Ethanol Plants Are Allowed To Pollute More Than Oil Refineries (reuters.com) 119
Bruce66423 shares a report from Reuters: In 2007, the U.S. Congress mandated the blending of biofuels such as corn-based ethanol into gasoline. One of the top goals: reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But today, the nation's ethanol plants produce more than double the climate-damaging pollution, per gallon of fuel production capacity, than the nation's oil refineries, according to a Reuters analysis of federal data. The average ethanol plant chuffed out 1,187 metric tons of carbon emissions per million gallons of fuel capacity in 2020, the latest year data is available. The average oil refinery, by contrast, produced 533 metric tons of carbon.
The ethanol plants' high emissions result in part from a history of industry-friendly federal regulation that has allowed almost all processors to sidestep the key environmental requirement of the 2007 law, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), according to academics who have studied ethanol pollution and regulatory documents examined by Reuters. The rule requires individual ethanol processors to demonstrate that their fuels result in lower carbon emissions than gasoline. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged with writing the regulations to meet the goals set by Congress. For processors, that translates to an EPA requirement that the plants use certain emissions-control processes the agency assumes will result in lower-than-gasoline emissions. But the agency has exempted more than 95% of U.S. ethanol plants from the requirement through a grandfathering provision that excused plants built or under construction before the legislation passed. Today, these plants produce more than 80% of the nation's ethanol, according to the EPA.
Some of the exempted plants produced much less pollution, including some owned by the same companies producing the highest emissions. The EPA said about a third meet the law's environmental standard even though they are not required to do so. But as a group, the plants freed from regulation produced 40% more pollution per gallon of fuel capacity, on average, than the plants required to comply, the Reuters analysis found.
The ethanol plants' high emissions result in part from a history of industry-friendly federal regulation that has allowed almost all processors to sidestep the key environmental requirement of the 2007 law, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), according to academics who have studied ethanol pollution and regulatory documents examined by Reuters. The rule requires individual ethanol processors to demonstrate that their fuels result in lower carbon emissions than gasoline. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged with writing the regulations to meet the goals set by Congress. For processors, that translates to an EPA requirement that the plants use certain emissions-control processes the agency assumes will result in lower-than-gasoline emissions. But the agency has exempted more than 95% of U.S. ethanol plants from the requirement through a grandfathering provision that excused plants built or under construction before the legislation passed. Today, these plants produce more than 80% of the nation's ethanol, according to the EPA.
Some of the exempted plants produced much less pollution, including some owned by the same companies producing the highest emissions. The EPA said about a third meet the law's environmental standard even though they are not required to do so. But as a group, the plants freed from regulation produced 40% more pollution per gallon of fuel capacity, on average, than the plants required to comply, the Reuters analysis found.
Technical problme needs a technical solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Much as policymakers want to be able to dictate carbon emissions reductions, the reality is far more complicated because you need to look at full lifecycle carbon emissions, and those total emissions may depend on details of the location and production chain.
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Mitigating climate change is a very complex problem and not amenable to simple solutions like "lets use ethanol from farms", or "lets plant lots of trees", or "lets all buy electric cars ". Done correctly, all of those can help, done incorrectly, they can all make things worse.
The only place it might make sense to make ethanol in relation to farms is for any silage that's not getting turned in to be turned into locally used fuel. Ethanol is a terrible motor fuel for practical reasons, not that gasoline isn't. Diesel is pretty great in most ways, but it has an optics problem (it doesn't actually produce more soot than gassers [slashdot.org], but you see more of it) so... roll on the EVs.
We could also be producing more Butanol fuel, it's a 1:1 replacement for gasoline...
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I'm convinced the only way to mitigate climate change would be to stop destroying the natural processes that sequester carbon. Deforestation and ocean acidification would be at the top of the list for me. If you look at Brazil over the last 30 years, we've pretty much clearcut over half of it.
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And offsetting isn't enough, either, so we've got to octuple the output or whatever, it's not physically possible.
Assuming we could figure out how to use the materials, it would also be a lot faster to do it with bamboo than with trees.
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And offsetting isn't enough, either, so we've got to octuple the output or whatever, it's not physically possible.
