Algae? I think we could manage that....

Biofuel breakthrough: Quick cook method turns algae into oil

ANN ARBOR—It looks like Mother Nature was wasting her time with a multimillion-year process to produce crude oil. Michigan Engineering researchers can "pressure-cook" algae for as little as a minute and transform an unprecedented 65 percent of the green slime into biocrude. "We're trying to mimic the process in nature that forms crude oil with marine organisms," said Phil Savage, an Arthur F. Thurnau professor and a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan.

Make millions by not cleaning your pool!

The oil giant Exxon Mobil, whose chief executive once mocked alternative energy by referring to ethanol as “moonshine,” is about to venture into biofuels.

On Tuesday, Exxon plans to announce an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae — organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.

The agreement could plug a major gap in the strategy of Exxon, the world’s largest and richest publicly traded oil company, which has been criticized by environmental groups for dismissing concerns about global warming in the past and its reluctance to develop renewable fuels.

Don't throw your plate scrapings into the garbage!

You could drive your car on that!: [my bold]

Scandinavian Biogas is investing about 10 million euros to upgrade a wastewater treatment plant in Ulsan and will soon start accepting food and other waste for processing into biogas, said Scandinavian Biogas President and CEO Thomas Davidsson.

"Producing biogas is a very effective way of taking care of the waste" as it can be used for heat, electricity and vehicle fuel, Davidsson said in an interview Wednesday. He was in Seoul to participate in the Seoul Climate Change Expo held in conjunction with the third C40 Large Cities Climate Summit.

Turning food waste into biogas can also contribute to efforts to stop global warming.

"If you dump it into the sea, methane will be produced," he said. "And methane released into the air is 21 times more aggressive than carbon dioxide. So it has a great impact on the greenhouse effect."

Ulsan is not alone in looking to Sweden for help. Seoul, South Korea's largest city with a population of over 10 million people, also sees potential in biogas and has teamed up with Swedish Biogas International AB on a pilot project.

"There is a lot of potential," Kjell Enstrom, who heads the company's operations in South Korea, said Thursday in an interview.

South Korea has the ability to produce biogas, Enstrom said, though not of a clean enough level to be used as fuel. That gives companies from Sweden, which has championed the technology, an advantage.

"Within 10 years I think it will be the main fuel in Sweden," he said.

Davidsson, of Scandinavian Biogas, said his company plans to initially sell the biogas to an industrial user in Ulsan for internal heating. The company has an agreement to run the facility for at least 15 years, he said.

Ulsan's Park said that as a long-term goal, the city wants to adopt the biogas system to all its public buses.

Davidsson said that among the advantages of biogas is that is a technology that, unlike ethanol, does not draw resources away from food production.

Take that, ethanol!

Barrel of crude pushes past $120

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude futures climbed to uncharted territory in New York Monday as concerns about supply disruptions in Nigeria and weakness in the U.S. dollar lifted prices past $120 a barrel in electronic trading.

Crude oil for June delivery climbed as high as $120.21 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract was last up $3.43, or 3%, at $119.75 after peaking at $120 in regular trading.

Leanan of The Oil Drum has an excellent list of the present day attitudes, effects, and future consequences.

crossposted at American Street

Food riots are beginning

And will soon be in a grocery store near you.

Paul Krugman:

I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.

There have already been food riots around the world. Food-supplying countries, from Ukraine to Argentina, have been limiting exports in an attempt to protect domestic consumers, leading to angry protests from farmers — and making things even worse in countries that need to import food.

He lists the things that aren't controllable at the moment: drought, rising demand for beef, oil, etc, then gets to the point:

Where the effects of bad policy are clearest, however, is in the rise of demon ethanol and other biofuels.

The subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence and help limit global warming. But this promise was, as Time magazine bluntly put it, a “scam.”

This is especially true of corn ethanol: even on optimistic estimates, producing a gallon of ethanol from corn uses most of the energy the gallon contains. But it turns out that even seemingly “good” biofuel policies, like Brazil’s use of ethanol from sugar cane, accelerate the pace of climate change by promoting deforestation.

