Why Biofuels Are Failing
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2GreenEnergy super-supporter Cameron Atwood writes: “As a species, we do a fairly good job of cultivating and harvesting grain energy to distribute as food. In your estimation, what are the core technical factors are that currently prevent the scale up of algae fuel production?” I respond:
As I understand it, the problem is largely pollution with “weeds,” i.e., unwanted plant species getting in the pool; this results in the dichotomy of the success in the lab and the failure in the real world.
If anybody can do this right, it’s brewing companies like Miller and Coors, but I simply don’t see it happening, especially now that electric transportation is becoming more cost-effective and user-friendly. Like so many things, it had its window of opportunity, but it’s rapidly closing.
Btw, I’m not at all convinced that we’re going to avoid a global food crisis; check out this Ted Talk. I caught it the other day on the “Ted Radio Hour” on NPR, and its program on the five biggest challenges facing humankind. Fantastic.
Thanks, Craig!
Incidentally, I caught much of the TED talk about global food you mentioned. I agree that the speaker offers what appear to be sound (though severe) measures to feed the globe’s population into the 2020’s.
However, unless our species finds a humane and widely accepted method of controlling population, all the measures possible are merely kicking the can down the road.
By most estimates, we’ve already far exceeded the planet’s carrying capacity – a conclusion reinforced by the halving of non-human vertebrates between 1970 and 2010, while humanity had doubled.
Population control means educating women which means electrifying the third world.
Cameron,
Since you live and work in a city and have no real agricultural qualifications of which I’m aware, I suppose scary messages about overpopulation and famine must seem frightening.
In fact nothing could be further from the truth !
The planet could easily sustain a population of more than 10 times it’s present size and remain pleasantly inhabitable. Such a huge population might seem scary, but think of Singapore, Switzerland, Denmark, or even Shanghai.
Singapore enjoys a high standard of living per capita, with a population of nearly six million living on a small equatorial Island of 278 sq miles. Singapore produces around 18% of the food consumed on the islands while still exporting flowers and exotic fruits. with 12% of the island reserved for parks and wildlife.
Denmark with a similar population and prosperity, is still a very small nation (16,573 sq miles) as big as say Maryland, produces and exports more than 5 times it’s own food requirements.
New Zealand, if intensively farmed, could feed and estimated 4 billion people !
Food isn’t a problem.
Marcopolo,
While we strongly agree on algae, we do not agree on the carrying capacity of the planet.
You clearly have reviewed some theoretical analysis on maximizing food production, and I don’t disagree with that. In fact, I’m surprised that you didn’t use the Netherlands as an example. The country isn’t even as large as the state of New York, and it’s more densely populated, yet it’s the world’s second largest exporter of food. (They did this by glassing in most of their agriculture into greenhouses, something I’ve mentioned before as inevitable… but people tend to shrug off such a solution as impossible)
But the ghost of Malthus is never a fixed issue based on theoretical maximum yields. Overpopulation is a race between the thief and the lock-maker. As the population grows, more infrastructure has to change in order to satisfy the needs of the greater population, from food, water, energy, wood, real estate, metals, etc..
If the population grows faster than the technology and infrastructure that is needed to secure it, then the population undergoes a period of privation until the technology and infrastructure can catch up to the now slower-growing population.
That’s just how it works.
The reason to fear the current population boom is that it is developing at the same time that we are facing dramatic climate change. The concern is that the changing climate will strain resources – especially energy and water resources – in areas where there will not be sufficient infrastructure to allow enough food to be distributed throughout the change.
This has already happened in Africa, where the population is continually at war and there is such a high concentration of youth that it is difficult to provide adequate education in the interim between localized conflicts.
I believe that it will also become true on the Indian subcontinent, where there are already about 1.7 billion people crammed together and utterly dependent on the rivers that are formed from alpine snow-melt in the Himalayas… but that more-rapid snow-melt is projected to dry up by 2040. Without the extra flow of water, there will need to be some 60,000 large dams acting as water traps for the monsoon season in order for crops to continue as normal.
