The Observation Deck

"In Iowa alone, the 7.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gases emitted by ethanol plants each year are equivalent to emissions from almost 1.4 million cars, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. The rush to increase corn production for ethanol has increased agriculture-related toxic run-off in the Mississippi River Basin, and that has swollen the Gulf of Mexico's "Dead Zone" to record levels. Precious wildlife habitat is being plowed under as farmers plant more fuel crops to meet the federal mandate."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-carr/ ... 43972.html

Ethanol is and has always been a sham.

Jim DeVito wrote:Ethanol is and has always been a sham.

A sham that is only made possible by government subsidies. Get ready for more of the same with the Obama energy policy.

Bill,

I think you are wrong about Obama and I'll tell you why. He seems to have read Rep. Jay Inslee book Apollo's Fire which had the forward written by President Clinton. In fact his energy policy heavily parrots Inslee.

My son did his honors thesis last year first which started as a big conservation paper. He even went out to Arizona to meet with Soleri at Arcosanti and ended up moderating his position in the second half of the paper as he discovered that the way we are selling conservation and environmentalism in this country isn't working and he didn't believe ever would work. (I agree).

But he is still for environmentalism that is smart and creates jobs and gets us off of our foreign oil dependendance. One of the best ideas that he saw which the Bush administration stopped years ago wasn't corn - but algae. Rep. Inslee suggests looking at some of these ideas as well. But we will know his policies if he picks someone like Tom Vilsack as his Secy of Agriculture or someone that is not from an corn state.

I'll look for some more recent articles, but this is a relatively good well balanced one. One of the exciting things about algae is it can be reproduced in areas that no one wants to live in and in areas where you can't grow other crops - like the desert.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4213775.html

Given the right conditions, algae can double its volume overnight. Unlike other biofuel feedstocks, such as soy or corn, it can be harvested day after day. Up to 50 percent of an alga’s body weight is comprised of oil, whereas oil-palm trees—currently the largest producer of oil to make biofuels—yield just about 20 percent of their weight in oil. Across the board, yields are already impressive: Soy produces some 50 gallons of oil per acre per year; canola, 150 gallons; and palm, 650 gallons. But algae is expected to produce 10,000 gallons per acre per year, and eventually even more.

“If we were to replace all of the diesel that we use in the United States" with an algae derivative, says Solix CEO Douglas Henston, "we could do it on an area of land that’s about one-half of 1 percent of the current farm land that we use now."

they could probably engineer suitable algae that grows in saltwater. Irrigating the sahara and arabia with oceans might become a big thing. At least enough to produce shade trees, biomass, and some kind of silvaculture. It would lower ambient temperatures in the desert. maybe. it could work. at least in science fiction.

Ocean photosynthetic organisms do a lot of the C02 abosrbing. it is rumored low levels of dissolved Iron in many parts of the ocean bottleneck this. They say dumping iron powder in these oceans could suck a lot of C02 out of the atmosphere by enabling more photosynthetic microorganisms.

Raw Sewage is also a minimally tapped source of methane. it is already centrally collected. you'd probably need to knock over a few football fields of houses or trees to build extraction facilities around each sewage treatment plant.

in the end the fastest solutions and surest solutions are conservation. smaller stores within walking distance. schools within walking distance. shorter supply lines of manufactured goods.