wmhjr

Steve,

As for sites, just start with NPR for one. There are plenty out there. However, you need to insure that the data you are reviewing is newer - otherwise you're looking at the same "potential" data that the big raves for Biodiesel were based on - not reality. One older example of the emissions controversy is at http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/12...y-over-pollut/


As for the amount of fossil fuel - I'm not talking about the fuel "in" the biodiesel. I'm talking about the fuel required to raise the crops, harvest, gather, process, refine, etc. And this is not ethanol. This is biodiesel. A quote: "Although animal fat can be used, plant oil is the largest source of biodiesel. You've probably used some of these in the kitchen. Scientists and engineers can use oils from familiar crops such as soybean, rapeseed, canola, palm, cottonseed, sunflower and peanut to produce biodiesel. "

Please keep in mind that my comments are directed toward the long term viability of "Commercially available" biodiesel - and not some home grown kits. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of people simply do not have the capability or desire to "refine" their own fuel - and frankly the byproducts of such an idea would also be counterproductive.

Everyone on this site who is a real proponent of biodiesel is really concentrating on the upside, and on the use of "cooking oil". When in fact, the overall effects on the environment, the overall cost, and the implications are far less beneficial.

And just to be completely clear - the statement that "most biodiesel is generated from waste vegetable oil from restaurants" is completely untrue in terms of commercially available biodiesel. That is a very common - but false - impression.

StevethePilot

Thank you for the link. It looks like it's still a controversy, not yet settled. Perhaps different oil sources produce different results? I also see where they're using direct-to-biodiesel crops, which I think is a mistake. I think the waste oil market has not been fully utilized, personally. The companies probably see it as an added cost to both collect and properly filter the stuff pre-treatment, but there's a hell of a lot of it out there. (My family's been in food service for several generations.)

This is a technology that's coming of age still. I think poo-pooing it as a false hope is as short-sighted as accepting it as our savior from foriegn dependency. Our highest weight-to-energy proportion is still petrolium diesel and that's just a chemical fact. But it needs to be fully investigated as an alternative, which we really do need for security reasons if nothing else, before it's either accepted or rejected. I appreciate the information and dialogue!

STP

midnightz

ASTM certified refinery are currently sourced from soy or cotton seed. "Home-brewed" biodiesel are typically from waste cooking oil since the main reason for the DIY biodiesel is cheap fuel... And waste cooking oil is free; however, there are some upstarts beginning to tap into the waste oil to provide ASTM certified biodiesel.

With any alternatives, there are positives and negatives. Depends on where you get the data, it usually tend to lean toward the side of the source of the funding. I think with biodiesel, the positives outweigh the negatives. And in time, the disparity would get significantly wider as we invest and develop the technologies.

I like to help promote alternative energy and the best and the easiest way is with my money. I can do that today by buying biodiesel at a retailer pump station and use it in a car from a major car manufacturer. It also helps that the car is a Mercedes…

wmhjr

It has been, and the direct effects of trying to scale biodiesel to the extent that it would have any measurable effect on fossil fuel consumption have dramatic side effects. Clearcutting and deforestation of natural resources, reduction in food supply output, and increased overall cost in human (and agricultural) foods top the list. In terms of there being a "hell of a lot of it out there" (it being vegetable oil wasted products) that is also a very common misconception.

The bottom line is that for a hobby, it's fine. And for some it may make sense assuming it's just a hobby. But to scale to the extent that it has any effect really means commercialization and consumerization. At that level, biodiesel has already been judged and found lacking. In other words, maybe a short term fix for a small number of people but nothing else.

midnightz

I wouldn't hesitate using B20, as long as it's from commercial sources. They have to meet ASTM standards.

From nwbiodiesel.org:

How does biodiesel impact my engine warranty?

Engine manufacturers’ warranties only cover the manufacturers’ parts and workmanship. These warranties do not cover fuel whether it’s petroleum diesel or biodiesel. The use of biodiesel in diesel engines does not void these warranties, even if the blend of biodiesel (such as B99) is higher than what the manufacturer approves. Engine manufacturers can not void an engine’s warranty due to the use of biodiesel under the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act. If there are engine problems caused by a fuel (whether that fuel is petroleum diesel or biodiesel) these problems are the responsibility of the fuel supplier. If an engine problem is the result of faulty parts or workmanship and not resulting from the fuel, the engine manufacturer must honor the warranty.

