On December 19th, 2007, President George W. Bush signed into law
the Energy Independence and Security Act, which mandates massive
increases in the production of ethanol to be used as "biofuel" to run
automobiles and trucks. Ethanol is currently made from corn and other
foodstuffs, and all the various forms of biofuel, including
"biodiesel," are made from food or inedible crops which displace
normal agricultural activity. Biofuel crops include corn, sugarcane,
cassava, rapeseed, soybeans, palm trees (for palm oil), as well as
experimental "second generation" crops such as switchgrass, giant
reed, jatropha, hemp, and algae. In 2007, 54% of the world's corn was
grown in the USA, and an ever increasing percentage of that crop ended
up in gas tanks instead of stomachs. Ethanol production took only 7%
of American corn in 1998, but has grown as a cancer on our food
supply, taking 37 to 38% by 2007 (reference Fermenting the Food Supply
by Stuart Staniford).
The amount of corn required to fill the 18.5 gallon gas tank of a
Toyota Camry with ethanol is enough to feed a human being for 270
days. At current levels of biofuel production, this "renewable energy
source" has already caused huge increases in the price of food around
the world, which can be experienced firsthand at any supermarket in
America. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), global food prices rose 40% in the year 2007
alone, producing the highest food cost level on record, and qualifying
2007 as a year of food price hyperinflation! Unfortunately, few
consumers/voters understand exactly why food prices have risen so
dramatically, and even our most respected politicians do not
comprehend the inevitable global food disaster that lies just ahead
(see Clinton And Obama On Iran And Biofuels) and which they have
created.
The United Nations has officially stated that its charity
programs can no longer afford to feed the starving peoples of the
world because of high food costs created by biofuel production.
Earlier this year, Jean Ziegler, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the
Right to Food, denounced biofuels as "a crime against humanity" and
called for a five-year moratorium on their production. Local food
banks in the United States are running low on supplies, and many
families who use to contribute to food banks are now in need of help
themselves. When farmers plant more corn in order to cash in on
artificially high prices created by government biofuel mandates, they
reduce production of other crops and thus food prices rise across the
board. We use corn to feed chickens and cattle, so the price of
poultry, eggs, beef, and dairy products has risen substantially and
will continue to rise with no end in sight.
The advocacy and use of biofuels is one of the greatest political
hoaxes in American history. The ideology of biofuel production sounds
wholesome superficially, a kind of green, health food store way of
producing energy. The problem is that our current biofuel scheme is
based on political and economic selfishness, without legitimate
science based ecological justification.
1) Biofuel production starves the poor and reduces our standard of
living by dramatically increasing the cost of food, which we all need
just to survive. Of course the homeless, the elderly, the disabled,
and those living on Social Security and other fixed incomes are the
hardest hit. Most Americans do not realize that global food reserves
are at historic lows, while proven global oil reserves are at historic
highs. The United States alone has vast untouched oil reserves in
Alaska, just waiting to be pumped, but our politicians have incredibly
decided to trade food and thus human lives for oil instead.
2) Biofuel production increases our Federal budget deficit because it
demands large subsidies to exist. Without massive Federal subsidies
and political mandates, there would be no significant free market
demand for biofuels at all. Ethanol has less energy per gallon than
gasoline, so the new ethanol blended fuels will reduce our gas mileage
at a time we are all paying record high prices at the pump. Our
biofuel schemes are energy socialism gone terribly wrong.
3) Biofuel production harms the environment by needlessly eroding
topsoil and encouraging the destruction of forests, which are
desperately needed to soak up excess carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the major greenhouse gas that
causes global warming, and the two great sponges of carbon dioxide are
the oceans and the forests. The oceans are losing their ability to
absorb CO2 as they are becoming increasingly acidic due to pollution,
so if we also destroy our forests global warming will accelerate that
much faster. Do we really want to annihilate forests all over the
world, from Indonesia to Pennsylvania, just to have more land to grow
biofuel crops to burn as fuel in our SUVs? Biofuel schemes speed up
global warming because the entire biofuel production process, from
beginning to end, releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere while destroying native forests which naturally clean and
rejuvenate the air we breathe.
Roland Clift, a senior science advisor to the British Government,
has stated that British plans to promote ethanol and biodiesel
produced from plants is a "scam." On the subject of tropical
biodiesel production, Clift states that "Biodiesel is a complete scam
because in the tropics the growing demand is causing forests to be
burnt to make way for palm trees (to make palm oil) and similar
crops. "We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops
for 70 to 300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest
destruction."
Scientists point out that using nitrogen fertilizers, which are
made from natural gas, coal, and mined minerals, generates large
amounts of nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas estimated to be 296
times more effective at trapping heat than CO2. Farming contributes
more to global warming than all forms of motorized land, sea, and air
transportation combined, so growing vast amounts of crops for biofuel
will heat up the earth's atmosphere faster than if we only used
imported Saudi Arabian oil. Biofuel crop production also aggravates
water shortages because irrigation water is taken away from our
shrinking supplies of safe drinking water. Biofuels are a losing
proposition on every level, except for the big profits giant
agricultural corporations will make producing them.
