The Biofuel Follies

Dear Mr. Will. We use almost 800 Sq miles a year just to make the paper to wrap hamburgers. Those forests are managed by Potlatch, Weyerhauser, Georgia pacific, etc. They are regrown as fast as they are used. So drop your Oil shill spokesmodel outfit and go wash. We have plenty of crops that we currently lack the same infrastructure as corn and soybeans that will yield a much higher gallon/acre such as sorghum, etc. So it isn't about chopping down trees until ANWR opens. You are an ass. It is about thinking ahead of the curve. Did Cheney draft this article for you? The 5 major oil/fascism/cabalists are eating our middle class and we're going to get answers. There is righteous desire for a new energy model.
You are a candidate for recycling.

Before Wills trashes biofuel, he should read the article Growing Fuel in National Geographic. Wills is right in that ethanol from corn is the least efficient way to get ethanol, but he says nothing about getting ethanol and biodiesel from switch grass, which grows on marginal land, or algae which can be grown from the exhaust of coal-burning power plants. He should check out Dunkirk New York, which has or is about to have such a plant in operation. (Australia is also planning similar plants.

Wills??? other citations are equally disingenuous. The amount of oil we can obtain from ANWR varies, depending on which internet site you consult. Most of Wills stats come from oil companies or the Department of the Interior under Gail Norton, hardly reliable sources. At most we can get 9% of our energy needs from ANWR, and that oil will last only 25 years. We will need far more than one drilling site. All the sites will need to be connected by roads or pipelines. Wills doesn???t mention the damage to permafrost or the effect on global warming. Nor does he consider what would happen if methane gas trapped under the permafrost escapes. (Methane is far more lethal than carbon dioxide.) Wills should check out the havoc that oil companies have wreaked on the Niger Delta and that is what oil companies will do to ANWR.

Before Wills touts coal as a ???clean fuel???, he should investigate the effects of mountaintop removal, a common practice in West Virginia. He seems also to have forgotten the horrible tragedies that occurred in mining accidents in Utah and West Virginia. The same disingenuous babble applies to his belief that vast stores of natural gas that exist under continental shelves. He forgets that we will need expensive off-shore drilling rigs to get this natural gas. These off-shore rigs may collapse under gales or hurricanes because at times the open ocean is a lethal playground. He does not consider what would happen if methane leaked out or escaped.

I will concede, that so-called clean coal and even ANWAR drilling might be feasible under strict regulation, but that???s another problem. Wills hates all forms of regulation. Under the Bush Administration, regulatory agencies were run by the industries they were supposed to regulate, and whistle blowers or truth tellers were persecuted. That does not bode well for the energy sources Will advocates. Which brings up the final problem. From 2001 to 2003, the Bush Administration lied to us 953 times. During that time Will simply regurgitated those lies. He has no credibility. PERIOD. Why should we believe him now?

The two major problems with the recently passed energy bill edicting 36 billion gallons per year (about 2 million barrels per day of the 20 million we use) of biofuels in about 15 years are technology (cellulosic processes need to be developed),and capacity:, there is a major question of how much land area we can use for these crops. Brazil, a tropical country about the same size as continental United States produces about 300,000 barrels per day and estimates that the maximum they could produce would be about 3 million barrels per day on 12% of their land area. We would be hard pressed to duplicate that feat!
As to the 10 billion barrels in ANWAR, that's a little over a year's supply. The answer is to create a coal-to-liquid industry based on the 80+ year old Fischer-Tropsch process used by Germany during WW2 and currently producing 150,000 barrels per day in South Africa as a vestige of their apartheid era. This approach has capacity for many decades of U.S. consumption and can be produced for less than $60 per barrel. We need a standby subsidy to protect the needed investment of many billions of dollars against predatory pricing; (One billion dollars, it is estimated will build a facilty capable of 10,000 barrels per day.) And we need to overcome the environmentalists grip on our politicians on the issue of added CO2 emissions from this source. A realistic look at the environmental issue will require a short term "geoengineering" solution (e,g., emulating the cooling effect of a large volcanic eruption - among the ideas supported for possible implementation by many prominent scientists over the past 30 years) This will give us the century or more we need to change the world's energy base.

The switch to ethanol is needed to reduce our dependence on unreliable foreign supplies. Brilliant. We go from a fuel subject to the vagaries of oil exporters to a fuel subject to the vagaries of weather. Let's get locked in to ethanol and see what happens when we have a crop decline due to drought, one of the things that is supposed to to be exacerbated by global warming. Its ironic that perhaps the only thing more unreliable than our erstwhile oil suppliers is the weather.

George Will raises important issues about biofuels that deserve careful scrutiny. He is right that energetic rethinking about energy policy is in order.

Unfortunately, his support for the feel-good bromide of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge shows that he has not carried his rethinking very far or very energetically.



