On Apr 6, 5:30=A0pm, JSM <ekrub...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Biofuel Farming Looks to Be an Environmental Disaster
> Growing corn for ethanol may increase greenhouse gases for over a
> century.
> Discover magazine =A0February, Better Planet Special Issue, =A0snippett
> by Jennifer Barone and Amber Fields
>
> THE STUDIES =A0"Land Clearing and the Carbon Biofuel Debt" by Joseph
> Fargione et al., and "Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases
> Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions From Land Use Change" by Timothy
> Searchinger et al., both published in the February 7, 2008, issue of
> Science.
>
> THE QUESTION =A0Will switching from fossil fuels to biofuels really
> reduce greenhouse gases? We take a close look at two big,
> controversial studies that examine carbon emissions from the
> ecosystems torn down to produce biofuels.
>
> THE METHODS =A0Throughout the Amazonian rain forest and the savanna of
> Brazil, enormous swaths of land are being converted to farms for
> growing soybeans and sugarcane--all for use in creating biofuels. The
> tropical rain forest and peatland of Indonesia and Malaysia and the
> grasslands of the United States are also being converted to biofuel
> crops. It is a disturbing trend, says Joseph Fargione, regional
> science director at the Nature Conservancy, who conducted the first of
> the two studies examined here. With his colleagues Fargione took a
> close look at how the areas being transformed into farmland have acted
> as carbon dioxide storage systems. Trees, grass, and other flora take
> in the gas, Fargione says, incor****ating the carbon into their
> structures. But when the land is converted for agriculture, the plants
> are cut down, burned, or processed, and the stored carbon is
> eventually released back into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases.
> Using numbers from nearly 50 previous studies, Fargione's team
> calculated the amount of carbon stored in these landscapes and the up-
> front carbon cost for each acre of land converted to produce biofuels.
For once I agree with you. Also, my son in law is a dairy farmer in
New York that tells me they can't get fertilizer. He says the word is
China has bought up all the US fertilizer and there is not enough for
US farmers. Could this be the beginning of the great meltdown?
Everything seems to be going haywire at once. The bottom line is
there are too many people on this planet and it is time for the
Malthusian Principle to kick in. That means some form of control has
to happen such as mass starvation, a global epidemic, a global war, or
some catastrophic event to curb the over population. There are too
many people on this planet for all of them to have the same standard
of living as we have in the USA, and that is a fact. The Internet and
global communications have educated the m***** so they are no longer
happy living in the bottom third of humanity. They are not going to
take it any longer. Something has got to give
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