Ethanol: an end to the reign of error?
—“You mean there was no steak, no cream pies, no deep fat, no hot fudge?”—“Those were thought to be unhealthy, exactly the opposite of what we now know to be true.”
Sleeper, 1973
The heyday of ethanol may be soon over, if anyone is willing to forgo the ample political benefits of pretending they didn’t read this:
Rapeseed and maize biodiesels were calculated to produce up to 70 per cent and 50 per cent more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil fuels. The concerns were raised over the levels of emissions of nitrous oxide, which is 296 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Scientists found that the use of biofuels released twice as much as nitrous oxide as previously realised.
So, the whole biofuel business appears to be worse than the disease, since most US biofuel is from corn, while most EU biofuel is from rapeseed.
Dr Dave Reay, of the University of Edinburgh, used the findings to calculate that with the US Senate aiming to increase maize ethanol production sevenfold by 2022, greenhouse gas emissions from transport will rise by 6 per cent.
This has led scientists to call for greater scrutiny of alternatives to fossil fuels. Might one also hope that it would lead to greater scrutiny of the convoluted computer models behind the global warming stampede itself? Don’t, so to speak, hold your breath.
Ethanol is a gas
IHT has a good editorial on the ethanol nonsense, citing escalating grain prices that are causing economic and politic stress around the world. And the politics and pork of it drives the policy, with governments trying to favor their own producers. Add to that the environmental costs of raising the grain and processing it, and you get marginal benefits at enormous cost:
The economics of corn ethanol have never made much sense. Rather than importing cheap Brazilian ethanol made from sugar cane, the United States slaps a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on ethanol from Brazil. Then the government provides a tax break of 51 cents a gallon to American ethanol producers - on top of the generous subsidies that corn growers already receive under the farm program.
Corn-based ethanol also requires a lot of land. An OECD report two years ago suggested that replacing 10 percent of America’s motor fuel with biofuels would require about a third of the total cropland devoted to cereals, oilseeds and sugar crops.
Meanwhile, the environmental benefits are modest. A study published last year by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, estimated that after accounting for the energy used to grow the corn and turn it into ethanol, corn ethanol lowers emissions of greenhouse gases by only 13 percent.
Oil, dictatorships & terror
Almost all money we spend on foreign oil goes to subsidize ideologues and dictators ranging from Saudi Arabia to Venezuela. I’ve wondered why this isn’t more of an issue in our politics and why we haven’t launched a Manhattan project for alternative fuels or advanced carburetors.
Andres Oppenheimer has a piece in the Miami Herald on Chavez’ power grab in Venezuela, including some thoughts on how it might be successfully opposed. He finishes with an appeal for energy independence:
The United States could do more than anybody to stop Chávez’s megalomania if it stopped subsidizing it. Indeed, the United States is spending $34 billion a year on oil imports from Venezuela.
The White House should impose a $2 a gallon tax on U.S. gasoline imports from petro dictatorships around the world, or a 50 percent tax on Hummers and other needlessly gigantic SUVs, or demand Detroit carmakers double the fuel efficiency of American cars.
Reducing America’s foreign oil addiction should be the single most important issue in the 2008 presidential election. In addition to being the most effective U.S. weapon against Middle Eastern countries that support terrorism, it would weaken oil-rich autocrats like Chávez, and would help reduce global warming.
Cate, your greasy hair ain’t helpin things
Cate Blanchet is no longer washing her hair. I don’t even know who she is. Googling her, I realize I saw her in the Lord of the Rings films, and that she has a habit of flying private jets around the world.
“It’s great to see my children [Cate, you have children? You selfish anthropocentric slut!] engaged in these things, like when you put the water on when you put the toothbrush under the tap, you turn it off the minute you take it out and you don’t let the water run.”
The Australian star has also limited her car use and has switched her household power supply to green power.
She must be so brainwashed with the “think globally, act locally” cliché that she actually thinks the little things matter. They don’t. I know it is reassuring to lie to yourself that you can make a difference on the margins. You can’t.
Global warming may be caused by variations in the sun’s energy, and if so, good luck with that. If it is anthropogenic, it can only be addressed through enormous technological breakthroughs in electricity and in car engines. Token gestures toward wind or solar power aint gonna cut it. We’re talking massive changes in economies of scale. And we aren’t even close technologically. Not even close.
Finally, once we make these tech breakthroughs, we need to transmit these technologies to developing countries.
Global warming, if it is man made, cannot be addressed one greasy head at a time.
