More Ethanol Debate

[GTAHVIT]

Originally Posted by blaSSt

One thing ethanol is not is 'environmentally friendly' It is an environmental disaster.

I'm not worried about the V8 it will be a sweet package.

Originally Posted by Captain Awesome

+1,000,000,000

If you two are so sure about this; why don't you start a new thread and state your case? I'd also love to see why you believe this to be true.

In fairness, you may want to search this site before you just jump in on this one.

[Captain Awesome]

Originally Posted by gtahvit

If you two are so sure about this; why don't you start a new thread and state your case? I'd also love to see why you believe this to be true.

In fairness, you may want to search this site before you just jump in on this one.

I don't have to search this site to know that in south America where they already don't have enough farmland to feed themselves they are cutting down rainforests to grow grain crops to sell to the lucrative ethanol distilleries.

These are the same rainforests that are taking the carbon we make now out of the atmosphere.

These are the same rainforests that the environmentalists have been trying to protect all these years.

These are the same rainforests that they have to BURN to make room for the ethanol crops (reducing them to carbon and putting it into the air).

Oh, and by the way... the soil down there is so poor that they can only grow grains on it for a couple of years before it's useless and they have to move on to ANOTHER rainforest to grow ethanol on.

And don't forget that the rainforest plants are actually many times better at taking carbon out of the atmosphere than the crops that are grown for ethanol.

So what does ethanol contribute to?

1) Starving People
2) Extinct Plants and Animals
3) Large carbon emissions
4) Less efficiant carbon consumption

It's a lose-lose scenario.

Research is currently being done now to create bacteria that creates ethanol from waste, which can eliminate the above problems, and this is possibly the only saving grace for this dangerous fuel.

[Mr. Wyndham]

Originally Posted by Captain Awesome

for this dangerous fuel.

dun-dun-dunnnnnn


EDIT: The research is done. They're making the fuel now using bacteria, etc, and it's being ramped up in production as we speak. Brazil is a poor example, imo. And a terrible example to conclude a stigma for Ethanol from.

[Captain Awesome]

Originally Posted by Dragoneye

dun-dun-dunnnnnn

Don't get me started or else I'll have to give my lecture on why "squiggly lightbulbs" are bad too.

(LED's, on the other hand kick ass!)

[Captain Awesome]

Originally Posted by Dragoneye

dun-dun-dunnnnnn


The research is done. They're making the fuel now using bacteria, etc, and it's being ramped up in production as we speak. Brazil is a poor example, imo. And a terrible example to conclude a stigma for Ethanol from.

Nice unmarked edit, btw...

[Mr. Wyndham]

Originally Posted by Captain Awesome

Don't get me started or else I'll have to give my lecture on why "squiggly lightbulbs" are bad too.

(LED's, on the other hand kick ass!)

Oh I know why they're bad...believe me....I know. I just don't think of it as a massive problem like some do. I see more of a hiccup.

Originally Posted by Captain Awesome

Nice unmarked edit, btw...

Don't know what you're talking about..............

[Captain Awesome]

Originally Posted by Dragoneye

dun-dun-dunnnnnn
The research is done. They're making the fuel now using bacteria, etc, and it's being ramped up in production as we speak. Brazil is a poor example, imo. And a terrible example to conclude a stigma for Ethanol from.

I've seen no proof that production is ready for alternate production.

Brazil is an EXCELLENT choice for an example because they happen to get the MAJORITY of their energy from ethanol. Why wouldn't it be a SUPERB example?

The only stigma is that ethanol is the wonder-cure for all the energy problems.

Plus, even with 10% ethanol in my gas, I get noticibly WORSE mileage.

[Captain Awesome]

Apparently the decision has already been made. I'm wasting my time here trying to present alternative views. Nevermind.

[Mr. Wyndham]

I've spun off another thread...We can concentrate a little better, now.

Originally Posted by Captain Awesome

Apparently the decision has already been made. I'm wasting my time here trying to present alternative views. Nevermind.

