Bio-fuels have a terrible EROEI. It's like going from eating the equivalent weight of steak to the equivalent weight in carrots, you can only lose weight on such a diet.
Global warming
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Bio-fuels have a terrible EROEI. It's like going from eating the equivalent weight of steak to the equivalent weight in carrots, you can only lose weight on such a diet.
Humans are removing carbon from the ground and putting it into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. I imagine the only comparable natural event would be widespread volcanic activity, but we haven't experienced that recently, so . . . .
It may be extremely efficient, but too bad they're harvesting/slashing and burning rainforest which can never be replaced, due to the ground becoming exhausted of nutrients in a couple growing seasons in order to fuel their production of sugar cane, so... It's not sustainable, clearly, nor is it a model of production for other countries to adopt either.
Actually it isn't as bad as Grall implies, but there is obviously a limit as far as how much land area we can use, and cutting more forest for more land does have consequences. Basically we need more fuel efficient vehicles anyway. Also the reason it is so efficient there is cheap labor. If you have machines doing more of the work then the energy efficiency drops.
That's only corn ethanol. Other biofuels are not nearly so wasteful. Sugar ethanol is pretty decent, for example, and Brazil supplies a good fraction of their fuel needs while using only a small percentage of their cropland for its production. Various sorts of biodiesel are also halfway decent.
But the real power comes from algae-based biofuels.
Right, CO2 in particular.
Blazkowicz
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sugar cane ethanol sure is better, as with other forms of solar energy latitudes have a great impact.
now you have the same issues as with all agricultural projects in the 3rd world, "international investments" which look like neocolonial enterprises. land is up for grabs, fine but local population and their needs are out of the pictures, so is the environment in the end.
there ought to be better international governance, we suffer the ubiquitous dogmas of deregulation and "investment" everywhere instead.
no battle against global warming can be won until we take care of the "global" politics and economics issues. (waging war in a certain african country so it gets the IMF treatment goes the way of supporting the old dogmas for instance)
now you have the same issues as with all agricultural projects in the 3rd world, "international investments" which look like neocolonial enterprises. land is up for grabs, fine but local population and their needs are out of the pictures, so is the environment in the end.
there ought to be better international governance, we suffer the ubiquitous dogmas of deregulation and "investment" everywhere instead.
no battle against global warming can be won until we take care of the "global" politics and economics issues. (waging war in a certain african country so it gets the IMF treatment goes the way of supporting the old dogmas for instance)
Yes, international trade provides some series difficulties in terms of regulations of all sorts.
The most obvious way forward, to me, is to have an agreement among the nations that have decent environmental standards to incorporate the costs of environmental damage into all products, whether they are domestic or imported. This would remove the incentive for a "race to the bottom" in terms of environmental regulation.
It'd be easier to get them to agree on world peace and complete disarmament. You can't even get half the countries to agree to try to lower pollution at all and almost all of the ones that do agree miss targets by miles or just keep moving the goalposts.
Yes, well, obviously we need a sea change in politics to remove the influence of the rich. Hopefully the OWS protests will grow and spread, to the point where positive changed can genuinely be forced.
24C temperature difference year-over-year on the same day in Kiruna, Sweden. The ground is bare, flowers are blooming, believing it's spring-time and the warm weather is expected to persist for another two weeks...well into december.
I'm sure it's all normal.
May I mention that this is ~200km due north of the arctic circle...?
I'm sure it's all normal.
May I mention that this is ~200km due north of the arctic circle...?
Well, the denialists seem to have abandoned their "The world is not warming, so we shouldn't do anything!" position, and replaced it with "Well, the world is warming but it's not caused by human activities, so we shouldn't do anything!". This should result in another decade of arguments, after which they will surely change their position to "Well, the world is warming and man has had a part in it, but it's too late so we shouldn't do anything!"
It's just a typical delay tactic.
It's just a typical delay tactic.
Except in reality it's too expensive to keep burning fossil fuels! The additional negative effects of fossil fuels, such as air pollution, have enough negative impact on health that they far outstrip alternative energy in cost.
Only hippies count those costs....
so obviously, fossil fuels are incredibly cheap and replacing them will kill jobs.I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned "Climategate II", the release of more of the stolen messages from the CRU hack back in 2009. Released shortly before the talks in Durban - what a surprise, eh?
Of course, there isn't really anything worth commenting about in them because there is a limit to the amount of misrepresentation the denialists can manage to winkle out of the messages. The usual suspects are doing their utmost to kick up a fuss, of course...
Of course, there isn't really anything worth commenting about in them because there is a limit to the amount of misrepresentation the denialists can manage to winkle out of the messages. The usual suspects are doing their utmost to kick up a fuss, of course...
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