The Biofuel Follies

Utah Transit Authority needs to get Accessible Vans and Small Buses to go into neighborhoods to help Encourage People to take the Bus, to take Individuals to the Main Bus Route or Trax. Gas Prices have Sky Rocketed. UTA needs to work on Barrier Free, Benches and Shelters and also Increase the Frequency of Buses. Utah Transit Authority has good Bus Service Down Town Salt Lake City and in the Aveunes, UTA has Destroy the Bus System in the rest of Salt Lake County, so they can put more REVENUE into Light Rail and FrontRunner. John Inglish General Manager Salary is $266,614 Bonus $39,860 Other Incentives $60,526 Total $100,386, there are 9 more High Paid Exectives that receive a Huge Salaries and Huge Bonuses all at TAX PAYER EXPENSE. UTAH TRANSIT AUTHORITY has Less then Half as EFFICIENT TRANSIT SYSTEM. Google: UTA Transit Follies 5 or Utah Transit Follies 5 and also go to transitridersunion.blogstot.com for more Information. Please Help! Thank You!

Utah Transit Authority needs to get Accessible Vans and Small Buses to go into neighborhoods to help Encourage People to take the Bus, to take Individuals to the Main Bus Route or Trax. Gas Prices have Sky Rocketed. UTA needs to work on Barrier Free, Benches and Shelters and also Increase the Frequency of Buses. Utah Transit Authority has good Bus Service Down Town Salt Lake City and in the Aveunes, UTA has Destroy the Bus System in the rest of Salt Lake County, so they can put more REVENUE into Light Rail and FrontRunner. John Inglish General Manager Salary is $266,614 Bonus $39,860 Other Incentives $60,526 Total $100,386, there are 9 more High Paid Exectives that receive a Huge Salaries and Huge Bonuses all at TAX PAYER EXPENSE. UTAH TRANSIT AUTHORITY has Less then Half as EFFICIENT TRANSIT SYSTEM. Google: UTA Transit Follies 5 or Utah Transit Follies 5 and also go to transitridersunion.blogstot.com for more Information. Please Help! Thank You!

Quit whining George, when oil goes to 1000 dollars a barrel we will look intelligent for having saved some to sell!

George F. Will ignores (deliverately?) known facts regarding oil reserves in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR). The US Geological Survey???s best estimate is the proposed region contains no more than 10.4 billion barrels (BBL) of oil. Yet the Department of Energy (DoE) forecasts that the US will use over 7.6 BBL of oil this year alone and states "???demand for oil in the United States is projected to increase at an average rate of 1.5 percent per year??? reaching 28.3 million barrels per day in 2025." In other words, US oil consumption will be between 10 and 15 BBL/year by the time any ANWR oil could be developed. So, the mere 10.4 BBL of oil thought to be in the ANWR region proposed for drilling will supply perhaps 6-9 months of oil by the time we get any of it! The same reports indicate that the percentage of oil imported to US would barely change ??? decreasing almost imperceptively from 70% to 64% of total US oil use, for only a couple of years at most, before it???s exhausted. I believe if most Americans knew the numbers, they???d never support this risky idea! A simple calculation shows that even modest improvements in the fuel efficiency of ???sport utility vehicles (SUVs)??? sold in our country would more than make up for any energy to be gained from ANWR.


Sources:

1. "Analysis of Oil and Gas Production in the ANWR," Mar 04, US Energy Info Admin Office (DOE)
2. "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Petroleum Assessment, 1998, US Geological Survey
3. "World Oil Markets," from the "International Energy Outlook 2004," US Energy Information Administration

George Will accurately points out the problem of destroying forests to plant biofuels. He points his finger in particular at Indonesia, where, he says, "44 million acres [of forests] have been razed to make way for production of palm oil." He also reiterates the now well-worn argument that corn-derived ethanol is neither energy efficient nor economically sustainable.

Guess what, George. No one who is familiar with these issues is arguing with you.

