permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

George Monbiot is a good source of intelligent analysis on a host of 
subjects. Here's his take on biofuels, and to me the numbers certainly 
support him.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/

We have a first rate example in the midwestern US, where corn states make 
certain their congress members mandate the use of ethanol as a fuel additive. 
It 
costs more energy to grow, fertilize, transport, render (refine) and 
distribute the corn than it would to get the therms just from petroleum.

Sites like the following paint a glowing picture of the efficiency we're 
supposed to be gaining from the use of such "renewable" fuels

http://www.ethanolrfa.org/RFA_Fuel_Cell_White_Paper.PDF 

http://www.phillips66.com/energyanswers/savingfuel.htm 

but they fail to show the net energy loss from all the inputs involved in 
putting an ear of corn in your gas tank.

One major drawback:

Tremendous energy inputs are required to make commercial fertilizers, which 
are then transported and applied to the fields mechanically. There is a large 
net loss from nitrates poorly applied and superavailable in the wrong form. 
These excess nitrates get washed downstream from the Corn Belt into the Gulf 
of 
Mexico, creating the famous Dead Zone so fatal to shrimp populations offshore 
from the Mississippi River mouths. The nutrient-rich sediment loads that 
would 
normally be returned to the land in seasonal flooding are now managed by the 
Mississippi Authority and the Army Corps of Engineers at great expense to 
avoid 
flooding any land that doesn't want to be flooded. No more than a third of 
the sediment load is deposited in such useful places as the Atchafalaya 
Basin. 

The net result? The land that replenishes the lower Mississippi now gets 
washed out to be deposited on the steep slopes of the Gulf, creating the Dead 
Zone. The Mississippi Delta is losing ground rapidly, and is a shadow of what 
it 
was a couple of decades ago. We spend millions trying unsuccessfully to 
figure 
out how to combat this soil loss because we're afraid to take the necessary 
steps and flood the entire basin (odd details like New Orleans being right in 
the way).

http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/PageServer?pagename=bpm_feature3_5

On the other end of the equation, soil loss in Iowa is so pronounced that 
farmsteads built in the 19th cebtury are now three feet higher than the 
surrounding fields-- so much Iowa soil has been lost.

Corn-based ethanol, in my opinion, is not a good solution to weaning 
ourselves from a dependence on fossil fuels. Other biofuels may be of local 
interest. 
In wholesale weed clearance projects, such as the freeing of waterways choked 
with hyacinth, it may be a useful treatment for a material that would 
otherwise be just a waste product.

And chopping wood is good for the soul. As well, it heats you twice-- in the 
chopping and in the burning. But as a macro-solution for human society, we'd 
have to cover the earth in fast-growing pulpwood just to satisfy our fuel 
needs. The numbers just aren't there, I'm afraid, for most large biofuel 
ventures.