Now, comes word of another failing biofuel "miracle." Thousands of farmers in the developing world were told that biofuel from an oily tree fruit, jatropha, could be grown on marginal land. Thus it could produce massive amounts of renewable fuels without competing with food crops.
Now it turns out the experts were wrong about jatropha growing well on marginal land. Jatropha will grow on marginal land, but it needs good land to produce economically viable yields. Indian farmers, for example, find the forecast yields of 2–5 tons per hectare are actually less than 2 tons.
Meanwhile, millions of jatropha trees are being grown instead of food on farms from Ghana and Guatemala to Mozambique and India. EU companies have reportedly leased 5 million hectares of land for biofuel production, much of it in Africa, where it will compete with already-inadequate food production and threaten unique wildlife.
Via Siemens Says
And the law of unintended, yet entirely foreseeable, consequences rears its head.
Again.
And again and again and again...
I always thought that the AGW crowd was into eugenics and now we have proof. Their slogan could be, "Help control CO2 output - starve an African".
I'm beginning to think that these consequences aren't unintended.
Should make the zero population growth people happy. Lovely sort, those environmentalists.
I'm beginning to think that these consequences aren't unintended.
beginning ??
more intended consequences of blind devotion to greenism . . . think Dulton signing Ontario up to a $7 Billion boondogle.
"Here’s a fact you won’t see mentioned in the public policy debate over “alternative” energy:
There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology.
Nada.
Zero.
Zilch.
Yet many want to make this group of functionally useless technologies the primary energy sources for our entire civilization."
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/11847.html
Who cares? Really, who cares?
Is this just metaphor too, Dr. Libby?
Once you accept the idea that the -bigtime- environmentalists like the guys who cooked up this biofuel scam are disgusting human beings who make the much hated robber barons of US history look like freakin' choirboys, you'll have a better handle on what they are liable to do.
Like extort billions in sketchy deals on wind generators out of the Ontario Liberals, by hinting that bad things could happen to Dalton's majority if he didn't go for it, but nice campaign contributions could happen if he did go for it.
Algore and carbon offsets. Dr. Fruitfly and lucrative TV work. And etc.
Just sayin'.
Someone want to sign for these jatropha trees?
Am I the only one who is seeing Goldman-Sachs in every green project turning sour?
This is why "progressives" aren't really progressive. Bio-fuel is unsustainable, indigenous populations lose out and some bleeding-heart pats himself on the back for what he thinks is a good day's work.
Will the WWF file a report?
Syncro
Al lied, people died.
I said here a few years ago that "using food for fuel instead of feeding people is evil".
Who'd have thought that we'd require some type of ethics board to correctly direct farmers and everyone else of the proper destination for FOOD!
We've seen a substantial increase on the grocery bill in the last few years. Fortunately for us we've managed to out pace the rate of inflation. People are going to have to start tightening their belts and rearranging priorities.
Less than 2 tons/acre of what is probably mainly water. I'm curious if anyone has done the calculations to determine how many Kwh it takes to plant/fertilize/harvest the trees and extract and transport the oil in comparison to the number of Kwh acually produced when one fuels an internal combustion engine with this biofuel. My guess is that one is putting in more energy than one gets out; I guess this is the "green" version of a perpetual motion machine.
Although, OTOH, it does allow one to starve more Africans with a smaller carbon footprint for each dead African. Perhaps the original aim of this whole project?
Sorry if this has been mentioned,
but have any of you heard of the Bloom Box?
I saw the inventor on TV claim -repeatedely- his invention converted oxygen into electricity which made it sound like not only electricity for free but a very very green invention.
Then I did my own research and it turns out the Bloom Box runs on - you guessed it- FOSSIL FUELS such as diesel and propane !!!
Oh and the magic Bloom Box operates at temperatures between 800 F and 1800 F...talk about man made global warming...
If it claims to be green, don't trust it as the green people are mostly a bunch of dishonest people.
jatropha, jojoba, jamocha..
Same tune, different era
Is using food for fuel really evil? If it is, then what about using food for decorations? What about using food for children's games, or eating contests, or beauty products, or plenty more things we could live without?
After we stamp out those practices, the next logical step would be to restrict the amount of food individuals consume. Party food is just going to waste. Snack foods should be banned, for two reasons, it's a waste of resources, and it's creating unhealthy children. I just ate a hotdog, because I'm bored. Every time I took a bite, a kid in Darfur died of hunger.
In all seriousness, I hate to see food wasted, but how are we supposed to regulate behaviour?
Does this mean that we may be finally seeing the end of Africa?
On her death bed, the late unlamented Rachel Carson declared her proudest momment was the banning of DDT.
She had to have been in the loop and knew that DDT didn't threaten arctic birds, nor eagles except insects....
And that without DDT, millions were dying of malaria.
dp, it's all about scale and national economies and public policy, something you equate with a single child playing with a carrot. Not the same thing. But no worries, you can resume playing with your hot dog now.
"I'm beginning to think that these consequences aren't unintended"
Mr.Bear,I'm beginning to agree with you.
Doug, I think it's just as much about individual rights, as it is about public policy, etc. I'm thinking along the lines of an individual's right to grow whatever he wants, on his own land, in a free economy. That would extend to his right to sell his product to whoever he wants.
I also think, if someone can afford it, he has the right to waste as much food as he wants. That's just a natural law. If the moose population makes a big surge upward, it's not uncommon for wolves to kill way more than they could ever hope to eat. It's a myth that animals don't kill for sport. Truth is, wolves kill anything they can sink their teeth into. The natural balance comes into play, when they kill too many moose, and some of them starve, the next year. They don't plan this natural balance, it just happens.
Man is just due for a period of correction. Don't sweat it, it's just God's way of telling us we're more deserving than Africans.
Growing crops for fuel is not evil. Nor is growing crops for clothing (cotton) or paper (bamboo - so much so that much of canadas paper industry will be gone in next two decades) or any other non-food product. Producers should be able to grow whatever offers them the best financial return in both the short and the long run. The more transparent and undistorted the pricing signals these growers recieve The better as it is in everybody's best interest that this be the case.
What is evil is legislating artificial demand and thus artificial price hikes that take food out of peoples mouths for irrational reasons. Starving people today in the belief that peoples lives will be saved (maybe) a hundred years from now is perverse and evil .
I didn't say you could play with your hot dog in front of all of us ;)
"Atlas Shrugged" and soybeans. Nothing new here. Those raised within a particular madness can best see and explain it to outsiders. That the supposed elites never bother to learn new tactics nor from their mistakes can be heartening, until you realize that they make life more difficult for the rest of us.
I heard that they got a lot of marginal land near Fort McMurray ... maybe they should try planting jatropha trees there.
dp wrote: Man is just due for a period of correction. Don't sweat it, it's just God's way of telling us we're more deserving than Africans.
I was half-listening to a documentary about [some war, somewhere] on the History Channel and a comment that made its way through my thick skull was, (paraphrased) "These people had been living under communism for decades, they have little appreciation for truth."
"Is using food for fuel really evil? If it is, then what about using food for decorations? What about using food for children's games, or eating contests, or beauty products, or plenty more things we could live without?"
Obviously the differnce is scale; and, paper and cotton are not food. Your counter arguements are comparing apples to oranges.Jmo