4) America's "biofuel energy independence plan" is a scientific hoax
and an economic fraud because all current American production methods
use more energy to create biofuels than they yield in the form of
biofuel itself. We have to use large amounts of coal, natural gas,
and oil just to manufacture biofuels. Supporters hope that second and
third generation biofuel crops will generate more energy than they
take to produce, but those schemes have yet to be proven in the real
world. Our Congress has decided to mandate first and prove later!
Even proposed second and third generation biofuel plants do not
eliminate the tremendous environmental damage that massive biofuel
production will cause. At the recent Conference on Climate Change
held in Bali, several studies were presented detailing the dangers of
making automobile fuels from crops. Respected scientists warned that
biofuel production is destructive to the environment and will not give
us the clean "renewable energy" its advocates claim. Just a few days
after the Bali conference ended, America's political leaders enacted a
new law mandating massive increases in biofuel production, the science
and the facts be damned.
5) The biofuel hoax was created to a large degree by domestic
American politics and corporate greed. Both the Democratic and
Republican Parties want to get the "farm vote" in politically
strategic states like Iowa, Ohio, and Nebraska. Our leaders have put
political gain ahead of the world's starving poor, the elderly on
fixed incomes, and the welfare of the American middle class. Rich
politicians can afford to pay the dramatically higher food bills that
biofuel production creates, and they have decided to throw science to
the wind and charge blindly into what will inevitably be branded as
one of the most destructive political fiascoes of the 21st century.
Ambitious young biofuel entrepreneurs and giant agricultural
corporations smell the money to be made, and have lobbied Congress and
President Bush in hopes of turning the farm belt into the Saudi Arabia
of "renewable energy," even if the energy they supply comes at the
cost of human starvation and accelerated environmental damage.
6) Making cellulosic ethanol from lignocellulose, a structural
material that comprises much of the mass of plants, is better than
making ethanol from corn, but still has most of the drawbacks of
ethanol made from food crops. Growing lignocellulose yielding grasses
on land we currently use to graze cattle will increase the price of
beef and milk. We will still have to use fertilizers made from
natural gas and coal to make inedible crops grow, and the entire
process will erode topsoil and increase the price of food.
If we grow switchgrass on "marginal" prairie land, we will soon
turn that marginal land into a dust bowl, which it may turn into
anyway due to global warming, which biofuel use will not stop.
Computer models for the progression of global warming show the America
Midwest and Southwest getting hotter and dryer, with much of our farm
and grazing land turning into desert. We know that biofuel use will
do nothing to stop this progression, so why are we pinning so much
hope on an environmental battle plan that any fool can see will blow
up in our face over time? We won't be able to produce enough biofuels
to run our cars, or enough food to fill our bellies! The biofuel
scheme is another example of a basic lack of intelligence of our
politicians, many of whom also voted for the disastrous Iraq War
despite the warnings of more thoughtful advisers. If you cannot plan
ahead and anticipate future trends, then you will lead this nation
into one disaster after another, and that is exactly what is happening
in Washington DC at this very moment. Our Congress has become a
chorus of stupidity, and our politicians are leading us to national
suicide, not to the nirvana of energy independence.
The very process of making cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass
and other plants has not been proven to be economically viable, and
the Bush energy bill assumes new scientific breakthroughs that have
not yet occurred. Many of the plants being proposed as lignocellulose
yielding crops are weeds which will have a destructive impact on
wildlife and biodiversity around the world. In practical terms, there
is not enough usable land area to grow a sufficient quantity of
biofuel plants to meet the world's energy demands. "The biofuel
potential of the entire human food supply is quite a small amount of
energy compared to the global oil supply - somewhere between 15 to 20%
on a volumetric basis, so 10 to 15% on an energy basis." - Quote from
Stuart Staniford in Fermenting the Food Supply.
The prospect of growing algae to make biodiesel has much more
positive potential than making ethanol from switchgrass, but large
open algae sewage ponds are difficult to manage due to contamination
from invasive algae and bacteria, and the inherent problem of finding
an algae that will survive wide swings in temperature and pH. If an
algae based biofuel system can be developed that uses only a small
amount of land, and produces much more energy than it takes to
manufacture, then algae biodiesel production might be a positive
venture that we all can support. To date there has been no proof that
such a system is viable or truly carbon neutral. If you have to run
algae farms off the waste of coal fired power plants, as has been
proposed, then you have a band-aid solution that will not stop global
warming in its tracks, which is what we need to do if we want our
children to survive on this planet. Algae biofuel production deserves
research funding, but any biofuel manufacturing process should be
tested and proven environmentally safe and food supply friendly by
scientists with no vested economic or political interest in the matter
before being mandated by law.