My point was to indicate the scale of the issue, not suggesting offsetting was sufficient. Eventually, if 100% was offset, then levels would fall. However, logging uses energy, so you need to offset just a bit more to make up for that. Swapping to non-CO2 forms of electrical generation and some energy efficiency (e.g. insulation) are going to be the lowest-hanging fruit to turn offsetting of current output into potential sequestration, followed by some elements of transport. Heating is a bit difficult, and
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Yeah, there are definitely issues with bamboo. On the other hand, finding ways to use it isn't that hard if you grow useful kinds of bamboo instead of bullshit ones. Timber bamboo can do a lot of jobs that are currently done by wood timber without too much specialized knowledge being required, and some varieties are very attractive to boot. It can also do jobs that are commonly done with steel, but that is a significant shift that requires substantially different engineering strategies.
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If we can grow the trees, we can put them to work.
One interesting possibility is bringing back wood for serious construction applications that have been taken over by steel and concrete. Laminated wood beams mostly eliminate the variability found in single boards, making for a much more predictable carbon-fiber-based construction material with a better strength-to-weight ratio than steel.
The underlying carbon fiber basis of wood can be made even more obvious by processing such as done to produce Mettlewood
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If we can grow the trees, we can put them to work.
Interesting stuff.
It is a lot of wood, though. I guess wooden clogs will need to make a comeback. Plus new uses like wooden phone cases. I think cricket bats might use more wood than a baseball bat so the USA might need to change sports to absorb some wood to avoid wooden footballs.
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Mettlewood cars, planes, trains, shipping containers...
If you'd like a comparatively cheap carbon-fiber version of something, with free authentic wood grain finish, it would seem to have potential. And when you're done with it you throw it in the decay-resistant landfill and let it slowly release that carbon into other still-bound forms over the subsequent centuries. Or compost it at any time for faster release.
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I was pretty sure you were wrong, but wasn't going to go digging for half-remembered evidence... but just tripped over this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
He starts discussing flammability about 4min in.
Modern engineered lumber can actually be *more* fire resistant than steel. The "secret" is that wood chars as it burns, and charcoal is a great insulator - so much so it's commonly used in ablative heat shielding on orbital reentry vehicles. Cover it in a layer of gypsum wall board and it may avoid damag
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FYI - ocean acidification is caused by carbon capture. CO2 dissolved in water is an acid, and the CO2 levels in the water are determined mostly by reaching the equilibrium point with CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
As such, the only practical way to reduce ocean acidification is to reduce the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which are *also* causing climate change... and we're back to the original problem.
Kinda like like the only practical way to reduce the heating caused by melting ice caps exposing more dark g
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Ethanol is actually a great additive for gasoline though. It's a VERY eco-friendly octane booster - better than tetraethyl lead ("ethyl" or "leaded" gas), or MTBE.
It's a terrible fuel by itself, but its inclusion in gas isn't an accident.
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Ethanol is actually a great additive for gasoline though.
It isn't, because it destroys fuel system components.
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Old fuel systems that weren't designed with it in mind, it's no longer a problem.
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Ethanol is hygroscopic, the inevitable water content in the fuel causes corrosion of metal components. And even the allegedly ethanol-safe hoses and seals still fail faster with ethanol fuel than with normal petro fuel, which proves that those hoses and seals are still affected by it. It's still a problem for modern fuel systems.
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Ethanol doesn't have to be bad. (Score:4, Interesting)
Ethanol doesn't have to be a bad fuel, but we make in a poor way, and because we want our E85 multifuel engines to be able to run on regular, that means we can't ramp up the compression to take advantage of the higher octane, and higher compression can be used to increase the efficiency to make up for the lesser energy.
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How about returning to the good old system of 2 different fuels? I remember, when I was a kid, pumps offered "regular" and "premium", which they still kinda do (usually it's fuel or "fuel plus whatever the chain claims will make your engine run at least 50 cents better"). What's wrong with switching back to that, and people have to pick the right fuel for their engines?
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It's still like that here in Canada, regular, premium and a mix of the 2 at most gas stations. Chevron also has a premium plus, 94 octane and no ethanol, that I buy for my small engines.
Kind of surprised it is not similar everywhere, while most cars are happy with 87 octane, there are higher compression engines that want premium.
We're already at like 5? (Score:2)
We're still in the "good old system" though it is actually pretty bad, requiring a lot of tanks.
Off hand:
Regular
Mid-Grade
Premium
Ethanol-Free
E85
Diesel
Etc...
We can do this all with ~4 Tanks, but that's still a bunch.
(Regular gas, Premium Gas, E85, diesel, mix as required)
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because we want our E85 multifuel engines to be able to run on regular, that means we can't ramp up the compression to take advantage of the higher octane
Pardon me, but isn't that what turbos are supposed to address?
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I don't remember seeing many E85 vehicles with turbos...
