We are often lectured at how those more enlightened Europeans are ahead of us on Kyoto. Partly, this is true, as they’ve engaged in more of those money sucking socialist schemes than we have so far, but the Suzuki types are constantly cajoling us to imitate them.
So, by their own evaluation, how is it working for them so far?
Well, let’s look at this Biodiesel initiative:
Just a few years ago, politicians and environmental groups in the Netherlands were thrilled by the early and rapid adoption of “sustainable energy,” achieved in part by coaxing electricity plants to use biofuel — in particular, palm oil from Southeast Asia.
Spurred by government subsidies, energy companies became so enthusiastic that they designed generators that ran exclusively on the oil, which in theory would be cleaner than fossil fuels like coal because it is derived from plants.
But last year, when scientists studied practices at palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, this green fairy tale began to look more like an environmental nightmare.
Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.
So, after subsidies, directives, and investment in new “green” technology they ended up with unintended consequences of clearing rainforest, chemical pollution and other unintended consequences. Unfortunate, perhaps, but it’s a small price to pay to solve global warming, right? Err, no:
Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Factoring in these emissions, Indonesia had quickly become the world’s third-leading producer of carbon emissions that scientists believe are responsible for global warming ….
“It was shocking and totally smashed all the good reasons we initially went into palm oil,” said Alex Kaat, a spokesman for Wetlands, a conservation group.
The production of biofuels, long a cornerstone of the quest for greener energy, may sometimes create more harmful emissions than the fossil fuels they replace, scientific studies are finding.
As a result, politicians in many countries are rethinking the billions of US dollars in subsidies that have indiscriminately supported the spread of all of these supposedly “eco-friendly” fuels, for use in vehicles and factories. The 2003 European Union Biofuels Directive, which demands that all member states aim to have 5.75 percent of transportation fueled by biofuel in 2010, is now under review.
So, such programs are not only money sucking socialist schemes with horrendous unintended consequences.
They’re money-sucking socialist schemes that increase global warming, should you happen to think that that’s a bad thing.
So what’s the problem? Indonesia is a non-signatory of Y2Kyoto, so the sheeple of Canada will just step up and send them a few 100 million so they can find a “greener” way to industrialize how they grow palms. Maybe the Dutch have been smoking to much Maryjane?
I thought the Dutch had all those windmills. What do they need to burn biodiesel for?
Vast areas of mother earth are normally covered with green forests.
Forests, the world*s water holding sponge and weather moderator. Removing the earth*s natural sponge and squeezing some of it for palm oil seems a little idiotic, considering the energy required.
The missed point here is that the internal combustion engine is old fashioned and should be abandoned as soon as possible.
Air transport and HD diesel will continue for some time, but gas engines are morphing towards electric motoring and the quicker the better. = TG
The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
I like bio diesel…the popular mechanics survey Kate posted showed it to be te least costly, least investment requeired, low emissions and decent mileage.
Whole issue is where do you ge the raw material. The whole reason you have to watch what you do to subsidize, the cause of all the unintended consequences.
Ayway, twisted economic decision making, no different than the shortage of corn flour tortilla’s, a staple for the poor in mexico, because of subsidies to make corn ethanol.
If you want to set a higher price to make the other things economic thats fine….but subsidies are always an issue.
Oh! But won’t cutting down trees decrease those nasty Co2 emmissions? That is the aim of Koyota; trees are one of the ‘bad’ guys. It really would be a sucess story for the nightmare Koyota pushers as they group hate all forms of life; cattle, horses, people and trees too!
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is correct when he says there are no winners in the Kyota cult – even the human haters themselves are such mangy living organisms that in their lack luster grey world they will find no happiness. The cultists already hate their own being, they have pre destined themselves for misery; they just want to drag the rest of us down with them so they can turn the page and be the privilaged elitists who crack the whips (Hitler/Lenin type personalities- envy disorders). Those of that ilk hate all beauty unless it is perverted beauty.
Stephen – I agree palm oil actually has some potential. At least it starts with the potential of producing significantly more energy than it takes to manufacture, unlike ethanol from corn.
But it certainly doesn’t reduce CO2 emissions if you’re draining and burning peat bogs to produce it.
electric cars are all fine and well, but how on earth are we going to charge them??can you imagine what would happen in Ontario if 500,000 cars were plugged in around 1800 hrs(when people get home from work), the dishawahser going, laundry,stove, computers, etc, etc, etc…the grid would not just shut down, it would collapse…so until all the dipper/moonbat/librano crowds stop crying like idiots over nuclear power, get used to the status quo
those dishwahsers use alot of energy…lol
Dishwashers. A favourite of all those who ferry their kids six blocks to and from school every day in the extra-big SUV.
Kids can*t wash dishes, can*t cook, can*t get their breath, can*t avoid diabetes. . . and need drugs to take the pain away . . .
Wunnerful!
BTW, transition to half a million electric vehicles will not occur overnight. Trust me. = TG
I feel it won’t be bio diesel that going to win out (even though the corn farmers have the best lobby group), its Hydrogen stupid.
