We can see from this article that "carbon" and "climate change" have become completely interchangeable terminologies. It makes sense to change the symbol for element 12 from "C" to "Cc." If these evil little atoms were branded as "Climate change" atoms instead of "Carbon" atoms, they would provide a constant reminder of the evil we all emit every second of every day.

CO2 molecules would be CcO2. Methane would be CcH4. This terminology would provide school children with a badly needed reminder that each time they exhale, laugh or pass wind - they are causing polar bears to suffer, Bangladeshis to drown, and creating massive hurricanes and tornadoes on a scale never seen before since that chimp bashed another one over the head with a bone in the movie "2001."

Instead of installing a carbon monoxide detector in your home, you could have a "climate change monoxide" detector.

And best of all, the UN climate change oversight committee could implant a "climate change dioxide" detector in each evil American and immediately arrest any one who exceeds his/her population adjusted pre-1900 "climate change dioxide" quota. Americans caught exercising vigorously could be immediately put down, or sent to confess their sins at the nearest Cc place of worship.

Of course, green preachers and people living in developing countries must be excluded, because their particular CcO2 isotope is benign.

And remember, child psychologists all tell us that the key to raising mentally healthy children is to teach them that they are evil, and that they must achieve impossible and irrational goals in order to be decent human beings.

The irony of this is huge, though, as a small farmer, I already noticed the price of corn rising.

I am informed by well-meaning, young eco-freaks that it is wrong to raise a pig for bacon, for the corn used to raise enough pork for one person could be used to feed ten people. I should become a vegetarian. Then they putter off in Prius using ethanol from corn which could have fed fifty.

Who was it who lobbied so strenuously to require ethanol be added to gasoline? Was it the poor and hungry? Or was it Archer Daniel Midland, America's largest agribusiness?

The NY Times artical which the above post links to states, "Syngenta, the Swiss agricultural giant, announced Thursday that its annual profits had risen 75 percent in the last year, in part because of rising demand for biofuels."

Sometimes I get cynical, and feel all the Big-wigs care about is sating their ever-growing greed for money. Big Business, Big Government, Big University are all the same. And the little man had best wake up to this fact, and stop being such a sucker for altruistic-sounding proposals.

In Cental Asia the winter has been so cold entire nations are running out of fuel. Hospitals are running without heat, light, power or water.

I bet they wish they had some carbon to burn.

Many skeptics said this as soon as the idea became popular and were called a bunch of unflattering names. Maybe skeptics should be listened to more often rather than just being shouted down.
I wonder how long (if ever) it will take to get the recent legislation calling for x amount of biofuels to be included in the gasoline blend repealed.

In addition to this you'd have to carpet the earth with sugar cane and peanut plants to supply 1/4 the volume of our current oil usage.

Biofuel is an invention of the French farming lobby, who wanted a nice reason to justify their already over-generous government subsidising crop-rotation.

WAIT!

You mean -- no, it couldn't be -- you mean that Dubya was wrong when he proposed his "plan"?

Why, this study would suggest that the entire "Alternative Fuel Standard (AFS)" plan (not to be confused with the "Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), pushed through by the same crowd, that the AFS replaces) is perhaps nothing more than a lie, calculated to enhance the bank accounts of corporate farmers in the midwest.

Holy Cow! Just a year ago, our president said (from the above transcript, emphasis original):
The President's Plan Will Help Confront Climate Change By Stopping The Projected Growth Of Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Cars, Light Trucks, And SUVs Within 10 Years.

B-b-b-b-b-ut it doesn't LOOK like the President's plan accomplishes this AT ALL! Why, it doesn't even LOOK like the President even intends to slow the growth of CO2 emissions! The legislative leader of the President's own party (Senator Inhofe) has made a career of lambasting the very idea of AGW as some sort of "liberal" conspiracy.

Why it, in fact, creates the APPEARANCE that Dubya's "alternative energy" plan joins his medicare/medicaid plan, social security "plan", and of course "war on terror" as yet another lie, driven by self-serving greed on the part of the President's puppet-masters, and dutifully served up and sold by a dishonest war-criminal through an uncritical press to a gullible public.