What are you talking about? I realize there was lag time with posts...but we just started talking about this. There's MUCH more to go!

Coskata, the Biofuels company GM partnered with, has already demonstrated that their procedure works. And works pretty darn well. They expect to have a moderate to full-scale plant up and running with in a year, and be able to produce Ethanol from almost anything for about a dollar a gallon, all while leaving a very minimal impact on the environment.

Tests have shown that from "well" to wheel, Cellulosic Ethanol done Coskata's way reduces Carbon emissions by as much as 80%.

Corn Ethanol's impact on global food prices have been crazy-exagerated, as well. Of the 40-something percent rise in cost, corn growth for Ethanol accounts for about 1% of it. But when we speak about Cellulosic ethanol, there's no rainforests (or any forests) being cut down and there's no need for any farmland to be reallocated to switchgrass, because the dang stuff grows everywhere. (and you don't need to grow waste)

[CamaroSpike23]

Originally Posted by Captain Awesome

I don't have to search this site to know that in south America where they already don't have enough farmland to feed themselves they are cutting down rainforests to grow grain crops to sell to the lucrative ethanol distilleries.

These are the same rainforests that are taking the carbon we make now out of the atmosphere.

These are the same rainforests that the environmentalists have been trying to protect all these years.

These are the same rainforests that they have to BURN to make room for the ethanol crops (reducing them to carbon and putting it into the air).

Oh, and by the way... the soil down there is so poor that they can only grow grains on it for a couple of years before it's useless and they have to move on to ANOTHER rainforest to grow ethanol on.

And don't forget that the rainforest plants are actually many times better at taking carbon out of the atmosphere than the crops that are grown for ethanol.

So what does ethanol contribute to?

1) Starving People
2) Extinct Plants and Animals
3) Large carbon emissions
4) Less efficiant carbon consumption

It's a lose-lose scenario.

Research is currently being done now to create bacteria that creates ethanol from waste, which can eliminate the above problems, and this is possibly the only saving grace for this dangerous fuel.

wow.... can i get a reference to where you are getting your info?


brazil's cane fields account for just 5.7 million hectares in a country of 850 million hectares. There are already 100 million hectares of old agricultural land or pasture land in the centre-south available for the industry to expand into. Expansion into at least some of those millions of hectares would probably be more or less carbon-neutral. For degraded pastures, which are slowly losing carbon, it is not such a bad change. And almost 70% of the Cerrado (Latin America's savanna, of which Brazil has some 200 million hectares) has already been cleared. Because it needs a dry season, sugar cane would not be a good crop to move into cleared rainforest areas, even if that was what anyone wanted. In this respect, cane is more environmentally friendly than palm oil, the most energy-intensive source of biodiesel. Palm-oil plantations for biofuel are having serious effects on the primary forests of Indonesia, but are not as yet big business in Brazil.

[blaSSt]

Basically my response to Dragoneye earlier.

It's easy to see converting food crop is bad.

People say celluosic Ethanol can displace a LOT. How much is a LOT? How about 5%? How can we get there?

Household Garbage
Ethanol from 'garbage' has extremely low yield. Typical household garbage is expected to yield 4-10 gallons per ton. Waste average is 1000 lbs. per yer per person. Garbage from 300 million people 'could' generate about 1.5 billion gallons per year. There's 1%.

Tires
100% of the tires sold in the US (say they each generate equivalent waste) produces less than 0.7% of the requirement.

Wood
5% Ethanol in the total gasoline stream from forrest would need to consume 650 million acres of forest per year. There are about 747 million acres of forrest in the US. Not viable as far as I'm concerned. So let's let it contribute 0.5%. 65million acres.

Switchgrass
If we want 5% Ethanol in the total gasoline stream from switchgrass, it takes 900 million acres of land by Costaka's data. That is equal to 1.4 million square miles of land, 40% of the total land area of the US, equal to the seven largest states combined Alaska, Texas, California, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada.