So the overpopulation of the Indian subcontinent could be seen as a race between the Indian government building 60,000 dams that have limited value until the alpine icepack melts away… there will almost certainly be a period of time, perhaps even decades, in which the subcontinent will be severely overpopulated.
And again, much of sub-Saharan Africa is already overpopulated.
Glenn,
Perhaps my age and experience give me greater optimism.
In my nearly 70 years on the planet, I’ve experienced a number of dire predictions, none of which eventuated. Maybe I’ve lived through a lucky golden era when potential disasters jut didn’t occur, or maybe the prophets of doom missed the inherent ability of human capacity to adapt and survive.
In my lifetime, huge movements arose all crying doom, despair, etc. These include Nuclear Armageddon, human interference with “nature”, world famine (1977 Club of Rome ) Water depletion (every decade) Over population (every decade), oil depletion/peak oil (every year from 1964 to 2012) Global Cooling (1970-2003) and these were only some of the more vaguely sensible scares. All were backed by impressive thinkers and “top’ scientists” (usually in solemn consensus).
IMHO the most likely reason none of these dire forecasts ever occurred is advocates for these myths made a common mistake in logic.
All started with am exciting conclusion, and worked backward to substantiate the hypothesis.
You’re correct in assuming human social behaviour and progress isn’t always smooth or logical. It’s the nature of human beings to act and react both rationally or irrationally and always unpredictably to any event or circumstances.
My experience as a farmer, financial analyst, merchant banker and investor, has taught me nothing is absolutely predictable. Humans have an infinite capacity to adapt, innovate and survive.
My legal training taught me to always research both sides of any issue and evaluate objectively.
I appreciate your examples, especially using the subcontinent, and while I agree over population of areas lacking resources is a recipe for potential disaster, I don’t accept this will automatically follow.
Climate change is not new. The planet’s climate is in a constant state of change, our life times are too short and immediate to appreciate the phenomenon.
Humans are desperate for signs and portents to aid human control of the natural world, especially the future. When baffled or insecure we turn to prophets, scientists or in past eras religious leaders to provide control, especially regarding the future.
We live in an era where some have elevated scientists to religious status. This behaviour is an inherent human reaction to uncertainty and insecurity.
I’m not suggesting we should be complacent, just retain a healthy degree of cynicism, proportion and skepticism.
The problems of India are mostly not a lack of land, space, water or resources. India suffers from a fragmented, dysfunctional society with many competing deeply divided social factions. It’s for these reasons India has not enjoyed the success of China’s far more cohesive social structure and common aspirations.
The environment is just a casualty.
Sub-Saharan Africa also suffers from political, religious and tribal dysfunction. France and Kenya are roughly the same size and resource yet France comfortably supports a 50% larger population.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a similar size to France and Kenya and is richer in soil and resources than either, yet social and political dysfunction have reduced the nation’s 78 million people to abject poverty.
Craig, is quite right when he points out the only effective method of population control is higher education of young females. The only way to ensure lower population growth is better social structure where law and order can raise the standard of living and provide security and participation for all citizens in the advancement of society.
Anyway, that’s just one man’s opinion !
I hope you are still actively watching this thread, because I’m interested in continuing this conversation.
One possibility that you missed, when you went through the litany of doomsday prophesies that failed to come to pass:
What if they were right? Remember Y2K? Because the people who built early computer infrastructure were somewhat short-sighted, they failed to use 4 characters for the year in time stamping. This was destined to cause all sorts of mayhem in society… but it didn’t.
That wasn’t because the prediction was incorrect, it was because the prediction came with a caveat: IF WE DON’T DO SOMETHING, then these computer systems will crash and everything will go to hell…
And society listened. And we did something. Every government spent years upgrading their computers. English majors were hired and given unlimited overtime to load files, add two digits to a specific field, save them, and close them. Literally billions of man-hours were spent working to upgrade society before Y2K fell… and when it did there were only a few people who felt any inconvenience at all.
