Corn Can't Solve Our Problem – washingtonpost.com

Byoliveridley

A must read for anyone who likes articulate scientists writing very approachable articles about important subjects!
Corn Can’t Solve Our Problem – washingtonpost.com

If every one of the 70 million acres on which corn was grown in 2006 was used for ethanol, the amount produced would displace only 12 percent of the U.S. gasoline market. Moreover, the “new” (non-fossil) energy gained would be very small — just 2.4 percent of the market. Car tune-ups and proper tire air pressure would save more energy.

Proper tire pressure is not sexy, and does not lead to billions of dollars of profits!

The net effect is that ethanol from corn grown in the Corn Belt does increase atmospheric greenhouse gases, and this increase is only about 15 percent less than the increase caused by an equivalent amount of gasoline

Corn is such a boondongle, it’s amazing what the ADMs and Monsantos of the world can do.

This means that when tropical woodland is cleared to produce sugar cane for ethanol, the greenhouse gas released is about 50 percent greater than what occurs from the production and use of the same amount of gasoline. And that statistic holds for at least two decades.

Brazil will not solve all your problems (unless they’re samba related!). Increased demand for ethanol from Brazil could lead to clearcutting of the rain forest/other fallow grassland.

Across the full process of growing high-diversity prairie hay, converting it into an energy source and using that energy, we found a net removal and storage of about a ton and a half of atmospheric carbon dioxide per acre. The net effect is that ethanol or synthetic gasoline produced from this grass on degraded land can provide energy that actually reduces atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.

It’s a very well written article.

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    Byoliveridley

    If by working, you mean increasing CO2 is good for the world, a warm place is a better place, right!

    EPA chief: Bush climate policy working – Yahoo News

    The EPA said its annual greenhouse gas assessment showed that 7.26 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were released by U.S. sources in 2005, an increase of 0.8 percent from the previous year.

    “The Bush administration’s unparalleled financial, international and domestic commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is delivering real results,” Johnson proclaimed in a statement.

    This statement makes perfect sense and is the complete truth if you assume that increasing GHG emissions demonstrates “unparalleled” commitment to “reducing” greenhouse gas emissions? Unparalleled all right! Nobody’s better at emitting CO2 than the U.S of A! Wohoo!!

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    NC smoking bill extinguished?

    Byoliveridley

    Laura Leslie has the scoop…

    Monday: Snuffed Out? — North Carolina Public Radio WUNC

    Looks like House Maj. Leader Hugh Holliman’s smoking ban may be in trouble. The first sign of trouble was that it didn’t come up for a floor vote in the few days following its 9-4 approval in J1 committee. Today, Holliman told NCNN’s Matt Willoughby he’s planning to pull the bill off the calendar when it comes up tomorrow.

    It’s only a matter of time, they can fight it all they want, the smoking bans will pass throughout the country in a a decade or less, that’s a bold prediction!

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    As I mentioned in comments on an earlier post, property rights is a catchall rhetorical tool that can defend just about anything, good bad or neutral. So, I am not surprised it is being used here. The obvious counter argument that property rights do not give you the right to pollute is apparently lost on this debate. But this is not really about property rights, is it? It is about protecting the tobacco industry, good old plut-prot-principle!

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    Lead in Paint, why???

    Byoliveridley

    1940-11_White_Lead_Paint.JPGThis makes my head explode, once again, science is helpless when faced with inertia, and greed. Lead-based paint has been banned in the US since 1978, and if this story is any indication, we’re still seeing the effects of peeling paint. But this bit of research from the University of Cincinnati suggests that not only is lead-based paint being used in more than half the world, it is actually legal.

    Study Supports ‘Urgent’ Need for Worldwide Ban on Lead-Based Paint

    Environmental and occupational health experts at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have found that major countries—including India, China and Malaysia—still produce and sell consumer paints with dangerously high lead levels.

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    Guess what, even if lead-based paint was banned today, it’s still going to be on the walls forever. As the paint peels, kids will be exposed, have lowered IQ, and all other kinds of health issues for as long as that house is standing, which in India could be a 100 years.

    Grassroots organizing is probably needed, and if effective, the stuff will be banned in India quickly, the government does move rapidly on these kinds of easy to legislate issues. But, enforcement will be lax, and awareness will lag, which means we are looking at (my rough guess) at least 20 years more of this issue.

    Once again, the absence of a ban and its implementation affects the poor and uneducated disproportionately. The way I see it happening in India is

    1. Some grassroots awareness, media stories, etc.
    2. A furore that lasts about a week, before the next big story comes along
    3. Maybe a government action that will “ban” lead-based paint
    4. The middle class and above are now aware that they can use titania based paints, so, a quick change for them.
    5. Everyone else is still stuck with the lead-based paint.