Now we have 1% from 100% of household garbage, from 0.7% from 100% of used tires (still made from fossil fuels by the way), 0.5% from forrests, and need 2.8% from switchgrass.

The US has 3.5 million square miles of land, 1.4 million in agriculture, 1.1 million square miles of land is forrested, 0.75 million square miles of land is in switchgrass for EtOH production, leaving 250 thousand square miles for people to live on, including roads, commercial businesses, homes, etc.

All that to get to E5. Makes E10 or E85 unfathomable.

Celluosic EtOH can contribute, and we should. But, the scale needed for it to be a major contributor is mindboggling.

[Captain Awesome]

Google is your friend!

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/science/...inforests.html
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0516-ethanol_amazon.html
http://www.worldlandtrust.org/news/2...diesel-and.htm
http://www.rainforestportal.org/shar...x?linkid=93923
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17500316/

[GTAHVIT]

Lets not forget that there are millions of acres of farmland in the US being subsidised by the government so the farmers won't grow corn. If they got rid of the subsidy then that land can be used to produce Ethanol... Which by the way I think would be a mistake. I don't think Corn Based ethanol is the way to go. But now we can produce it from sugar, trees, and cellulosic sources which are all much more efficient and with far less of an impact to the environment then corn based ethanol has.

Cellulosic Ethanol requirements are no less mind boggling then corn based when you consider how much energy goes into creating ethanol from corn. Cellulosic ethanol is far less wasteful and has no impact on crops and has very little impact when compared to the slash and burn crops in Brazil. If you want to say Brazil is jacked up then so be it. But ethanol, on the whole, when you consider the many better sources, isn't as bad as you say it is.

Also, Sugar is the most readily available feed stock in the world. No one is proposing that we should use every spare piece of land to grow/store the materials necessary to create ethanol. But, Ethanol is the best substitute for foreign oil. It will work with the current infrastructure and only requires minor modifications to cars to make it work with any mixture of gasoline. Nothing other than MAYBE hydrogen can be easily adapted to the current vehicles on the road today. We at least have to give it consideration. Otherwise we are left with crude oil and all the global and environmental baggage that comes with it. I say we use Ethanol to at least decrease our dependency on OPEC, and, at least, partially reduce the cost of a gallon of gas.

There is more to gain than moving to a renewable fuel source. Ethanol also allows us to move away from 40yr old refineries, and the "stick it to the U.S. mentality OPEC has. For the sake of competition alone, Ethanol production is valuable to the U.S. If a significant portion of our fuel requirements can be supplied by ethanol there will be less demand for crude oil and lower prices at the pump.

[CamaroSpike23]

Originally Posted by Captain Awesome

Google is your friend!

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/science/...inforests.html
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0516-ethanol_amazon.html
http://www.worldlandtrust.org/news/2...diesel-and.htm
http://www.rainforestportal.org/shar...x?linkid=93923
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17500316/

first link... talks not about how sugar production is destroying rain forests, but how soy production is.

second link... same thing. soy is being grown more, due to america planting more corn and less soy. not sugar


third link... john burton doesnt know his ass from a hole in the ground. as ive already stated, sugar cane does not grow worth a crap in cleared rainforest areas. its the soy production that is moving into the cleared rain forests


fourth link... wow....your link spoke for me "The Japanese plans to produce ethanol from molasses provided by Fiji Sugar Corporation will produce a net global savings in carbon emissions" sugar production, HELPING reduce carbon emissions? lol

fifth link... one that actually has some good info. such as:
US production increases for corn (to be used as ethanol), decrease stateside soy production, increasing expansion of soy plantations in brazil, therefore cutting down the rainforest.
the amazon is being cut down for more than just agriculture. its been being cut down for development and logging uses. its just that the argument is about biofuels destroying the amazon, so people forget about the other reasons.





i wonder how much more it would cost to import sugarcane ethanol over soy. i cant wait till we hit the 1973 gas crisis vol. II here pretty soon. maybe the govt will realize that we can import more sugarcane ethanol to reduce our dependancy on oil.