It wasn’t because the prophesy of doom was wrong, it was because the prophesy was LISTENED TO and ACTED ON.
The problem now with the know-nothing cult of anti-intellectualism, personified by Trump but embodied by tens of millions… is that they are just ignoring this problem and pretending it will go away. It won’t. The prediction could have been another Y2K… we could have put billions upon billions of man hours into upgrading society (and unleashing another economic super-boom in the process)… but instead we’re just pretending that it won’t happen.
That’s why this one really is doing damage, and will do a lot more damage. It’s not because the past doomsday predictions were wrong, they weren’t. They were just respected and we averted them.
Though I’m 90% in agreement with you here, Glenn, I hasten to add that we’ll never know the precise role that preparedness played in averting any specific disaster. Regardless, justifying lack of preparedness on the basis that no disasters have occurred in the past is ludicrous.
Craig,
This may sound disconcerting, but your comments seem to lack a basic knowledge of agriculture and evolution.
Now I’m sure that isn’t the case and the fault lies more in the emptive turn of phrase you employed.
There is no “mother nature”, no overriding direction or principle guiding evolution. Evolution has no moral dimension, it’s simply a random lottery in which some of the constantly occurring mutations survive and are passed on to future generations , while others disappear.
There is no wise “spirit of nature” with a moral dimension. That concept is simply a product of human invention and relates solely to human perception.
The natural world isn’t a sentient being. It doesn’t care if the planet becomes a jungle or a desert. Only humans care and, in our loneliness we invent ethical concepts as part of our bid to exercise control over an otherwise, meaningless random process.
All around you are instances of human intervention and manipulation of the selective breeding and survival process. from chickens to racehorses,human intervention in evolution to suit human needs has been going on since we first let a wolf share our fire.
Every decade some doomsday prophet without any concept of agriculture but in possession of a calculator pontificates on a theory of how the human race is about to starve.(some even claim we are currently starving). The fact this never occurs, and the human race over produces food in increasing volume every year, never daunts these prophets of doom.
The reason algae production as a replacement for oil doesn’t work is simply because the original motivation to produce bio-fuel has largely disappeared. Bio-fuels were largely a response to “peak oil”, especially US oil security.
The economics of large scale biofuel production were never good, except in some locations with an existing huge surplus of a high yield crops such as sugar production.
As an environmental substitute, US corn ethanol production has proved far more economically and environmentally destructive than oil and natural gas production.
Biofuels like Hydrogen, gasoline, diesel.CNG, LPG, etc are simply a means of storing energy in a form that’s easy to transport, distribute and convert to usable energy. Economics should decide the viability of a particular energy storage source, unless governments intervene for extraneous reasons to encourage or restrict any particular method.
In 2012 The National Academy of Sciences concluded the scale-up of algal biofuel production to replace even 5% of U.S. transportation fuel (diesel, gasoline) would place unsustainable demands on energy, water, and nutrients.
Algae production does not sequester fossil carbon (DOE p 80). Several LCA studies of GHG emissions of algal biofuel production showed a higher level of GHG emissions than from gasoline (NAS 2012 Table 5-4). Carbon dioxide injected to promote algae growth tends to escape (Wald). The CO2 generated by the power plant can only be effectively used by the algae while the sun is shining. The GHG emissions offset is 20% to 30% of the total power plant emissions due to CO2 off-gassing during non-sunlight hours and parasitic losses.
A 50-MWe natural-gas-fired power plant would require about 2,200 acres of algae cultivation area. A 1,000-2,500 MWe coal power plant would need tens of thousands of acres of algae production and large volumes of water to provide a similar effective offset of 20% to 30% of the CO2 emitted (DOE p 80).
