FACTBOX-World biofuels production and its impact

Click on the headline for more. Being a neutral news source, Reuters just gives the facts without the fucking outrage I have on the subject.

The following are facts about biofuels production as world leaders meet in Rome this week to discuss the global food price crisis.

* The most important biofuel is ethanol, a substitute for gasoline, which is mainly produced from grains and sugar crops.

* The two largest producers of ethanol are the United States and Brazil although there is also growing production in the European Union.

* The U.S. makes ethanol from corn, a crop for which it is by far the world's largest producer with output more than twice that of nearest rival China.

* Ethanol makers will use 4 billion bushels, one-third of this year's projected U.S. corn crop, to produce the fuel during 2008/09, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated earlier this month.

* Corn prices have risen sharply during the last two years and currently stand at more than $6.00 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade compared with about $2.50 in June 2006.

But don't forget. Taking that much food out of the market couldn't possibly have any affect on the goddamn prices. I'm afraid you're just imagining that.

Note: Headline links to source.

Global Famine: The Lords of Capital Decree Mass Death by Starvation

Politicians who have some vested interest in biofuels can spin and lie about ethanol and biodiesel, but the fact remains large corporations are literally taking food out of people's mouths and driving up the cost of the food that remains.

Having crushed the planet's peasants and converted food into just another commodity for global manipulation, the Lord's of Capital have unleashed upon humanity the threat - no, certainty - of mass starvation. The criminal mega-enterprise is centered in the United States, the former "breadbasket of the planet" whose massive conversion to biofuels has caused staple crop prices to skyrocket beyond the reach of hundreds of millions of the world's poor. The death of millions translates into profits in the trillions for the Lords of Capital, killers on a mass scale whose only talents lie in "the production of overlapping calamities, each more lethal than the last."

"No amount of emergency aid is sufficient to make up for the wild price rises that have already occurred." [formatting in original]

Note: Headline links to source.

Condoleezza Rice admits biofuel production contributing to food shortages

Ya think?

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted that the decision to set aside American farmland for the production of corn for biofuels may in part be driving up world food prices.

"There has been apparently some effect, unintended consequence from the alternative fuels effort," Rice told a gathering of the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C.

...

Nearly one-third of the US corn harvest is currently being funnelled [sic] into biofuel production.

She goes on to say she doesn't believe it is the dominate factor, but one of many causing an increase in world food prices. One can't argue with that, but...

Let me get this straight. Diverting food crops for biofuels only marginally affects world food prices? Doesn't she understand any fucking thing about supply and demand? Just asking.

Note: Headline links to source.

Global famine? Blame the Fed

One way or another the US is going to bring the whole world down. It doesn't just require bombs.

At least that's the contention of Mike Whitney writing in the Online Journal.

The stakes couldn't be higher for Ben Bernanke. If the Fed chief decides to lower rates at the end of April, he could be condemning millions of people to a death by starvation.

The situation is that serious. Food riots have broken out across the globe destabilizing large parts of the developing world. China is experiencing double-digit inflation. Indonesia, Vietnam and India have imposed controls over rice exports. Wheat, corn and soya are at record highs and threatening to go higher still. Commodities are up across the board. The World Food Program is warning of widespread famine if the West doesn't provide emergency humanitarian relief.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said it best: "It is a massacre of the world's poor. The problem is not the production of food. It is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis."

Right on, Hugo. There is no shortage of food; it's just the prices that are making food unaffordable. Bernanke's "weak dollar" policy has ignited a wave of speculation in commodities which is pushing prices into the stratosphere. The UN is calling the global food crisis a "silent tsunami," but its more like a flood; the world is awash in increasingly worthless dollars that are making food and raw materials more expensive. Foreign central banks and investors presently hold $6 trillion in dollars and dollar-backed assets, so when the dollar starts to slide, the pain radiates through entire economies. This is especially true in countries where the currency is pegged to the dollar. That's why most of the Gulf States are experiencing runaway inflation. This doesn't mean that oil depletion, biofuel production, over-population, and giant agribusinesses don't add to the problem. They do. But the catalyst is the Fed's monetary policies; that's the domino that puts the others in motion.