StevethePilot

Yes, well, a misconception is usually something that is believed but is not true. I can tell you that while I do not know the actual volumes available, it is nowhere near what the US consumes in gasoline but might be somewhat of a dent in the diesel arena. It's currently used in Europe by many over-the-road trucks. And being in the business, I can tell you that as subjective as "a hell of a lot" is, the term applies. It is, in my case, no misconception. It's unfortunate that you feel the product is already proven as useless, I would've hoped for a more open-minded response. Clearly there is more than one way to get the necessary oils, and the vast majority of vehicles out there use gasoline anyway so the effect on them would be minimal. I really don't know that clear-cutting and the apparant collapse of the food system, the economy and society as a whole would occur from trying to move a small fraction of the vehicles out there off of normal diesel.

Here's hoping the folks looking at alternatives are a little more willing to try things.

STP

wmhjr

Steve, I was very open minded about it. And you've accurately described both the definition of a misconception as well as the fact that the belief that most biodiesel comes from waste products as being a misconception. Once again - just because the actual facts are not what we would like does not change reality. Commercially produced biodiesel is not from cooking oil waste products. Only a very very small percentage is.

The problem is that the jury is already in on it. It has much to do with the ecological and economical effects of trying to scale biodiesel to support a measurable increase of percentage of our diesel consumption. You really need to read more about it - with an open mind. There are law suits and pending legislation in Germany to start preventing any increase in production and distribution. Other international locations are experiencing the same issue. The pure problem is math, and numbers don't lie. For example, the Germans invested a great deal of public funds in biodiesel - but one byproduct is that they've found that the only way to increase production is to conduct deforestation on a large scale, and that it has also lead to a decline in food supplies with corresponding increases in cost. You have no idea how much I'd like to see it become a real player, but both financially and realistically it's beating a dead horse.

You see, in order to be a success, there HAS to be the ablity to produce a profit as well - otherwise there cannot be private investment in production/refinery capacity. Because of the significant limitations in the fuel itself and the difficulty/ramifications of gathering resources, private investment is problematic to say the least.

It's just math - wish it were different. But, I'd rather see resources spent toward an alternative resources than continuing marking time on a technology that simply cannot scale to make a large difference. And how else can you explain the fact that the people bringing suit against further deployment of biodiesel are environmentalists - not oil companies?

StevethePilot

First, the misconception I was talking about was that there's not a lot of oil available for biodiesel. Waste oil is sometimes called "yellow grease" and it is currently underutilized. Estimates are that in the US, there are 25 billion (with a "b") gallons of yellow grease produced. Weekly. Now, total (TOTAL) U.S. use of diesel for 2006 was just over 1 trillion gallons a week. On highway use was 615 billion gallons weekly. Does it cover it? No. Does it make a dent? Yes it could. Are we a tiny country like Germany? No, we're a vast country. Is Canada growing everything it can? Nope. Is the U.S.? C'mon, it's a joke that we pay so many farmers to not grow food. In Arizona alone, we use under 18% of the land and the rest is reservations (vast open lands), state, federal and military preserves (vast open land), and about 10% of the remaining is national park (no use). There are fields of Jojoba growing wild out in the desert because that market died. How efficient is Jojoba oil as biodiesel? This stuff hasn't even been studied in the U.S. Our economies of scale are vastly different than Europe. No clear-cutting needed here, no vast environmental impact.

Second, if you want me to explain the "logic" that environmentalists don't want biodiesel development, you're suffering under the vast misconception that the word "environmentalist" and "logic" can be used in the same sentence. Most of what I see from "environmentalists" is directed only at anti-industrialism, not anything allowing further research and development of ... well, of anything. When the man who created Green Peace has left the movement because he cannot stand the alarmist anti-industrialization that it has become, and he himself says the best way to stop much of the pollution in the world is to go to nuclear power (watch the environmentalists turn first white, then beet red when you say this to them), I tend to tune out the environmentalists as reactionary and irrelevant. Including, sorry, NPR, who I once loved.