It’s the lightest element in the world so it leaks out of everything.
It takes more energy to produce then what you get out of it.
Here’s the kicker; the cheapest way to make it, is with fossil fuels, Exxon can take on any
bio diesel farmer.
I have friend who makes his own bio diesel from used deep fry oil from restaurants. Claims his car and truck run better and cleaner on it.
alan, you’re recalling an episode from The Simpsons. You know, where Homer thinks he will build his “nest egg” by harvesting used grease from around town in their newly-converted “grease-mobile”, making Bart quit school to help him. They have a serious run-in with Groundskeeper Willie and the grease explodes with Homer’s dream.
In typical leftist fashion, there are no consequences for any of their actions, because, after all, their intentions were noble. Need to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, right Jack Lenin, er, Layton?
figure out how many chips one has to fry to get a gallon of biodiesal from a greasy spoon. dont the MSM ever do a calculation for their lunacy.
CBCpravda still not reporting Hollands liberal threat to shutdown the oilsands. lies by ommission.
so if we cut our 2 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by say about 40 percent thats about.008 of greenhouse gas emissions that we’re going to kill about how many jobs and spend how many billions on ? just wondering that number of that percent of that percent never seems to come up in the hysteria ?
Trees breath IN CO2, and expel oxygen. Not the other way around. Cutting trees increases co2, not reduce it. Go back and read some grade 4 science texts. Dion the green hamas supporter wants to kill all the trees and plant life by getting rid of co2. He is a terrorist against the planet.
“…in theory would be cleaner than fossil fuels like coal because it is derived from plants…”
*ahem*
Am I missing something here? Didn’t coal used to be plants too? Like peat?
Inevitably there will be a mix of choices…works better for everyone. I happy to own a diesel and I wish I had a bio diesel station nearby. But I wouldnt want everyone on it.
While I dont mind buying oil and its derivatives from Alberta or Alaska I would dearly love to not buy anything from Saudi or Indonesia, you never know where the money goes.
Fuel efficiency is better for everyone in this country.
Mainstream electric cars are several decades away if at all. Fuel cells? Maybe, but the piston engine is an incredibly efficient reliable durable and flexible power generator that will be very hard to beat.
Biodiesel from Canola and other oilseeds is close to being cost-competitive with petroleum-based diesels and with yields per acre and tillage and other production costs plummeting using genetic splicing they will only be more and more so.
However, in order to totally displace fossil fuels we would have to colonize and cultivate Mars in order to have enough arable land.
Biofuels will always be a minority player in the energy game.
I’m not quite finished doing the math, but it’s my contention that based on the fear mongering being spewed by the Kyoto Kool-Aid Krew, the amount of C02 released into the entire earth’s atmosphere (50 miles thick)and how it’s going to kill us all/raise the ocean levels, etc. is like saying the C02 released by one person exhaling will kill all of the fans in attendance at a Jays game while under the Skydome…..once again, I’m still working on the math-lots of decimal places and exponents!
What a load of horseshit this whole environmental movement has become. Al Gore and David Suzuki are false prophets and the fact that so many misguided sheep have melted their gold to cast idols of these so-called global messiahs reinforces my belief that human stupidity and gullibility will NEVER be in short supply.
damn oops i forgot to kill off a couple of zeros above there. o well whats another bit of in the midst of a whole big methane fogged pool of it .
I like the idea of letting dingbat socialist nations charge ahead with every superficial social cure that comes along…no need to drink what you suspect is poison as long as there is an enthusiastic lefty moonbat willing to do it first….we can see that Europe leads western culture in “enlightened” political moonbattery…since they discarded aristocracy for communism, fascism and now decadent socialism…and we have had to bail them out of each of these “enlightened” failures I have to wonder about their judgement on any social or national policy….we should always sit back and wait to see if every new cure European politics embraces poisons the user before we try it.
The last time it was propane that was going to save us with the incentive of cheap energy.
Gee !!! We all know how that turned out.
The suckers that converted now pay near the same & it turns out to be a bigger polutter.Plus most where stuck with the turn over bills. Marks being played. Enough of these plots to create a smoke screen.
I also remember the City of Edmonton turning over to electric zamboni’s in the arenas. .At $10,000 of tax payers bucks just for yearly maintenece , its the reason we don’t have then anymore, That & the acidic fumes from the batteries. They never did work properly.
This is just another con in a long line of conversion scams.
I’m not given to conspiracy theories. But, that bit released by the UN last week has convinced me that it is indeed a “money sucking socialist scheme.” I used to think that the “science” people were just aiding and abetting activists in getting their faces on the news while, at the same time, finding a way to get quick “research” grant money…stuff like that. But I figured that each had their own private little agenda to ensure their own profit. I guess I believed that everyone knew that they were kidding each other and themselves…but it was a quiet understanding.
But now, I am sure that there are actually meetings going on where these people are actually saying things to the effect of, “OK. The next phase of the scam will be…” And what has finally convinced me of this was nothing to do with any kind of “scientific” evidence or argument. It was what they slipped in about predictions for the future.