Dramatic increases in food prices created by biofuel production
will cause political instability around the globe, because food
products are sold in a world wide marketplace just like oil. There
have already been mass public protests and food riots in Mexico,
Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Senegal and Indonesia over the high price
of basic staple foods. Imagine the political instability in Central
and South America, Africa, India, and Pakistan that runaway food price
inflation will cause. Will a starving Pakistan, armed with nuclear
weapons, make the world a safer place? If American politicians lead
us down a path to global use of biofuels, we will be leading the world
into a historic disaster that can easily kill more people due to
starvation than have been killed in the Iraq War by bullets and
bombs.
If we truly wish to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will have
to create an infrastructure based on nuclear energy, improved electric
car battery technology, and hydrogen fuel, not on biofuels. Hydrogen
releases water vapor when burned, and is the cleanest burning fuel
known to man. Hydrogen can be used in both internal combustion
engines and in fuel cells. Hydrogen fuel can be made through the
electrolysis of water via electricity generated from zero emissions
nuclear power plants, which currently produce about 19.4% of our
nation's electricity. We need to build large numbers of nuclear power
plants now using mass production techniques if we want to end global
warming. Otherwise, we will just continue talking endlessly about the
subject with no positive effect.
Nuclear power plants do not contribute to global warming because
they release no greenhouse gases at all. You do not need much land to
build a nuclear power plant, and you do not need to make fertilizer to
make nuclear energy grow. Nuclear power plants are not vulnerable to
attack by viruses, bacteria, fungi, insects, or competing weeds, as
are biofuel crops. We need to get off the organic carbon cycle for
energy production and use inorganic nuclear power to produce the
highly concentrated energy supply that solar and wind power can never
hope to provide. Even by the most optimistic estimates, solar and
wind power can only hope to satisfy perhaps 20% of our future energy
needs. Solar and wind power tap into natural energy sources that are
far too diffuse to be collected on a large enough scale to power an
advanced, industrialized nation. Solar and wind power currently
produce only about 2.4% of our nation's electricity, so even an
increase to 20% would be a major undertaking.
One of the added benefits of nuclear power is that we already own
huge amounts of nuclear fuel in the form of nuclear weapons materials,
which can be converted into fuel rods for civilian power production.
The United States Government has hundreds of years worth of nuclear
fuel in storage thanks to the Cold War nuclear arms race of the 1950s
and 1960s. We can turn our swords into plowshares while paying only
the modest costs of converting high level weapons grade materials into
lower level fuel rods suitable for power production. Unlike oil, we
do not have to import nuclear fuel from foreign countries or fight
endless foreign wars to protect our supplies. We have the fuel and
it's already paid for!
Nuclear fuel rods can be reprocessed over and over again because
only a tiny portion of the nuclear material is actually used up during
each fuel cycle. When you reprocess fuel rods there is very little
high level nuclear waste that needs to be stored. The nuclear "waste"
is simply reused as nuclear fuel, and that is part of the reason why
France's nuclear power program has been so successful. France relies
heavily on nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel reprocessing, and
thus France has the cleanest air and lowest electricity rates in
Europe.
The fears many Americans have about civilian nuclear power plants
are largely unfounded. Our latest nuclear reactor designs are
carefully engineered with many layers of redundant safety and security
features built-in. One single disaster that occurred at an obsolete
Ukrainian reactor is no reason to be eternally afraid of all nuclear
power plants across the board. The old Chernobyl reactor used a
dangerous design that has never been used in the West, and which did
not even have a containment vessel. The 1986 Chernobyl accident was
caused by Soviet engineers conducting wildly irresponsible experiments
that were totally unrelated to normal civilian power production, and
which would never be allowed in the USA. The Chernobyl accident
killed a total of 56 people, a great tragedy, but not a nation killing
disaster. Far fewer people died at Chernobyl than on Japan Airlines
Flight 123 in 1985, when a lone 747 jetliner crashed and killed all
520 passengers. Americans suffer over 40,000 deaths due to automobile
accidents every year, yet there is no great human cry to ban
automobiles.
Nuclear power plants in America have an excellent record for
safety and for clean, pollution free operation. By contrast, the over
600 coal burning power plants which produce approximately 49% of our
nation's electricity emit sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen, which
combine with moisture in the atmosphere to form destructive acid
rain. America's coal burning power plants release approximately
200,000 pounds of toxic mercury every year, and an enormous skyward
bound river of carbon dioxide gas which represents nearly 10% of all
CO2 emissions worldwide. A single 1,000 megawatt coal burning power
plant can release as much as 12.8 tons of thorium and 5.2 tons of
uranium every year, both radioactive metals which naturally occur in
coal. The uranium figure includes 74 pounds of uranium-235, the
highly fissionable form of uranium used to make atomic bombs. Coal
burning power plants also release microscopic particulate matter which
clogs the lungs and is attributed to causing approximately 24,000
unnatural premature deaths in the United States every year, which is
428 times the Chernobyl death toll.
