Quality Weenie

Tree Huggers Getting Bitch-slapped By Their Own

I think it's hilerous when the tree huggers get laws passed and then those laws prove more harming to the enviroment then the thing they are trying to outlaw.

The ink is still moist on Capitol Hill's latest energy bill and, as if on cue, a scientific avalanche is demolishing its assumptions. To wit, trendy climate-change policies like ethanol and other biofuels are actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels.

Guess things like doing in depth research for all senarious isn't something tree huggers take much stock in.

The rebukes arrive via two new studies in Science, a peer-reviewed journal not known for right-wing proclivities. The first, by ecologists at Princeton and the Woods Hole Research Center, reviews the environmental consequences of increased biofuel consumption, which had never been examined comprehensively.

I like that they specifically pointed out that isn't not a right wing institute.

The researchers break new ground by exposing a kind of mega-accounting error: Prior studies had never credited the carbon-dioxide emissions that arise when virgin forests, grasslands and the like are cleared to grow biofuel feedstocks. About 2.7 times more carbon is stored in terrestrial soils and plant material than in the atmosphere, and this carbon is released when these areas are cleared (often by burning) and the soil is tilled. Compounding problems is the loss of "carbon sinks" that absorb atmospheric CO2 in the bargain. Previous projections had also ignored the second-order effects of transferring normal farm land to biofuels, which exerts world-wide pressure on land use.

I can't beleive one wouldn't think that people are going to turn to growing corn if there is a huge demand and large quanities of getting money from it.

But how much damage is the "new" tree hugging loving techknowlege going to cost us?

So, incredibly, when the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol "pays back" the carbon released by land-use change.

Bwahahahahahhaha

The second study comes out of the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy and explores what the authors call the "carbon debt" when native ecosystems are converted to biofuel stock. Until the debt is repaid, biofuels from those fields will be greater net emitters than the fossil fuels they replace. The authors find that the debt for corn ethanol in the U.S. is between 48 and 93 years. In Indonesia and Malaysia, which have a 1.5% annual rate of deforestation to produce palm oil for Western European biodiesel, the debt is as high as 423 years. Yep, that's four centuries. Even Fidel Castro won't last that long.

Bwahahahahahhaha, oh stop it, your killing me, bwahahahahahaha

And what does the author think the tree huggers will do about these revalations?

Our guess is that these new revelations will also be ignored. They're too embarrassing.

Bwahahahahahhaha

(all emphasis is mine)

Posted by Quality Weenie at February 13, 2008 09:16 AM | TrackBack