They said that climate change cannot be stopped and nothing that humans can do will have any kind of effect for centuries.
This is an old political ploy: Imagine a situation where you have Prime Minister X. PM X has been in power for a while and he/she has been running the government under some specific policy. A policy that’s good.
Along comes Prime Minister B. Prime Minister B gets elected by convincing the public that the policy being run by PM A is bad and is causing some sort of harm to the public. It’s not true. But PM B gets elected by convincing the people that it is and vows that once he/she is in power, the policy will be reversed. It works and PM B does as promised and reverses the policy and, because it was a good policy, the economy (or whatever) collapses.
The trick…PM B claims that the collapse was inevitable…but luckily, his reversal of that old policy made the situation “not as bad as it would have been had I not reversed it.”
When the announcements this past week essentially pulled off this ploy in advance, it was proof-positive for me that there is a real oraganized scheme going on here.
Won’t be seen for centuries. Now there’s a plan to guarantee their income for a long time, huh?
Kate- The people who began this project had good intentions. That is the important thing. The fact that it only made things worse is beside the point.
Eskimo:
Al Gore and David Suzuki are false prophets and the fact that so many misguided sheep have melted their gold to cast idols of these so-called global messiahs reinforces my belief that human stupidity and gullibility will NEVER be in short supply.
Great wordplay. Loved this last sentence of your excellent post. (O:} Now if only we can convert both Human malidies into energy we will never need any fuel again .
“The people who began this project had good intentions.”
I suppose some people might say the same thing about the Khmer Rouge.
yes, mystery meat, they had good intentions. Just like Chamberlain did when he signed the Munich agreement. But good intentions combined with naivete can have very bad results.
OK, so it turns out that government subsidies and “incentives” do lot more harm than good. You convinced me. I expect that it all has to do with the fact that politicians are usually retired and living high off the hog on their pensions and sucking the teat as lobbyists, consultants, corporate directors, etc., by the time their failures are exposed … and the bureaucrats who push the harebrained schemes can’t be fired, can’t be sued, and in any case can always blame it on the politicians. And then they always ask for (and receive) a big raise and an even bigger budget, so they can fix the problems they caused. So you can see that there is no incentive whatsoever for governments to select, implement and manage a profitable technology. Whereas a private entrepreneur will get fired, get sued, go broke and get a bad credit rating if he or she makes a bad investment decision. So unlike government schemes, private individuals have a pretty good track record of developing new technologies, and if they fail, then their losses are not taken out of the hides of taxpayers. That is why there is no need to waste time investigating this technology or that technology, if someone in government is pushing it. Government meddling equals loser technologies, bad investments, waste and corruption.
Now would you conservatives please stop that socialist idiot Stephen Harper before he wastes any more of my money on this ridiculous corn ethanol scam? And can the subsidies and direct investments in Tar Sands, Hibernia, and AECL. No point throwing good money after bad. If there’s any profit in them thar hills, let the entrepreneurs find it.
The left will never…ever, ever, EVER admit to a serious error in policy. This has always been an attack on capitalism and private property.
Ah heck, I was more worried about what bio-diesel was going to do to the cost of running my turkey fryer. Of course bio-diesel isn’t the answer, we’ll all go broke feeding ourselves because of all the land that went out of food production. This is win-win for farmers, for the first time in a long time they’ve got urbanite socialists coming and going. Just a suggestion though, you all better brush up on your gardening and canning skills!
Kyoto is a scam…
Liberal socialist blind support for Kyoto shows,
just how out of touch with reality they are.
India and China and a slew of other developing nations, won’t sign onto Kyoto.
Between them, India and China are building over 700 new coal fired energy plants.
India and China are global warming deniers.
We signed Kyoto,
we are trying to reduce emissions.
As long as the socialists turn a blind eye to
the real global warming deniers…
they will never have any credibility.!
There is ..NO..global warming problem,
just ask India and China.!
The next time Dion and the liberals accuse Harper
of being a global warming denier, he should be taken to task and asked.
Why do we have to cut emissions while India and China, are allowed to destroy the planet?
Just asking…!
Mystery meat: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
biodiesel.
I raise my glass to Mr Rube Goldberg and his pioneering wacky inventions.
the tradition continues now on a global scale.
because experts and politishuns utterly and repeatedly REFUSE to look for any loopholes or downside in their pet projects and legislation.
twas ever thus.
If we sould use and harness HOT AIR our former VP AL GORE would be very usful
Local restaurant guy burns his used cooking oil/grease in his jeep.
He saves real money and avoids paying for road upkeep while leaving the aroma of french fries when going by.
The smell may not be great but it is far better than carcenogenic gas and diesel fumes that can make one gag.
Hybrids are a transition thing. Overly complex, they will keep *Big Auto* in gravy for some time, but the Electric Vehicle will fill the gap between now and when hydrogen becomes fully safe and practical.
Big box stores have installed *Plug-ins* so you can charge while you shop. Electric *Scooterteqs, senior*s Electra-carts, and a growing number of EV users are plugging in.
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