitute this for thinking - you deign to insult a serious scientific career as "lightweight" while completely lacking any evidence for your ability to make such distinctions. My experience of your thinking indicates that you are spectacularly unqualified to judge what is and is not "lightweight."

Now, looking over the literature in a cursory and non-expert way, I think a good case can be made that that the scientific consensus is that Dr. Pimentel's conclusions about the energy balance of ethanol are in error. But even if ethanol does have a slight positive energy balance, it is hardly high enough to displace significant quantities of oil. If fossil fuels disappeared tomorrow, so would the ethanol industry. There is zero evidence of a single farm - or farm state - operating as a closed system entirely on biomass of any kind, corn (or speculative cellulose based) ethanol included. This fact is indicated, again, by a long history with "gasohol" subsidies and support, going back to Dr. Pimentel's tenure as Chairman of an Energy Department panel on what was then called "gasahol," beginning in 1979, during the Carter administration. The question about energy should be rephrased, I think, like this: "Even if ethanol has a net positive energy balance, is it worth the money?"

For billions and billions of dollars invested, the biomass industry produces 1.5 exajoules of primary energy in the United States, most of it coming not from ethanol, but from black liquor in the wood pulp industry. http://www.ornl.gov/~webworks/cpr/pres/108178_.pdf (Note that this paper shows that the subject of "switchgrass" ethanol has already been under discussion for a decade and a half with little industrial result.) The argument is well made, therefore that ethanol subsidies are wasteful and counterproductive. Thus while Dr. Pimentel's "EROEI" calculations - and I certainly don't want to give undue respect to this over played and under informed focus on the concept of "EROEI" that substitutes for knowledge and reason - may be wrong, the basic question, "Is ethanol worth it?" is a valid one, worthy of a fine analytical mind.

You of course wish to deny that Dr. Pimentel has been involved in public policy about ethanol for thirty years. But you don't know anything at all about Pimentel's scientific career or about his credentials because you don't know anything about science. All you know is that you hate Pimentel because his mere existence calls your dogma into question. Since Pimentel has been hearing - and thinking - about ethanol for thirty years, and since ethanol after decades of subsidy still does not produce a single exajoule out of the more than 100 exajoules the US economy consumes, you insist, as usual, in the use of the logical fallacy of an ad hominem attack on Pimentel using a street insult, "lightweight."

Lightweight, indeed.

Ethanol is a serious strategy for dispensing farm subsidies - which may or may not be desirable - and massive corporate subsidies for ADM (probably less desirable) but ethanol is clearly not a serious energy strategy. There is a little energy produced as a side product for this support by subsidy for the agricultural industry, but it's just that, a side product. After thirty years, ethanol still does not produce 0.5% of US energy, not even half an exajoule. It is a distraction from the dire energy problem and the related (and more serious) climate problem, not a solution.

[RestoreGore]

86. CELLULOSIC ethanol

He has spoken out for cellulosic ethanol being a better choice than corn based ethanol. And for you to think that because Al Gore may or not be for it that we can't think for ourselves, just shows your own mentality.

[JohnWxy]

93. I think Gore has thougth this through pretty thoroughly. That' why I mentioned him.

[conning]

96. There is another reason to be cautious about biofuels.

As James Lovelock point out in THE REVENGE OF GAIA, the planet requires land as part of its regulatory system. Anthropocentric use of the land, therefore, needs to be limited. On page 121 he states that the planet needs about half of the land surface.

[Dogmudgeon]

97. And now, for a moment of rational, Peer-Reviewed™ discourse

I see you have invoked the name of James Lovelock.

For that, you shall surely pay.



J J J J J J J J J J J J J J

Oh, yes. Welcome to DU.

J J J J J J J J J J J J J J





JAM3Z L0VEL0CKKK 1Z THA SPAWN 0V THA DEV1L!

0MG ! ! ! 0MG ! ! ! 0MG ! ! !


HEE 1Z A NUKKKULAR L0V3R ! 1 !
AND A KKK0RPR0ATE H0RE ! 1 !
H3E WANTZ 2 KKK1LL EV3RYB0DDY 1NN THA H0LE W0RLD W1TH H1Z
P01Z0N NUKKKULAR P0W3R!!!

GAiA 1Z GAY


TH1S 1S HUGH ! ! !


AND dAVEY p1M-ASSH0LE 1S A KKK0RRUPT KKKL0WN 0V THA KKK0RPR0ATE KKKABAL!!!
HEE BEETZ H1Z W1F3!
HEE L1SSENZ T00 L0R1NCE WELCKKK!
HEE 1Z A LAME LAM3R d00d!
HEE EATZ W1TE BABYZ 4 BR3AKKKF1ST LUNCH AND D1N3R!!!

D1E P1GG1EZ D1Y P1GG1EZ D1E !!!



eTH0NAL rUL3ZZZ!
NUKKKEZZ DR00LZ!

eTH0NAL rUL3ZZZ!
NUKKKEZZ DR00LZ!

eTH0NAL rUL3ZZZ!
NUKKKEZZ DR00LZ!

WEE must DESTR0Y A11 TH0Z3 WH00 0PP0Z3 US ! 1 !

W3E MUST UZE B1GG f0NTZ & CAP1T0LZ!1!1!1!
W1TH C0L0RZZ!1!1!

p3ACE n0W!1! 0AR eALSE!


LEAGAL1ZE H3MPP!

L3AGAL1ZE POTRZEBIE!
/B]

G0 V3GGG --- 4 G0dd3SS SAK3! 1 !

L8R,


-- TH3 w33D d00D
:smoke:
THA W33D d00d SEZ: "SM0AK 2 BLUNTZ 4 J33BUS"


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[conning]

98. Laughter is

such a wonderful tonic. Thank you, Pigwidgeon, for making me laugh out loud.

[Dead_Parrot]

111. I've just solved the energy crises!

I hooked a stirling engine up to this thread: The combination of fiery rhetoric and icy comments have generated 45.2 KWh, so far...

[Nihil]

112. Nice one ...

... but remember that although it's a step in the right direction,
it "still hasn't produced a SINGLE EXAJOULE of energy to date!"

:-)

[hunter]

114. A mixture of cellulosic ethanol and deleted comments has a much higher EROEI.

Future refinements of your stirling engine combustion cycle will make this a very worthwhile contributor to the U.S. energy economy.