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Searchinger: Biofuel trend poses unforeseen hazards
Published: Friday, February 6th, 2009
Biofuels are not as green as many people think, visiting Wilson School research scholar Timothy Searchinger said.
In a 2008 paper in the journal Science, Searchinger said that cutting down forests to clear more land for growing biofuel crops could ...
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global warming isn't the irrevocable disaster that anti-fossil fuel advocates make it out to be, but is correctible via engineering projects designed to either (1) reflect heat back into space; or (2) absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, such as by fertilizing ocean areas with iron to encourage algea growth.
The rapid industrialization of India and China, with a combined population of more than 2 billion, makes political solutions to limit fossil fuel use seem extremely unlikely. Mankind won't rest until every ounce of fossil fuel located on the planet has been converted to energy. Geoengineering, therefore, requires serious study.
Of course so-called environmentalists are horrified at this, just as many of them abhor clean nuclear energy. This shows that they were not scientifically interested in the problem at all, but substitute a form of Gaia worship as a pseudo-religion filling the void left by the retreat of Christianity
Liquid biofuels will always be inefficient - that is true.
To say that all biofuels poses unforeseen hazards is not right!!!
Biogas produced from renewable organic material in residues and waste is the best alternative.
Imagine that each person in developed countries generate daily 2 kg renewable raw material (1.2 kg human excreta + 0.8 kg organic waste). 500 people generate 1 ton daily. By high solids anaerobic digestion can be produced methane in biogas and biofertilizers adjusted to cultivated crops.
What happened today? By costly management plant nutrients do not return to cultivated soils, plenty of water is polluted in unhygienic sewage systems and wastewater treatment plants, household waste is incinerated or buried on landfills. Waste incineration pollutes air and leaves 200-250 kg toxic ash that ends up on landfills where pollution of soil and water continues.
Is it perhaps time to realise that renewable raw material in waste is valuable resource.
Ruzena Svedelius AgrD
rsvedelius@hotmail.com