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Ethanol is a terrible motor fuel for practical reasons, not that gasoline isn't.
Ethanol has problems for other reasons, but no, it's a quite practical fuel. It's a bad fuel for engines that weren't designed to use it, but that's not surprising.
Diesel is pretty great in most ways, but it has an optics problem (it doesn't actually produce more soot than gassers [slashdot.org],
Not quite. If you track down that article, you see that is says that gasoline engines (may) produce more soot than previously estimated, not more soot than diesel engines.
We could also be producing more Butanol fuel, it's a 1:1 replacement for gasoline...
I'm actually a fan of methanol [motortrend.com], but hardly anybody else seems to propose using it. (More corrosive, though, but you can adapt to it.)
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Ethanol has problems for other reasons, but no, it's a quite practical fuel. It's a bad fuel for engines that weren't designed to use it, but that's not surprising.
No, it's hygroscopic so it attracts water which corrodes fuel systems. It's a problem fuel in every way but cooling (which benefit is due to the large fuel volume and the heat energy consumed vaporizing it — the larger fuel volume is a detriment as well) and nobody should use it unless it's in a tractor with a 1bbl carburetor that is cheaply and trivially rebuilt, or a funny car. It has very little to do with suitability for engines, only for fuel systems.
Diesel is pretty great in most ways, but it has an optics problem (it doesn't actually produce more soot than gassers,
Not quite. If you track down that article, you see that is says that gasoline engines (may) produce more soot than previously estimated, not more soot than diesel engines.
Me: Diesels don't produce more soot than gasol
Methanol [Re:Technical problme needs a technic...] (Score:2)
Ethanol has problems for other reasons, but no, it's a quite practical fuel. It's a bad fuel for engines that weren't designed to use it, but that's not surprising.
No, it's hygroscopic so it attracts water which corrodes fuel systems.
Right. Don't let water get in. Problem solved. Nothing you said here contradicts the statement "ethanol is a fine fuel for engines. Don't let it absorb water."
...Diesel is pretty great in most ways, but it has an optics problem (it doesn't actually produce more soot than gassers,
Not quite. If you track down that article, you see that is says that gasoline engines (may) produce more soot than previously estimated, not more soot than diesel engines.
Me: Diesels don't produce more soot than gasoline engines. You: Gasoline engines don't produce more soot than diesel engines. Me: Get near a point
You: makes an assertion.
Me: the reference you give does not support that assertion.
You: what's your point?
I'm actually a fan of methanol, but hardly anybody else seems to propose using it. (More corrosive, though, but you can adapt to it.)
Methanol is spectacularly toxic [nih.gov]
About the same as gasoline.
and is readily absorbed through the skin, far more than gasoline for example.
Don't stick your hand in a jar of methanol. But the average lethal dose is 56 grams [nih.gov] (about 2 ounces); that's far more than you can absorb through your skin even if you do.
Oh, and I advise not sticking your hand in a jar
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Don't let water get in. Problem solved.
In the really real world it's really a problem. Many aspects of the fueling infrastructure must be vented to function.
the average lethal dose is 56 grams
It only takes ten grams to cause blindness.
assertions such as the ones you made are indeed the reason people aren't thinking about ethanol as a biofuel.
It's also generally topsoil-based, which is terrible.
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the average lethal dose [of methanol] is 56 grams
It only takes ten grams to cause blindness.
Yes, I would advise not drinking ten grams of methanol... and also give the same advice about drinking gasoline.
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You can absorb methanol much more readily through the skin, and people have gone blind just from that. I've had gasoline all over my hands repeatedly, still not blind.
You really do seem to want people to be harmed.
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I've had gasoline all over my hands repeatedly, still not blind.
There's a saying in science, "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'."
Plug in hybrids (Score:3)
The current problem with EVs is that if you want decent range you need a huge battery, and between the mining and manufacturing, batteries are still very CO2-intensive to make. I think I recall hearing a typical US-range EV would have to be used for 20 years of average driving to actually save net carbon. A bit of a problem when the current car only lasts an average of 12 years - though I'm all for dramatically improved reliability.
Plug in hybrids though - you can give them just enough battery to complete
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The recent numbers I've seen are closer to 5 years for carbon equality, at least for cars. The EV Hummer is an exception at closer to 20, and too many people want the biggest vehicle possible.
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That raises the question of whether they're really comparing like with like. Are they putting the EV Hummer up against non-EV Hummers, or are they putting it up against the "car" category in general?
Because if they're getting 20 years by comparing it to cars in general, then I'd assert that they're not actually comparing like with like, and it should be CO2 positive if put up against comparable(less efficient) vehicles.