Fits of enthusiasm
So Tony Blair, in a fit of enthusiasm, signed an agreement to make the UK 20% dependent on renewable energies–wind, solar, and heaven knows what–by 2020. But now the UK currently stands at 2%, and thinks it would be a very tough to get to 9%. Environmentalists don’t think this is funny.
In contrast to the government’s claims to be leading the world on climate change, officials within the former Department of Trade and Industry have admitted that under current policies Britain would miss the EU’s 2020 target of 20% energy from renewables by a long way. And their suggestion that “statistical interpretations of the target” be used rather than new ways to reach it has infuriated environmentalists.
This is par for the course, however, as the much touted Kyoto treaty has met a similar fate in terms of matching words with deeds.
The whole SNAFU kind of brings into focus the laughability of expecting developing nations in Africa or Asia to rise to Western standards using renewables.
Help! Russia has claimed my cellar
Hilarious exchange in the Daily Telegraph, an echo of the Onion headline, “Angelina Jolie Wants to Adopt Your Baby”:
Dear Sirs, When I went down to the cellar of my property at 4 Eustace Gardens to check my electricity meter today, I discovered that a Russian flag had been planted there. I am wondering if this has any connection with the Russian flag recently planted on the ocean floor beneath the North Pole. It could be that Eustace Gardens is part of a Russian master-plan for exploiting minerals or for launching a missile attack. What is the council going to do about it? Yours faithfully, R. P. Stringer.
Dear Mr Stringer, Following receipt of your letter, this is to inform you that it has been necessary to move your house to a higher council tax band, on the grounds that a) it has valuable mineral deposits underneath it, or b) that it is clearly highly prized by the Russian government. Please complete the enclosed form, stating the height of the flagpole in your cellar, as this raises planning permission issues.
The correspondence continues. Read the whole thing.
What a gas
I’m probably not supposed to be amused by this, but Canada is now getting into the arctic oil and gas gambit, facing off against the Russians. Denmark is making a few squeaks as well. What really cracks me up is that all of this is made possible by the melting of the polar ice cap and higher hydrocarbon prices.
According to some estimates, the Arctic contains billions of tonnes of gas and oil deposits, which could become more accessible as the ice cap that cover them begins to melt. This is happening just as their exploitation becomes more economically viable because of high hydrocarbon prices.
So, connecting the dots, we see that global warming, presumably caused by burning carbon fuels, is going to make it possible to recover huge supplies of carbon fuels from the region, and already the dogs are growling over the slab of meat.
The irony brings home the pointlessness of the odd little self-indulgent rituals like turning off the lights of London or Sidney for a couple of hours, or burning biodiesel on film sets.
Fox aims fuzzy toy blunderbuss at carbon
Fox’s 24 is going to do some kind of carbon thingamajig that is supposed to stop global warming, or at least put the fear of God into it. The article goes on at length trying to explain how this generator will run 5% biodiesel–and maybe more!–and this electric bill will be diverted to that windfarm or something. Here’s an excerpt, with short incredulous interjections from me:
The extent to which the plan will reduce the show’s imprint on Earth is difficult to calculate [duh], but the measures certainly won’t hurt [duh]; more shows and films aiming to reduce their carbon footprints could have a considerable impact [huh?]. Some productions before “24″ were green — films such as “Syriana” and “An Inconvenient Truth” were carbon-neutral [whah?] …
Three thoughts:
1) If Rupert Murdoch is the devil, why is Fox bending over to be so frickin angelic? What’s the fun of being a demon if you let people do this stuff behind your back?
2) This whole stunt is a hopeless load of transparent guano. Anyone who can pretend to follow the maze of explanations to how any of this matters could probably also explain the carbon neutrality of Al Gore’s pool house.
3) Hollywood is so Hollywood-centric it actually think that what it does in a handful of movies has a discernible impact. If carbon is a problem, the answers lie with China, India and Africa. When you figure that one out, send us a memo, but spare us the gas on your biodiesel movie sets.
Still burned about that Alaska deal
Russia wants the North Pole, and is going to strange contortions to plant a Russian flag on the sea bed there. It sounds laughable at face value, but I guess there are some serious oil and gas deposits at stake, and they are still feeling pretty burned about selling Alaska to the U.S.
Maybe someone should tell them that you can’t claim a seabed. By definition, they are in international waters. I guess the logical extension of this will be when Portugal claims the Atlantic ocean and tries to hustle everyone else’s fishing boats out of it?
It’s the kind of gambit that only works if you talk really fast and keep their eyes off your hands. Is the rest of the world that dumb?
