What is wrong with biofuels? Comments on peakoil.com

Peak Oil News

The biggest problem that humanity faces is not running out of fuels, it is the results of continuing to burn them.
Turning the planet’s biosphere into even more fuels, just so that we can continue on the path that we are on, is a really bad idea. GregT 

Whatever happened to bio-fools? Well about ummm,….lets see.

A) They dont work

B) They are too expensive.

C) They don’t new deliver net energy(killer)

D) The production of Bio-fools is utterly dependant on OIL powered industrial-scale-ag.(closely related to C)

E) Neither Land or Water or fertilizer etc exist in sufficient quantities to make bio-fools remotely useful. If we were dumb enough to try, it would likely end industrial civilization. At least if attempted on the scales that would be required.

F) The fruitless pursuit of providing ‘fuel’ for private 4000 pound grocery fetchers using bio-fools is inherently and deeply flawed, regardless of all the other technical and financial flaws in trying to do so. IoW, its simply wrong.

DC

Just like with supposed ‘renewable’ electric power generation. Fossil fuels are required to make all of the things that we hope to run with biofuels.

Free energy is a myth, it is tens of millions of years worth of stored solar energy that we are currently using to build everything. Current solar energy will never replace what it took the Earth to store in such a long period of time.

There is nothing that human beings can do to change this. We need to return back to living within the confines of the natural world, and we need to do this soon, or nature will remove us from IT’S future. GregT

Polluting power plants to reap carbon tax windfall

Carbon tax hands out billions to polluters, now it looks to be scrapped.

Polluting power plants to reap carbon tax windfall: Under the carbon price there is a five-year, multibillion-dollar compensation package for heavy-emitting coal power plants. Labor says the assistance is necessary for energy security and to compensate for the loss in value of coal power plants.
The free credits come on top of $1 billion in cash compensation given last year to eligible plants,

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/polluting-power-plants-to-reap-carbon-tax-windfall-20130830-2sudb.html#ixzz2dVlJkz44

How biofuels increase greenhouse gas emissions

CTA - Brussels Office Weblog - Studies shore up proof of indirect biofuels emissions: "Projections that feedstock-based biofuels will indirectly cause net greenhouse gas emissions in the future have been confirmed by preliminary results from two new studies of past land use change.
This may strengthen the case for bringing forward a review into whether indirect land use change (ILUC) - net carbon loss that occurs when forests and grasslands are cleared for food production that has been displaced by biofuels plantations elsewhere- factors should be included in EU legislation."

Natural gas was supposed to be a bridge from coal to renewables. Not.

Bridge Out: Coal Generation Rises While Natural Gas Falls As The Fairy Tale Comes To An End | ThinkProgress: "Coal’s share of total domestic power generation in the first four months of 2013 averaged 39.5%, compared with 35.4% during the same period last year, according to the Energy Information Administration [EIA]…. By contrast, natural gas generation averaged about 25.8% this year, compared with 29.5% a year earlier."

The Exaggerated Benefits of Electric Cars

Streetsblog: "Rather than using that money to subsidize electric cars, taxpayers would get a better environmental bang for their buck with interventions like transit expansion, more targeted emissions testing policies, and making places more walkable and bikeable."

Unclean at Any Speed - IEEE Spectrum

Unclean at Any Speed - IEEE Spectrum: "Upon closer consideration, moving from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric cars begins to look more and more like shifting from one brand of cigarettes to another."

Wishful thinking that capitalism can actually save forests

Guest Post: Redeeming REDD | redd-monitor.org: "Opponents of REDD speak about the predatory green economy, REDD as a new form of colonialism, rights abuses, carbon cowboys and susceptibility to other forms of grander organized crime corruption. "