They're probably also calcing excessively pessimistically, like assuming 100% coal for e
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Unluckily I can't find the article now and Google doesn't help so going on memory. It was a comparison of like vs like including the electric Hummer vs gas Hummer. Seems the Hummer needs huge battery packs compared to cars. I'd also assume they're using the EPA's estimate of average CO2 output for generating electricity but can't remember if it was mentioned.
Just now Googling does show how complicated it is, from mining to transporting the new car to emissions created while actually driving.
As you say, if t
EV Hummer (Score:2)
Hmmm... googling "ev hummer carbon footprint"
https://robbreport.com/motors/... [robbreport.com]
- Worse than a gas powered sedan (well duh, it's huge), and a lot of articles regurgitating the same information on different sites.
I'm not seeing your figure either.
So it may have been a low quality report that was debunked and removed.
Hell, it might even be "financial payback estimate".
Re:Technical problme needs a technical solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Mitigating climate change is a very complex problem and not amenable to simple solutions like "lets use ethanol from farms", or "lets plant lots of trees", or "lets all buy electric cars ". Done correctly, all of those can help, done incorrectly, they can all make things worse.
I disagree on the solutions not being simple.
What are the largest producers of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses? Electricity production, transportation fuels, cement and concrete, and then after that the impacts start to get rather small. People make a big deal about meat producing greenhouse gases, but how much does that produce? Especially when anything that we can think of to replace meat has it's own carbon footprint? I've seen estimates being something like one or two percent. Okay, after we tackle the top three then maybe we can get back to "the one percenters".
Let's start with electricity. What are the lowest CO2 emitting energy sources, that have costs that are competitive with fossil fuels, and are technologies we can deploy today? The top four are, hydro, onshore wind, geothermal, and nuclear fission. The precise rank order of those four can vary on who you ask but there's few that will dispute that those four are on top.
If we go beyond the top four then we find offshore wind, solar (in it's many forms), and natural gas. While natural gas is a fossil fuel there is evidence to suggest this is preferable to wind and solar. This is in large part from the use of natural gas a backup to wind and solar, to make up for the intermittent nature. By burning natural gas in a slow and steady boiler instead of a backup or "peaker" turbine the fuel is burned more efficiently and cleanly, meaning less CO2 and unburned methane per unit of useful energy produced. Solar should be a choice of last resort.
With carbon neutral electricity we can produce carbon neutral transportation fuels. That's a process the US Navy demonstrated. They plan to use electricity from a nuclear power plant on a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and turn seawater into jet fuel. They've been turning seawater into freshwater on nuclear powered ships also, so maybe we can take a few clues from them on the water shortage issues too. The Navy calls it "jet fuel" but it is the fuel they use for planes, helicopters, battle tanks, trucks, stoves, generators, other ships, and so on. With light modifications to most any engine it can run on this fuel. Or, more likely, the process can be modified lightly to produce gasoline or diesel fuel.
We know how to make carbon negative cement and concrete. We use basalt as the raw material instead of limestone and sand. The process gets complicated quickly so I'm not sure I should go through with how it works here. The important part is that by mining the basalt we are increasing the surface area of the rock so that it will react with CO2 in the air and water so that the basalt based cement turns into a very durable limestone material that is indistinguishable from the kinds of cement we use now.
We can take the hydrocarbon synthesis from making fuels further and product carbon negative asphalt and tar. People like tarmac as paving material. Tarmac is tar and macadam, with macadam being a kind of crushed rock. I suspect asphalt as most people see it is actually tarmac but with a thin layer of asphalt to give it a smooth texture and color. For added carbon negative points use basalt as the macadam.
Once we tackle those big three on CO2/GHG emissions then we have brought CO2/GHG emissions from human activity to something like 20% what it is now. Then maybe we can discuss meat production. At which point we should discover that meat production is already largely carbon neutral. We got all the trucks and tractors running on carbon neutral fuel, and the basalt mined for the cement was also used to fertilize the crops. The basalt in the crop fields is trapping CO2 in the soil for the plants to pick up, and is managing the Ph so plants are picking up
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I do agree that low carbon electricity would be a huge win -just that will pretty much solve the problem, but its still hard:
Natural gas: Certainly a lot better than coal but still significant carbon emissions. Carbon capture at the generating plant is possible but adds cost. I think we will see most fossil fueled electrical generation going to natural gas, but I don't know if that is enough. Also methane is itself a very strong greenhouse gas. Unlike CO2,
Re:Technical problme needs a technical solution (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that we're still burning coal, oil, and gas for electricity is purely a (dumb) political choice.