Why is there so little fear of coal burning power plants, but so
much hysterical fear of much safer and healthier nuclear power? The
answer is that nuclear power has been unfairly demonized by a
Hollywood entertainment industry trying to make a quick buck (The
China Syndrome, The Simpsons, etc.), and by scientifically
undereducated politicians and environmental activists. There has
never been a single death attributed to American nuclear power plants,
which produce electricity at an average cost of less than 3 cents per
kilowatt-hour (latest 2008 estimate), a rate comparable to
hydroelectric power and less than natural gas or coal. The cost of
coal power is even more expensive if you figure in damage to buildings
due to acid rain and other air pollutants, and increased human health
costs: the monetary value of 24,000 human lives plus those who are
simply made ill.
Building newer, more efficient standardized nuclear power plant
designs using mass production techniques for major structural and
control components will bring the cost down even further. For the
total US cost of the Iraq War, estimated to be well over 2,000 billion
dollars (2 trillion), we could have built at least 500 1,600 megawatt
nuclear power plants, outputting 800,000 megawatts total. That would
have given us virtual energy independence, almost doubling our current
national electric generating capacity of 906,155 megawatts (peak
capacity for 2006).
Nuclear power is the only technology that can produce an
extremely high volume of energy using only a tiny amount of land and
at reasonable cost, all without emitting any greenhouse gases. That
is why the father of Gaia theory, British atmospheric scientist James
Lovelock, stated that nuclear power is the only way to have a large
human population on planet earth without causing global warming and
destroying the environment. Please read James Lovelock's public
statement on nuclear energy, Nuclear power is the only green solution,
at: http://www.ecolo.org/media/articles/articles.in.english/love-indep-24-05-04.htm
The economic benefits of a nuclear based, hydrogen fueled economy
are spectacular, and the United States foreign trade deficit and
Federal budget deficit can be greatly reduced. All of the nuclear
reactors will be built and run by Americans in America, who will make
high wages and pay taxes to Federal, state, and local governments, and
spend their income at local American stores. As the USA currently
imports over 60% of its oil supply, all of the dollars we now ship off
to Canada (18%), Mexico (15%), Saudi Arabia (14%), Nigeria (12%),
Venezuela (10%), and Angola (6%) will stay right here in the USA. In
the year 2007, the USA is estimated to have imported a total of about
3.8 billion barrels of crude oil in addition to a tremendous amount of
natural gas and other hydrocarbon products which can largely be
replaced by nuclear power. At $93. a barrel (12/24/07 price), 3.8
billion barrels of crude oil is worth over 353. billion dollars. A
nuclear based hydrogen economy will make the United States richer in
addition to saving us from desertification of our heartland, increased
storm damage, coastal flooding, and world wide starvation caused by
the deadly combination of global warming and massive, government
mandated biofuel production.
Hydrogen fuel produced by nuclear energy will be expensive at
first, but the price will decline over time as the infrastructure
grows and economies of scale lower production costs. Electric car
battery technology is constantly improving and will allow Americans to
drive our highways without guilt that they are burning up precious
natural resources or polluting the environment. If you modify a
Toyota Prius by giving it a hydrogen capable gas tank, slightly alter
its internal combustion engine so that it can run on hydrogen gas, and
rewire its electrical system so that its batteries can be plugged into
a charging station, then you have an excellent hydrogen-electric
hybrid automobile right now. The nuclear based hydrogen economy is
achievable with current technology and is a long term investment in
America's future that will pay increasingly larger dividends every
year. [also see General Motor's prototype hydrogen fuel cell
vehicle]
If we wish a fast, short term fix to rising oil prices, then
drilling in the Alaska ANWR oil reserve will do far less environmental
damage than plunging ahead with biofuel production. Scientific
studies show that drilling at ANWR with modern, low land use
techniques will have a minuscule, inconsequential impact on vegetation
and wildlife. Opposition to ANWR drilling represents emotional
symbolism, not good science or responsible national energy policy.
Using Alaskan oil will create new American jobs, reduce the Federal
budget and foreign trade deficits, and help lower food prices. One
positive idea would be to use Federal revenues from sale of the ANWR
reserves to help fund the switchover to a national nuclear-hydrogen
infrastructure.
If you do not want food prices to double, triple, or even
quadruple in the next ten years, then write your political
representatives and tell them that you do not want to waste food
production resources on biofuels. State the obvious fact that food
prices are already too high and that you want all biofuel mandates and
manufacturing subsidies ended. If this is done you will soon see food
prices declining instead of rising, your local food banks will become
full again, and the United Nations and other charitable organizations
will be able to meet their moral obligations to help feed the world's
starving masses. With a world wide human population of over 6.6
billion people and growing, we cannot afford to feed our families and
at the same time use precious farm and grazing land to produce
biofuels.
On December 19th, 2007, when the United States Congress voted for
massive increases in biofuel production during a time of worldwide
food price hyperinflation, the message they gave the low income people
of the world was very clear; LET THEM EAT BIOFUEL! Is the
unintentional starvation inflicted on the world by thoughtless
American politicians any more morally excusable than the intentional
starvation of innocent civilians ordered by infamous dictators during
times of war?