So besides the fact that we're not even drilling for new oil here in the U.S. or doing anything to reduce, at least, our dependency on foreign oil, what do you suggest we do to help the situaiton?

wmhjr

Well, rather than investing what experts to believe is a waste into biodiesel development, I'd recommend that same investment go into true alternative energy development like fuel cells, etc. Since what the opponents of biodiesel are concerned about has already proven to be a reality where such development has happened (higher food prices, conflicts between growing biodiesel components rather than consumable food products) I'd prefer to avoid the waste of time for what by all rights would only be a small and temporary fix.

StevethePilot

Do you think John Kanzius will be able to produce hydrogen from sea water at a rate that would make it commercially viable?

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6vSxR6UKFM - could this be installed in any modified-to-burn-hydrogen internal combustion engine?)

STP

wmhjr

Honestly, I'm not familiar with this and have no idea. But I really do think we need more focused attention on real potential and scalable alternatives. The whole diesel/biodiesel/gasoline thing to me is just moving peas around on the same plate.

Quicks

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...725975,00.html

Thursday, Mar. 27, 2008
The Clean Energy Scam
By Michael Grunwald

From his Cessna a mile above the southern Amazon, John Carter looks down on the destruction of the world's greatest ecological jewel. He watches men converting rain forest into cattle pastures and soybean fields with bulldozers and chains. He sees fires wiping out such gigantic swaths of jungle that scientists now debate the "savannization" of the Amazon. Brazil just announced that deforestation is on track to double this year; Carter, a Texas cowboy with all the subtlety of a chainsaw, says it's going to get worse fast. "It gives me goose bumps," says Carter, who founded a nonprofit to promote sustainable ranching on the Amazon frontier. "It's like witnessing a rape."

The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse of biodiversity. It's been overshadowed lately by global warming, but the Amazon rain forest happens also to be an incomparable storehouse of carbon, the very carbon that heats up the planet when it's released into the atmosphere. Brazil now ranks fourth in the world in carbon emissions, and most of its emissions come from deforestation. Carter is not a man who gets easily spooked--he led a reconnaissance unit in Desert Storm, and I watched him grab a small anaconda with his bare hands in Brazil--but he can sound downright panicky about the future of the forest. "You can't protect it. There's too much money to be made tearing it down," he says. "Out here on the frontier, you really see the market at work."

This land rush is being accelerated by an unlikely source: biofuels. An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.

Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they're serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol--ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter--in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil's filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group. Renewable fuels has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie catchphrases, as unobjectionable as the troops or the middle class.

But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.

Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.

Backed by billions in investment capital, this alarming phenomenon is replicating itself around the world. Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the world's top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third according to a report by Wetlands International. Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it's running out of uncultivated land. But most of the damage created by biofuels will be less direct and less obvious. In Brazil, for instance, only a tiny portion of the Amazon is being torn down to grow the sugarcane that fuels most Brazilian cars. More deforestation results from a chain reaction so vast it's subtle: U.S. farmers are selling one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production, so U.S. soybean farmers are switching to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures, so Brazilian cattlemen are displaced to the Amazon. It's the remorseless economics of commodities markets. "The price of soybeans goes up," laments Sandro Menezes, a biologist with Conservation International in Brazil, "and the forest comes down."

Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions. So unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources--cars, power plants, factories, even flatulent cows--it needs to reduce deforestation or risk an environmental catastrophe. That means limiting the expansion of agriculture, a daunting task as the world's population keeps expanding. And saving forests is probably an impossibility so long as vast expanses of cropland are used to grow modest amounts of fuel. The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations--and it's only getting started.

Why the Amazon Is on Fire

This destructive biofuel dynamic is on vivid display in Brazil, where a Rhode Island--size chunk of the Amazon was deforested in the second half of 2007 and even more was degraded by fire. Some scientists believe fires are now altering the local microclimate and could eventually reduce the Amazon to a savanna or even a desert. "It's approaching a tipping point," says ecologist Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center.