I don't know if I'm convinced the "weak dollar", though exacerbating this and other world problems, is the tail wagging the dog. Its a factor of course, but taking food stocks and arid lands to produce biofuels quickly and directly affects food costs.

The headline links to the source.

UN condemns biofuels growth

Now this is taking the food crises, biofuels seriously and its about time.

The United Nations is expected to reveal a new battle plan to tackle the growing crisis in global food provision.

Monday's meeting in Switzerland follows a warning from the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, who says developed countries and the biofuel industry are largely to blame for the current food shortages.

"Bioethanol is one of the reasons why food prices have exploded. Last year the US burned 138 million tons of maize and transformed it into bioethanol and biodiesel," Jean Ziegler told Al Jazeera.

"Burning food today, so as to serve the mobility of the rich countries, is a crime against humanity." [emphasis mine]

The headline links to the source.

Ethanol's Failed Promise

And slowly they come around to what I've been telling you.

The willingness to try, fail and try again is the essence of scientific progress. The same sometimes holds true for public policy. It is in this spirit that today, Earth Day, we call upon Congress to revisit recently enacted federal mandates requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of biofuels. These "food-to-fuel" mandates were meant to move America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis.

This has always been about politics. Sure, all things are in one way or another, but this was never a good idea scientifically or socially and anyone with any sense knew it.

Ah, but the political mileage... we can't forget the political mileage.

Via Washington Post.

USDA looks at new ethanol crops

File under must read IMHO or its about time or whatever...

Note: Several new links added. Sorry, but I found them after posting.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is working on new crops for ethanol.

With corn and soybeans being used for fuel as well as food, there are increasing concerns about the best use, the Journal Star reported.

It was getting a little fucking disconcerting that many were sounding the alarm about using food crops for fuel when some people are already starving for lack of food. Those who aren't starving are slowing being starved out of affordable food. (FT.com).

Yet almost no one seemed to be addressing the problem. The bright side is, one crop cycle and farms can switch to non-food sources for biofuels. The USDA just has to figure out the best ones.

Now if someone would just tackle the problems of deforestation for biofuels crop production, the need to water those crops when the water is needed for drinking and irrigation of food crops and the probability biofuels will put more carbon into the atmosphere, we can all relax.

A short aside. In the US, biofuels almost always mean ethanol with little to no consideration of biodiesel. Those big trucks gobble up millions of barrels of fuel and pollute pretty badly, but ya gotta keep them voters' cars going.

Related story at FT.com. Study finds profit in cutting emissions.

Related story at AlterNet. Maude Barlow: The Growing Battle for the Right to Water.

Via UPI.

The Biofuel Follies

I'm starting to wonder if I'm beginning to think more like George "F" Will or he's starting to think more like I.

Nah, I don't really think like he does.

In this op-ed piece he's spot on about biofuels, but woefully wrong about drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

Why won't Repugs ever accept the fact we need to reduce the use of oil and not constantly search for and extract more until the fucking planet is dry? Its a goddamn limited resource and we're exploiting it as fast as we can get our greedy little hands on it.

The ANWR is a pristine area on this planet and must be protected.

Yeah, as I've stated before, I'm a fucking tree hugger. Did you catch the last two words of the name for ANWR? Wildlife Refuge.

Iowa's caucuses, a source of so much turbulence, might even have helped cause the recent demonstration by 10,000 Indonesians in Jakarta. Savor the multiplying irrationalities of the government-driven mania for ethanol and other biofuels, and energy policy generally.

