Biofuels..... and the number of people dying because of bio-fuels is? 5

Follow the link here to the article "Meals per gallon".

http://www.actionaid.org.uk/102268/biofuels_and_hunger.html

This is an article about how many people will die because of biofuels production and the new EU targets.

I have no idea how good their figures are but there is a tendency in the AGW camp to report half the situation and this may be the opther half or it may be tainted with the same tendency to inflate.

For example, the AGW they want to tell about how many extra deaths will be caused by hotter summers but not how many lives will be saved by warmer winters because warmer is bad for us they say (otherwise, who cares if we are warming up?).

So OK, we know about the higher cost of food but while we can afford it we neglect that many of those in poorer countries cannot. Worse, many are being displaced from their own land where they used to grow food crops by the big companies.
It says.
Where is the truth?

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[moltenmetal]

Without the presumption of AGW due to CO2 emissions, biofuels make precious little sense, which is why in a pre-AGW world they saw so little intensive use in the developed world. So any conversation abou the topic takes that as a given.

Do food-derived biofuels take food off the table? Anything which increases food prices takes food off the tables of the poor in theory. Increased food prices put food ON the table of farmers, and on the tables of all the parasites between the farmer and the consumer as well. But unlike 100 years ago, farmers make up a small fraction of the population in the developed world.

If your concern is the welfare of the poor, it's ridiculous and inefficient to tackle hunger by depressing the prices of food for everyone.

If the AGW predictions come true, the poor of the world will be the biggest losers.

Let's not forget that although tarrifs on manufactured goods are becoming a thing of the past, most of the developed world still maintain STEEP agricultural trade barriers against the poorest nations. Farmers have surprisingly strong lobbying power with the governments of developed nations.

 

[cranky108]

During WWII people were encuraged to grow food in there back yard, to so called help the war. Today very few people do that, so in effect, more crop land is available. Let alone the fact that they still pay farmers to keep land out of production.

So there is no real good reason that food prices should increase in the long term.

Also the fact that growing plants is not that difficult, and so many people don't, leads me to believe that so many of the so called poor in this country, are actually just free loaders who really deserve to go hungry.

 

[jmw]

Too many assumptions.
High food prices don't necessarily help poor farmers.
Poor farmers can't take risks.
In the past what has happened is that rich farmers take chances, switch production and benefit and the poor farmers get worse off.
There are lots of problems documented with almost every approach to "solving" the problems of the poor.
In this case no one is even attempting to make food or bio fuel production a vehicle with which to address poor farmer's problems, indeed, in the report it seems that big business is trying to take over farming directly.

Nothing is going to accidentally help poor farmers, there will be no inadvertent collateral benefits. How can there be when even schemes to try and help them so often fall down because of misconceptions.

One thing we can be pretty sure of is that if something can go bad it will go bad. There may be fewer farmers in developed countries but in other countries?
Nice to try and think this is going to do some good but I seriously doubt it. Still, if it helps people sleep at night....

Then we have that dreaded uncertainty principal again.
Sorry, no thanks.

The real issue is that warmer weather, however caused is actually beneficial.
The real comment is
"Without the presumption of AGW due to CO2 emissions, biofuels make precious little sense,...."
Even if we allowed that assumption, they don't make that much sense either.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[KENAT]

Yep, for all the urban poor that live in apartments with no gardens... growing their own food is clearly the answer cranky.

I'm not sure it's the poor of 'this country' that would be most friendly. More likely those in poorer nations that live at a subsistence level - but as they don't live in 'this country' who gives a damn right.

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[btrueblood]

"Without the presumption of AGW due to CO2 emissions, biofuels make precious little sense"

Um, or the presumption of peak oil, and an ever spiralling increase in cost of fossil fuels.

 

[YoungTurk]

Considering American economic dependence on cheap liquid fuel and the variety of risk factors to our imported fuel supply, biofuel technology development is a wise investment. It may not ever be cheaper than pumping crude, but can we pump enough crude locally to keep going without tankers rolling in daily? If global warming concerns drive biofuel tech investment and shore up economic and natioal security along the way, no objection here.

Celluosic ethanol technology could be a liquid fuel game changer, but will require continued investment streams to mature to industrial scale.

Food concerns are overstated and overblown, likely with corporate-political intent.

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/market_news/article.jsp?content=D9H6Q3O80

I'd rather spend my money enriching local farmers than middle east royalty when I fill up.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9H4RGGO0.htm

My weekends are already bio-ethanol fueled; why not my workdays too?

 

[moltenmetal]

"If global warming concerns drive biofuel tech investment and shore up economic and natioal security along the way, no objection here."

That's a statement we can agree on, except that tech investment without a market pay-off at the end of the rainbow is merely a distraction.

