There is no shortage of food in the world, and certainly no shortage of farmers willing to provide double the food they currently do, if only people will pay for that food what their parents paid for it.
And the shortage of people in the world willing to pay what it costs to grow food is diminishing every year, as free markets in countries like India and China lift billions of people out of starvation and into middle-class lifestyles.
We can easily have both a well-fed world and biofuels – just ask the farmers.
[quote=“Gregr, post:19, topic:27341”]
that their production uses more energy than is given when used (burnt)
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Now if that were true, there would not be a biofuels industry. And my cottage-industry production gives the lie to that as well, producing ethanol for my ageing Subaru for a fraction of the cost of petrol.
[quote=“Gregr, post:19, topic:27341”]
land area required is far greater for a comparable amount of energy than that required for solar or wind
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It’s not just about the land area required, but about the larger capital inputs into building solar and wind farms, not to mention the monumentally-huge capital investment in replacing the world’s entire stock of Infernal Combustion Engined Vehicles, and the world’s entire network of petrol/diesel distribution chains, with EVs and charging outlets.
Once we have decarbonised all those existing uses for fossil fuels which can’t be taken out of the climate change equation by using biofuels, then we can start to carpet biofuel-feedstock-producing land with PVs and windmills.
[quote=“Gregr, post:19, topic:27341”]
does nothing to address the problem emissions of CO2 into the atmospere
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It’s actually EVs that do nothing except add a lot more embedded emissions of CO₂ (and other greenhouse gases) to the atmosphere. The electricity they use is either produced from burning fossil fuels if the vehicles are being charged from the main grids in almost all of the cities of the world, or if it is coming from renewable electricity, those renewable watts would otherwise be replacing fossil-fuel watts elsewhere in the grid (including renewable watts from rooftop solar, at least on houses/offices/businesses connected to the grid).
Biofuels, on the other hand, lock up more carbon drawn out of the atmosphere in growing the feedstock than is released in burning the fuel, so they are better than zero-emissions.
The world’s tropical forests have been clear-felled for all of my long lifetime, mostly to export timber to rich countries like Australia.
What’s worse, Australia has happily clear-felled its own subtropical publicly-owned forests, just to turn into woodchips to export to private multinational paper manufacturers.
We will not protect rainforests by removing the excuse of biofuel production for those who want to get at that valuable timber – indeed, pretending we are doing something to protect the world’s rainforests by helping out the Fossil Fools is a level of delusion remarkable even amongst people who pretend to care about the planet (when their real motives lie in justifying revolutionary socialism).
In that many will take offence.
It’s the better informed who value the biodiversity of the planet over crude agricultural exploitation, regardless of the excuses.
What does the increasing rate of adoption of technologies for transportable energy using battery or hydrogen technology achieve? It reduces fossil fuel use and the incentive for new agricultural clearing for biofuel crop production.
Biofuel production in Australia is decreasing. It is currently not sustainable without government support. The industry enjoys support at Commonwealth level through duties and taxes on imported product, as well as a substantial discount of the fuel excise rates applied to bio ethanol and bio diesel fuel. Biofuel production arguably has been better subsidised and supported than the BEV alternative, and has failed to achieve significant increases in investment or uptake.
It’s also true Australia remains heavily reliant on coal, petroleum products and natural gas.
Of all fuels diesel according to the Govt contributes the greatest portion of final energy consumption. Have the current priorities for the development or uptake of alternate fuels been well thought out if the ‘dirty’ diesel fleet is not the first priority? There is a substantive argument that alternate lower carbon energy solutions should prioritise diesel replacement. A strong argument to reserve all biofuel production exclusively for diesel replacement.
At this point in time that is correct, but producing biofuels which compete directly with food the status quo will change. See the above reports from the FAI and CSIRO, plus others about biofuels and food security.
I am not sure where you get this information from, but it isn’t correct. Field production is currently at its limits. It is currently impossible to double farm production - if it was, farmers would be doing it to make more money and fill production deficits when they occur. Neither occur as it is not possible.
There might be individual cases where a farm can increase outputs through installing irrigation, additional land clearing or other inputs, but, this isn’t a norm. As indicated above resources are limited and water or other inputs can’t magically appear where they are needed to potentially increase production.
As indicated earlier, this is incorrect. It is worth reading reports of experts in the field, some which I posted earlier.
The only question I ask is, if farm production could be doubled, why haven’t farmers being doing this to increase Australian farm production and increase their revenues/incomes? Australia has some of the most efficient farms in the world and any increased production could easily be sold (cost and quality advantage over many other counties). The reason is it is impossible.
I wish biofuels were the utopian solution, but, it can’t be if we want to continue feeding the world’s population, as its competition will have devastating impacts if fossil fuels are replaced by biofuels
I’m touched that you believe the experts are UN bureaucrats and academics rather than actual farmers, like me. It’s like meeting someone who still believes in the Easter Bunny.
I could demolish every line in those so-called reports, but life is too short.