Oh, I'm sorry. Not a "lie" -- just a "mistake". It's just a coincidence that yet another "mistake" breaks in a way that benefits the handful of wealthy corporate owners that profit from the ethanol gold rush, at the crushing expense of everybody else -- and the children and grandchildren of everybody else.

OMG! There is no solution! I guess we need volunteers for mass suicide. Come on folks, read what single BIOFUEL the article is about!!! CORN!!!! Corn has to be planted yearly and requires lot’s of work. Of course it is more expensive than oil. This article doesn’t talk about other biofuels that require less work and are economical with today’s fuel prices.
There are better alternatives such as switchgrass. That particular crop once planted has a life of 20 years before replanting is needed, requires little to NO nitrogen fertilizer, can be grown on very poor soil, is drought and insect resistant and has tap root to 6 feet deep which great for low lying flood prone areas. Canada has run studies showing 1 acre can HEAT 1 household for 1 year WITHOUT the need for converting it into ethanol. The problem is there is no Switchgrass lobby, and NO need for fancy expensive facilities to be built (with government subsidies ) Ergo NO impetus for using that fuel because it can be grown and used locally with small farmers/landowners making a decent return on their property. Big business finds that thought very depressing.
I may be a AGW skeptic but am sufficiently jaded to see an attempt to stifle the quest for and public interest in alternative energy sources that MAY actually make sense.
I say better to give my money to a nearly bankrupt NY farmer for his locally grown product, than some Dubai sheik who is in business with a NY Senator’s husband. (A possible conflict of interest from a politician? I am shocked! LOL what a farce)
This game is on many levels for many different reasons whose ultimate prize is your money.
READ, LEARN and think for yourself!

Yet another example of "the science is settled" Yea right ! ! !

Mis-calculations agin and again or should we say mis-adjusted adjustments.

With phrases like this: When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially, said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. Previously there's been an accounting error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis. and the number of years that these experts have been working on "solutions", we only now find out that it is useless for the environment !

Again big money has succeeded in forcing a very lucretive solution down our throats in the name of saving the planet ......what a laugh !

What other surprises does "settled science" have for us?

When will real science take over and save themselves a little credibility on this issue ?

If we were really serious about the environment, RESPONSIBILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY has to lead the way; something the UN or the IPCC has neither of !

I may be naive, but wouldn't it be great if we could get back to real solutions to protect the environment NOW and be better stewards of our natural resources NOW.

Conservation may even make a comeback after Carbon credits, offsets and taxes are exposed as useless money making schemes (not to say frauds) that serve only one master .......Big Money ! ! !

Ah yes big money ....it's face may have changed but WE are still the victims ! ! !

Well here you go folks. This is just a taste of the type of wastfully foolish Buffoonery we can expect to see from now on. My question to anyone who thinks bio-fuels is a great idea is; who do you think is going to be paying for this botch job? The people who make this stuff? Yeah right.!!! It's all going to be passed down to us the consumers. Soooo,..... has anybody bothered trying to figure into the equation how much ADDED cost will be inccured by the world for Carbon abatment program screw-ups like this one over the next fifty or sixty years ? I think this is what is ment by the old saying " Look before you Leap " .

The use of Biofuels is driving up the cost of food. Atomic energy must be part of the mix.
Jim

Call it the Law of Unintended Consequences. Some thoughtfull people warned that ethanol would produce more problems than it solves if taken to the next step. Today, nearly 20% of the corn grown is used to make 2% of our gasoline supplies. Yet, last month energy bill mandated that ethanol must grow to 30% of our petrol supplies by 2030.

