12 ms·
Biodiesel is still way more environmentally friendly than ethanol, which is also heavily subsidized. And the idea of biofuels displacing food production also g
by paulmd 9y ago
Biodiesel is still way more environmentally friendly than ethanol, which is also heavily subsidized. And the idea of biofuels displacing food production also generically applies to any biofuel, again including Ethanol.
This kinda reads like a corn industry hit-piece on a rival technology.
Besides, having third-world countries be dependent on US exports of (heavily subsidized) surplus food is one of the things that causes famines (shortages in the US come out of exports first), and continues the cycle of economic dependency (domestic producers cannot compete with heavily subsidized US exports). The actual fix here would be to develop foreign food production and then have the US reduce emissions to offset.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoIn a world where hunger is still an unsolved problem, burning food for fuel is not just unethical, it's downright stupid.
- clementmiao 9y agoThe counter argument there is that hunger still existing is not so much a product of there not being enough food as much as the food not properly being allocated. There is easily enough food produced in the world to feed everyone as is.
- Leader2light 9y agoHunger is solved, in any country that is not a shit hole.
- brokensegue 9y agowow. chronic hunger is still a problem in the first world. i hope you are trolling. either way i hope you are banned.
- dang 9y agoWould you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We eventually ban accounts that do this repeatedly. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- geezerjay 9y ago> In a world where hunger is still an unsolved problem At best its only a problem in specific locations and due to political problems. I don't believe its reasonable to demand that progress in renewable energy adoption should be aborted just because some nation on some random corner of the world is experiencing political problems.
- empath75 9y agoHunger is a distribution problem not a food shortage problem. There’s more than enough food being produced for everyone.
- sien 9y agoLook at the trends: https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment Even in sub-Saharan Africa under nourishment has gone from ~35% of the population in 1991 to ~18% today. It's a problem that is being solved.
- skybrian 9y agoCrop failures can happen anywhere, so isn't supplier diversity a good thing? All other things being equal, it seems like excluding US exports from the global market would increase exposure to bad weather and make prices more volatile. In particular, think about the case where US farmers have a good year and many other places have a bad year. It seems like efficiency and environmental considerations would have us reduce the amount of land devoted to crops as much as possible, but guaranteeing safety of the food supply would mean increasing capacity. So there's a tradeoff here.
- omegaworks 9y ago>This kinda reads like a corn industry hit-piece on a rival technology. The way that this is framed really betrays either a bias or a significant gap in understanding on the part of the author. The big one is their neglect of the costs to society borne from extracting and refining diesel from fossil fuel. Instead they focused solely on the costs of the subsidy. Look at how they mentioned the Argentine subsidy: "Argentina was doing the U.S. a favor, helping it satisfy its biodiesel demands more cheaply" They're framing this as a net positive for America, but it betrays their perspective: they don't see disincentivization of biodiesel production by American farmers as a negative thing.
- tom_mellior 9y ago> Biodiesel is still way more environmentally friendly than ethanol "X is less bad than Y" doesn't mean that X is not bad. Both can be. In this case, both are. > then have the US reduce emissions to offset Yes. One way to do that would be to stop planting huge cultures for "bio"-diesel and then fertilizing them to death.
- empath75 9y agoThe only real fix is reducing energy usage.
- beat 9y agoOr finding an alternative energy source. I'm pretty convinced that the not-distant future will be wind/solar cached in batteries.
- neves 9y agoIn Brazil Ethanol is made from sugar cane. It is much more efficient and environment friendly than corn ethanol.
- mirimir 9y agoI agree re the comparison. However, the fundamental problem with biofuels overall is that fuel requirements are so huge. Indeed, total annual fossil fuel usage -- coal, oil and natural gas -- is an appreciable fraction of total annual biomass production through photosynthesis. Everything, all plants, everywhere. The reasons being that energy requirements are so much greater than food and feed requirements, and that photosynthesis is so inefficient compared to PV. Human land use is a major factor in the current great extinction. Adding large-scale biofuel production would increase extinction rates. But of course, global climate change is also a major extinction driver. PV and batteries are clearly the way to go.
- thomastjeffery 9y agoIn the future, would you mind typing the word "photovoltaics"? It's a bit frustrating to have to leave mid-read to define an acronym.
- r00fus 9y agoThe whole concept of fuel-based transport should be at question here. Hybridization would be more efficient by far. EVs in general (energy production + transport to plug + battery efficiency losses) are more efficient than the biofuel option (growing/fertilizing/harvesting crops -> turning into fuel-> transport/storage->burning in a vehicle) But what's being discussed? Which crop or where it's grown? Shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
- jogjayr 9y agoEthanol has never made much sense to me. Drill and pump petroleum, process into gasoline (for tractors), and fertilizers, grow corn, turn into ethanol., It's the equivalent of getting a crisp new $100 bill from the bank, recycling it immediately and printing a $1 bill from the "recycled" paper and calling it an environmental success.
- eigenman 9y agoEthanol makes perfect electoral sense: Democrats get to pass "green" legislation which their base likes while Republicans get to give subsides to farmers, one of their main constituents.
- beat 9y agoIt depends on whether the ethanol is generating net positive energy. If I burn one joule of petroleum to get two joules of ethanol, it's a net success. If I burn two joules of petroleum to get one joule of ethanol, it's a net failure. I very much doubt it would have survived as long as it has as a technology if it were a net energy loss.
- bsder 9y ago> I very much doubt it would have survived as long as it has as a technology if it were a net energy loss. Most of the assessments I have seen generally always show that bio-ethanol is a net loss. Only subsidies keep it afloat. None of the bio-* will make any sense until we have a lot more renewable electricity on the grid. At that point, producing bio-* will basically become an energy storage solution and a way to soak up excess energy production that you couldn't store any other way.
- eximius 9y agoeconomically a net loss or ecologically? I sort of assume both, but I'd like to hope for one of them.
- someguydave 9y ago