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  • From: lbsaltzman@aol.com
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] what about lubrication?
  • Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:58:49 -0400

David Fridley makes sense to me.? I hope we can retire the biofuels debate
for now. Biofuels ain't happening on a large enough scale to replace
petroleum.


-----Original Message-----
From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 9:52 pm
Subject: Re: [permaculture] what about lubrication?



Harmon Seaver wrote:
> I can't find where he says that the US has "1.5
> billion acres" of cropland, let alone "prime cropland". . . Maybe some of
> you
should try reading the book before posting about it, eh?
>

That's classic--Harmon is unable to find it, so he demeans others,
determined to make other people wrong. Why not learn to disagree with
people without smearing their intelligence?

Quotation marks, in my hand, means I'm quoting text, in this case cut
and pasted from the book's website (Full disclosure: I copied it last
December for a different use, but I assume it's still on line). The 1.5
billion figure is also quoted in several book reviews, like Albert
Bates's in Permaculture Activist, and Dave wrote the number on the board
when I saw him speak. It's also in my own copy (signed by Dave, whom I
first met in 1995--so it's not like I dislike the guy).

> corn . . . is only 72.1
> million acres. , or about 16.6% of the "cropland", or about 7.45% of
> the total "agricultural" acreage -- and last I know of, the USDA
> considers forests and rangelands "agricultural"
If an intelligent person is unable to see how specious this argument is,
there's some prejudice deeper than logic going on. The 16% and 7%
numbers are irrelevant and misleading, since we're not going to plant
corn in arid rangeland (to arrive at 16%) or National Forest ( 7%). The
only honest comparison is the percentage of corn out of all land
currently planted to crops, which is roughly 30% (this year it's 91
million acres out of 315 million). Using 434 million as the basis is
also a stretch since it includes fallow land (a rough constant),
exhausted marginal lands, and conservation land. Planting any of that
will have dire consequences, which is why we don't.

As has been pointed out, the increase in corn acreage has come at the
expense of soybeans and other crops, showing that we cannot increase
corn acreage even by a few percent without serious consequences. It's
arguments like the above that cause an otherwise valuable book not to be
taken seriously by policymakers and energy scientists, and that's a shame.

If anyone is interested in hearing a reasoned argument against biofuels
by an energy scientist, check out "The Myths of Biofuels" by David
Fridley (who must be, of course, another lying shill for the oil
industry!). A trailer is at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeVT7jMYZlo&feature=related

Toby
http://patternliteracy
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