Since commodities (corn, palm oil, and sugar are commodities) are bought and sold globally, nations like Brazil and Indonesia began a system of clear cutting rain forests in order to plant more and more biofuels. The price of these commodities have sky rocket recently has goverment mandates have created a supply problem. And talk about your positive feedbacks. As farmers world wide switched from growing grains such as barely, wheat, and soy beans to growing corn, supplies of these staple crops have dwindled. World food supplies are now hovering below 30 days (that is, if farmers worldwide stopped growing food, there would be only 30 days of food left) -in 2006 it was at 11 weeks.

The climate implications are also straight forward. The rain forests provide a natural place for tropical convection to exhaust excess heat skyward. From there, this tropical air flows poleward. Important pressure circulations such as the Hadley Cell are in part affected by this. Clear a large portion of our tropical rain forests for the growing of bifuels, and who knows what affect this would have on circulation patterns.

I would think someone at the IPCC would sound alarms; however, I think many there refuse to because thier reputations would suffer; after-all, it was thier work that got us into this mess to begin with.

BTW, three weeks ago food riots errupted in Indonesia. The price of soybeans (a staple for Indonesians) is becoming prohibitive there. It turns out one cannot eat palm oil.

Hi BT,

The misinformation from the IPCC and the global warming community in general about biofuels, which led Congress and the President to implement this stupid policy, is just the tip of the iceberg. Blaming the IPCC's stupidity on Bush is typical of your way of thinking.

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
Michael Crichton

A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually
Abba Eban

Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had
Michael Crichton

JP,

"I would think someone at the IPCC would sound alarms; however, I think many there refuse to because thier reputations would suffer; after-all, it was thier work that got us into this mess to begin with."

Did anyone at the IPCC ever publicly promote Biofuels? If not, I don't think that your above statment is fair. The biofue debacle is just an example of a poorly thought-out solution. It was just a plain bad idea. The people at the IPCC had nothing to do with it, except in that that organization is a leader in presenting the view that AGW is a serious danger to be avoided. Of course, I haven't read all of their reports, so they may have endorsed biofuels. If so, feel free to ignore me!

Uh, can someone please cite climatologists advocating a massive switch to ethanol?

I'm quite certain that I recall JP and I agreeing several years ago that the motivator for the ethanol mania in the US was midwest agribusiness interests -- and the Republican and Democrat politicians who pander to them. Reasonable scientists have said, for a very long time, that the net benefit of biofuels is very questionable.

I'd like to see cites where scientists argue that biofuels in general and ethanol in particular is any kind of "settled science", or even a very good idea.

The IPCC report is, in fact, muted on this question. The recommendations that are there (that I recall, at least) are for genetically-modified crops such as switchgrass. Those proposals have a host of problems -- scientific, social, and political.

I'm sorry, folks, but this monkey belongs on the back of the current administration. It was Bush's State of Union Address, Bush's RFS plan, Bush's AFS plan, and Bush's (actually Cheney's) energy bill.

Hi Guys,

To me this post says it all. There are three main groups involved here.
1) The energy policy group, they want us off oil and are trying to scare us off it. These include politicians from both sides.
2) Enviro's, these one just hate all type of capitalism and development. they want us to go back to the middle ages.
3) Other countries, other countries would like nothing better than to limit the growth of the USA so they would finally have some control over the USA i.e the EU, China, Russia, Japan and India. You always here the USA must take the lead. Why so we will be weak and they can influence the US.

Just my opinion I could be wrong. Can't wait for the reaction.

Brookline Tom is bashing Bush? What a surprise.

Like the UN and democrats have been against this ethanol business from the start. HA!

I hadn't heard there were food riots in Indonesia because palm oil is replacing soy beans. But I did know that farmers in Ohio, who once alternated corn with soy-beans every other year, are now producing corn, corn, corn. Yet the corn prices rise, as do the soy bean prices.

Meanwhile frost in the south of China has damaged food crops, and is stressing their already-stressed food supplies. (Just last year a much- warmer-than-normal winter in South China was used as proof of global warming, and of the need for ethanol.)