Christopher Calderhttp://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html
the Energy Independence and Security Act, which mandates massive
increases in the production of ethanol to be used as "biofuel" to run
automobiles and trucks. Ethanol is currently made from corn and other
foodstuffs, and all the various forms of biofuel, including
"biodiesel," are made from food or inedible crops which displace
normal agricultural activity. Biofuel crops include corn, sugarcane,
cassava, rapeseed, soybeans, palm trees (for palm oil), as well as
experimental "second generation" crops such as switchgrass, giant
reed, jatropha, hemp, and algae. In 2007, 54% of the world's corn was
grown in the USA, and an ever increasing percentage of that crop ended
up in gas tanks instead of stomachs. Ethanol production took only 7%
of American corn in 1998, but has grown as a cancer on our food
supply, taking 37 to 38% by 2007 (reference Fermenting the Food Supply
by Stuart Staniford).
The amount of corn required to fill the 18.5 gallon gas tank of a
Toyota Camry with ethanol is enough to feed a human being for 270
days. At current levels of biofuel production, this "renewable energy
source" has already caused huge increases in the price of food around
the world, which can be experienced firsthand at any supermarket in
America. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), global food prices rose 40% in the year 2007
alone, producing the highest food cost level on record, and qualifying
2007 as a year of food price hyperinflation! Unfortunately, few
consumers/voters understand exactly why food prices have risen so
dramatically, and even our most respected politicians do not
comprehend the inevitable global food disaster that lies just ahead
(see Clinton And Obama On Iran And Biofuels) and which they have
created.
The United Nations has officially stated that its charity
programs can no longer afford to feed the starving peoples of the
world because of high food costs created by biofuel production.
Earlier this year, Jean Ziegler, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the
Right to Food, denounced biofuels as "a crime against humanity" and
called for a five-year moratorium on their production. Local food
banks in the United States are running low on supplies, and many
families who use to contribute to food banks are now in need of help
themselves. When farmers plant more corn in order to cash in on
artificially high prices created by government biofuel mandates, they
reduce production of other crops and thus food prices rise across the
board. We use corn to feed chickens and cattle, so the price of
poultry, eggs, beef, and dairy products has risen substantially and
will continue to rise with no end in sight.
The advocacy and use of biofuels is one of the greatest political
hoaxes in American history. The ideology of biofuel production sounds
wholesome superficially, a kind of green, health food store way of
producing energy. The problem is that our current biofuel scheme is
based on political and economic selfishness, without legitimate
science based ecological justification.
1) Biofuel production starves the poor and reduces our standard of
living by dramatically increasing the cost of food, which we all need
just to survive. Of course the homeless, the elderly, the disabled,
and those living on Social Security and other fixed incomes are the
hardest hit. Most Americans do not realize that global food reserves
are at historic lows, while proven global oil reserves are at historic
highs. The United States alone has vast untouched oil reserves in
Alaska, just waiting to be pumped, but our politicians have incredibly
decided to trade food and thus human lives for oil instead.
2) Biofuel production increases our Federal budget deficit because it
demands large subsidies to exist. Without massive Federal subsidies
and political mandates, there would be no significant free market
demand for biofuels at all. Ethanol has less energy per gallon than
gasoline, so the new ethanol blended fuels will reduce our gas mileage
at a time we are all paying record high prices at the pump. Our
biofuel schemes are energy socialism gone terribly wrong.
3) Biofuel production harms the environment by needlessly eroding
topsoil and encouraging the destruction of forests, which are
desperately needed to soak up excess carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the major greenhouse gas that
causes global warming, and the two great sponges of carbon dioxide are
the oceans and the forests. The oceans are losing their ability to
absorb CO2 as they are becoming increasingly acidic due to pollution,
so if we also destroy our forests global warming will accelerate that
much faster. Do we really want to annihilate forests all over the
world, from Indonesia to Pennsylvania, just to have more land to grow
biofuel crops to burn as fuel in our SUVs? Biofuel schemes speed up
global warming because the entire biofuel production process, from
beginning to end, releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere while destroying native forests which naturally clean and
rejuvenate the air we breathe.
Roland Clift, a senior science advisor to the British Government,
has stated that British plans to promote ethanol and biodiesel
produced from plants is a "scam." On the subject of tropical
biodiesel production, Clift states that "Biodiesel is a complete scam
because in the tropics the growing demand is causing forests to be
burnt to make way for palm trees (to make palm oil) and similar
crops. "We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops
for 70 to 300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest
destruction."
Scientists point out that using nitrogen fertilizers, which are
made from natural gas, coal, and mined minerals, generates large
amounts of nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas estimated to be 296
times more effective at trapping heat than CO2. Farming contributes
more to global warming than all forms of motorized land, sea, and air
transportation combined, so growing vast amounts of crops for biofuel
will heat up the earth's atmosphere faster than if we only used
imported Saudi Arabian oil. Biofuel crop production also aggravates
water shortages because irrigation water is taken away from our
shrinking supplies of safe drinking water. Biofuels are a losing
proposition on every level, except for the big profits giant
agricultural corporations will make producing them.