Indonesians, like most Asians, love soybeans, the world price of which has risen 50 percent in a month and 125 percent in a year, partly because of increasing world population and incomes, but also because many farmers have switched land from soybeans to crops that can be turned into biofuels. In 2005, America used 15 percent of its corn crop to supplant less than 2 percent of its gasoline use. In 2007, the government-contrived U.S. demand for ethanol was more than half the global increase in demand. The political importance of corn-growing, ethanol-making Iowa is one reason that biofuel mandates flow from Washington the way oil would flow from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if it had nominating caucuses.

ANWR's 10.4 billion barrels of oil have become hostage to the planet's saviors (e.g., John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama), who block drilling in even a tiny patch of ANWR. You could fit Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware into ANWR's frozen desolation; the "footprint" of the drilling operation would be one sixth the size of Washington's Dulles airport.

Clinton has an alternative to drilling: Oil should be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve—which exists to protect the nation against major interruptions of supply—as "a signal to the market." A signal of what? Readiness to release more? All 698 million barrels? Then what?

Americans can still drill for … water. Water rights (T. Boone Pickens has bought 400,000 acres of them in the Texas Panhandle) are becoming more valuable as ethanol production, which is extremely water-intensive, puts pressure on supplies.

To avoid drilling for oil in ANWR's moonscape, the planet savers evidently prefer destroying forests, even though they absorb greenhouse gases. Will ethanol prevent more carbon-dioxide emissions than would have been absorbed by the trees cut down to clear land for the production of crops for ethanol? Be that as it may, governments mandating the use of biofuels are one reason for the global rise in food prices, which is driving demand for more arable land. That demand is driving the destruction of forests—and animal habitats. In Indonesia alone, 44 million acres have been razed to make way for production of palm oil.

Via Newsweek.

"Grass Gas" Shows Promise as Superefficient, Clean Fuel

Sometimes I wish I'd never taken up this biofuel topic. Once you start, it seems you can't stop.

Anyway, this sounds like a much better idea than making biofuel out of edible crops which is already adding to food costs and shortages.

You don't eat grass do you? Just asking.

Ethanol made from a prairie grass shows promise as a viable fuel that could be much more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient than corn ethanol, a new study says. Ethanol is often touted as a cleaner-burning gasoline alternative that lessens dependence on oil.

Via The Signs.

Experts: Burning Biofuels May Be Worse Than Coal and Oil

Palm oil plantation - Malaysia

Some more scientists weigh in. I just hope it isn't too late.

Using biofuels made from corn, sugar cane and soy could have a greater environmental impact than burning fossil fuels, according to experts. Although the fuels themselves emit fewer greenhouse gases, they all have higher costs in terms of biodiversity loss and destruction of farmland.

The problems of climate change and the rising cost of oil have led to a race to develop environmentally-friendly biofuels, such as palm oil or ethanol derived from corn and sugar cane. The EU has proposed that 10% of all fuel used in transport should come from biofuels by 2020 and the emerging global market is expected to be worth billions of dollars a year.

But the new fuels have attracted controversy. “Regardless of how effective sugar cane is for producing ethanol, its benefits quickly diminish if carbon-rich tropical forests are being razed to make the sugar cane fields, thereby causing vast greenhouse-gas emission increases,” Jörn Scharlemann and William Laurance, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, write in Science today.

“Such comparisons become even more lopsided if the full environmental benefits of tropical forests - for example, for biodiversity conservation, hydrological functioning, and soil protection - are included.”

Efforts to work out which crops are most environmentally friendly have, until now, focused only on the amount of greenhouse gases a fuel emits when it is burned. Scharlemann and Laurance highlighted a more comprehensive method, developed by Rainer Zah of the Empa Research Institute in Switzerland, that can take total environmental impacts - such as loss of forests and farmland and effects on biodiversity - into account.

In a study of 26 biofuels the Swiss method showed that 21 fuels reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 30% compared with gasoline when burned. But almost half of the biofuels, a total of 12, had greater total environmental impacts than fossil fuels. These included economically-significant fuels such as US corn ethanol, Brazilian sugar cane ethanol and soy diesel, and Malaysian palm-oil diesel. Biofuels that fared best were those produced from waste products such as recycled cooking oil, as well as ethanol from grass or wood.