How about poor Tajikistan, where they don't even have heat? Their hydro-power is freezing up solid. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76675

Ted's idea about growing "switchgrass" might make some sense, provided it is only grown on poor land not used for food. It ought be tried out, as long as it isn't part of some moronic bit of government "central planning." I am sad to confess I just don't trust central government to make the right choices, as long as they must consult "experts" who ignore facts to promote a false idea: The idea of global warming caused by man and not by nature's cycles.

This is from the IPCC report on measures that can mitigate climate change:

"Policies, measures and instruments shown to be environmentally effective

Mandatory fuel economy, biofuel blending and CO2 standards for road transport"

Now how can this be so? The vaunted IPCC is wrong?

I perused the IPCC report for "biomass" & "biofuel" and the Panel touts those two sources of energy as being capable of abating CO2 emissions. What a joke!

Only several years back there was "consensus" on the use of biomass/biofuels. They were going to save us from ourselves. In the past couple of years with new research coming out stating the harmful effects of biomass, we now see that "consensus" is gone. Hopefully this will happen very soon to our so-called "consensus" on AGW

I'm a convert from neutral to skeptic, but I did what I thought was the "responsible" thing and switched at the urging of my home heating supplier to biofuel. It turns out that it contains only 85% of the BTUs of normal furnace oil, thereby raising my heating costs by 18%. The same applies when it is used as motor fuel, so even the trucks and trains shipping our foodstuffs (such as are left after conversion to methanol) are burning more fuel per mile upping the costs and emitting more "evil" CO2.

BT - despite your persistent, tiresome rants, I would remind you that the president of the United States is not the president of the world; this website is about global issues, not partisan American politics.

This article mainly talks about biofuels in the form of ethanol and sugar cane. Producing biofuel from switchgrass or wood chips, on the other hand, is a much better option that will reduce CO2 emissions.

I agree that corn-based ethanol is a complete waste, but the good that may come out of it is that it helps build an infrastructure that will support the next breed of biofuel, namely switchgrass.

"Yet, last month energy bill mandated that ethanol must grow to 30% of our petrol supplies by 2030."

JP, this is a misleading statement. While the energy bill mandated an increase to 36 billion gallons of biofuel per year, most of that increase must be from sources that are not corn.

"Clear a large portion of our tropical rain forests for the growing of bifuels, and who knows what affect this would have on circulation patterns."

You mean humans clearing forests can have an effect on circulation patterns? In other words, you're saying that humans can affect circulation patterns? There's a term for this, JP. It's called anthropogenic climate change. Go figure.

The law of intended consequences, is to mis-direct your thinking, and make more money. What about hybrid vehicles.What about using less oil. If we consume more than we need, we are pigs. America used to send all of it's extra wheat, and corn to starving nations. Not any more. What have we done lately to save energy. They have found that the land from the rainforest, when it is exposed is almost worthless to grow anything on. Eat less red meat,you will live longer. Use cow manure and lime to fertilize, not chemicles that are four times as much nitrogen, better chemistry through DOW. I look forward to gas prices rising to six dollars a gallon, and a carbon tax. If we don't decrease the use of energy than, the marketplace will. As for wingnut Hanson. He has had his two minutes of fame, and has made millions with his interviews. Screw him. By the way ,what will anyone of you do today to help the enviroment. Or will you just fill up more space on this board.
Kipp

A lot of us have always challenged the use of "biofuels" which has meant liquid fuel derived from a small proportion of the plant, grown by conventional farming techniques. The figures never stacked up. Don't forget thought that the oldest biofuel is firewood (currently the most serious energy shortage in the world is firewood for cooking - people in third world countries do count)and if we start looking at biofuels as part of ecological growing and harvesting using the whole plant, the figures start to make sense.

Environmental groups condemn IPCC call for large scale biofuels as a climate disaster in the making, 4th May 2007

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/files/pressrelease2007-05-04.pdf

Lefties condemn Bush when he does listen to the IPCC. They also condemn him when he doesn't listen to the IPCC. Best policy for Bush would be to ignore both.

Hey Ted, Were you not the one who suggested Sw