Guest Best_Guest Posted February 10, 2008 Report Share Posted February 10, 2008 Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account.... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/science/...268&ei=5087 A "solution" that makes the problem worse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted February 10, 2008 Report Share Posted February 10, 2008 It makes sense. If we trace any kind of fuel all the way back to its source we end up at the same source for all of them ... the Sun. Some fuels condense the sun's energy more compactly than others. Fuels of greatest energy-density are the ones we have been using for preference already ... fossil fuels including oil. If we switch to less dense fuels we still have to extract the same amount of energy for our needs. Therefore more 'bulk' of a less dense fuel is needed. Bio-fuel crops are not very concentrated forms of energy storage therefore large land areas are needed. Add extraction and processing to condense this energy to the density needed and more industrial and agricultural pollution accompanies it, hastening environmental damage affecting climate. We just use energy to condense energy, losing some efficiency along the way, coming out behind rather than ahead. The equation ultimately doesn't look good for those new technologies. The law of Conservation Of Energy ultimately means that no matter what we do, we can't improve on the equation that can be traced back to the Sun ... the same equation that we've been exploiting all along in one form or another. I'm glad that a credible body of experts is starting to be heard on this issue. It's not before time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Guest Posted February 10, 2008 Report Share Posted February 10, 2008 Biofuels made out of sugar cane are as high octane as gasoline. But in the US we make it from corn... Biofuel made from corn is only 1/6 as powerful as gasoline. So corn based biofuels are like watered down gasoline. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest A Reasonable Atheist Posted February 10, 2008 Report Share Posted February 10, 2008 One of the problems with ethanol is that it takes more gasoline to convert the corn to ethanol than you get in the end. Can this process be made more efficient in the long run, possibly, but right now it would appear to be a wash in terms of environmental savings. We really do need to focus on nuclear power as a means of energy production, though, even there it is extremely expensive to build a nuclear plant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted February 11, 2008 Report Share Posted February 11, 2008 There has been talk of positioning vast acreages of parabolic mirror in orbit to harness Sun's rays that would normally bypass Earth, converting them into microwaves that can be beamed down to receptors at ground level, from where the energy can be distributed as needed. Great if it can be pulled off, but it would seem to lie far in the future at our present state of technology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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