Some people shit of France for some maintenance issues they're having to do on the NPPs now but if you look at the whole picture I think it's pretty it worked out great. They've had an 80-90% carbon free generation mix for like 30 years now. The downside is... it's a bit more expensive, maybe? On the other hand, it's low carbon, not dependent on a single dictator for fuel supply, and most of the costs are capital and labor, which goes into your local economy and not to prop up petrostates or pay for Chinese slave labor.
Solar and wind is great too though, and again France is actually building out renewables as well and IMO it's working out well. Some cheap gas plants can then level out generation. This mix seems to work pretty well and doesn't require anything crazy to make work.
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...which goes into your local economy and not to prop up petrostates or pay for Chinese slave labor.
Which country is home to the 3 biggest manufacturers of solar panels & 6 out the 10 biggest in the world? I'll give you a clue, it begins with 'C'.
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Corea?
No seriously I know it's China, that's exactly what I meant in that sentence.
I know I mention solar later as being good as part of renewable mix, I just think a) it's possible to get other panels and b) spending $200 on your nuclear engineers is better than $100 on Chinese panels.
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Yeah - China is the dominant player in solar in large part because other countries never bothered to step up. The factories are so automated that labor costs are almost irrelevant, though lax pollution laws no doubt help bring down the cost a fair bit - traditional semiconductors are a nasty industry. But a lot of the newer solar technologies are much less so.
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The obvious question that follows is, if it is so easy then why hasn't it already been done?
Because its more profitable to not do it. If I could make everyone who emits carbon into my air supply pay me a microtransaction, a free market solution could exist. Unfortunately, that's impossible, so we need government regulation.
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People make a big deal about meat producing greenhouse gases, but how much does that produce? Especially when anything that we can think of to replace meat has it's own carbon footprint? I've seen estimates being something like one or two percent.
I don't know where you're getting your info from but it's exceptionally wrong, e.g. see: https://journals.plos.org/clim... [plos.org] There's a wide variety of estimates of contributions to global heating that animal agriculture makes but they're all pretty high.
It would seem that encouraging more people to consume less animal products would be a fast & highly effective strategy. A more plant-based diet can also have many health benefits (if it isn't processed into junk food as it tends to be at the moment).
Global problems need a global solution (Score:2)
The obvious question that follows is, if it is so easy then why hasn't it already been done? It is because we have politicians that want to use the threat of global warming to advance their political careers, if they solve the problems then people might believe we don't need these worthless politicians. We don't need the government to solve the problems. We just need them to get out of our way.
Your analysis makes the naive assumption that the US is a planet onto itself. You can't fix a global problem without global action. What might work in the US, where corporate capitalism has strong roots, might not work in countries where people view the government as the lesser evil.
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No, my analysis does not assume that the US is a planet unto itself. The cost differences between different energy sources depends on materials and labor, with materials being commodities traded on a global market and labor being provided locally at roughly the same rates regardless of which energy source is used. As pointed out before the top four solutions to our energy supply problem may shift around a bit but on nearly every place on the planet the same four come out on top on costs and CO2 emissions.
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Ethanol from farms is net carbon positive because it uses fuel in its production and doesn't sequester any.
Planting trees is net carbon positive for the same reason. Remember in elementary school when they taught us about the carbon cycle? The only way planting trees will help is if we bury them underground instead of letting them decompose after they die.
Electric cars are net carbon positive, again, for the same reason.
None of these things will help.
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Well, trees will sequester it for the time they grow. And even when they decompose, they usually do so by binding their carbon back into some other kind of growth, so eventually they are at least carbon neutral if not negative.
But yeah, we'd need to do what nature did a few million years ago, bury those trees down in the earth and eventually turn them into coal.
Re:Technical problme needs a technical solution (Score:4, Interesting)
It's actually very simple, and something we've always done. You make a large scale evaluation of all methods you have, take into consideration every input, every operating factor and every output, and rate it as a whole
We do this for almost everything industrial as a matter of norm when it comes to productivity. You simply would need to do the same for the emissions. And just like productivity types, you'd also need to rank order the emissions types. This is actually not hard, because we have a veritable army of people who have been trained to do those kinds of evaluations accurately. Any medium and large business relies on those people to survive. They're dry, annoying and often called "excel warriors" for their troubles. Specifically because they're really good at shooting down pipe dreams of the delusional with cold, hard numbers.
