Finally, a reality check for the biodiesel true believers...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/sc...678657&ei=5070


-mike

 

Sound like this study was from the anti-bio police. Now how much emissions is produced to make Dino diesel compared to bio diesel? My bio diesel supplier buys only American grown soy and delivers it with bio diesel in his truck. I think it is sad that people don't want whats good for them or for their children.

 

carbon dioxide is listed as a greenhouse gas = bad for earth

Tree huggers and extreme environmentalists produce carbon dioxide when they breathe

"Reduction" of these could lower greenhouse gasses.

Any volunteers to stop breathing?....Bueller?.....Bueller?

 

maby the studys were done by arabs

 

The article is heavily laced with propaganda from the conservationista factions in the scientific community, citing The Nature Conservancy as one of the sources is a dead giveaway.

 

It's not only Bio-Fuels that have carbon based fuels used in their production...they just seem to get the black eye because some have "beat the drum" over how great they are. Which they are, just some are willing preach "hate & doom" since the world is coming to an end.

 

I would like to add, after "skiming" over that article, that it sounds to me like some people in the big oil industry are trying to swing people away from bio and back to dino.... we all no that bio and dino give off bad gasses... the reality is firstly which one is cheaper and which one is the lesser of 2 evils. i dont believe there has been nearly enough time or true un-biast research to trully tell which one is worse then the other.. as for myself... once my "source" of bio is up and running... i will be able to get 3 tanks of bio for what it would cost me for 1 tank of dino... let me see.... ummm ya.... i think ill be switching to bio AS SOON AND FRIG'N POSSIBLE....

just my 2 cents and sound bite...
JoryLee

 

You read past New York Times????????????

 

yes i did. I still believe that its big oil trying to sway people to stay away from bio... with that.. if bio was so bad.. why would the goverment do everything there doing for the little people who make bio for self use...

 

I saw the name and just started reading responses. If I wanted to read propaganda reporting, I would have moved to USSR in the height of the cold war.

 

Re: Carbon based fuel

All repeat all fuel is carbon based.
The difference between Bio and Petro is that CO2 released by burning Bio was recently removed from the atmosphere so re-releasing it does not affect the overall levels of atmospereic CO2. Petro releases CO2 that was removed from the atmosphere several eons ago so it does increase atmospheric levels of CO2.

The statement that you must burn dino based fuels to produce Bio is false, why not use Bio fuels to produce it. After the first cycle it is a neutral situation.

Bio fuels can be produced from crops that are essentially weeds ie camelina BD and switchgrass for ethanol, thus greatly reducing the work done with farm equipment to produce the crop. They are esentially broadcast and harvest crops tillage is unnecessary.
There is a lot of effort being placed on developing algae that produces oil. This is promising because yields are very high per acre. I believe cities could build algae ponds and use treated waste water to fill them thus turning waste water treatment into a revenue source instead of an expense.
The next best yeild per acre crop is palm nut oil. There are large tracts of unused desert in the south west, where palms grow well, that are not suitable for growing other crops.
When you add the different oil source crops together and realize that they can utilize land not currently used for food production that arguement goes away also.

 

Re: Algae for BD production (noted above).

Interesting read here
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

 

Wonder what the report would look like if we examined oil exploration, refining, spills, emmisions, and contamination over the last 100yrs? This industry has been around for a very very long time and it's trying to compare/compete with a newly emerging source; and for this, the key argument is land use? I don't know about anyone else, but the article appeared to me as the rantings of spoiled child.

True, BioFuels is still in it's infancy. It is a growing, evolving being. Yes, I do believe that the answer to our fuel 'woes' is NOT in farm-crop producing biofuels, but in 'alternative sources' such as algae production. Why don't the oil companies that are earning 40 billion a year in PROFITS take that money and put it into biofuel research? Yes, some are, but it's just a small fraction of their total outlay. Can you even imagine what one years worth of profits from just one company (remember...40Billion!) would accomplish in the way of research and progress?

For that matter, as a side note, why don't oil companies invest that 40 billion of profit into increasing their current productions to help keep our costs down????? Hmmmm.

 

http://nbb.grassroots.com/08Member/Envir/
Just some facts for the unbelievers of Biodiesel.

 

I think a lot of peolple get the ethanol and bio mixed up. The thing with ethanol is that the extraction process is extremely complicated. If you look at a ethanol plant diagram and then compare it to a soy plant your reaction would be "whoaa."

I'm not harping on biofuels, we have been using soy diesel since the 80's. However, the amount of coal being burned for power (for ethanol plants mostly) has gone up drastically in the midwest.

New York Times.... blah... lol