I'm afraid I've been visiting this subject often, but its something that can be stopped if people learn about the topic.

If more money can be made selling palm oil for biofuels, forests get cut down for larger and larger plantations. Meanwhile, there's a shortage of palm oil for cooking.

You can search for "biofuel" or "bio-fuel" on the right sidebar. I apologize beforehand, some of the results don't go to specific posts, but to pages containing a biofuel post. Those links are a fucking PITA (pain in the ass) because there are so many posts per page.

Via Mathaba.

UK govt scientist sees few benefits from biofuels

Finally someone is waking up. I'm a little disappointed this guy still thinks biofuels are viable considering Brazil might be completely deforested, but its a start.

Rising production of biofuels has distorted government budgets, helped to drive up food prices and led to deforestation in south-east Asia, the chief scientist of Britain's farm ministry said on Friday.

"The way we are currently producing biofuels is not the way to go," former World Bank chief scientist Robert Watson said, citing the U.S. ethanol programme and German support for biodiesel as among the least cost effective.

Watson told the Oxford Farming Conference that biofuels production from sugar cane in Brazil may be one of the only sustainable current methods.

He added that there needed to be aggressive research and development and in five to 10 years time it was possible that new, better technologies could be commercially viable.

Crispin Tickell, director of the Policy Foresight Programme at Oxford University's James Martin Institute of Science and Civilization, said U.S. ethanol policy had been "disastrous."

Via Reuters.

Rigged

Of course George is absolutely correct on this and will be considered completely bonkers by the representatives to climate change conferences such as Bali.

Too many people have a lot at stake in extracting fossil fuels from the earth and they aren't about to voluntarily stop.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart I offer it to you for free. No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses. Already this technology, a radical new kind of carbon capture and storage, is causing a stir among scientists. It is cheap, it is efficient and it can be deployed straight away. It is called … leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

On a filthy day last week, as governments gathered in Bali to prevaricate about climate change, a group of us tried to put this policy into effect. We swarmed into the opencast coal mine being dug at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales and occupied the excavators, shutting down the works for the day. We were motivated by a fact which the wise heads in Bali have somehow missed: if fossil fuels are extracted, they will be used.

Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate our lofts, turn our TVs off at the wall. In other words, they have a demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the supply of fossil fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every barrel of oil and tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burnt.

Conservation is good. Renewable sources of energy are good (except for biofuels). They are horrible. But those aren't the answer in and of themselves. The problem is far too drastic to just throw a fucking Band Aide on it at this point.

SPIIDERWEB™ Rulz!

Via Monbiot.

The politics of ethanol outshine its costs

I've said I won't let this subject go. More people have to realize politicians are playing them.

With gasoline near $3 a gallon, climate concerns rising, and an election season in full swing, politicians are eager to tell constituents that they're doing something to help at the gas pump.

Enter ethanol – or, more specifically, a plan in Congress to mandate that US gasoline refiners add a minimum of 36 billion gallons of ethanol to the nation's gasoline supply – up from the 7.5 billion gallons currently mandated by 2012.

Ethanol's popularity comes despite charges from environmentalists, livestock farmers, and opponents of subsidies that the move won't meet energy goals and may damage the environment as food prices soar. Energy-security experts say the measure also falls short on a key goal: weaning America off foreign oil.

Boosting ethanol production is the political equivalent of motherhood and apple pie these days. Politicians on both sides of the aisle as well as presidential candidates eager to do well in Iowa, the nation's No. 1 ethanol-producing state, are behind the measure, unglamorously named the "Renewable Fuels Standard." The RFS, part of the energy bill in the Senate, is so popular that it may be enough to ram through energy legislation this year, despite bitter disagreements over other parts of the bills.

