Monday, February 16, 2009

Good Intentions Unintended Consequences

Yet again, plans put in place without full knowledge of their effects.

Hey folks,

Happy President's Day to you. Remember, all those Holiday Sales today will accrue interest on your credit cards causing a $10 shirt to become $100. Spend wisely.

I love this story. This is just another example of plans put in place, with nothing but good intentions, that have consequences that no one seen coming. The problem is, no one wants to actually take the time to fully investigate the possibilities of what will happen. They love the idea, dream, or concept, they rush it into being, before they understand the REALITY of the situation.

According to the AFP - Biofuels may speed up, not slow global warming: study

CHICAGO (AFP) – The use of crop-based biofuels could speed up rather than slow down global warming by fueling the destruction of rainforests, scientists warned Saturday.

Once heralded as the answer to oil, biofuels have become increasingly controversial because of their impact on food prices and the amount of energy it takes to produce them.

Yeah, remember the riots? The "Food Wars" that were breaking out? The poor could no longer afford Corn Products and Farmers were rewards a lot of money to set land aside to produce Harvests for Fuel only? That was a great plan.

They could also be responsible for pumping far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they could possibly save as a replacement for fossil fuels, according to a study released Saturday.

Told you so.

"If we run our cars on biofuels produced in the tropics, chances will be good that we are effectively burning rainforests in our gas tanks," warned Holly Gibbs, of Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.

Gibbs studied satellite photos of the tropics from 1980 to 2000 and found that half of new cropland came from intact rainforests and another 30 percent from disturbed forests.

"When trees are cut down to make room for new farmland, they are usually burned, sending their stored carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide," Gibbs said.

{Laughing} No one thought of this in the beginning?

For high-yield crops like sugar cane it would take 40 to 120 years to pay back this carbon debt.

For lower yield crops like corn or soybeans it would take 300 to 1,500 years, she told reporters at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Biofuels have caused alarm because of how quickly production has been growing: Global ethanol production increased by four times and biodiesel by 10 times between 2000 and 2007," Gibbs said.

"Moreover, agricultural subsidies in Indonesia and in the United States are providing added incentives to increase production of these crops."

Yup. Put that together with all the Chicken Little Crowd, including the MMD just reporting what they are told based on the SCAM that IS GWBS, and you get what you get. Some in the General Population actually thinking that the sky is falling, we are killing the planet, and that we need to do something NOW! RIGHT NOW! Or we are all going to die.

Gibbs estimates that anywhere from a third to two thirds of recent deforestation could be as a result of the increased demand for biofuels, but said an increased demand for food and feed also play a major role.

What is certain is that much of the expansion of cropland in response to growing demand and rising prices is occurring in the tropics where there is an abundance of arable land and climates ideal for growing biofuel crops like sugar cane, soy and oil palm.

Simply growing the biofuel crops in the United States or other non-tropical countries will not solve the problem, said Michael Coe of the Woods Hole Research Center.

Recent legislation mandating increased use of ethanol has already prompted US farmers to switch from soy to corn production. But since soy demand remains high, farmers in Brazil have responded by cutting down forests to expand soy production.


Liberals with agendas. Pipe Dreams and careless actions. Without full facts and truth to back ANY of it.

"Emissions from deforestation in Brazil -- even under our best scenarios -- still swamp any decrease in greenhouse gasses in the United States," Coe told reporters.

"We can't find a way that it makes greenhouse gas sense to grow ethanol in the United States."

These findings do not mean that biofuels cannot be an important part of energy policy, Gibbs added.

Growing biofuel crops on marginal lands can have an overall positive environmental impact and there are enormous tracks of degraded land in the tropics.

But since fighting soil erosion or reversing nutrient leeching with fertilizers costs more than cutting down forests, farmers must be offered economic incentives to do so, Gibbs said.

So let's throw MORE MONEY at the problem that WE are creating. {Laughing}

And policy makers must also decide if the climate would be better served by returning degraded land to its natural forested state so it could act as a carbon sink and provide ecological services such as rainwater recycling, flood mitigation and habitat for endangered species.

"There are tradeoffs in all these decisions that need to be made on a case-by-case basis," she said. "We need to keep in mind that more cropland will be needed to meet the global demands for food, feed and fuel, so the best options will likely vary by circumstance."


Don't let the facts and truth stand in your way this time. Never stopped you before. {sigh} Yes folks, just another example of the Good intentions of the Left, going miserably wrong, because they have no real knowledge of what actual consequences will their actions actually produce.
Peter

Sources:
AFP - Biofuels may speed up, not slow global warming: study

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