[Newsbot]

Title: Biofuels do more harm than good, UN warns
Category: Environmental
Posted By: N_Fiddledog
Date: 2014-03-26 06:29:09

[Canadian_Mind]

Good thing they found this out. Now, start producing fuel out of leftover mcdonalds fryer fat instead.

[DrCaleb]

I've said for years that food should not be fuel. You can't eat Thor's metal!

[andyt]

Funny, if I remember right, biofuels were suggested as one of the solutions to peak oil and a dropoff in food production.

You can make biofuel out of wood waste. We're not termites, we don't eat that. But to use oil to grow crops to make fuel to replace oil doesn't seem right.

[ShepherdsDog]

Farm machinery needs to be retooled to use more bio-diesel and ethanol based fuels. This is more about farmers switching to corn for bio fuels, because it`s more lucrative than the cheaper cereal grains we send to areas that have limited access to finite resources.....and who then continue to breed like flies keeping the population on the brink of famine. Reality is cold.

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

Funny, if I remember right, biofuels were suggested as one of the solutions to peak oil and a dropoff in food production.

You can make biofuel out of wood waste. We're not termites, we don't eat that. But to use oil to grow crops to make fuel to replace oil doesn't seem right.

Food waste, switchgrass, corn husks . . .all of those can be made into ethanol. But I never saw the savings in having to use oil (mostly diesel) to harvest it all. That and increasing our use of potash as fertilizer to produce fuel seems even more of a waste. Nitrogen we can suck out of the air thanks to a smart German chemist, but Potash and Phosphates are even more limited than oil!

Robbing Peter to pay Paul for something that is needed by every living organism! Not smart.

[andyt]

We also use oil to harvest oil. It's gone down from using one barrel to get 20 to using one barrel to get 5. That's the idea behind peak oil - there will still be oil in the ground, but it will take more energy than it gives to extract it.

Wood waste doesn't require fertilizer. Doubt if there's enough wood waste generated to make a dent in our thirst for oil tho.

[DrCaleb]

andyt andyt:

We also use oil to harvest oil. It's gone down from using one barrel to get 20 to using one barrel to get 5.

I've read estimates that it takes 1.3 gallons of oil to make 1 gallon of corn ethanol. Poor tradeoff, in my estimation.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/al ... ls/4237539

Same sort of deal with food. It takes something like 20 calories of vegetables to make 1 calorie of Chicken. Why not just eat the vegetables instead of farming the chicken?

[andyt]

Because chicken tastes better than only veges. Of course as you go up the trophic pyramid you're going to have less efficiency.

There are instances of course where you do want to use animals. Tibetans east Yak meat even tho they're Buddhists because the Yaks turn grass into a food usable by humans. Pigs can eat all sorts of scraps we wouldn't. So our future might hold much less meat production as we run short of oil, there will probalby always be some. At least the 1% will still get their steaks.

[DrCaleb]

I'm not against meat, by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just saying from an efficiency standpoint, it's better to eat the veg than feed it to animals and eat the animals.

Animals taste better when they graze anyhow. Chickens can eat a shitton of bugs too!

[martin14]

Won't change anytime soon, the US has way too much money invested in it now.

[andyt]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

I'm not against meat, by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just saying from an efficiency standpoint, it's better to eat the veg than feed it to animals and eat the animals.

Animals taste better when they graze anyhow. Chickens can eat a shitton of bugs too!

Yep. The grassfed beef in Australia and New Zealand is delicious. More natural forms of meat production will survive, I think, but the mass production will end when we reach limits of oil vs food. May already be doing so. I believe grain production is down in the world

[ShepherdsDog]

We developed a taste for meat in our diet when we didn`t have to produce its feed....we just harvested it from the wild. Besides, wild game and fish are healthier...and tastier. Grain is our bane

[Jabberwalker]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

I've said for years that food should not be fuel. You can't eat Thor's metal!

It puts us in the weird, futuristic position of having to compete with our machines for our sustenance.

[BRAH]

I was an investor with Bedford Biofuels that had promise but because of corruption and other issues it failed, uggh lesson learned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Biofuels