4) America's "biofuel energy independence plan" is a scientific hoax
and an economic fraud because all current American production methods
use more energy to create biofuels than they yield in the form of
biofuel itself. We have to use large amounts of coal, natural gas,
and oil just to manufacture biofuels. Supporters hope that second and
third generation biofuel crops will generate more energy than they
take to produce, but those schemes have yet to be proven in the real
world. Our Congress has decided to mandate first and prove later!
Even proposed second and third generation biofuel plants do not
eliminate the tremendous environmental damage that massive biofuel
production will cause. At the recent Conference on Climate Change
held in Bali, several studies were presented detailing the dangers of
making automobile fuels from crops. Respected scientists warned that
biofuel production is destructive to the environment and will not give
us the clean "renewable energy" its advocates claim. Just a few days
after the Bali conference ended, America's political leaders enacted a
new law mandating massive increases in biofuel production, the science
and the facts be damned.
5) The biofuel hoax was created to a large degree by domestic
American politics and corporate greed. Both the Democratic and
Republican Parties want to get the "farm vote" in politically
strategic states like Iowa, Ohio, and Nebraska. Our leaders have put
political gain ahead of the world's starving poor, the elderly on
fixed incomes, and the welfare of the American middle class. Rich
politicians can afford to pay the dramatically higher food bills that
biofuel production creates, and they have decided to throw science to
the wind and charge blindly into what will inevitably be branded as
one of the most destructive political fiascoes of the 21st century.
Ambitious young biofuel entrepreneurs and giant agricultural
corporations smell the money to be made, and have lobbied Congress and
President Bush in hopes of turning the farm belt into the Saudi Arabia
of "renewable energy," even if the energy they supply comes at the
cost of human starvation and accelerated environmental damage.
6) Making cellulosic ethanol from lignocellulose, a structural
material that comprises much of the mass of plants, is better than
making ethanol from corn, but still has most of the drawbacks of
ethanol made from food crops. Growing lignocellulose yielding grasses
on land we currently use to graze cattle will increase the price of
beef and milk. We will still have to use fertilizers made from
natural gas and coal to make inedible crops grow, and the entire
process will erode topsoil and increase the price of food.
If we grow switchgrass on "marginal" prairie land, we will soon
turn that marginal land into a dust bowl, which it may turn into
anyway due to global warming, which biofuel use will not stop.
Computer models for the progression of global warming show the America
Midwest and Southwest getting hotter and dryer, with much of our farm
and grazing land turning into desert. We know that biofuel use will
do nothing to stop this progression, so why are we pinning so much
hope on an environmental battle plan that any fool can see will blow
up in our face over time? We won't be able to produce enough biofuels
to run our cars, or enough food to fill our bellies! The biofuel
scheme is another example of a basic lack of intelligence of our
politicians, many of whom also voted for the disastrous Iraq War
despite the warnings of more thoughtful advisers. If you cannot plan
ahead and anticipate future trends, then you will lead this nation
into one disaster after another, and that is exactly what is happening
in Washington DC at this very moment. Our Congress has become a
chorus of stupidity, and our politicians are leading us to national
suicide, not to the nirvana of energy independence.
The very process of making cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass
and other plants has not been proven to be economically viable, and
the Bush energy bill assumes new scientific breakthroughs that have
not yet occurred. Many of the plants being proposed as lignocellulose
yielding crops are weeds which will have a destructive impact on
wildlife and biodiversity around the world. In practical terms, there
is not enough usable land area to grow a sufficient quantity of
biofuel plants to meet the world's energy demands. "The biofuel
potential of the entire human food supply is quite a small amount of
energy compared to the global oil supply - somewhere between 15 to 20%
on a volumetric basis, so 10 to 15% on an energy basis." - Quote from
Stuart Staniford in Fermenting the Food Supply.
The prospect of growing algae to make biodiesel has much more
positive potential than making ethanol from switchgrass, but large
open algae sewage ponds are difficult to manage due to contamination
from invasive algae and bacteria, and the inherent problem of finding
an algae that will survive wide swings in temperature and pH. If an
algae based biofuel system can be developed that uses only a small
amount of land, and produces much more energy than it takes to
manufacture, then algae biodiesel production might be a positive
venture that we all can support. To date there has been no proof that
such a system is viable or truly carbon neutral. If you have to run
algae farms off the waste of coal fired power plants, as has been
proposed, then you have a band-aid solution that will not stop global
warming in its tracks, which is what we need to do if we want our
children to survive on this planet. Algae biofuel production deserves
research funding, but any biofuel manufacturing process should be
tested and proven environmentally safe and food supply friendly by
scientists with no vested economic or political interest in the matter
before being mandated by law.