Via Christian Science Monitor.

The biofuel scam - and it's a 'beaut'

No I'm not gonna let this topic lie rotting in the dust. This is so perverse it needs our attention.

Am I nagging? Sorry, but I'll do it again. Hehehe.

Because I'm beating this dead horse until it looks like hamburger. Here, here, here, here, here.

Jesus H Christ in Doc Martens, I can't believe how un-lazy ass I was with this post.

Hey, don't those look like Doc Martens Jesus would wear? Pretty cheeky me thinks.

When it comes to navigating a way out of the nation's energy crisis, you have to wonder whether the fix is already in.

The government has picked the winner--even as senior policy makers issue bland pronouncements about finding new technologies to help break our energy dependence on foreign oil. Between now and 2012, biofuel subsidies will total more than $92 billion, according to a recent report conducted under the auspices of the Global Subsidiaries Initiative.

The timing is coincidental, but the report came out just as Senate and House leaders were weighing a plan which would leave renewable energy out of the next congressional energy bill.

I'm sure there's some larger logic to explain that omission. But it might have a little something to do with the political muscle of the farm interests, a powerful lobby that knows its way around the corridors of power.

The 2007 farm bill features strong support for biofuel subsidies--even with crude oil prices hovering over $90 a barrel.

I've read a number of expert studies questioning the environmental impact of biofuels--especially the production of corn ethanol. Yet few policy makers of any national significance are stepping forward to question whether our national bet on biofuels makes good sense.

That hasn't stopped Washington and various state capitols from lavishing billions of dollars on agribusiness' pet project. Most of the $92 billion I mentioned earlier will go to ethanol production.

All this is giving the cynics a field day. Each dollar spent on biofuel subsidies is a dollar not getting invested in other, possibly cleaner technologies. But the only people squawking seem to be the folks involved from those particular fields.

I'm not advocating dumping ethanol research and production, but the selling of biofuels as the all-American favorite has been a marketing tour de force. That doesn't necessarily mean it's smart decision-making.

Courtesy link because I stole the whole fucking article.

Biofuels Could Kill More People Than the Iraq War

Folks, I'm not just standing here hollering into the wilderness. This fucking shit is for real.

It doesn't get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the county of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought. It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.

This is one of many examples of a trade described last month by Jean Ziegler, the UN's special rapporteur, as "a crime against humanity." Ziegler took up the call first made by this column for a five-year moratorium on all government targets and incentives for biofuel: the trade should be frozen until second-generation fuels -- made from wood or straw or waste -- become commercially available. Otherwise the superior purchasing power of drivers in the rich world means that they will snatch food from people's mouths. Run your car on virgin biofuel and other people will starve.

Do you want people to starve so you can drive your fucking SUV? If so, please don't come near me because I don't like to be vicious and destructive. K?

Via Reuters.

Booming palm oil demand fuelling climate crisis

I'm not gonna link. Search for biofuels or bio-fuels (I'm not consistent) on the sidebar. I've many posts on this topic.

I know I'm beating this sucker to death, but when will the world wake up and realize the dangers of biofuels? They're dirty, steal food from people and hurt the climate.

Biofuels are about the nastiest things around and are embraced by most countries. They make people think they've found the magic bullet for petroleum dependency.

Booming world demand for palm oil from Indonesia for food and biofuels is posing multiple threats to the environment as forests are being cleared, peat wetlands exposed and carbon released, a report said on Thursday.

The massive forest clearance for palm plantations underway in Indonesia removes trees that capture carbon dioxide, and the draining and burning of the peat wetlands leads to massive release of the gas, said environment group Greenpeace in its report "Cooking the Climate".

On top of that, the booming demand for biofuels that include vegetable oils to replace mineral oil is in many cases actually generating more climate warming gases, the report said.

"Tropical deforestation accounts for about a fifth of all global emissions," said the report. "Indonesia now has the fastest deforestation rate of any major forested country, losing two percent of its remaining forest every year."