Algae production using the carbon from corn, soybeans, and other land plants competes with food and feed markets, and existing ethanol biofuel refineries for feedstock.
Photobioreactors need less water and land than open ponds, but are not feasible yet because even at a small scale, they use more fossil fuel energy than the energy contained in the algal biofuel.
The advent of advanced technology deployed by the oil industry which produced an era of relatively cheap and plentiful oil and gas, eliminated the original economic reason for biofuel production.
Evolution is not a random lottery, it is dependent on advantage gained through mutation. If the mutation is not advantageous, its chances of being passed on are less, and vice versa. Surely you know that.
MP tends to invent ways of attacking you (and me). He writes, “evolution has no moral dimension,” as if I didn’t know that.
Craig,
I’m sorry you felt I was attacking you. I was a little confused by your observation:-
“My theory is that the subject is doomed to failure because the whole enterprise is an attempt to defy nature and the theory of evolution. Life forms evolved to store precisely the energy they need to survive, grow, and reproduce; .”
The phrases “defy nature and the theory of evolution” , and “they did not evolve to store energy they don’t need, just so human beings could come along, harvest it, and put in in our gas tanks”, seems to imply a moral culpability on the part of human beings in interfering with “evolution”.
Maybe it’s just the way I read the paragraph, and that wasn’t your intent. If that is so, I apologize, but on re-reading the paragraph it’s difficult to see any other intended meaning, don’t you think ?
Here in Australia we suffer from a widespread misinterpretation of evolution, especially by the Green-left. The concept of flora and fauna evolving to “benefit’ the environment and a desperate sense of fashionable guilt for the indigenous population has led to an unrealistic glorification of the moral virtues of native flora and fauna.
Australia is a huge continent with some very unusual species. (they don’t come stranger than the Platypus!). Unfortunately, it’s become popular to preserve all environs with native flora, while extolling the virtues of indigenous “custodianship” of the land before European settlement.
Any suggestion that several dozen millennia spent burning down vegetation on a vast scale might be the cause of massive soil depletion and the growth of trees and flora able to compete in harsh conditions, The practice further isolates gene pools and narrowed genetic diversity creating an arid, fairly fragile environment lacking the topsoils needed to sustain human occupation, is met with outrage and cries of “racist” from largely urban based critics.
I realize it may not have been your intention, but the concept of a benevolent and wise “mother nature” is continually expounded as method of endorsing anti-human attitudes.
The whole point of the theory of evolution is that random mutations produce individuals that survive better in environmental circumstances, leading to natural selection. It doesn’t require a God, and it certainly doesn’t imply anything at all with respect to morality.
Having said that, it’s true that humans tend to anthropomorphize this into “Mother Nature” and attribute some sort of benign character to “her.”
Craig,
Thank you for your reply.
I agree there’s a subtle deference between Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution” and Evolution. Darwin sought to explain the origin of species and Natural Selection.
While the ” Theory ” may be making a point, Evolution itself doesn’t “have a point”. Genetic mutations can occur at any times during or the lifetime of any life form and occur for a variety of reasons.
Thus the idea of humans meddling with genetic variation, isn’t “playing God” or “unnatural”,
Nor are random alterations in the DNA sequence incompatible with the existence of a Divine Entity . As you quite rightly point out, it’s all how humans interpret knowledge.
Cameron,
No, I didn’t know that and nor do I agree. Evolution starts by a process of completely random mutations.
There is no such thing as “advantageous” or “disadvantageous” in the true sense, such an interpretation is only a human perception and implies a grand design or a consciousness in other species to conform to some form of model.
Lot’s of evolutionary mutations have no meaning or advantage, yet species continue to pass on the characteristics. 99.9999% of mutations are very tiny and inconsequential. Naturally, those mutations which inhibit survival or lack the ability to reproduce will disappear, but “natural selection” has no moral or any other sentient purpose.
Just a lottery, or an example of “enough monkeys with enough typewriters” etc.