And meanwhile, land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food, so subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering: all the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue.

What can we do? Krugman's conclusion:

What should be done? The most immediate need is more aid to people in distress: the U.N.’s World Food Program put out a desperate appeal for more funds.

We also need a pushback against biofuels, which turn out to have been a terrible mistake.

But it’s not clear how much can be done. Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.

Ethanol is a scam to make quick money. There are other ways to lessen the demand for oil. We already have the technology. Let's make sure the next Democratic president has the facts.

crossposted at American Street

Want to win the oil endgame? Want to stop the oil wars?

Give yourself 20 minutes and listen to Amory Lovins!

Amory Lovins was worried (and writing) about energy long before global warming was making the front -- or even back -- page of newspapers. Since studying at Harvard and Oxford in the 1960s, he's written dozens of books, and initiated ambitious projects -- cofounding the influential, environment-focused Rocky Mountain Institute; prototyping the ultra-efficient Hypercar -- to focus the world's attention on alternative approaches to energy and transportation.

His critical thinking has driven people around the globe -- from world leaders to the average Joe -- to think differently about energy and its role in some of our biggest problems: climate change, oil dependency, national security, economic health, and depletion of natural resources.

Lovins offers solutions as well. His book and site Winning the Oil Endgame shows how all US oil use can be eliminated by 2040. Lovins has always focused on solutions that conserve natural resources while also promoting economic growth; Texas Instruments and Wal-Mart are just two of the mega-corporations he has advised on improving energy efficiency.

Give us this day our daily bread

And stop making corn for ethanol:

Wheat prices have hit record highs and tight supplies of the staple crop have ignited concern about rising food costs.

The price of higher-quality spring wheat jumped almost 25% on Monday - the biggest one-day increase to date.

The rise comes as the UN's World Food Programme warns that it will have to start cutting rations or feeding fewer people if it does not get more money to cope with the higher cost of food.

The article goes on to list export curbs, drought, land for biofuels, growing demand, and speculation by investors as reasons for the climbing prices.

The US could help by acknowledging that ethanol is a ridiculous choice for a biofuel, inefficient in the extreme. The ruin of the water aquifers, the enlarging dead zones from fertilizer overuse, the extra pollution ethanol releases into the atmosphere, the loss of farm land to the mega-agriculture corporations, the infiltration into all our food of corn and corn byproducts, all this could be cut back by trying for another type of more efficient biofuel.

Edible cars

Made from corn.... parts of it at least:

How organic is your vehicle? While corn-based door panels and dashboards made from hemp may sound like a pipe dream, major car manufacturers have begun ditching traditional petroleum-based plastics and composites in favour of bio-based materials.

Indeed, researchers have predicted that by 2015, 100 kilograms of every car could come from materials made from plants like soy, wheat, canola and sugar cane.

"By and large, anything you make from oil you can make from biological material," says Terry Daynard, chief executive officer of the Ontario BioAuto Council, an industry-driven group working to promote biomaterials. "The question, of course, is can you do it in a cost-effective manner and can you do it with all the quality requirements the auto manufacturers want."

[snip]

Biomaterials are considered "greener" than those based on materials such as fossil fuels because they don't generate greenhouse gases. Replacing one tonne of conventional plastic with a bio-equivalent eliminates three tonnes of planet-warming carbon dioxide, for example.

That's a big plus for manufacturers who see Europe setting hard targets for carbon dioxide emissions and want to be prepared if similar regulations are enacted here.

Bioplastics are also generally lighter than their petroleum-based counterparts, which translates into better mileage. Every one-kilogram reduction in vehicle weight saves up to nine litres of fuel a year.

Finally, when the life the vehicle ends, plant-based parts can be composted instead of consigned to landfills.

As long as it doesn't turn into compost while still being driven....

The push for ethanol is having an effect on food prices and availability

Joseph Romm:

I have an article in Salon on the insanity that is America’s ethanol policy. The new energy bill sets this country on a path to finish the assault on the world food supply begun by the (even lamer) 2005 energy bill. As I explain, our ethanol policy does not help fight global warming, but it does threaten food supplies:

In just the past two years, food prices have jumped 75 percent in real terms…. The Economist points out the amazing statistic that “the demands of America’s ethanol program alone account for over half the world’s unmet need for cereals.”

By law (the 2005 energy bill) we are going to increase corn ethanol production at least 50% over the next few years. And the new energy bill will probably require corn ethanol to triple from current levels!! But current levels are already bringing havoc down on the global food market.

And from Romm's article in Salon: (my bold)

In the Energy Policy Act of 2005 -- a rather lame collection of giveaways to the energy industry -- Bush and the Republican Congress tripled the mandated biofuel requirement to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. Again, corn ethanol is the only plausible biofuel that can meet the vast majority of that target. Also helping corn ethanol are the huge subsidies the industry gets and a large tariff that keeps out Brazilian ethanol made from sugar -- ironically the one food-based ethanol that is a big reducer of greenhouse gases compared with gasoline.

Unfortunately, most biofuels are not a realistic climate solution for one simple reason: Biofuels from most food crops or from newly deforested lands do not provide a significant net decrease in greenhouse gas emissions -- and some may cause a net increase. Most life-cycle analyses show that corn ethanol has little or no net greenhouse gas benefit compared with gasoline because so much energy is consumed to grow and process the corn.

Exactly.

In fact, recent research, led by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, found that corn ethanol might generate up to 50 percent more greenhouse gases than gasoline, when you account for the extra emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, from increased use of artificial fertilizer. That same study found that the favorite biofuel worldwide, biodiesel from rapeseed, releases up to 70 percent higher total greenhouse gas than regular diesel.

As for developing countries, "Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," explains Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition. In part because of the burning of forests to clear land for palm oil production, Indonesia has become the world's third-leading producer of carbon emissions!

So... we will starve more of the world as we pollute even more and then sadly admit defeat and come crawling back to petroleum? Or will we be able to stop this insanity and develop less polluting more efficient biofuels? Do we have to go to the edge of the cliff every time before we can pull back and assess? Why does the promise of money erase all common sense?

Update: Blue Girl at Blue Girl, Red State:

Across Africa NGOs and scientists are increasing their calls for a moratorium on new biofuels projects as millions and millions of acres of prime agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa are switched from food production to biofuel production.

African governments, wooed by the prospect of a "Green Opec" and encouraged by their counterparts in industrialized nations have taken the bait; hook, line and sinker.

The prospect of being a part of a "green revolution," complete with promises of exports, job creation and energy security has seen countries converting prime cropland at breakneck speed - on the least food-secure continent on the face of the earth - has prompted African civil society groups to call for a time-out on further crop-switching for the near term. "We need to protect food security, forests, water, land rights, farmers and indigenous peoples from the aggressive march of agrofuel developments," reads the call for a moratorium.

In reality, the switch to biofuels crops has forced small farmers off the land, led to rising food costs and provided minimal benefits for local populations.

In Mozambique last week food riots erupted as government efforts to control the prices of bread and fuel failed, collapsing under the strain of soaring prices for oil and all food staples - driven in part for demand for biofuels.

Biofuels suck.

Sadly and unfortunately. But it's what I've been saying for months. Ethanol is utterly worthless.

The European Union has announced plans to increase the use of gas and diesel produced from plants. But the critique against biofuels is mounting. Many say they are even more harmful than conventional fossil fuels.

[snip]

"The biofuels route is a dead end," Dr. Andrew Boswell, a Green Party councillor in England and author of a recent study on the harmful effects of biofuels, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "They are going to create great damage to the environment and will also produce dramatic social problems in (tropical countries where many crops for biofuels are grown). There basically isn't any way to make them viable."

The evidence against biofuels marshalled by Boswell and other environmentalists appears quite damning. Advertised as a fuel that only emits the amount of carbon dioxide that the plants absorb while growing -- making it carbon neutral -- it actually has resulted in a profitable industrial sector attractive to countries around the world. Vast swaths of forest have been felled and burned in Argentina and elsewhere for soya plantations. Carbon-rich peat bogs are being drained and rain forests destroyed in Indonesia to make way for extensive palm oil farming.

Because the forests are often torched and the peat rapidly oxidizes, the result is huge amounts of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. Furthermore, healthy peat bogs and forests absorb CO2 -- scientists refer to them as "carbon sinks" -- making their disappearance doubly harmful.

Indeed, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, released in October 2006, estimates that deforestation and other comparable land-use changes account for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions around the world. Biofuels, say activists, accelerate that process.

Solar, tides, nuclear (though I'm not for it, myself), hydrogen (definitely not for it), there are so many other ways of making energy. Ethanol and other biofuels are doing damage to the environment.

Chose some other way.

Wait a minute... does this make sense?

We are growing corn to make ethanol because we want to be less reliant on foreign oil (no more wars) and more environmentally friendly (fight global warming), right? So when businesses activate a coal burning plant to process ethanol (which is actually an extremely inefficient carbon to burn), isn't that kinda defeating the purpose? When we ignore the fact that some biofuels actually damage the enviroment more, isn't that kinda defeating the purpose? And when the ethanol mega farms begin using too much water from the ancient acquifers in Iowa, isn't that kinda defeating the purpose?

So when we grow so much corn that we flood the rivers with fertilizer and it poisons everything downstream and way out into the Gulf of Mexico, isn't that kinda defeating the purpose?:

JEFFERSON, Iowa - Because of rising demand for ethanol, American farmers are growing more corn than at any time since World War II. And sea life in the Gulf of Mexico is paying the price.

The nation's corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. And when that nitrogen runs off fields in Corn Belt states, it makes its way to the Mississippi River and eventually pours into the Gulf, where it contributes to a growing "dead zone" — a 7,900-square-mile patch so depleted of oxygen that fish, crabs and shrimp suffocate.

The dead zone was discovered in 1985 and has grown fairly steadily since then, forcing fishermen to venture farther and farther out to sea to find their catch. For decades, fertilizer has been considered the prime cause of the lifeless spot.

Who is getting rich off this nonsense? You want to take a guess? Maybe Bush's cronies or the Megafarms?

Update 12/19: Carl at Simply Left Behind makes the same points.

They've already noticed this in Iowa

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 The National Research Council has warned that the increased use of corn to produce ethanol could harm U.S. water quality and create water supply problems.

The NRC looked at how shifts in the nation's agriculture to include more energy crops, and potentially more crops overall, could affect water management and the long-term sustainability of biofuel production.

In terms of water quantity, researchers found agricultural shifts to growing corn and expanding biofuel crops into dry regions could change current irrigation practices and greatly increase pressure on water resources in many parts of the United States.

For example, the report noted that in the Northern and Southern Plains, corn generally uses more water than soybeans and cotton, while the reverse is true in the Pacific and mountain regions of the nation. Water demands for drinking and such uses as hydropower, fish habitat, and recreation could compete with, and in some cases constrain, the use of water for biofuel crops.

Consequently, researchers said, growing biofuel crops requiring additional irrigation in areas with limited water supplies is a major concern.

The study was sponsored by the McKnight Foundation, Energy Foundation, National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and National Research Council Day Fund.

Phila of Bouphonia posted on this:

Where numerous wells withdraw large quantities of water over time...regional declines in water levels may occur. In Iowa, the most widespread of these declines has occurred in the extensive Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer. Regional water levels have dropped about 100 feet in this aquifer since use began in the late 1800s, with the greatest lowering of water-levels near major pumping centers. Other declines of a more local nature have occurred, such as those in the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City areas where the Silurian aquifer is heavily used.

In related news, ever-expanding ethanol crops in the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay are expected to poison it with agricultural runoff:

The study forecasted that farmers in the bay watershed area will field more than half a million acres of corn over the next five years, reports The Washington Post. Corn fields usually produce more polluted runoff than other crops, creating a problem for the bay.

“It’s going in the opposite direction from where we want to go,” Jim Pease, a Virginia Tech professor and one of the study’s authors, told the newspaper.

It seems logical that increased runoff from the ethanol boom could pose a problem for Iowa's groundwater, too.

Is the ethanol party over?

Because these German scientists are saying something that a lot of us were thinking:

Biofuels, once championed as the great hope for fighting climate change, could end up being more damaging to the environment than oil or gasoline. A new study has found that the growth and use of crops to make biofuels produces more damaging greenhouse gases than previously thought.

German Nobel-prize winning chemist Paul Crutzen and his team of researchers have calculated the emissions released by the growth and burning of crops such as maize, rapeseed and cane sugar to produce biofuels. The team of American, British and German scientists has found that the process releases twice as much nitrous oxide (N2O) as previously thought. They estimate that 3 to 5 percent of nitrogen in fertilizer is converted and emitted, as opposed to the 2 percent used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its calculations.

Crutzen is widely respected in the field of climate research, having received the Nobel Prize in 1995 for his research into the ozone layer. The study, published in the scientific journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, finds that the growth and use of biofuels produced from rapeseed and maize can produce 70 percent and 50 percent more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil fuels.

We're going to have to invent solar cells on everything we use, wear, and build..... That or have an army of hamsters in exercise wheels to run our public transport systems.

Move over, ethanol!

Here comes jatropha!

But now that a plant called jatropha is being hailed by scientists and policy makers as a potentially ideal source of biofuel, a plant that can grow in marginal soil or beside food crops, that does not require a lot of fertilizer and yields many times as much biofuel per acre planted as corn and many other potential biofuels. By planting a row of jatropha for every seven rows of regular crops, Mr. Banani could double his income on the field in the first year and lose none of his usual yield from his field.

Poor farmers living on a wide band of land on both sides of the equator are planting it on millions of acres, hoping to turn their rockiest, most unproductive fields into a biofuel boom. They are spurred on by big oil companies like BP and the British biofuel giant D1 Oils, which are investing millions of dollars in jatropha cultivation.

Countries like India, China, the Philippines and Malaysia are starting huge plantations, betting that jatropha will help them to become more energy independent and even export biofuel. It is too soon to say whether jatropha will be viable as a commercial biofuel, scientists say, and farmers in India are already expressing frustration that after being encouraged to plant huge swaths of the bush they have found no buyers for the seeds.

But here in Mali, one of the poorest nations on earth, a number of small-scale projects aimed at solving local problems — the lack of electricity and rural poverty — are blossoming across the country to use the existing supply of jatropha to fuel specially modified generators in villages far off the electrical grid.

The ethanol boom

Is creating land grabs:

Skyrocketing farmland prices, particularly in states like Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, giddy with the promise of corn-based ethanol, are stirring new optimism among established farmers. But for younger farmers, already rare in this graying profession, and for small farmers with dreams of expanding and grabbing a piece of the ethanol craze, the news is oddly grim. The higher prices feel out of reach.

[snip]

In central Illinois, prime farmland is selling for about $5,000 an acre on average, up from just over $3,000 an acre five years ago, a study showed. In Nebraska, meanwhile, land values rose 17 percent in the first quarter of this year over the same time last year, the swiftest such gain in more than a quarter century, said Jason R. Henderson, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.

A federal-government analysis of farm real estate values released Friday showed record average-per-acre values across the country. The analysis said property prices averaged $2,160 an acre at the start of 2007, up 14 percent from a year earlier.

"For everyone who owns an acre of land, we love this," said Dale E. Aupperle, a professional farm manager and real estate consultant in Decatur, Ill., who said the rising land values were being driven by rising commodity prices (though corn has dropped some since June) and the prospect of increased demand for ethanol.

"For everyone who doesn't own an acre of land, these prices mean it gets a little harder to get into," Mr. Aupperle added. "For an entry-level land owner or a renter, there's a bit of a thought right now that the train is leaving and I'm not on it."

