[Gasification] General over view -- barely on topic

[Peter Singfield]

I also found many technical mistakes in the following article -- but the
message stays the same none the less.

Rather than practice austerity -- we seem committed to:

"Damn the torpedoes -- full speed ahead!!"

Under our new modern religion -- we have faith that "science" can solve all
our problems.

"This is faith, not science." We believe we can fix things, but we can't be
sure. And if we can't, then the Earth will fix them herself, flicking the
human species into oblivion in the process"

(Quoted from another article -- one discussing our presently rapidly
declining ability to do "good" technical innovation)

Putting both together -- one can ask:

How did we end up promoting fuels from food and ignore totally alternative
energies based on gasification of non-eatable biomasses??

answer: Because our societies of man got to "religious" and thus "stupefied".

Science has became a religious "belief" rather than a working tool for
survival!!

What to do?? Well -- get out of the way -- stand well back -- and let the
die-off begin.

Know amount of intelligent discussions have ever changed the mind of even
on religious nut case -- ever!!

If you have problems with this kind of dark logic -- please delete this
message now ---

The answer to our immediate survival at present human population levels is
for one and all to practice "austerity" -- but the faith in "Science"
allows the human race to march over the cliff's edge with eyes tightly shut!!

Peter -- Belize

**************************************************

Starving the People To Feed the Cars
 
By Lester R. Brown
Sunday, September 10, 2006; Page B03
 
High oil prices are much more than just a drain on drivers' pocketbooks or
a sign of tough economic times ahead; they could also prove to be a leading
indicator of the unraveling of our global civilization.
 
That may sound unlikely, or melodramatic. But consider this: Now, almost
everything we eat can be converted into automotive fuel. And once the price
of oil surpassed $60 a barrel last year, the business of transforming
wheat, corn, soybeans and sugarcane into fuel for cars instead of food for
people became hugely profitable. As crops that have long sustained us are
diverted to provide fuel, we may encounter the same fate that brought down
great civilizations of the past.
 
Plans for new ethanol distilleries and biodiesel refineries are announced
almost daily, setting the stage for an epic competition. In a narrow sense,
it is one between the world's supermarkets and its service stations. More
broadly, it is a battle between the world's 800 million automobile owners,
who want to maintain their mobility, and the world's 2 billion poorest
people, who simply want to survive.
 
Whenever the food value of a crop drops below its fuel value, the market
will convert it into fuel. Ultimately, this dynamic risks driving up world
food prices, destabilizing governments in low-income nations and disrupting
global economic growth.
 
Ours is not the first society to face a predicament of this kind. In his
book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," Jared Diamond
assesses our current civilization against the backdrop of earlier ones,
some of which recognized only too late how their future depended on
safeguarding their basic resources.
 
Take the Sumerian civilization of the fourth millennium BC, which was based
on an ingeniously engineered irrigation system -- one yielding a food
surplus that supported the first cities. Some of the irrigation water
percolated downward, slowly raising the water table. As the water rose, it
began to evaporate, leaving a residue of salt. Over time, the accumulating
salt lowered wheat yields, and the Sumerians turned to barley, a more
salt-tolerant crop. But eventually the yields of barley also fell, bringing
down this once-great civilization.
 
The New World counterpart to Sumer was the Mayan civilization in the
lowlands of southern Mexico and Guatemala, a society that flourished from
AD 250 until around AD 900. But deforestation and the resulting soil
erosion undermined their agriculture. Today this region is covered in
jungle, reclaimed by nature, and the Mayan civilization is a mere
archaeological curiosity.
 
Some early societies recognized environmental trouble and fashioned an
effective response. In the 15th century, Icelanders realized that
overgrazing of their grasslands was leading to soil erosion. Farmers then
calculated how many sheep the land could sustain and allocated quotas among
themselves, thus preserving their grasslands -- and a wool industry that
thrives today.
 
What salt levels, deforestation and soil erosion foretold for past
societies, high oil prices could reveal about our own.
 
Among the many environmental threats to our future -- increasing CO2levels,
melting ice sheets, rising sea levels, falling water tables and shrinking
forests -- the depletion of oil reserves may be the most immediate for our
oil-based global civilization.
 
The price of oil has more than tripled over the past four years, jumping
from $20 to nearly $70 a barrel. Mainstream analysts talk about prices
rising to $100 a barrel or more if major disruptions in supply occur --
such as the explosion of violence and chaos in the oil-rich Middle East.
And even though the discovery of oil reserves last week beneath the Gulf of
Mexico was hailed as a boost for the U.S. oil industry, it will only
temporarily delay the ongoing depletion. The real news is that so few such
discoveries are made.
 
These runaway oil prices are now driving biofuel production, once spurred
mainly by government subsidies. Brazil, the world's largest exporter of
sugar, converts half of its crop into ethanol for cars, contributing to a
doubling of the world sugar price over the past two years. In Europe, where
rapeseed is grown for both biodiesel and cooking, margarine manufacturers
have asked the European Parliament for protection from the heavily
subsidized biodiesel refineries.
 
Starving the People To Feed the Cars
 
However, it is Malaysia, the leading producer and exporter of palm oil --
the most widely used vegetable oil -- that plans to lead the world in
biodiesel production. Within the past 18 months, it has approved 52
proposals to build palm-oil refineries, raising doubts as to whether there
will be enough palm oil to satisfy its export commitments and to feed these
refineries.
 
And in the United States, investors are jumping on the biofuel bandwagon,
pumping billions into new ethanol distilleries and biodiesel refineries.
Last year, the United Sates produced more than 4 billion gallons of
ethanol. Corn use by the ethanol distilleries has increased from 18 million
tons in 2001 to an estimated 55 million tons from the 2006 crop, or nearly
one-sixth of the U.S. grain harvest.
 
In some Corn Belt states, ethanol distilleries are taking over the corn
supply. In Iowa, a staggering 55 ethanol plants are already operating or
are planned. Iowa State University economist Bob Wisner observes that if
all these plants are completed, they would use virtually the entire Iowa
corn harvest.
 
With so many distilleries being built, livestock producers fear there may
not be enough corn to feed animals, possibly leading to shortages in milk,
eggs, beef, pork and poultry. And because the United States supplies 70
percent of world corn exports, importing countries -- such as Egypt, Japan
and Mexico -- should be worried, too.
 
In agricultural terms, our appetite for automotive fuel is insatiable: The
grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol would feed one
person for a full year. If the United States converted its entire grain
harvest into ethanol, it would satisfy less than 16 percent of its
automotive fuel needs.
 
Yet, no one in the United States or internationally is monitoring the
escalating diversion of grain to fuel distilleries to ensure that it will
not disrupt food supplies. Instead, a market free-for-all dominates, with
commodities going to the highest bidder.
 
All of this is unfolding as the world's farmers are trying to feed 76
million additional people each year. In six of the past seven years, world
grain consumption has exceeded production. As a result, the reserve of
public and private grain stocks that we rely on as a carryover from harvest
to harvest has fallen to the lowest level in 34 years.
 
There are alternatives to this food-based fuels scenario. The equivalent of
a 3 percent gain in U.S. automotive fuel supplies from ethanol could be
achieved several times over -- and at a fraction of the cost -- simply by
raising automobile fuel-efficiency standards by 20 percent. We can also
shift to highly efficient gas-electric hybrid plug-in vehicles. And if we
invest in wind farms, feeding cheap electricity into the grid, cars could
run primarily on wind energy, and at the gasoline equivalent of less than
$1 a gallon.
 
Like earlier civilizations, we face a choice. When the Sumerians got into
trouble on the food front, they substituted barley for wheat, which delayed
but did not prevent their ultimate decline. We are similarly substituting
ethanol for oil, treating the symptoms rather than the cause. The question
is whether we will move quickly enough to reduce our dependence on oil, or
whether we will continue with business as usual. Will we choose to follow
the Icelanders, or the Sumerians and Mayans?
 
lesterbrown at earthpolicy.org
 
Lester R. Brown is president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of
"Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble"
(Earth Policy Institute).