Even if you throw economics totally aside, cellulosic biofuels will never replace our current levels of liquid fuels consumption, much less will they account for the future growth in that consumption which will occur unless we alter the market. The "Without Hot Air" guy demonstrates that with a few easy, difficult to dispute half-order of magnitude calcs, based on what we use and how much biomass we could possibly grow- forgetting about food entirely.

If we even tried to reach such high levels of cellulosic fuel production, we'd rapidly discover that we were not harvesting the biomass at anything approximating a truly sustainable rate.

The market driving force has to come FIRST. The investment will follow. Until there is a price signal to deter fossil fuels consumption and to fund true alternatives, it's all just talk and gambling.

 

[cranky108]

For the urban poor that live in apartments, they have a different problem. Living in an urban area usually costs more just to be there, and that's there problem (many smaller towns have much more affordable housing).

In many places around the world where poorer nations that live at a subsistence level, a good part of the problem is there inefficent, or corrupt goverments.

Often the problems are the people themselves, they don't want to change.

In my case I worry so much about change, but about who is expected to pay for it. And more true of really dumb ideas.

 

[jenofstructures]

how about developing a biofuel from Banana trees. Since banana can be grown even in our backyards, and besides when you harvest the fruits, it will not bear another one....

corn and many plants can give biofuels but food is also essential to us. If they use these crops, chances on price increase is possible



Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree. engineers creates wonderful buildings, but only God can creates wonderful minds

 

[cranky108]

There is a biofuel made from banana trees. It's called wood.

Although, if you can grow banana trees, you probally can also grow sugar cane, which has a much higher sugar content, as well as a wood like byproduct.

 

[jenofstructures]

they already produced biofuels from sugar cane but because of it, prices of sugar increased. Also, they need more land to mass produce the sugar cane unlike the banana trees that can be easily grown anywhere (if your in a tropical country).

Banana only needs months to grow in to a full tree and once it bear fruits, it dont have any use anymore while sugar is one of our basic commodities

Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree. engineers creates wonderful buildings, but only God can creates wonderful minds

 

[SnTMan]

Speaking to the "Meals Per Gallon" article, it also shows again the disadvanages of living where rule of law and property rights are weak or don't exist.

 

[cranky108]

There are other crops that produce sugar sutable for making ethonol, and of the several there should be ones that can grow in less perfect conditions.

So what ever happened to sugar beets?

And don't the Amish still use horses to till the lands?
It would seem using tractors really isen't required. Just people who can think, and work out side the box.

It's just simply amazing how lazy we have become.

 

[jmw]

Or ride on lawn mowers, race cars, snowmobiles, chain saws, go karts, electric screwdrivers...?

On the list of the most useless gifts given is the electric carving knife.
We can do without that, sandwich toasters, George Foreman grills.... any others for this list?

PS. Please note that since most of these don't actually get used, all we will do is have the satsifaction of binning them. There is a possibility that we can push these of the shelves at Xmass and save the carbon consumed in their production.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[ewh]

I disagree regarding the electric carving knife... having and knowing many who suffer from various flavors of arthritis, I use and appreciate it.

As far as the Foreman grills, they're great! They collect all of that delicious "au jus" to dip your bread into!

I once overheard a young engineer remark how useless a spray nozzle on the kitchen sink faucet was... just because he hadn't found a good use didn't mean that there weren't any, and I use mine every day.

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[YoungTurk]

cranky - you've earned your handle once again

I'd be careful about calling farmers lazy because they use mechanized processes; most I know are far from lazy. The level of mechanization is really a question of optimization which should be apparent to an engineer(unless it is a question of religion as is the case with the amish). I'd think that even if 100% of fuel to power the tractors was extracted from the crops they harvested, it would still be more efficient to use them. Although, as with most things, there would be a greater value placed on efficiency if the fuel/energy cost were greater.

I believe sugar beets have a similar explanation. They cannot compete with sugar cane in the sugar marketplace for a variety of factors including labor cost and yield / acre / growing season. Grains, especially corn and soy, produce better financial returns for the average midwestern farmer and so they get grown. This of course, again, is do in part to subsidies.

There is a great documentary about midwestern agribusiness and farming called "King Corn". Here is a link discussing some of the facts the movie covers and how they relate to food prices and biofuel.

http://www.nffc.net/Learn/Fact Sheets/King Corn Fact Sheet.pdf

There is indeed something rotten in the agribusiness world, but whether biofuels are a symptom or a solution depends on which biofuel and whether you agree with agribusiness subsidies in perpetuity or short term.

 

[cranky108]

I actually don't have an issue with farmers, or ethonol. I do have an issue with the premise that people are dying because of ethonol.

There are options, other than the triditional methods or crops. So if the premise is true that people are dying because of ethonol, I believe it isen't because of ethonol production. It must be because of lazeness of people, or over restriction of goverment. (I conceed that lack of knoledge is also possible).

This is not to say we can't improve things. Present farming is an example. There is a book writen by an engineer called square foot gardening, which shows that more intence (land efficent) crop growth is possible.