I spent a day in the Amazon with the Kamayura tribe, which has been forced by drought to replant its crops five times this year. The tribesmen I met all complained about hacking coughs and stinging eyes from the constant fires and the disappearance of the native plants they use for food, medicine and rituals. The Kamayura had virtually no contact with whites until the 1960s; now their forest is collapsing around them. Their chief, Kotok, a middle-aged man with an easy smile and Three Stooges hairdo that belie his fierce authority, believes that's no coincidence. "We are people of the forest, and the whites are destroying our home," says Kotok, who wore a ceremonial beaded belt, a digital watch, a pair of flip-flops and nothing else. "It's all because of money."

Kotok knows nothing about biofuels. He's more concerned about his tribe's recent tendency to waste its precious diesel-powered generator watching late-night soap operas. But he's right. Deforestation can be a complex process; for example, land reforms enacted by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have attracted slash-and-burn squatters to the forest, and "use it or lose it" incentives have spurred some landowners to deforest to avoid redistribution.

The basic problem is that the Amazon is worth more deforested than it is intact. Carter, who fell in love with the region after marrying a Brazilian and taking over her father's ranch, says the rate of deforestation closely tracks commodity prices on the Chicago Board of Trade. "It's just exponential right now because the economics are so good," he says. "Everything tillable or grazeable is gouged out and cleared."

That the destruction is taking place in Brazil is sadly ironic, given that the nation is also an exemplar of the allure of biofuels. Sugar growers here have a greener story to tell than do any other biofuel producers. They provide 45% of Brazil's fuel (all cars in the country are able to run on ethanol) on only 1% of its arable land. They've reduced fertilizer use while increasing yields, and they convert leftover biomass into electricity. Marcos Jank, the head of their trade group, urges me not to lump biofuels together: "Grain is good for bread, not for cars. But sugar is different." Jank expects production to double by 2015 with little effect on the Amazon. "You'll see the expansion on cattle pastures and the Cerrado," he says.

So far, he's right. There isn't much sugar in the Amazon. But my next stop was the Cerrado, south of the Amazon, an ecological jewel in its own right. The Amazon gets the ink, but the Cerrado is the world's most biodiverse savanna, with 10,000 species of plants, nearly half of which are found nowhere else on earth, and more mammals than the African bush. In the natural Cerrado, I saw toucans and macaws, puma tracks and a carnivorous flower that lures flies by smelling like manure. The Cerrado's trees aren't as tall or dense as the Amazon's, so they don't store as much carbon, but the region is three times the size of Texas, so it stores its share.

At least it did, before it was transformed by the march of progress--first into pastures, then into sugarcane and soybean fields. In one field I saw an array of ovens cooking trees into charcoal, spewing Cerrado's carbon into the atmosphere; those ovens used to be ubiquitous, but most of the trees are gone. I had to travel hours through converted Cerrado to see a 96-acre (39 hectare) sliver of intact Cerrado, where a former shopkeeper named Lauro Barbosa had spent his life savings for a nature preserve. "The land prices are going up, up, up," Barbosa told me. "My friends say I'm a fool, and my wife almost divorced me. But I wanted to save something before it's all gone."

The environmental cost of this cropland creep is now becoming apparent. One groundbreaking new study in Science concluded that when this deforestation effect is taken into account, corn ethanol and soy biodiesel produce about twice the emissions of gasoline. Sugarcane ethanol is much cleaner, and biofuels created from waste products that don't gobble up land have real potential, but even cellulosic ethanol increases overall emissions when its plant source is grown on good cropland. "People don't want to believe renewable fuels could be bad," says the lead author, Tim Searchinger, a Princeton scholar and former Environmental Defense attorney. "But when you realize we're tearing down rain forests that store loads of carbon to grow crops that store much less carbon, it becomes obvious."