[snip]

Unknown is what will come of land prices if corn loses its place in the ethanol world and is surpassed by another source like cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass.

"Right now, a lot are still betting that corn-based ethanol will be around a while," said Mr. Duffy, who is also the director of the Beginning Farmer Center, which assists farmers who are starting out. He noted two other farming booms, in the 1910s and the 1970s, which were each later followed by periods of depression.

"In five years, corn-based ethanol will be around," Mr. Duffy said. "Fifteen years? I'm not as convinced."

Ethanol is a scam

As we knew from the beginning:

Biofuel - gasoline or other fuel produced from refining food products - is being touted as a solution to the controversial global-warming problem. Leaving aside the faked science and the political interests behind the sudden hype about dangers of global warming, biofuels offer no net positive benefits over oil even under the best conditions.

Their advocates claim that present first-generation biofuels save up to 60% of the carbon emission of equivalent petroleum fuels. As well, amid rising oil prices at $75 per barrel for Brent marker grades, governments such as Brazil's are frantic to substitute home-grown biofuels for imported gasoline. In Brazil today, 70% of all cars have "flexi-fuel" engines able to switch from conventional gasoline to 100% biofuel or any mix. Biofuel production has become one of Brazil's major export industries as well.

The green claims for biofuel as a friendly and better fuel than gasoline are at best dubious, if not outright fraudulent. Depending on who runs the tests, ethanol has little if any effect on exhaust-pipe emissions in current car models. It has significant emission, however, of some toxins, including formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, a suspected neurotoxin that has been banned as carcinogenic in California.

Ethanol is not some benign substance as we are led to think from the industry propaganda. It is highly corrosive to pipelines as well as to seals and fuel systems of existing car or other gasoline engines. It requires special new pumps. All that conversion costs money.

But the killer about ethanol is that it holds at least 30% less energy per liter than normal gasoline, translating into a loss in fuel economy of at least 25% over gasoline for an Ethanol E-85% blend.

No advocate of the ethanol boondoggle addresses the huge social cost that is beginning to hit the dining-room tables across the US, Europe and the rest of the world. Food prices are exploding as corn, soybeans and all cereal-grain prices are going through the roof because of the astronomical - US Congress-driven - demand for corn to burn for biofuel.

This year the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a report concluding that using corn-based ethanol instead of gasoline would have no impact on greenhouse-gas emissions, and would even expand fossil-fuel use because of increased demand for fertilizer and irrigation to expand acreage of ethanol crops. And according to MIT, "natural-gas consumption is 66% of total corn-ethanol production energy", meaning huge new strains on natural-gas supply, pushing prices of that product higher.

The article concludes with this warning:

Today a new element has replaced Soviet grain demand and harvest shortfalls. Biofuel demand, fed by US government subsidies, is literally linking food prices to oil prices. The scale of the subsidized biofuel consumption has exploded so dramatically since the beginning of 2006, when the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 first began to impact crop-planting decisions, that there is emerging a de facto competition between people and cars for the same grains.

Environmental analyst Lester Brown recently noted, "We're looking at competition in the global market between 800 million automobiles and the world's 2 billion poorest people for the same commodity, the same grains. We are now in a new economic era where oil and food are interchangeable commodities because we can convert grain, sugarcane, soybeans - anything - into fuel for cars. In effect the price of oil is beginning to set the price of food."

In the mid-1970s, secretary of state Henry Kissinger, a protege of the Rockefeller family and of its institutions, stated, "Control the oil and you control entire nations; control the food and you control the people." The same cast of characters who brought the world the Iraq war, and who cry about the "problem of world overpopulation", are now backing conversion of global grain production to burn as fuel at a time of declining global grain reserves. That alone should give pause for thought. As the popular saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."

Eat? Or make money?

Money wins!

The surging biofuel industry will use 27% of this year's American corn crop, challenging farmers' ability to meet food demands, the US government says.

