Biomass bummer: carbon mitigation could increase ozone A team from Lancaster University has poured cold water on Europe’s increasing plan to increase the biomass it uses in electricity production, saying that that while non-fossil fuels can improve the carbon picture, it comes at the cost of air quality on the ground. The problem, according to research led by professor Nick Hewitt …
The AGW thesis is that it is the scientific advances of the last century (or so) which created this situation.
As a generalisation, people try to push the costs of their gains onto others. Using the past couple of hundred years of massive advances in tech as evidence, I'd suggest that people don't change.
Contrary to the indoctrination of StarTrek and SG1, we are not evolving to a higher state of conciousness, we are merely more efficient at doing what we have always done.
In this case, "GM is our only hope" sounds like marketing. Nice try, but no cigar.
From http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/roc/twelfth/roc12.pdf
Isoprene is reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen based on sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity from studies in experimental animals.
Cancer Studies in Experimental Animals
Exposure to isoprene by inhalation caused tumors at several different tissue sites in mice and rats. In mice of both sexes, isoprene caused blood-vessel cancer (hemangiosarcoma) and benign or malignant tumors of the Harderian gland (adenoma or carcinoma) and the lung (alveolar/bronchiolar adenoma or carcinoma). In male mice, ...
It looks like isoprene is a problem all by itself.
Ozone is only produced when high levels of nitric oxides are present. Without the nitric oxides it will reduce ozone levels. The nitric oxides generally come from cars, power stations or other industrial sources (the source of the CO2 in the first place).
Now if we use genetically engineered trees (that just happen to be patented by some big multinational) then some company can make lots of money and we can keep driving SUVs.
....and not enough ozone is also bad! Witness the ozone 'hole' above the southern polar region, which we are told was/is caused by polluting flourocarbons. This is reportedly responsible for thousands of deaths due to skin cancer, so why would we not want to convert some other pollutants to ozone, and maybe fill the hole?
Ozone in the troposphere is a pollutant. It is extremely harmful to one's respiratory health. In the stratosphere, on the other hand, ozone absorbs UV rays, therefore decreasing how much we get exposed to. The half-life of ozone molecules is 30 minutes, so even if they were magically floating up (not the case), it still wouldn't make a difference for the ozone layer as a whole.
Although Wikipedia puts the half-life of ozone in air at 30 minutes, citing the Goddard Space Flight Center FAQ, these sources appear to have mistakenly provided the half-life in water rather than air. See, e.g.,
http://www.lenntech.com/library/ozone/decomposition/ozone-decomposition.htm
At 20 °C at ground level the half-life in air is about 3 days, and it increases with decreasing temperature.
AC 00:16 above points out that isoprene is very likely to be carcinogenic. Indeed it is quite similar to butadiene, which is a known cause of leukaemia.
Given the somewhat scant evidence that nuclear reactors are responsible for leukaemia clusters, a claim which is so often trumpeted by fearmongers, it will be interesting to see if there is any response from the rabid greenies.
Headlines such as "Biomass causes leukaemia" seem somewhat unlikely, even if the evidence is a good deal stronger than in the case of nuclear power.
Australia is a continent of mostly eucalyptus, people and maize/corn. Most of 'em live in houses surrounded by gum trees.
So, maybe we should study how many Aussies are getting cancer from isoprene (and generally dying from assorted ozone-ness complications), compared with, say, peoples everywhere else where there are fewer gum trees?
"So, maybe we should study how many Aussies are getting cancer from isoprene (and generally dying from assorted ozone-ness complications), compared with, say, peoples everywhere else where there are fewer gum trees?"
For such a trial you would need to eliminate anything else from the environment that is likely to kill the test subjects.
That groups appears to include all the Australian flora and fauna, apart from "some of the sheep".
"Not sure about the sheep but the Koalas are so cute.
Surely they're harmless."
Well it appears they are. Unfortunately petting also appears to be (mostly) illegal.
http://www.fodors.com/community/australia-the-pacific/petting-koalas.cfm
Although if highly stressed they will wee on you.
"Australia is a continent of mostly eucalyptus, people and maize/corn."
Australia is a continent of mostly desert, devoid of eucalyptus, people and maize/corn.
OK so there are a very small number of people in some of the desert, presumably only living there to avoid drop-bears.
DDT never caused the eggshell damage they said it did, and we have killed several millions of humans by stopping using it, while spending large amounts of money on alternative less effective pesticides who's major advantage is that they are still under patent...
Chlorofluorocarbons don't seem to have caused a hole in the ozone layer - that hole seems to be natural. That ban has cost us many billions in making alternative, less effective chemicals, and enabled DuPont to maintain a patent on refrigerant compound which they were about to lose. It has also deprived us of a major fire suppressant...
Acid rain turned out to be a non-problem. Interestingly, the biologists were brought on board by telling the 'leaf specialists' that acid rain damaged roots, while the root specialists were told that acid rain damaged leaves.... In all a few billion was passed to environmental activists, which could have been used in much better ways
Global Warming has been the grand-daddy of activist scams - with prospective costs in the trillions and major disruption to world energy infrastructure in order to stop a predicted minor warming of the planet which turns out to only exist in the fudged mathematics of incorrect computer models.
Can someone spot a trend here...?
There is a pertinent and presumably authoritative article here, 'The nonsense of biofuels'. The author, Prof. Dr. Hartmut Michel, was awarded a Nobel prize for his work in photosynthesis.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201200218/full
The efficiency of biofuel conversion is presently less than 0.1% for biodiesel, 0.2% for bioethanol. In terms of carbon capture it would be much better to reforest the land used for energy plants.
I will take Dodgy Geezers suppositions a step further and say that making completely unsupportable arguments for or against AGW, Climate Change, Biomass, Gene Modification. etc. just serves to dilute any chance that anyone will ever believe anything anyone will ever say on the subject.
With all the intelligence in this world, why can we not determine actual facts on these subjects instead of making wildass conjecture? Otherwise, my title above is as truthful a statement as anyones elses.
This post has been deleted by its author
"He suggests that trees could be genetically engineered to reduce isoprene emissions, and states that plantations should be located away from urban pollution."
I was always lead to believe that one of the major factors in support of using biofuels was that they'd be grown locally, avoiding the costs and emissions associated with transporting the fuel around the country.
The producing wood forests of the PAC NW have, for the last few years, been partially converted to furnace pellet production, with a large amount going to power plants in Europe... just like coal exports....
No one lives in those areas, larger than some countries in Europe, the Ozones are re used by the growing trees...
It is said that trees use these secondary gasses to communicate with other trees in the forest...
IMHO= some folks really need to get a hobby... ( we just now realized trees pollute )...RS
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