The problem we're having is that we have a small environmentalist movement, and a large Cult of Gaia pretending to be environmentalist. Former actually insist on doing what I suggested, and I count myself among them. Latter are in it for the satisfaction of their religious impulse. They actively demonstrate that they don't give a single fuck about CO2 emissions by doing things like blank support for solar anywhere. The same solar that emits tremendous amounts of both CO and CO2 during the production phase to the point where solar panels installed in places like Northern Europe and much of Central Europe will never recoup their carbon debt, especially vs low carbon sources like nuclear, but because of prevalence of Cult of Gaia adherents in legislative is rated "zero emissions" when received in manufactured form.
And until we reckon with the reality, policymakers will continue doing what they are doing. Satisfying the public on each issue, which is primarily driven by the small but just large enough minority that cares about each issue. Not to mention reckoning with the larger reality that almost all humans have a very strong religious impulse that they need to have satisfied in some way, and offering alternatives to genocidal cults like the one that claims that humans are a cancer on The Planet, hurting it.
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Does a tree planting program count the energy used to plant the trees? The energy used to build the vehicles that are used - or is that double counting? If it was formerl
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First of all, there's an obvious "climate motivation". It's in the decrease of productivity from global warming related problems. Just not the Cult of Gaia's, "capitalism is evil, growth is evil, humanity is evil" motivation. For example, if you have a farm, and you get less yields from days getting warmer drying your plants up, you're going to be working to mitigate the issues.
The problem here is also in that this is another failure in reckoning with reality, such as that while global warming is indeed glo
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Its a classic "tragedy of the commons" situation where it benefits the individual to emit more CO2, but hurts everyone if everyone does it.
Some people may act out of idealogy (I bought solar fro
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This is the Cult of Gaia propaganda that is anti-scientific on factual basis. IPCC has now done several analyses on the subject, and it's very clear that there are many places that are going to be clear cut net beneficiaries of global warming for at least next 50 years in terms of productivity.
For example, my home nation of Finland is looking at less harsh winters, longer summers, more agricultural productivity, less negative impact from extreme cold. And we're still going to be net gaining land from the se
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When you go so far into religious denial of well established scientific theories, that you deny the fact that plants become more productive as concentration of CO2 in air increases at least until it reaches 1200-1500ppm.
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Sure. For example, meta studies of many papers like this one:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/... [world-nuclear.org]
You're looking for figure on top of page seven. For good measure, notice the range on solar. That is the failure of most studies to reckon with just how incredibly polluting the process of generating PV grade polysilicon is.
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Fun part: 20 year old panels are better in terms of CO2 emissions, because they only require three to five nines purity, i.e. way less CO and CO2 emissions.
They're worse in terms of efficiency IF you zero out this carbon debt as is legally done in EU today upon receiving the panel, because they're less efficient in terms of production of electricity per unit of surface.
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The key problem here is that people need to relocate a lot, so maybe nip that problem in the bud and ensure people don't need to travel more than they absolutely have to? I'm fairly sure a lot of people would enjoy traveling a lot less quite a bit, but are now required to travel. To work, to leisure activities, to whatever other places. There's ways to curtail that. Give people a way (and incentive) to walk or travel by muscle power rather than fuel. If I have to travel 10 miles to do something, I will not
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I suspect this is nonsense from people who don't know chemistry.
Ethanol plants turn sugars into alcohol and CO2, well known to anyone who has brewed beer. But the sugar came from plants so it is not adding fossil carbon to the air and neither does the CO2 from fermenting. There is a relatively small amount of energy put into distilling the alcohol.
It takes a relatively small amount of energy to sort out gasoline from jet fuel, but the entire fuel output of a refinery gets into the air as CO2.
The rest of t
Stop burning food! (Score:2, Informative)
It is good to see people taking a critical look at ethanol fuel. The complaint is on air pollution, not that we are burning food. We might get the right answer but for the wrong reasons.
Stop burning food!
Don't people realize we are facing a possible global food shortage? In the middle of reports of a possible food shortage I'm getting political fliers in the mail about how "green" the federal government is getting because of increasing ethanol mandates. Not only am I not impressed but I'm quite infuriat
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Don't you mean stop burning drinks? How much bourbon have we been losing because of this ethanol fuel madness?
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Oh the spirituality!
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Don't people realize we are facing a possible global food shortage? In the middle of reports of a possible food shortage I'm getting political fliers in the mail about how "green" the federal government is getting because of increasing ethanol mandates. Not only am I not impressed but I'm quite infuriated that we have government officials that believe burning food is a good idea.
