Are biofuels Europe's sh*ttiest idea ever?

Re: to answer the headline question

Perhaps when wind turbines reach the end of development you can then sit on your fat lazy arse and nay say?

In the mean time, man who wants to move forward, will continue to develop greener energy.

We also need to be 100% sure that the chemicals added to fuels over the years have not caused any health damage, i.e auto- immune disorders, before claiming Bio is just as bad.

Re: Biodiesel in the UK

Ask the governments friends - dont blame biodiesel.

Don't look at things in isolation though - think more of biodiesel as a by product of animal food. You can feed almost all of the rape plant that the biodiesel can come from to cattle and pigs etc. If grown here and fed to animals here its pretty close to a win win - you can drive your car on a couple of acres and eat bacon sarnies all day.

But the same fuck ups apply to most things - US beef takes half of the US crop growing and a lot of the amazon jungle and yet produces not much more meat than the bison that wandered around a small area of the mid west without any human intervention.

Blaming biodiesel for taxes and starvation is missing the real culprit - general human fuckwittery - by a long chalk.

Re: Betteridge's Law says 'No'

Godwin!

Re: Betteridge's Law says 'No'

There are probably more 'Nazi' supporters in the US than in Europe.

Flying the Swastika is illegal in Germany and not illegal in the USA.

Re: Are biofuels Europe's sh*ttiest idea ever?

"by growing interesting new crops on land that cannot be effectively used for other food production"

I think that was what the green groups had in mind in the first place. Trouble is, land that's not fit for growing food crops is generally not fit for growing crops of any sort at a commercial yield.

The reason that they're using palm oil, maize and rape etc for bio stuff is that it's relatively easy to get from plant to fuel. The farming process is already industrialised and once harvested, the route to ethanol or whatever is relatively uncomplicated and again, has few technical hurdles to overcome.

If you want to reprocess waste, generally someone has to sort it and do more work to get it into fuel, and usually at lower conversion efficiencies. This means that the processes would require even more subsidies to get anyone interested in investing it.

Re: Are biofuels Europe's sh*ttiest idea ever?

Now there's an interesting question. I think we have to say no. I think the current clusterfuck that is the Euro has to win this one hands down. It's the policy that has the greatest chance of destroying the EU, and the economies of every member.

But then we have to look at the horrible consequences for third world economies and agriculture of the Common Agriculture Policy. That one's a real doozy. We increase poverty within the EU, by redistributing cash from poor consumers (and rich ones too, to be fair), to relatively rich farmers. Of course there are also some really poor farmers who get help too, but sadly the policy gives most of its cash to the rich ones. To make this work we also slap import tariffs onto poor developing world farmers, so they can't export to us in an area they can compete in. All the while we also increase inefficiency in our own farming. And at one point we were even paying one lot of farmers to over-produce subsidised crops, then paying a bunch of bureaucrats to either store or destroy the surplus. Biofuels isn't working, but I think CAP beats it even in the area of agriculture.

Oh, and I forgot the Common Fisheries Policy. Which even when it sees the need to reduce catastrophic over-fishing, to save the fish stocks that are being systematically destroyed, does it in such a way that it still kills massive numbers of fish that decimate the stocks, but now throws them back, so we can't even eat them as we destroy them. That's probably slightly madder than biofuels too.

The Financial Transactions Tax might come in there too. Although it's hard to know unless they actually do it. But the Commission's own figures say that the 11 countries who try it are expecting to raise a total of €38 billion in tax per year. But it's expected to cost 0.1 - 0.2% GDP growth per year, which will work out to several hundred billion Euro per year. Also, while the money you raise is an annual amount. If you lose a percentage of GDP growth every year, you get compound effects, so each year you get smaller growth from a total smaller than it would otherwise have been. Also they may destroy the market in their own government debt, in the middle of a crisis in confidence in Eurozone government debt. Oh and it may also break the Repo market, i.e. interbank lending, during a crisis in confidence in Eurozone banks. So it's possible it could bring down the Euro, even if they do enough to otherwise save it.

Re: Are biofuels Europe's sh*ttiest idea ever?

Living in SEA I can tell you that Palm Oil is an absolute blight in this region. It has caused environmental damage, endangered species and displaced thousands who have lived in regions it is grown in. Now driving through Malaysia (although as dangerous as ever) is just a dull voyage through hundreds of square miles of the stuff. It isn't even healthy enough to put in food!

Re: Are biofuels Europe's sh*ttiest idea ever?

"*IF* biofuels are produced by processing existing agricultural waste (and a lot of interesting research is being done on how the woody leftovers can be efficiently processed), by re-processing food waste(chip fat) or by growing interesting new crops on land that cannot be effectively used for other food production then it's an excellent idea - carbon neutral and using resources which would otherwise be wasted."

It's only an excellent idea if the fuel produced is significantly more than the fuel used to produce it.

Otherwise you're far better off putting that "waste biomass" back into the ground, as crop fertilizer. Stripping of arable land nutrients is a fast way of making a dust bowl.

I own a 1980s Kawasaki and I'm actually looking forward to fitting an electric motor and enjoying the freedom of motorcycling more so, with a quieter engine, rollercoster exhilaration these modded vehicles offer and possibly free charge cycles from the sun.

Worries me too

When lead was removed from petrol there was supposed to be some kind of similar proviso for older engines which couldn't cope with unleaded fuel. Using the availability of that as an indicator I think I can see what will happen here too.

Re: Who voted these buffoons in?

Vote UKIP!