Pulling forests to plant palms or jatropha for their oil, or cane for its sugar, is counterproductive if it results in a net greenhouse gas increase. And it's becoming increasingly clear that the silliest of all biofuels is corn because of the high energy demand in planting, harvesting and converting it to ethanol, as well as its dependence on oil-based, environment degrading fertilizers and herbicides in the growing process and oceans of water in the ethanol production phase.

Fortunately, those who really know this issue, unlike you, have proposed other solutions, none of which include drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or processing shale in Colorado, both of which, like clearing forests, would increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Agreed, there is no easy path out of the energy-vs.-climate hole that we have dug ourselves into. But the answer is not to take what appear to be easy, old-energy solutions and then fashioning a path to get there. The answer is to keep our minds open to all possible solutions, many of which have yet to be discovered, provided that we keep focused on these threefold goals for the future:

??? Energy efficiency (both in production and use),
??? Environmental stewardship (to avoid planet-wide catastrophe), and
??? Economic realism (which includes a full accounting of energy and environmental costs).

Despite the head-in-the-sand approach of the Bush administration over the past seven years, great strides have been made by scientists and futurists towards finding real solutions for our environmental and energy problems, which are too numerous to mention here.

I suggest this: Before you write on this subject again, George, force yourself to read Lester Brown's Plan B 3.0. It should give you a whole new perspective on the options that are available to us.

(Posted on http://voxverax.com.)

I am not sure if Will has written this to take potshots at the very people who have raised even his awareness about the need to address energy issues,"...the Clinton's tandem presidential policy...", or if he feels it is his right to tell everyone who HAS tried to change things for the better that they are wrong, while he sits idly by, refusing to suggest one single idea that might help the situation. Will's brand of conservatism tells us to do nothing until we can do anything perfectly. Were we as a race to adhere to that, we would not have invented the wheel yet. Get your club George, it's time to find a wife!

The 44 million acres of palm trees will still be covered with trees and will give a living to the people who cultivate them.

George Will lays out his support for ending the prohibition on drilling for the estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil in Alaska???s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR). I would argue that immediate drilling is short-sighted from a financial perspective.

Oil is a non-renewable resource, unless one is willing to wait millions of years for suitable geologic conditions. One may quibble over exactly how much remains, but the basic concept of a finite supply is a statement of fact, and the point at which demand outstrips supply, forcing astronomical oil prices (sound familiar?) will come much sooner than the actual exhaustion of the total quantity.

Drilling in ANWR now is the equivalent of an individual cashing in his 401(k) while still in his 40s. It may improve the standard of living for a while, but at the heavy cost of wiping out long-term financial security. Once the OPEC countries have pumped their wells dry, we will have our own oil supply, pristine below the ???moonscape??? of ANWR, to both meet our own needs and to export to the world for a handsome profit. All that is required is patience.

Thank you for expressing what Alaskans have always known, but what the rest of the country refuses to recognize! Open ANWR now!!!

the environment is not theproblem, theproblem is the user of that envirnment. the traffic congestion from all major world towns is the biggest consumer of fuels, and the displacement of food crops in an attempt to grow energy will definitely be self defeating in terms of world food security. the use of hybrid cars, electric cars is the way forward, as production of electricty does not have to displace food crops. Is it a coincidence that the major fuel companies are posting the biggest profits world wide, due to inflated crude prices and endemic traffic jams! there will no solution found in the near future as long as oil companies are dictating world and natoinal policy through financing campaigns!

In the last 25 years we have nearly doubled the number of PER CAPITA miles driven each year. This, and our penchant for bigger and more powerful cars has much more than eliminated improvements in automobile efficiency over that same period. Many commentators have suggested the need for one form or another of mass transit to replace automobiles, often augmented that the increase in traffic is due to increased commuting. According to the Energy Information Agency???s annual reports most of the increase is due to social and recreational usage of automobiles and shopping ??? none of which are particularly amenable to mass transit solutions.