The growing backlash against biofuels is a product of the law of unintended consequences. It may seem obvious now that when biofuels increase demand for crops, prices will rise and farms will expand into nature. But biofuel technology began on a small scale, and grain surpluses were common. Any ripples were inconsequential. When the scale becomes global, the outcome is entirely different, which is causing cheerleaders for biofuels to recalibrate. "We're all looking at the numbers in an entirely new way," says the Natural Resources Defense Council's Nathanael Greene, whose optimistic "Growing Energy" report in 2004 helped galvanize support for biofuels among green groups.

Several of the most widely cited experts on the environmental benefits of biofuels are warning about the environmental costs now that they've recognized the deforestation effect. "The situation is a lot more challenging than a lot of us thought," says University of California, Berkeley, professor Alexander Farrell, whose 2006 Science article calculating the emissions reductions of various ethanols used to be considered the definitive analysis. The experts haven't given up on biofuels; they're calling for better biofuels that won't trigger massive carbon releases by displacing wildland. Robert Watson, the top scientist at the U.K.'s Department for the Environment, recently warned that mandating more biofuel usage--as the European Union is proposing--would be "insane" if it increases greenhouse gases. But the forces that biofuels have unleashed--political, economic, social--may now be too powerful to constrain.

America the Bio-Foolish

The best place to see this is America's biofuel mecca: Iowa. Last year fewer than 2% of U.S. gas stations offered ethanol, and the country produced 7 billion gal. (26.5 billion L) of biofuel, which cost taxpayers at least $8 billion in subsidies. But on Nov. 6, at a biodiesel plant in Newton, Iowa, Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled an eye-popping plan that would require all stations to offer ethanol by 2017 while mandating 60 billion gal. (227 billion L) by 2030. "This is the fuel for a much brighter future!" she declared. Barack Obama immediately criticized her--not for proposing such an expansive plan but for failing to support ethanol before she started trolling for votes in Iowa's caucuses.

If biofuels are the new dotcoms, Iowa is Silicon Valley, with 53,000 jobs and $1.8 billion in income dependent on the industry. The state has so many ethanol distilleries under construction that it's poised to become a net importer of corn. That's why biofuel-pandering has become virtually mandatory for presidential contenders. John McCain was the rare candidate who vehemently opposed ethanol as an outrageous agribusiness boondoggle, which is why he skipped Iowa in 2000. But McCain learned his lesson in time for this year's caucuses. By 2006 he was calling ethanol a "vital alternative energy source."

Members of Congress love biofuels too, not only because so many dream about future Iowa caucuses but also because so few want to offend the farm lobby, the most powerful force behind biofuels on Capitol Hill. Ethanol isn't about just Iowa or even the Midwest anymore. Plants are under construction in New York, Georgia, Oregon and Texas, and the ethanol boom's effect on prices has helped lift farm incomes to record levels nationwide.

Someone is paying to support these environmentally questionable industries: you. In December, President Bush signed a bipartisan energy bill that will dramatically increase support to the industry while mandating 36 billion gal. (136 billion L) of biofuel by 2022. This will provide a huge boost to grain markets.

Why is so much money still being poured into such a misguided enterprise? Like the scientists and environmentalists, many politicians genuinely believe biofuels can help decrease global warming. It makes intuitive sense: cars emit carbon no matter what fuel they burn, but the process of growing plants for fuel sucks some of that carbon out of the atmosphere. For years, the big question was whether those reductions from carbon sequestration outweighed the "life cycle" of carbon emissions from farming, converting the crops to fuel and transporting the fuel to market. Researchers eventually concluded that yes, biofuels were greener than gasoline. The improvements were only about 20% for corn ethanol because tractors, petroleum-based fertilizers and distilleries emitted lots of carbon. But the gains approached 90% for more efficient fuels, and advocates were confident that technology would progressively increase benefits.

There was just one flaw in the calculation: the studies all credited fuel crops for sequestering carbon, but no one checked whether the crops would ultimately replace vegetation and soils that sucked up even more carbon. It was as if the science world assumed biofuels would be grown in parking lots. The deforestation of Indonesia has shown that's not the case. It turns out that the carbon lost when wilderness is razed overwhelms the gains from cleaner-burning fuels. A study by University of Minnesota ecologist David Tilman concluded that it will take more than 400 years of biodiesel use to "pay back" the carbon emitted by directly clearing peat lands to grow palm oil; clearing grasslands to grow corn for ethanol has a payback period of 93 years. The result is that biofuels increase demand for crops, which boosts prices, which drives agricultural expansion, which eats forests. Searchinger's study concluded that overall, corn ethanol has a payback period of about 167 years because of the deforestation it triggers.

