The current American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology has a most amazing story demonstrating the foolish, indeed outright dangerous, application of the “precautionary principle” to AGW mitigation.
The story is at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es201943v, but all you really need to know is summarized in the last paragraph.
[ Note from Anthony: IPCC co-author, Dr. Rex Victor O. Cruz paper entitled “Yield and Oil Content Ideotypes Specification in Jatropha curcas L.” won Best Scientific Poster Award for Agricultural Sciences by the National Academy of Science and Technology on July 15, 2010.
It looks like Al Gore via his Goldman Sachs train-wreck had a hand in this nonsense too. See the Wikipedia description for Jatropha:
In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil, averaging 34.4%. The remaining press cake of jatropha seeds after oil extraction could also be considered for energy production. However, despite their abundance and use as oil and reclamation plants, none of the Jatropha species have been properly domesticated and, as a result, their productivity is variable, and the long-term impact of their large-scale use on soil quality and the environment is unknown. ]
The Extraordinary Collapse of Jatropha as a Global Biofuel
Promode Kant , Institute of Green Economy, C-312, Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024, India
Shuirong Wu Chinese Academy of Forestry, Wanshoushan, Haidian District, Beijing 100091, China
Blending of fossil diesel with biodiesel is an important climate change mitigation strategy across the world. In 2003 the Planning Commission of India decided to introduce mandatory blending over increasingly larger parts of the country and reach countrywide 30% blending status by the year 2020 and opted for nonedible oilseed species of Jatropha curcus raised over lands unsuited to agriculture as it was considered to be high in oil content, early yielding, nonbrowsable and requiring little irrigation and even less management.
In a massive planting program of unprecedented scale millions of marginal farmers and landless people were encouraged to plant Jatropha across India through attractive schemes.
…
In Tanzania more than 10
000 small farmers have established Jatropha plantations and many more have done so in the rest of East Africa.(2) By 2008, Jatropha had already been planted over an estimated 900000 ha globally of which an overwhelming 85% was in Asia, 13% in Africa and the rest in Latin America, and by 2015 Jatropha is expected to be planted on 12.8 million ha worldwide.(5)
But the results are anything but encouraging. In India the provisions of mandatory blending could not be enforced as seed production fell far short of the expectation and a recent study has reported discontinuance by 85% of the Jatropha farmers.(1) In China also until today there is very little production of biodiesel from Jatropha seeds. In Tanzania the results are very unsatisfactory and a research study found the net present value of a five-year investment in Jatropha plantation was negative with a loss of US$ 65 per ha on lands with yields of 2 tons/ha of seeds and only slightly beneficial at US$ 9 per ha with yields of 3 tons when the average expected Jatropha seed yield on poor barren soils is only 1.7 to 2.2 tons/ha. Even on normal fertile soils (average seed yield 3.9 to 7.5 tons/ha) Jatropha was no match for sunflower.(2, 4)
Though acclaimed widely for its oil, Jatropha was never considered economically important enough for domestication and its seed and oil productivity is hugely variable.
…
A case study of Jatropha plantations raised in 1993–1994 in the Indian province of Andhra Pradesh had reported actual yields that were far below expectations and the species was found to be prone to termite attacks, water logging, vulnerable to drought in the planting year and delayed yields.(3)
…
It appears to be an extreme case of a well intentioned top down climate mitigation approach, undertaken without adequate preparation and ignoring conflict of interest, and adopted in good faith by other countries, gone awry bringing misery to millions of poorest people across the world. And it happened because the principle of “due diligence” before taking up large ventures was ignored everywhere. As climate mitigation and adaptation activities intensify attracting large investments there is danger of such lapses becoming more frequent unless “due diligence” is institutionalized and appropriate protocols developed to avoid conflict of interest of research organizations. As an immediate step an international body like the FAO may have to intervene to stop further extension of Jatropha in new areas without adequate research inputs. Greater investments in dissemination of scientific data will help in ensuring due diligence does not cause undue delays in decision making.
The full story is at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es201943v
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I loved this part of the Wikipedia entry on the Groundnut Scheme:
“When the Colonial Office sent two men to help the locals form their own trade union, the locals decided to go on strike in support of the dockworkers at Dar-es-Salaam and demanded better pay and more food. Increased wages of the workers also contributed to local inflation and villagers did not find enough money for food.”
The more things change…
It is very telling to read about the lack of ‘due diligence’.
In the distant past, political decisions only involved things that politicians understood – wars and treaties, for example. The decisions used to be taken by politicians, and they often made sense.
Then by the 1950s and 1960s, with the huge state expansion of that time, political decisions started to involve technical issues. So the politicians got internal technical advisers, and occasionally listened to them, though they usually treated them with disdain, as ‘oily rags’. Technical farming advice is probably essential if you are thinking about mass planting.
By the 2000s, politicians dropped internal technical advisers, in favour of lobbyists and activists. Activists, in particular, do not accept technical advice unless it supports their cause. Jatropha supported the cause. