If you check out my environmentalism posts (I'm going to tag them right after this), you'll notice a certain...attitude...from me about hardcore environmentalists. Maybe even a hint of a suggestion that they would be happy to have most humans die off in the name of a pure planet.
But obviously it isn't so. Obviously I'm exaggerating. Environmentalists would never push for policies that would result in world-wide starvation. That's just science fiction.
And surely it is. Here are a few interesting quotes from that science fictional article that must be from a dystopian future we'll never see:
"The reality is that people are dying already," said Jacques Diouf, of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "Naturally people won't be sitting dying of starvation, they will react," he said.
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The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted "massacres" unless the biofuel policy is halted.
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Mr Diouf says world grain stocks have fallen to a quarter-century low of 5m tonnes, rations for eight to 12 weeks.
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"The world food situation is very serious: we have seen riots in Egypt, Cameroon, Haiti and Burkina Faso," said Mr Diouf. "There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50pc to 60pc of income goes to food," he said.
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Haiti's government fell over the weekend following rice and bean riots. Five died.
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Roughly 100m people are tipping over the survival line. The import ratio for grains is: Eritrea (88pc), Sierra Leone (85pc), Niger (81pc), Liberia (75pc), Botswana (72pc), Haiti (67pc), and Bangladesh (65pc).
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"The idea that you cut down rainforest to actually grow biofuels seems profoundly stupid," said Professor John Beddington, Britain's chief scientific adviser.
Thank the gods this will never happen in our reality, because our environmentalists motto is "We Care". Oh yeah.
Now I can imagine a person or two raising the valid point that not all environmentalists support biofuel policies. And I welcome those environmentalists. I welcome their loud and clear calls to stop the madness immediately and put the welfare of humans over politically motivated environmental policies that will harm both people and the environment more than they help. I hope this type of environmentalist flourishes.
(By the way, if you actually find any such calls, please do point to them in the comments.)
Oh, and hat tip to my fake boss, the wonderful Fake Steve Jobs.
A last thought: Wouldn't it be great if there was some substance that could be used for fuel that wasn't consumed as food by people? Maybe such substance could even be lying around in pools under our feet ready to be sucked up (I drink your milk shake!), and if we were amazingly lucky, perhaps that substance would actually cause less pollution than the typical biofuel.
Nah, just more science fiction.
Mechana, nuclear energy is quite clean and there are plenty of ways to use it that don't generate a lot of waste--to say nothing of the fact that even the "waste" is still reusable. It is our simplest, best solution to realistic CO2 reduction.
As for biofuels, I like the idea of finding ways to convert waste cellulose into ethanol, which companies are doing now more and more, but corn ethanol is a complete disaster and that isn't said enough. However I do support the Zubrin plan mandating all new vehicles sold in the US to support flex fuels (which is cheap to do and, conveniently, gives a leg up to American auto makers), because that would create an ethanol market that would improve efforts to get realistic ethanol sources to market, as well as dramatically lower the price of oil due to competition. | |
Mechana says:
On a serious note, isn't it better to temporarily use food-wasting fuels(Until we can survive on a better alternative) that may cause a few people to lose the corn on their plate for a while, instead of having the world go nuclear and kill everyone? Will you volunteer to let us start with your plate? On the whole, I find it a bad bet to starve many people today to address an unknown future problem. This idea that without getting off oil we'll all kill each other mystifies me...when in human history have we run out of a major resource in such a way that we all "went nuclear"? Why would we go nuclear? We'll continue to investigate alternatives to oil, and in the meantime we actually have oil to use. As oil gets more expensive, other solutions will become more viable and more resources will be put into finding solutions. But it will never be a solution to create a real crisis today by starving the world's poor to avert a theoretical crisis in the future that may never occur. | |
With a post so chock full of ignorance, I'll do my best to save BYOND from its step function "dumb-down".
Deadron wrote: Mechana says: Doing a modicum of research and you'll easily find that it is not environmental policy nor proposed environmental policy that would cause human starvation. Think IMF, think WTO, think of the international debt trap these third world countries get themselves into which essentially strips their economic sovereignty. Ask yourself, how on earth does a third world child pay for a 232kg barrel of corn? They essentially can't; they have no money, and they have no access to it. This idea that without getting off oil we'll all kill each other mystifies me... You can stop with your false mystification and start being intellectually honest. In 1940, Japan engaged in two major energy related acts: the Sino-Japanese War was very expensive oil wise, and the joining with the Axis caused an oil embargo by Allied forces which effectively stopped their oil supply. when in human history have we run out of a major resource in such a way that we all "went nuclear"? Why would we go nuclear? So the Japanese effectivly lost their oil supply, and went full board into World War II. We'll continue to investigate alternatives to oil, and in the meantime we actually have oil to use. As oil gets more expensive, other solutions will become more viable and more resources will be put into finding solutions. I should apologize... this part of your post is true. The free markets are challenging the innovators of the world to create more energy efficent technology as well as alternative energy sources. Think about more of the economic forces as to why ethanol has been adopted... in 2003-2004, the free markets supported about a $2.50/bushel price on corn. This actually cost over $3/bushel for the farmers, but the US Government's subsidies program basically gave the farmers a $1/bushel entitlement to offset that loss. A bushel of corn produces 2.5-3.0 gallons of ethanol. At today's market, that bushel of corn ends up costing $9-$12 to the end consumer. Now, commodities markets have corn at over $6/bushel; but still, the FREE MARKETS have more to do with the adoption of ethanol than any environmentalist or environmental policy. But it will never be a solution to create a real crisis today by starving the world's poor to avert a theoretical crisis in the future that may never occur. It's funny how you have a statement that has the correct view of free markets with one of total myopic ignorance. If you think that the free markets are starving the worlds poor... AND you think the US Government should manipulate the free markets to artificially and temporarily feed an arbitrary number of people, you are nothing more than a mouth-breathing liberal you claim to despise. | |
I'll have to get to the rest later, but I am flummoxed by the claim that rising food costs don't impact the ability of poor people to get access to food.
Do you really believe that? If so...well, wow. | |
Deadron wrote:
I'll have to get to the rest later, but I am flummoxed by the claim that rising food costs don't impact the ability of poor people to get access to food. It's not a question of personal belief, it's about facts. And good try using semantics: "rising food costs don't impact the ability". The rising cost of anything impacts everybody's ability to access anything. Since this is a universal truth, your sentence has no relevance. And since there is no quote within my response that indicates me trying to disprove something that you learn in kindergarten indicates a severe case of "truthiness" in your being. But we all knew that already. | |
Amen to that [earlier comment about addressing a future problem by screwing up the present]. Global warming is poorly quantified, the causes and effects are poorly studied, and we may well have better solutions available with more research into other areas (like as Freeman Dyson proposed, researching how soil stores and releases carbon due to vegetation). The greatest truth hardcore greeners refuse to acknowledge is that robust economies help the environment; poor or struggling ones do not. Understanding this would invalidate their whole belief system, since the really hardcore crowd is really pushing for the idea that the world will be better if humans return to living in small tribes in mud huts.
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Ethanol production from grass is considerably more efficient than from corn. I can't figure out why they're not doing that instead.
Wait, yes I can. Corn subsidies. Congratulations on another bonehead move, U.S. [edit] I should mention that Canada isn't any more brilliant, but I had to identify at least one target, and given that I happen to like Canada... ;-) | |
We really need to stop running Presidential primaries in Iowa first--or at all. Iowa is a big corn-producing state so they (among others) help this corn subsidy crap keep going. Also they were really keen on Jimmy Carter, moron extraordinaire, and they almost stuck us with Mike Huckabee.
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Booty, I'm not going to take the argument personal, so I'm not interested in dealing with your approach to rhetoric here.
You said: Ask yourself, how on earth does a third world child pay for a 232kg barrel of corn? They essentially can't; they have no money, and they have no access to it. Then you say you didn't say anything about cost not impacting the ability of the poor to get food. I'll assume you are arguing honestly, but we just live in different mental universes. | |
I CAN SEE INFINITY!
Or in this case the "solution" that bio-fuel is suppose to provide. Make food into fuel, let lots of people starve to death because their food is not fuel, now there is not only an alternative to oil but a lot less people to waste oil on!!! It is a win-win situation no matter how you look at it! Hahaha. Whoever came up with the idea for bio-fuel made from corn was a sick and twisted GENIUS. | |
I could have sworn I posted a comment in here... <_<
Anyway, Mechana, we know that carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by roughly 100 PPM since the start of the industrial era. The last 60 PPM of this change has been directly measured by us, the earlier changes are more indirect - generally ice cores. We know that we've been emitting significant quantities of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases, but I'm focusing on CO2 for now) since the start of the industrial era - not as much as natural sources (we emit about a twentieth as much CO2 as natural sources), but the natural sources all go into carbon sinks - the CO2 concentration stayed pretty much constant for a fair while, we can tell that the natural CO2 emissions were in equilibrium with the various CO2 sinks. We can pretty safely conclude that that 100 PPM rise in CO2 concentration is our fault - it's due to all the CO2 we've been producing. The average temperature at Earth's surface has risen by 0.65 C over the past 50 years. The greenhouse effect is a well known and studied mechanism by which greenhouse gases (like CO2) can cause this extra surface warming. Solar variations do not match up with the change in temperature well at all. Additionally, if changing solar activity was the primary cause of global warming effects, the stratosphere would be getting warmer. It's actually getting cooler. This is precisely what the scientific consensus on climate change predicts - global warming caused by increased greenhouse gas concentrations should cool the stratosphere, for now, at least. The vast majority of scientists in this field think that there is a real global warming effect, that it is caused by an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, and that that increase in greenhouse gas concentrations is caused by us. Scientists tend to have some clue what they're doing - it's a property of science. In short, global warming is real. How much warming will result? As far as I'm aware, current estimates are pretty tentative, but we know there's going to be some effect. It will likely cause issues - and the hardest hit tend to be third world countries, as they enjoy increased spread of disease and flooding in low-lying areas. Actually on topic, I'd always thought that famine is caused primarily by issues with food distribution - that is, we produce enough food to feed the world, but most of it is here and we're not giving it away? Am I mistaken? Additionally, I'd suggest that subsidies to agriculture certainly aren't helping the situation - it makes profitable farming very hard for people in third world countries when imported food is cheaper than stuff produced locally. Of course, the US isn't the only country to blame - I think most first-world countries do it. | |
On a serious note, isn't it better to temporarily use food-wasting fuels(Until we can survive on a better alternative) that may cause a few people to lose the corn on their plate for a while, instead of having the world go nuclear and kill everyone?
Then again, there's no point- Global Warming is natural, most people just want to blame it on big business to get cheaper energy sources.
As the Earth goes through it's endless cycle of Flame and Frost, it's inevitable that Humans will come out with the short straw eventually. We're not permanent, the Earth is..(Or atleast longer-lasting than we are.)
I could go into some really long speech now about how we need to increase research funding to save ourselves, but I think everyone's already tired of it.