There are surely places where mass transit solutions may improve things. But of all the things over which we have control with respect to energy efficiency, the simple act of distinguishing between reasonable and necessary use of our mobility and gratuitous waste is the most immediate and most cost effective thing we can do. That one half mile detour to get a four dollar cup of Starbucks consumes a twenty cent cup of gasoline. It doesn???t seem like much, but when you add them up and multiply by all of the other kinds of mindless little trips we makes it turns into the majority of the miles that we have each added to our consumption each year. In the past 25 years the percentage of children who live within one and one half miles of their schools has nearly doubled. And on and on.

I find immense irony in the fact that even the greenest advocates for change in this country have not made any visible effort to determine how and why our energy usage has increased so much since the last energy crisis. And those who are less green trot out statistics that show that we have actually decreased our energy usage per unit of GDP. It seems as if everyone despises our industrialists and at the same times looks first for industrial solutions to the things we would change. I see repeatedly in places like this everyone???s brilliant and sometimes useful suggestions for making changes which will allow us to not change, as if mindless consumption was somehow a natural state of existence and our birthright.

It would be refreshing if all, or even any, of the advocates for changes in our energy systems would first look at the changes they have made as individuals in years past for clues as to the changes they each might make going forward to restore some measure of energy sanity in their own lives.

Whether we Americans use bio-fuels or fossil-fuels, we must face the verifiable fact that half or more of that fuel is wasted while we sit in traffic congestion. This growing problem adversely affects each one of us, and will ultimately kill our earth. Traffic experts continue to claim that there is NO SOLUTION, while demanding $Billions annually (see Secretary of Transportation, Mary E. Peters??? recent article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120062474267899727.html or The 2007 Urban Mobility Report: http://mobility.tamu.edu/).

Of course, the true solution could never come from within the flawed traffic industry (which pockets enormous profits), but rather must come from an entirely new and different mind-set. As Albert Einstein wisely said, ???We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.???

Good news! Now for the first time independent innovators, with an entirely new mind-set, have found the true, universal solution to all traffic congestion! By embracing accountability and challenging the status quo a small group of citizens CAN demonstrate this amazing TRAFFIX solution.

If you are honest and accountable, willing to seek true solutions to this, the world???s greatest problem, check out the TRAFFIX yahoo group: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Traffix/
Or email: traffix88@yahoo.com

There is another reason to go slow with biofuels - they aren't really renewable. This article http://www.scragged.com/articles/biofuels-the-non-renewable-resource.aspx
points out that all plants take SOMETHING out of the soil. Unless we put back whatever the plants take out, THOSE plants won't grow there any more once it's all gone. Depending on the energy cost of putting the right stuff back into the soil, we may or may not gain anything with biofuels.

George, you must be in bed wtih Big Oil. The point of protecting ANWR has less to do with the "footprint" you and the world's biggest corporations say you'll minimize, and more to do with the urgency we face of finding alternate means of energy. Granted, ethanol is not the solution...I agree. But destroying Alaska to keep Exxon-Mobile raking in record profits and all of us burning oil isn't either. How about encouraging American ingenuity to develop wind, solar and hydrogen technologies, instead of endearing Bush & Co.'s status quo?

There is certainly a lot of fantasy in the "get off oil" crowd. However, consider that a rise of another 70 parts per million in the carbon found in the enterprise is likely to wipe out over 1/2 of the world's largest cities. Considered in that light, the "burn baby burn" of the oil crowd doesn't sound so bright either. It sounds like someone explaining they can't quit making lead toys for toddlers (common in the 19th century) because it would interfere with the economy.

Once upon a time this country had a fair proportion of people who lived in reality, and tried to solve the problems found there. When did all the pundits, and most of the readers, turn into automatic pilot blabbermouths?

The quickest way to solve our energy problem is not drilling for off-shore gas or oil, but rather use existing technology and use wind and solar power generators to power the national grids. Then tell the auto companes to pull out their designs for battery powerd cars.

Thw way of the problem is using wind, solar and nuclear to power the grids. Then tell the auto companies to quickly develop (or pull out the drawings for) battery powered cars!