Not every kernel of corn diverted to fuel will be replaced. Diversions raise food prices, so the poor will eat less. That's the reason a U.N. food expert recently called agrofuels a "crime against humanity." Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute says that biofuels pit the 800 million people with cars against the 800 million people with hunger problems. Four years ago, two University of Minnesota researchers predicted the ranks of the hungry would drop to 625 million by 2025; last year, after adjusting for the inflationary effects of biofuels, they increased their prediction to 1.2 billion.

Industry advocates say that as farms increase crop yields, as has happened throughout history, they won't need as much land. They'll use less energy, and they'll use farm waste to generate electricity. To which Searchinger says: Wonderful! But growing fuel is still an inefficient use of good cropland. Strange as it sounds, we're better off growing food and drilling for oil. Sure, we should conserve fuel and buy efficient cars, but we should keep filling them with gas if the alternatives are dirtier.

The lesson behind the math is that on a warming planet, land is an incredibly precious commodity, and every acre used to generate fuel is an acre that can't be used to generate the food needed to feed us or the carbon storage needed to save us. Searchinger acknowledges that biofuels can be a godsend if they don't use arable land. Possible feedstocks include municipal trash, agricultural waste, algae and even carbon dioxide, although none of the technologies are yet economical on a large scale. Tilman even holds out hope for fuel crops--he's been experimenting with Midwestern prairie grasses--as long as they're grown on "degraded lands" that can no longer support food crops or cattle.

Changing the Incentives

That's certainly not what's going on in Brazil. There's a frontier feel to the southern Amazon right now. Gunmen go by names like Lizard and Messiah, and Carter tells harrowing stories about decapitations and castrations and hostages. Brazil has remarkably strict environmental laws--in the Amazon, landholders are permitted to deforest only 20% of their property--but there's not much law enforcement. I left Kotok to see Blairo Maggi, who is not only the soybean king of the world, with nearly half a million acres (200,000 hectares) in the province of Mato Grosso, but also the region's governor. "It's like your Wild West right now," Maggi says. "There's no money for enforcement, so people do what they want."

Maggi has been a leading pioneer on the Brazilian frontier, and it irks him that critics in the U.S.--which cleared its forests and settled its frontier 125 years ago but still provides generous subsidies to its farmers--attack him for doing the same thing except without subsidies and with severe restrictions on deforestation. Imagine Iowa farmers agreeing to keep 80%--or even 20%--of their land in native prairie grass. "You make us sound like bandits," Maggi tells me. "But we want to achieve what you achieved in America. We have the same dreams for our families. Are you afraid of the competition?"

Maggi got in trouble recently for saying he'd rather feed a child than save a tree, but he's come to recognize the importance of the forest. "Now I want to feed a child and save a tree," he says with a grin. But can he do all that and grow fuel for the world as well? "Ah, now you've hit the nail on the head." Maggi says the biofuel boom is making him richer, but it's also making it harder to feed children and save trees. "There are many mouths to feed, and nobody's invented a chip to create protein without growing crops," says his pal Homero Pereira, a congressman who is also the head of Mato Grosso's farm bureau. "If you don't want us to tear down the forest, you better pay us to leave it up!"

Everyone I interviewed in Brazil agreed: the market drives behavior, so without incentives to prevent deforestation, the Amazon is doomed. It's unfair to ask developing countries not to develop natural areas without compensation. Anyway, laws aren't enough. Carter tried confronting ranchers who didn't obey deforestation laws and nearly got killed; now his nonprofit is developing certification programs to reward eco-sensitive ranchers. "People see the forest as junk," he says. "If you want to save it, you better open your pocketbook. Plus, you might not get shot."