I hope it doesn't come to this, but when the world wakes up I'm gonna SCREAM I told you so!

Via Reuters.

Tears for beers: Craft brewers ailing (NSFW)

OK, its one thing to starve people to produce biofuel, but now your beer supply is in danger? Have these fucking people no consciences nor morales?

Fans of Snipes Mountain Brewery's cloudy Hefeweizen relish the subtle wheat flavor of the bright, summery brew, and like beer drinkers everywhere, they know when their favorite brew tastes a little too hoppy or bitter.

Connoisseurs could be in for a surprise this year, and they may not be alone.

Small brewers from Australia to Oregon face the daunting prospect of tweaking their recipes or experimenting less with new brews thanks to a worldwide shortage of one key beer ingredient and rising prices for others.

Barley and wheat prices have skyrocketed as more farmers plant corn to meet increasing demand for ethanol, while others plant feed crops to replace acres lost to corn.

A decadelong oversupply of hops that had forced farmers to abandon the crop is finally gone and harvests were down this year. In the United States, where one-fourth of the world's hops are grown, acreage fell 30 percent from 1995 to 2006.

Three quick things.

1. Its nice to see Foster's didn't use a particularly skinny model for the "after" picture.

2. I realize Foster's isn't a small brewery any more than is Anheuser-Busch.

3. Yeah, its a sexist advert, but funny none the less.

Via Mercury News.

SWAZILAND: Food or biofuel seems to be the question

I'm not gonna bother linking internally. I've posted so many times about:

1. Biofuels are not the answer to energy problems. They aren't "clean" either.
2. Biofuels remove land from food production. And the poor suffer for it.
3. Water is going to be the next oil. People will wage wars over it.

The government of Swaziland announced this week that it would be allocating thousands of hectares [2.471 acres] to a private company to cultivate cassava for biofuel. About 40 percent of the country's one million people are facing acute food and water shortages.

It seems obvious the Swaziland government is more concerned with money rolling in than feeding its people. Greed raises its ugly head again.

IRIN has more stories on this.

Google™ searches on the right side of my page for biofuel or bio-fuel (I'm not consistent) or water will link to my earlier posts.

Via IRIN.

H/T AlertNet.

Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Renewable Fuel Options

Sometimes its fun t read polls and find out just how stupid people can be.

A new poll conducted by Harris Interactive(R) shows overwhelming American support for expanding renewable fuel options with nine in 10 U.S. adults (88 percent) agreeing the U.S. should pursue renewable energy sources. The poll, commissioned by the Clean Fuels Development Coalition, concludes that 72 percent of adults believe that higher oil prices have had a substantial impact on the rising cost of food in recent months, compared to only 35 percent who believe ethanol production has had a significant impact on rising food prices.

Via News Unfiltered.

Ah, but here's the rub. The US government, that is the people who know what the fuck they're talking about, says we can't do it.

A commercial industry based on converting cellulosic biomass to ethanol does not yet exist in the United States, however, the technology is ready to be deployed in pilot or demonstration facilities. Iogen Corporation, a biotechnology company in Canada, operates the largest demonstration facility, which annually produces about one million gallons of cellulosic ethanol from wheat straw.

And I've blogged before here, here, here about how this just isn't a feasible idea anywhere.

That last link is about how Mexicans are running short of edible corn because of bio-fuels. There are many other posts. Go to SPIIDERWEB™ and use the Google™ search box.

Fossil Fuels Better for Environment than Biofuels

Not a new topic here at SPIIDERWEB™. I've posted about this here, here and here.

This is fucking politics, folks. It ain't science. Its trying to appear like you're doing something about the US's reliance on oil while creating far worse problems.

It sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fuelling cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead. They recommend governments steer away from biofuel and focus on reforestation and maximising the efficiency of fossil fuels instead.

I'm nothing if not persistent.

(read more)