Especially when you continue to quote just half of the things I say, in order to misrepresent my position – speak to any farmer and they will tell you they can double their production IF AND ONLY IF you will pay the price your parents paid for the food they produce, rather than the 50% of that price currently on offer.
It is principally the 50% decline (in real terms) in the price of food over each generation that has resulted in all those billions of hectares of land around the world that used to grow food and now no longer does so.
There is no shortage of food, there is no shortage of arable land, there is only a shortage of people willing to pay what it costs to grow food.
Once again I reiterate that I am entirely in favour of EVs in the long-term, once we have a surplus of renewable electricity beyond decarbonising all those other industries (and domestic uses) which must take priority if we are to have any chance of keeping global warming below 2° above preindustrial levels, let alone below 1.5°.
Adopting EV technologies now is counter-productive, and (paradoxically) does NOT reduce fossil-fuel use, because the electricity used to charge their batteries or to produce green hydrogen either comes from fossil-fuel-fired power stations or is renewable electricity that would otherwise be replacing electricity from fossil-fuel-fired power stations.
And then there are the embedded emissions in those new vehicles and in the new infrastructure needed to support them, so adopting EVs now is actually bad for the climate (and for biodiversity, which is under greater threat from man-made climate change than even from the reckless destruction of our rainforests).
Biofuel production is declining because biofuel demand is declining because people like you are out there helping the fossil-fuel industry discredit it by repeating their talking points.
I would have expected consumer advocates to be more sceptical, but then again, I used to be a farmer.
Your arguments seem to reflect the outlook and confidence of an infantry soldier who is confident he knows more about the war than the generals.
Sometimes academics and experts, that you are apparently dismissive of, know something an individual farmer doesn’t. They deserve respect whether or not you personally agree with them.
Are you discounting those unable to pay?
It is not to convince others, it is to put information on the table for others to consider .As this topic seems to have bogged down I am pausing in the expectation some new thoughts may be presented about bio or other fuels.
As I have confessed elsewhere, I have never seen the draft report prepared by the CSIRO in 1975 and destroyed in 1976 on the orders of the new government.
I heard about it at the time from friends who worked at the CSIRO, and I followed as best a non-scientist can whatever appeared in magazines like Science and Scientific American about biofuels, and when the Internet came along, to scientific papers obtainable either without charge or as part of my $50-a-year subscription to an aggregator.
Then in the 1990s I happened to be at the CSIRO, coincidentally helping a couple of people with their Internet browser problems (among other things), and in one office I happened across an ancient paper copy of what these days we would call the “Executive Summary” of the draft report.
Now while I think I have done justice to what I remember of that summary, in this post and in many like it since that surreptitious read, it is true that the summary did not have the numbers you wish to be shown.
Until yesterday, I had only met a single scientist who said they had read the full report, and that was a friend of a Facebook Friend on social media. Their (distant) memory was of a lengthy report they said was short on any real science and long on what they called “speculation”.
Yesterday I met an 80-something former CSIRO scientist who also remembered reading the original draft report, and indeed of having the same response to it which I had had to what I was told about it by other CSIRO scientists at the time: this report purported to be about energy security but it was really about a partial solution to the problem of dangerous man-made climate change.
She did however tell me that her late husband, who was also a CSIRO scientist at the time, had a different take, seeing the report as being able to be read by politicians of any stripe as supporting whatever view they took of Australia’s transport sector, and as applicable to whatever problem for which they sought a solution or sought to disparage solutions advanced by their political opponents.
This is an excellent point, and I confess that short of the kind of conspiracy theory that will make me sound even more nutty than I do already, I really have no answer to it.
What is the relevance of that? If biofuel was a serious contender to reduce emissions better than EVs there would dozens, if not hundreds of papers, explaining it and providing solid evidence. It would seem that you have never looked for these or have looked and not found them.
If biofuel was a serious option we would have growers and manufacturers lobbying and fund-raising to set up major pilot studies. Instead you regret that one report is somehow missing.
Now 1975 was a very long time ago. The worry about ‘peak oil’ based on the Hubbert model proved to be very wrong, but at the time no doubt prompted thought about finding ways to produce like for like replacements for fossil based liquid fuels for transport.
Also, electricity generation using solar and wind were in their very early stages. Solar generation and electricity storage technology has advanced hugely to the point where there is just nothing that can compete with them on a cost of energy produced basis, and electricity storage is available easily in transport systems.
Finally, in 1975, the climate change risk due CO2 atmosphere increases by burning carbon based fuels (and that includes biofuels) was a potential future problem. Today, the problem is here and real.
As for the CSIRO, it puts out lots of reports all the time on lots of different areas. Fascinating that the one report from many years ago that can support your biofuel conjectures has gone missing. I suspect it exists, but doesn’t say what you would like it to say. Confirmation bias being what it is.
Hi all, I have transferred the discussion on biofuels to a new thread so we can focus specifically on this subject. We appreciate all the thoughts being shared and also the efforts to reference or add reasoning to back up any differing positions. Friendly reminder to pay close attention to our forum guidelines and also to be ready to agree to disagree.