It's not a terrible idea in theory, but under the current circumstances, it's not remotely a good idea.
Maybe small amounts of ethanol in our gasoline is a good thing. I've heard how ethanol is supposed to improve octane or whatever. Ethanol is supposed to be a replacement for MTBE or something that is far worse as a fuel additive. Maybe there is an argument for something like 1% of the fuel being ethanol. When it's getting to be 15%, and people are seeing their cars damaged from the high levels of ethanol in the fuel, then we went too far.
E15 is safe for all vehicles manufactured after 2001, and some vehicles before that. Most gas stations are more like E5 or E10. There really aren't a lot of cars on the road that can't handle it at this point.
For one thing we could build more nuclear power plants.
And should. I agree with you there.
That isn't an exact replacement for gasoline but then with nuclear power we aren't seeing cropland paved over with solar panels to produce electricity.
This one, however, seems rather overly cautious. Over a third of solar panels are on the roofs of buildings. Many others are installed as coverings over parking
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I understand the appeal of synthetic fuels in terms of not having to replace vehicles and in terms of faster fill-ups than EVs when taking longer trips, but it's really not the right solution to the problem.
If you believe battery powered vehicles are a better solution over synthetic fuels then you don't understand the problem.
You can claim it is unlikely for new cars to be damaged from E15 fuel but it is well documented as happening. You can have doubts that agricultural land has been paved over with solar panels but that is also well documented. You can suggest that synthetic fuels have shitty thermodynamic efficiency but nobody cares. What people care about is how much the energy will cost them to get whe
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I understand the appeal of synthetic fuels in terms of not having to replace vehicles and in terms of faster fill-ups than EVs when taking longer trips, but it's really not the right solution to the problem.
If you believe battery powered vehicles are a better solution over synthetic fuels then you don't understand the problem.
I drive a battery-powered vehicle, and have sone so exclusively for the past five years, so no, I really don't understand the problem. What's the problem you're trying to solve that isn't solved by EVs?
You can claim it is unlikely for new cars to be damaged from E15 fuel but it is well documented as happening.
Source?
You can have doubts that agricultural land has been paved over with solar panels but that is also well documented.
Source?
You can suggest that synthetic fuels have shitty thermodynamic efficiency but nobody cares. What people care about is how much the energy will cost them to get where they are going.
And using 9x as much power to get there means that you would expect it to cost 9x as much to get there, which makes synthetic fuels a total non-starter. The fact of the matter is that burning fuel is an incredibly inefficient way to get where you're going, which is why EVs are much cheaper per
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I drive a battery-powered vehicle, and have done so exclusively for the past five years, so no, I really don't understand the problem. What's the problem you're trying to solve that isn't solved by EVs?
And as soon as I clicked submit, I saw the typo... in the very first ^&)@#$(* sentence. Grr.
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Source?
Why didn't you provide sources? I feel like I'm being trolled into another waste of my time. First there is the demand for sources. I provide a source. Then comes the accusations that my source was cherry picked. I provide more sources. Then is the accusation the sources were biased. I provide more sources. Then the goal posts are moved. I provide more sources. I'm an idiot for falling for that shit over and over. I need to remind myself that there's no winning a debate by citing sources if the o
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Source?
Why didn't you provide sources?
Because I'm not saying things that sound an awful lot like conspiracy theories. The U.S. EPA [epa.gov] says E15 is safe for all vehicles built after 2001. And so do indepdendent studies [researchgate.net]. So when I see claims that the opposite of that is "well documented", I think it is reasonable to ask for some sort of evidence.
As for farmland becoming solar farms, we could power the entire U.S. (ignoring storage losses) from solar with just half a percent [freeingenergy.com] of the U.S. land area, or about 21,000 square miles. And about a third of
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That's what we've always done. Before there were automobiles, we used farmland to grow hay for horses for transportation. Even riding a bicycle or walking on our own two feet requires fuel grown on farms.
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Don't people realize we are facing a possible global food shortage?
Ethanol isn't food. Food is grown to be eaten. When you grow something specifically for another purpose it ceases to become food. Now your post may make more sense if it were focused on the issue of use of arable land, but in that respect we are also not facing a shortage. At least not now.
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You're conflating "become" with "used as". Corn is still food regardless of what use you put it to.
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No it's not, because it wouldn't exist. If it weren't for the supply of ethanol those corn crops wouldn't be corn crops. Hence, we're not burning food.
