Yeah, but it's still better.

It's also based on the efficiency of the conversion process, which would get better as more vehicles used and more research was poured into bio-fuels.

There is that grass they were working on that supposedly is yielding positive results.

If we put as much research into ethical fuel as defense, etc...

Either way, babies hurt.

So stop it people!

Help I'm a planet!

Stop with all the baby downloading!
 

Notice why this is true...

"clearing forests and grasslands to grow the crops releases vast amounts of carbon into the air"


They should take conventional food crop land or even the already deforested millions of acres of cattle lands in the amazon and grow biofuel crops on that land.

There needs to be a serious redistribution of food being grown. But also, we should be growing our food locally instead in huge farms.


This is people trying to get rich on the new market demand.

Who cares about the actually impact, it's still a money grab. Just because it might sound sustainable doesn't mean it always is.


There is a really good Slavoj Zizek talk on youtube called "Ecology without Nature"

(pt. 1)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3h4HHT1bt_A


Totally worth a listen/watch. He takes a bit of time to understand, but what a fucking philosopher. He's made some pretty funny comments about vegetarianism, but he's a funny guy.

I just saw this really great 30 min documentary interviewing some great thinkers like Zizek, Naomi Klein & Lovelock called "The Possibility of Hope" Also worth a gander.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=s_yDI-Wg0Tw
 

biodiesel has the potential to be a good transitional fuel... if done right, like local companies seem to be doing...

ethanol scares me though, aside from the deforestation and whatnot which is horrible... the emissions alone contain 1.5x the carbon of gas...

that being said... methane is 20x more effective of a greenhouse gas than carbon... cows and humans alike... stop farting
 

Gotta consider this too:
What are the biofuel crops fertilized with? Likely synthetic fertilizers, which are derived from fossil fuels. Without getting too deep into it, the crop is simply serving as a buffer between the fossil fuel, and the diesel engine. Fossil Fuel > Fertilizer > Biofuel Crop > Biodiesel. There is energy loss at each >.. You're better off burning diesel.. =(

-Will in Oly.
 

This is something that we've pretty much known for a while, but now we have the hard facts. There are two good reasons to keep biofuels around: first, we have a huge amount of used cooking oil that we can recycle into biodiesel, which IS economically and ecologically sound. Second, there is some promising research being done into specially engineered grass or algae that can produce ethanol much more efficiently.
 

live free or drive
 

I don't think there should be any emphasis on producing biofuels that are a result of land "converted" for that purpose. As someone said, used veggie oil is a great example of "waste" ingredients. We should be trying to use waste, not produce fuel from scratch. All that does is maintain the dependance on fuel oils, keep prices down,(bad imo) and slows the development of REAL technologies. I mean comon didnt anyone see back to the future?? The thing could travel through time on Freakin Coffie Grinds and empty beer cans!!!
 

From what I understand there's a huge opportunity to use alge as biofuel. These can be grown and harvested in current water treatment plants and wouldn't impact land used for growing crops.

Right now a huge threat to land for crops is corn. Huge amounts of farmers are growing industrial corn which is inedible.