Dramatic increases in food prices created by biofuel production
will cause political instability around the globe, because food
products are sold in a world wide marketplace just like oil. There
have already been mass public protests and food riots in Mexico,
Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Senegal and Indonesia over the high price
of basic staple foods. Imagine the political instability in Central
and South America, Africa, India, and Pakistan that runaway food price
inflation will cause. Will a starving Pakistan, armed with nuclear
weapons, make the world a safer place? If American politicians lead
us down a path to global use of biofuels, we will be leading the world
into a historic disaster that can easily kill more people due to
starvation than have been killed in the Iraq War by bullets and
bombs.
If we truly wish to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will have
to create an infrastructure based on nuclear energy, improved electric
car battery technology, and hydrogen fuel, not on biofuels. Hydrogen
releases water vapor when burned, and is the cleanest burning fuel
known to man. Hydrogen can be used in both internal combustion
engines and in fuel cells. Hydrogen fuel can be made through the
electrolysis of water via electricity generated from zero emissions
nuclear power plants, which currently produce about 19.4% of our
nation's electricity. We need to build large numbers of nuclear power
plants now using mass production techniques if we want to end global
warming. Otherwise, we will just continue talking endlessly about the
subject with no positive effect.
Nuclear power plants do not contribute to global warming because
they release no greenhouse gases at all. You do not need much land to
build a nuclear power plant, and you do not need to make fertilizer to
make nuclear energy grow. Nuclear power plants are not vulnerable to
attack by viruses, bacteria, fungi, insects, or competing weeds, as
are biofuel crops. We need to get off the organic carbon cycle for
energy production and use inorganic nuclear power to produce the
highly concentrated energy supply that solar and wind power can never
hope to provide. Even by the most optimistic estimates, solar and
wind power can only hope to satisfy perhaps 20% of our future energy
needs. Solar and wind power tap into natural energy sources that are
far too diffuse to be collected on a large enough scale to power an
advanced, industrialized nation. Solar and wind power currently
produce only about 2.4% of our nation's electricity, so even an
increase to 20% would be a major undertaking.
One of the added benefits of nuclear power is that we already own
huge amounts of nuclear fuel in the form of nuclear weapons materials,
which can be converted into fuel rods for civilian power production.
The United States Government has hundreds of years worth of nuclear
fuel in storage thanks to the Cold War nuclear arms race of the 1950s
and 1960s. We can turn our swords into plowshares while paying only
the modest costs of converting high level weapons grade materials into
lower level fuel rods suitable for power production. Unlike oil, we
do not have to import nuclear fuel from foreign countries or fight
endless foreign wars to protect our supplies. We have the fuel and
it's already paid for!
Nuclear fuel rods can be reprocessed over and over again because
only a tiny portion of the nuclear material is actually used up during
each fuel cycle. When you reprocess fuel rods there is very little
high level nuclear waste that needs to be stored. The nuclear "waste"
is simply reused as nuclear fuel, and that is part of the reason why
France's nuclear power program has been so successful. France relies
heavily on nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel reprocessing, and
thus France has the cleanest air and lowest electricity rates in
Europe.
The fears many Americans have about civilian nuclear power plants
are largely unfounded. Our latest nuclear reactor designs are
carefully engineered with many layers of redundant safety and security
features built-in. One single disaster that occurred at an obsolete
Ukrainian reactor is no reason to be eternally afraid of all nuclear
power plants across the board. The old Chernobyl reactor used a
dangerous design that has never been used in the West, and which did
not even have a containment vessel. The 1986 Chernobyl accident was
caused by Soviet engineers conducting wildly irresponsible experiments
that were totally unrelated to normal civilian power production, and
which would never be allowed in the USA. The Chernobyl accident
killed a total of 56 people, a great tragedy, but not a nation killing
disaster. Far fewer people died at Chernobyl than on Japan Airlines
Flight 123 in 1985, when a lone 747 jetliner crashed and killed all
520 passengers. Americans suffer over 40,000 deaths due to automobile
accidents every year, yet there is no great human cry to ban
automobiles.
Nuclear power plants in America have an excellent record for
safety and for clean, pollution free operation. By contrast, the over
600 coal burning power plants which produce approximately 49% of our
nation's electricity emit sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen, which
combine with moisture in the atmosphere to form destructive acid
rain. America's coal burning power plants release approximately
200,000 pounds of toxic mercury every year, and an enormous skyward
bound river of carbon dioxide gas which represents nearly 10% of all
CO2 emissions worldwide. A single 1,000 megawatt coal burning power
plant can release as much as 12.8 tons of thorium and 5.2 tons of
uranium every year, both radioactive metals which naturally occur in
coal. The uranium figure includes 74 pounds of uranium-235, the
highly fissionable form of uranium used to make atomic bombs. Coal
burning power plants also release microscopic particulate matter which
clogs the lungs and is attributed to causing approximately 24,000
unnatural premature deaths in the United States every year, which is
428 times the Chernobyl death toll.