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We have a global food shortage. And we have had it for about as long as humanity exists. We, in the Western world, didn't experience it for the past 70+ years because we pretty much took away food and resources from the rest of the world to ensure we won't have one (quite frankly, we still throw away more food than we eat), but that is by far not the norm on this planet.
And it hasn't been, ever.
My grandmother, born 1920, did still experience what a famine really is like. And famine as in "what we look at in
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*Finishing Blow!*
tamale > tortilla
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Popcorn!
*blows dealt*
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What on earth are you ranting about?
Stop burning food, because that is how societies have ended? Yea right. That's definitely how the Mayans and the Aztecs and the Moors went.
A funny thing happened on Easter Island.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
That's just one example of a civilization that died out because they didn't take care of their environment. I'm seeing this happen today but the people doing this bullshit are screaming the most about what is "sustainable". What is not sustainable is burning food. At least the rate we are burning corn and trees for fuel today is not sustainable.
What is sustainable is using nuclear fission. Not the kid of fission where we burn somet
Easter Island not the story we think it is (Score:2)
This presents a different view that reduces how far humans are directly culpable.
https://www.livescience.com/61... [livescience.com]
Rapa Nui [Re:Stop burning food!] (Score:2)
Failed Attempt (Score:4)
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Using ethanol was a a nice thought but it does not work. The fuel produced is less efficient and the production is a mess. We need to admit this was a failed option and stop throwing good money after bad.
We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas? Ethanol has problems, literally every material we have ever processed for some purpose in the history of the human race has problems. That doesn't mean you throw it all out. The fuel efficiency is completely irrelevant, but the production mess is real. Yet the problems in production are fixable if there's appetite to do so.
Just like in this case, where everyone seems to be criticising ethanol in a story about how the government was too fucking stupid to not pu
I thought everyone already knew this... (Score:2)
Plus, we need that corn for meal to feed the people. Down with ethanol!
not to mention (Score:2)
...each gallon of that crap only has about what, 85% of the energy of a gallon of gas?
I see it all the time, ethanol being touted because it's 10% cheaper than gas (or whatever) but people don't realize they're getting 15% less mileage.
Idiocy.
And this is to say nothing of the fact that, as it's not a food product, crops for ethanol are less strictly regulated for pesticides and other toxins, meaning they're also likely polluting more in the production as well.
Follow the money (Score:1)
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force it down our throats
They aren't forcing it down our throats in this instance, it's going into cars!
ethanol found to worse than gasoline (Score:1)
Considering all the effects of ethanol including land use changes to grow corn, it's more carbon intensive than gasoline. In short, we're being morons to use it, making 24 percent more carbon emissions:
https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
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Re: ethanol found to worse than gasoline (Score:1)
And weâ(TM)ve known that since the beginning, if it canâ(TM)t compete on price it is bad, because the cost of products is driven mostly by the amount of energy put into it. Yet the green movement pushed ethanol with massive subsidies, like they do for solar and wind, like they do for meat alternatives etc etc
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Did the green movement push the ethanol subsidies or was it the farming movement who did?
War in Ukraine (Score:2, Interesting)
Article Basis is "Not Even Wrong" (Score:2, Insightful)
The American Petroleum Institute (API) stated in 1948 that "it is generally considered that the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero".[73] There is no safe exposure level; even tiny amounts can cause harm.[74] The US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) classifies benzene as a human carcinogen. Long-term exposure to excessive levels of benzene in the air causes leu
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Absolutely. And in case anyone isn't paying attention, petroleum refineries release a lot more than just CO2. If the only emission from petroleum refineries you're worried about is CO2, you're nuts.
Benzene. Xylene. Ethylbenzene. Toluene. Heavy metals. Sulphur dioxide. Bleh.
Yeah we need those refineries, so let's put this all in some perspective. We should also remember that there's more to worry about than just CO2.
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Journalists have agendas. So long as that continues, objective analysis will miraculously escape them.
Not to say that ethanol is perfect, or even very good. But the article in question is a bit stupid (to be charitable).
Producing ethanol generates CO2 (Score:2)
The first thing I thought about was that producing ethanol by fermenting sugar or starch generates quite a lot of CO2. That is based on brewing and baking. Then you have to distil the ethanol from the fermentation product, which requires energy. I am not sure what processing is needed to get fermentable sugars from corn starch. Starches such as barley and wheat are digested only very slowly by yeast. Brewing beer normally relies on enzymes produced by malted barley. Sourdough bread culture relies on bacteri
Ethanol is and always has been, a boondoggle (Score:1)
Iowa votes more important than clean air? (Score:1)
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