By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal
Statement by Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, Australia:
The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused climate alarmists of scientific incompetence in promoting ethanol as an offset to animal emissions.
The Chairman of “Carbon Sense,” Mr. Viv Forbes, was responding to claims by Mr. Combet that agriculture (mainly cattle and sheep) “made up 23% of Australia’s emissions.”
“Why are emissions from cattle eating grain classed as bad whereas emissions from cars burning grain ethanol are good?
“Consider a paddock of corn. Most of the carbon in the growing plant comes from carbon dioxide in the air and is converted to plant material using solar energy via the magic of photosynthesis. Some comes from the atmosphere via microbes in the soil.
“This plant material, either biomass or grain, can be fed to cattle or made into ethanol for motor fuel.
“Both cattle and cars then use an internal digestion/combustion process to extract the energy stored in the plant material.
“Both processes produce gaseous emissions. In cars, virtually every atom of ethanol carbon burnt produces one molecule of carbon dioxide. In cattle, some of the plant’s carbon is stored for a while in flesh and bones, and the rest is emitted as the natural gases carbon dioxide and methane. This methane is soon oxidized in the atmosphere to produce carbon dioxide.
“Over the life of a car or a cow, they both produce the same carbon emissions. Every atom of carbon extracted from the air by the green plant eventually returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the plant food. This is the cycle of life.
“It is therefore scientific incompetence or deliberate fraud by government climate alarmists to claim that consuming ethanol in cars is good and should be subsidized but consuming the same plant material in cows must be rationed and taxed.
“An ethanol industry propped up by subsidies and mandates is not sustainable. This industry damages taxpayers and pushes up the cost of grains, beef, pork, eggs, milk and cereals.
“Subsidizing ethanol brings no environmental benefits and is the enemy of the poor and hungry of the world. Its special privileges should be immediately removed.”
My only complaint about this argument is the idea that fuel-grade ethanol must come from grain. It’s only food-grade (i.e. drinkable) ethanol that must be made from food sources. Fuel-grade ethanol is being made right now, in job-lots, from cellulose — *any* form of cellulose: sawdust, straw, dead leaves, cornstalks, etc. etc. Fuel ethanol has several advantages over gasoline: 1) it burns cooler, placing less stress on the engine, 2) it burns cleaner, causing less air pollution, 3) it’s cheaper, precisely because it can be made from any plant material, 4) it’s renewable, for the same reason, 5) we can all make it at home, and thereby tell all those oil-rich sheiks and shahs and imams to kiss off and sink back into the sands from which they rose (on our money).
As for the modern fashionable horreur of producing Carbon Di-Oxide, the simple solution is to plant more trees. Precisely because of all our forests, America absorbs 500 billion tons of CO2 more than it produces, every year. This is what Nature has always done with CO2. Anyone who insists that we must still *stop producing* CO2 should first do his own part — by ceasing to exhale.
–Leslie < Fish