The trouble is that even if there were enough financial incentives to keep the Amazon intact, high commodity prices would encourage deforestation elsewhere. And government mandates to increase biofuel production are going to boost commodity prices, which will only attract more investment. Until someone invents that protein chip, it's going to mean the worst of everything: higher food prices, more deforestation and more emissions.

Advocates are always careful to point out that biofuels are only part of the solution to global warming, that the world also needs more energy-efficient lightbulbs and homes and factories and lifestyles. And the world does need all those things. But the world is still going to be fighting an uphill battle until it realizes that right now, biofuels aren't part of the solution at all. They're part of the problem.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...725975,00.html

Copyright � 2008 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

StevethePilot

... Thanks for the lecture. I hope Time doesn't get pissed at us.

midnightz

Good one there, StevethePilot!

I think we need to be careful on generalizing what impact biodiesel has on the food prices. If you look closely, there is not one element causing the current increase in food price. Drought, weak dollar, higher crud oil price, biofuel… etc all have contributed to it. The developing countries have been struggling with food shortages for years and I think we started to hear about it now is due to the media coverage on alternative energies. Consequently, we hear about pros and cons about bio-fuel and forgetting the fact that we in the US have enjoyed relatively low food prices. Amazon deforestation had been going on years before the corn based bio-fuel craze that we are experiencing currently.

Keep in mind that 80% of soybeans are made to protein meal and the byproduct oil is processed into biodiesel. It’s very different from the current corn-based bio-ethanol process. Many critics of bio-fuel use food vs fuel argument, but they don’t differentiate biodiesel and bio-ethanol.

For me, I just don’t like the bad taste in my mouth everytime I swipe my credit card to put gas in our Suburban and hearing the news about US being one of the largest air polluters and oil companies’ record profits. When we decided to replace our Suburban, we choose GL320 based on what we have today, what’s coming within 3-5 years and what we would do with it in 10 years.

I like the MPG and tailpipe emission offered by biodiesel and the safety and quality offered by Mercedes. In the near term future, I believe the potential life cycle energy output of biodiesel technology offers the greatest benefit. In 10 years, would I want to see a Mercedes or, say… a Tahoe Hybrid, next to a hydrogen fuel cell car? I think I would prefer a Mercedes.

But, let's not get into "Let's solve the world problem" here. There're lots of other on-line forums and local gatherings to get involved to do that. I think we should keep this thread on biodiesel in GL320.

dieseldel

Good post Quicks!
I've been yelling about this for 10 years, but everyone thought I was nuts. Biofuels are not always so "green". Life isn't simple, I guess.

midnightz

Just wanted to share my experience with using biodiesel in our GL320 so far.

We had been using B99 for the past 5,700 trouble free miles. Now the fall is here and temperature starts to dip into the 40's, we switched to B20 on our last fill-up and will be using B20 until next spring. I want to emphasize that we only buy from retail pumps that met ASTM standards. Before the switch, I changed the oil (Service A) myself and sent a sample of the oil for an analysis. Thanks to the members of this site, I was able to save a few dollars ordering Mobil 1 ESP Formula M here.

By the way, I'm still at lost on re-setting the service message. If anyone had successfully reset the message on an 08, please let me know

My primary reason for an analysis was the concerns about biodiesel dilution problem I read here: biodieselmagazine . Although that article reported biodiesel wash-down the cylinder in a VW engine, I wondered if it would occur in the GL.

The report showed the typical higher level of metal (new engine) and to my relief, no signs of excess biodiesel.

B200Turbo

I don't know about here but in Europe specially in Germany they used to put 5% of biodiesel mix in it. now apparently germany stopped doing it again because all manufacturer reported serious problems a lot of engine light issue.
If you use your car everyday it is OK but you use your car just every couple days or leave stand for longer apparently the bio part separate from diesel in tank and cause havoc in the injection. I will try to find the article.
I would never put biodiesel do my car unless it is emergency. Otherwise I use only V Power Diesel from Shell. It is a big difference in engine and I make normally 10.3 litres per 100kms. half town half highway.

StevethePilot

I do wish we could get the V Power series in diesel here in the states, but they just don't sell it here. Only the regular diesel.

STP