The facts don???t bear out proponents??? wild claims that drilling the refuge will significantly lower energy prices and make America energy secure. Department of Energy studies show that opening the Arctic Refuge to oil drilling would cut oil imports and fuel prices by only minuscule amounts.

No one knows how much oil may lie beneath the refuge???s coastal plain, but even if the quantity is as large as Will claims, there simply isn???t enough there to appreciably change the dynamics of the global market, where oil is bought and sol.

Our problem with energy security turns on how much oil we use, not how much we produce. Once we grasp that fundamental fact, then we can pursue effective solutions that will get us off the oil treadmill for good, rather than chase our tails in the Arctic wilderness.

I agree with you: biofuel is not the response to the lack of oil or coal. But I completly disagree with your point that US should drill Alaska or Utah. First you have to know that clean burning coal is probably clean about sulfur or whatever, but coal ALWAYS emit carbon dioxyd which is the main cause of the global warming threatening us. Second, the only solution is a tough one; we need to change the way our society uses oil. coal

second, the only solution is to change the way our society usees

I am not sure why George Will is explicitly linking ANWR with ethanol. Lots of other conservatives also think it shouldn't be drilled at this time. If you are playing bridge, is it wise to play your trump card first? I don't think so. We need to build plug-in hybrid vehicles that run on renewable methane. (Maybe add a small liquid fuel tank until the infrastructure for CNG improves.) That's all we need to do.

The world started making its biggest mistake when it started listening to algore. This entire frenzy is based on bad, dispelled science that fewer and fewer people are believing. We now have to heed the knee-jerk reaction and shortsightedness of people who weren't even smart enough NOT to take algore on face value. Can we stop this insanity before we actually DO long term damage to real people?

The problem is not so much ethanol as CORN ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol shows great promise and in 2-3 years could make up the majority of our ethanol production. It has the benefits of burning about 80% cleaner than corn ethanol, producing a great deal more energy, and being made from things that aren't food.

To paint all biofuels with the same brush is disingenuous: it's corn ethanol that's the villain in this situation.

What continues to drive me nuts are the ignoramuses who keep clamoring about biofuels being bad for the environment...then they trot out studies that use PETROLEUM and FOOD PRODUCTS (inefficient ones at that) as production elements for the biofuels that they are supposedly analyzing.
Algae-based biodiesel is a FACT, it is here now and it is extremely viable. The only thing that it is not? You guessed it - profitable to the big petro conglomorates who have a death-grip on today's world (and U.S. politicians).

Algae will produce multiple factors of 10 times the amount of soybeans within the same amount of area, PLUS it's preferred growing region is in otherwise unusable (non-agricultural/desert) areas, PLUS algae while growing removes quite a bit MORE greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than would soybeans, etc.

Again, this is a completely valid and viable fuel 'feedstock'...but you won't hear much about it since it would mean a decrease in profits for the fat cats at the top of the food chain. Do a google on "algae biodiesel" and do some reading.

In other news, there is a large amount of waste vegetable oil that would be perfect for diesel vehicles and home heating - this is a 'waste' product that is extremely clean to burn (especially in comparison to petroleum diesel). This should be a win/win situation: an American 'made' fuel that is recycled AND cleaner for the environment...but do you hear much about it? Nope...

I personally know over 50 people who run their diesel cars/trucks on recycled vegetable oil, and have met or corresponded with probably a dozen who either heat their homes/businesses on recycled vegetable oil and/or power their buildings by use of a diesel generator that runs on recycled vegetable oil.

These are just normal, fairly average folk that are trying to save some money, reduce their footprint on the planet and remove the need for some questionable socio-political policies.

But....you're not going to hear much about them on the evening news - can't distract from Britney's latests problems now can we???

What really baffles me is how some people can sit there and call for use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and say it will bring down the cost of fuel but on the other hand refuse to use the oil in ANWR saying it wont do anything to help. Which is it? will more oil help or not? Plus does anyone understand the amount of jobs just opening some of these place to drilling will bring...

Your typical environmental activist doesn't have a clue how things work in general. They like simple symbolic things that they can proudly point out to others that they are doing. Sticking it to "the man" (in this case, Big Oil or anything that can be construed as "establishment" is key to this narcissism. They have no idea what goes in to ethanol production and don't care. It's not oil, so it's good. If we drive food prices up and drain the water table, well they'll just vote for someone who promises to cap food prices and re-fill the water table and everything will be "solved".

Let us look at McCain???s conservative credentials:

-IMMIGRATION: he wrote the bill granting amnesty to illegal immigrants
-TAXES: he voted against the Bush tax cuts multiple times (he has since flip-flopped and has campaigned as a lifelong tax-cutter)
-PROFESSIONAL ETHICS: ringleader of the infamous Keating 5 ethical scandal which cost US tax payers $160 billion (Google it)
-PERSONAL ETHICS: McCain cheated on his first wife after she had a severe accident that left her partially disabled. He then divorced her and married his multi-millionaire mistress, whose daddy bought McCain a spot in the Congress