Even with the projected, record 12.46 billion-bushel crop this year, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says national corn stockpiles will run low going into the next crop year, when voracious ethanol demand will rise again.

Some 3.4 billion bushels of corn – enough to make 9.3 billion gallons of ethanol – will be used by distillers in the marketing year that begins on 1 September 2007, says the department, compared with 2.15 billion bushels this marketing year. About 20% of the 2006 US corn crop was used to make ethanol.

US ethanol output is on track to double to more than 12 billion gallons a year by the end of this decade.

All energy sources pose a problem for us

And we certainly won't want the Bush administration, Halliburtons and the Exxons to be in charge.
Germany is facing the problem with nuclear waste:

...the report is sure to add fuel to an ongoing smoldering debate in Germany and across Europe about what to do with highly radioactive nuclear waste. On the one hand, activists hold up waste storage as one of the primary dangers represented by atomic power. After all, used up fuel rods and other waste remain "hot" for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years. How can one be sure today, many wonder, that facilities built today won't fall apart in 300,000 years?

On the other hand, scientists claim that most of the tricky scientific questions pertaining to long-term nuclear waste storage have been answered and that safe storage is possible. Now, they say, it is up to the politicians.

"Because there isn't a final storage facility, one could come to the conclusion that the problem hasn't been solved," Dr. Thomas Fanghaenel, director of the Institute for Transuranium Elements in Karlsruhe, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "That would be the wrong conclusion.... I think the political problems are the most difficult -- the 'not in my backyard' phenomenon and other socio-political problems."

Update: Chernobyl's radiation causes birth defects. How could it even be a question?

Radiation or relocation? A study of birds around Chernobyl suggests that nuclear fallout, rather than stress and deteriorating living conditions, may be responsible for human birth defects in the region.

People living around the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine have unusually high levels of physical abnormalities and birth defects. The International Atomic Energy Agency has suggested that the abnormalities are caused by the impact of relocation and stress on the population, and Timothy Mousseau, at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, wanted to put this to the test.

Mousseau and his colleagues examined 7700 barn swallows from Chernobyl and compared them with birds from elsewhere. They found that Chernobyl's swallows were more likely to have tumours, misshapen toes and feather deformities than swallows from uncontaminated parts of Europe (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2007.0136).

"We don't fully understand the consequences of low doses of radiation," says Mousseau. "We should be more concerned about the human population."

Ethanol is bad for you:

Mark Jacobson at Stanford University in California, US, modelled emissions for cars expected to be on the road in 2020. An E85-fuelled fleet would cause 185 more pollution-related deaths per year than a petrol one across the US the model predicted - most of them in smoggy Los Angeles, California.

The findings run counter to the idea that ethanol is a cleaner-burning fuel. Cars running on gasoline emit a number of pollutants – including nitrogen dioxide and organic molecules like acetaldehyde – that react with sunlight to form ozone.

City killers

However, ethanol is an even bigger culprit. Along with many of the same pollutants as gasoline, a large amount of unburned ethanol gas escapes into the atmosphere. That vapour readily breaks down in sunlight to form acetaldehyde, which can send ozone levels soaring.

While ethanol-burning cars will emit fewer carcinogens such as benzene and butadiene, they will spew out 20 times as much acetaldehyde as those using conventional fuel, Jacobsen found.

Ozone is one of the main constituents of smog, which carries a number of health risks (see City deaths rise with ozone levels).

Out of a total fleet of over 240 million cars, trucks, and other vehicles in the US there are currently only about 6 million that can run on E85 fuel. But this is widely predicted to rise in coming years.

"There are so many people barking pretty loud about biofuels," Jacobsen says. "They've been pushing these things before the science is done. Now the question is: will people listen?"

However, the small potential increase in pollution-related deaths predicted in the study could be a risk worth taking for a renewable fuel, environmentalists may argue.

And, to the displeasure of the megacorporations, people are creating their own power sources:

Börnsen, a village in northern Germany, is spoiling energy giant E.on's business by creating its own electricity and natural gas supply. The idea could catch on elsewhere.