Why is there so little fear of coal burning power plants, but so
much hysterical fear of much safer and healthier nuclear power? The
answer is that nuclear power has been unfairly demonized by a
Hollywood entertainment industry trying to make a quick buck (The
China Syndrome, The Simpsons, etc.), and by scientifically
undereducated politicians and environmental activists. There has
never been a single death attributed to American nuclear power plants,
which produce electricity at an average cost of less than 3 cents per
kilowatt-hour (latest 2008 estimate), a rate comparable to
hydroelectric power and less than natural gas or coal. The cost of
coal power is even more expensive if you figure in damage to buildings
due to acid rain and other air pollutants, and increased human health
costs: the monetary value of 24,000 human lives plus those who are
simply made ill.
Building newer, more efficient standardized nuclear power plant
designs using mass production techniques for major structural and
control components will bring the cost down even further. For the
total US cost of the Iraq War, estimated to be well over 2,000 billion
dollars (2 trillion), we could have built at least 500 1,600 megawatt
nuclear power plants, outputting 800,000 megawatts total. That would
have given us virtual energy independence, almost doubling our current
national electric generating capacity of 906,155 megawatts (peak
capacity for 2006).
Nuclear power is the only technology that can produce an
extremely high volume of energy using only a tiny amount of land and
at reasonable cost, all without emitting any greenhouse gases. That
is why the father of Gaia theory, British atmospheric scientist James
Lovelock, stated that nuclear power is the only way to have a large
human population on planet earth without causing global warming and
destroying the environment. Please read James Lovelock's public
statement on nuclear energy, Nuclear power is the only green solution,
at: http://www.ecolo.org/media/articles/articles.in.english/love-indep-24-05-04.htm
The economic benefits of a nuclear based, hydrogen fueled economy
are spectacular, and the United States foreign trade deficit and
Federal budget deficit can be greatly reduced. All of the nuclear
reactors will be built and run by Americans in America, who will make
high wages and pay taxes to Federal, state, and local governments, and
spend their income at local American stores. As the USA currently
imports over 60% of its oil supply, all of the dollars we now ship off
to Canada (18%), Mexico (15%), Saudi Arabia (14%), Nigeria (12%),
Venezuela (10%), and Angola (6%) will stay right here in the USA. In
the year 2007, the USA is estimated to have imported a total of about
3.8 billion barrels of crude oil in addition to a tremendous amount of
natural gas and other hydrocarbon products which can largely be
replaced by nuclear power. At $93. a barrel (12/24/07 price), 3.8
billion barrels of crude oil is worth over 353. billion dollars. A
nuclear based hydrogen economy will make the United States richer in
addition to saving us from desertification of our heartland, increased
storm damage, coastal flooding, and world wide starvation caused by
the deadly combination of global warming and massive, government
mandated biofuel production.
Hydrogen fuel produced by nuclear energy will be expensive at
first, but the price will decline over time as the infrastructure
grows and economies of scale lower production costs. Electric car
battery technology is constantly improving and will allow Americans to
drive our highways without guilt that they are burning up precious
natural resources or polluting the environment. If you modify a
Toyota Prius by giving it a hydrogen capable gas tank, slightly alter
its internal combustion engine so that it can run on hydrogen gas, and
rewire its electrical system so that its batteries can be plugged into
a charging station, then you have an excellent hydrogen-electric
hybrid automobile right now. The nuclear based hydrogen economy is
achievable with current technology and is a long term investment in
America's future that will pay increasingly larger dividends every
year. [also see General Motor's prototype hydrogen fuel cell
vehicle]
If we wish a fast, short term fix to rising oil prices, then
drilling in the Alaska ANWR oil reserve will do far less environmental
damage than plunging ahead with biofuel production. Scientific
studies show that drilling at ANWR with modern, low land use
techniques will have a minuscule, inconsequential impact on vegetation
and wildlife. Opposition to ANWR drilling represents emotional
symbolism, not good science or responsible national energy policy.
Using Alaskan oil will create new American jobs, reduce the Federal
budget and foreign trade deficits, and help lower food prices. One
positive idea would be to use Federal revenues from sale of the ANWR
reserves to help fund the switchover to a national nuclear-hydrogen
infrastructure.
If you do not want food prices to double, triple, or even
quadruple in the next ten years, then write your political
representatives and tell them that you do not want to waste food
production resources on biofuels. State the obvious fact that food
prices are already too high and that you want all biofuel mandates and
manufacturing subsidies ended. If this is done you will soon see food
prices declining instead of rising, your local food banks will become
full again, and the United Nations and other charitable organizations
will be able to meet their moral obligations to help feed the world's
starving masses. With a world wide human population of over 6.6
billion people and growing, we cannot afford to feed our families and
at the same time use precious farm and grazing land to produce
biofuels.
On December 19th, 2007, when the United States Congress voted for
massive increases in biofuel production during a time of worldwide
food price hyperinflation, the message they gave the low income people
of the world was very clear; LET THEM EAT BIOFUEL! Is the
unintentional starvation inflicted on the world by thoughtless
American politicians any more morally excusable than the intentional
starvation of innocent civilians ordered by infamous dictators during
times of war?
Christopher Calderhttp://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html