    And this does not even begin to address what the US is going through now, aging houses, peeling paint, poor people being exposed to dangerous levels of lead.

    The world ain’t very fair…

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    India goes solar

    Byoliveridley

    India, of course, gets a lot of sun, it is wasted in the sense that it makes us sweat, causes us to use increasing amounts of electricity for air conditioning, and all in all, is a pain. So, a plan to use that sun to generate solar energy, of course, is very welcome. Solar energy use obviously is not new in India, my best friend growing up had a solar water heater at home (his family business used to make them). Policy has never kept up because there has not been a push, is this one?

    The Union Government has finalised the draft for the National Solar Mission. It aims to make India a global leader in solar energy and envisages an installed solar generation capacity of 20,000 MW by 2020, of 1,00,000 MW by 2030 and of 2,00,000 MW by 2050.

    The total expected funding from the government for the 30-year period will run to Rs. 85,000 crore to Rs. 105,000 crore. The requirement during the current Five Year Plan is estimated to be Rs. 5,000 crore to Rs. 6,000 crore. It will rise to between Rs. 12,000 crore and Rs. 15,000 crore during the 12th Five Year Plan.

    A crore, BTW, is 10 million. India still uses its own number multiplier system for money that goes in 100s, not thousands. So, a 100,000 is a lakh, and a 100 lakhs is a crore. I never understood why this was not changed when the country went metric. Lakhs and crores, of course, are metric, but can get confusing.

    The plan will start off by mandating roof top solar panels for government and government owned industry buildings in an attempt to reduce costs by scaling up. It will be followed by mandated solar water heaters for all commercial buildings and apartment complexes, and use of solar panels for all in industrial buildings. All this is supposed to happen in the next three years, which appears to be wildly ambitious.

    India is a federal country with delineation of jurisdictions between the central and state governments on regulation. Electricity happens to be on the concurrent list, meaning both the state and central governments can make laws, and the central government’s laws will always preempt the states. However, building appears to be a local government issue, so managing this huge transition could get tricky. They are all supposed to use the same building code, but given the unevenness of local governance, who knows what implementation will look like.

    In Phase II, starting 2012, India will go solar thermal. India and Pakistan have 200,000 sq km of the Thar Desert, a typical dry tropical desert with oodles of space and sun. It would be a good place to site all kinds of capacity similar to efforts in North Africa and Spain.

    Solar thermal, if combined with the right kind of transmission and storage technology, could power the world in 7000 sq km, so theoretical capacity may not be an issue. Of course, the storage and distribution are key. Molten salt batteries look very promising for solar energy storage and night use.

    India’s electricity needs are daunting. This WolframAlpha search provides the following:

    IndiaCanada

    Note to Wolfram: your data presentation would result in a failing grade on a middle school term paper, where are the sources? Where did you get your numbers? BIG FAIL!

    We in Canada use more electricity than India for about a billion fewer people. Clearly, if India was as profligate as Canada in energy consumption and got the power it needed to get there from coal, we would all be dead soon. India needs to go solar in a hurry and I am glad the government has released a policy that is more ambitious than the US or Canada. It needs the support and funding to make it happen and I for one will be very happy to see progress in this area. Solar power needs big up front costs and little ongoing costs.

    Can Indian industry provide the money needed? We shall see. I am not too worried about the photovoltaic panel parts, they will muddle along in typical patchwork Indian fashion with the quality of governance being the controlling factor in success or failure. It is the capital and political will needed for solar thermal that strikes me as problematic. The coal and mining industries are entrenched in some population (and vote) rich states like Bihar based in the central and north east regions and there could be some big losers if India went away from coal (as it needs to in order to prevent catastrophic climate change) and toward solar thermal, which I assume would come out of Rajasthan (West).

    Anyway, we live in interesting and sunshiny times, stay tuned for more.

    h/t to my one of my favourite climate blogs, solve climate for bringing this article to my attention, love your blog folks!

  • Canada's Greatest Scientist

    Byoliveridley

    Is apparently someone called Rex Murphy who writes political and social columns for Canada’s premier newspaper, who has done what thousands of scientists all over the world could not do: Solve the issue of global warming by pointing out that Toronto is having a very cool July.

    So where’s that global cooling alert? – The Globe and Mail

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    Flame Retardants and Hyperthyroidism in Cats

    Byoliveridley

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    The case of fire retardants is especially difficult because they save many lives, so manufacturers can always point to that fact and resist change. The logical fallacy, however is as follows:

    1. Fire retardants save lives (therefore good)
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    3. Therefore, PBDEs are good!!

    The search for a safer fire retardant needs to continue, and will not happen unless the old ones are under pressure of being phased out.

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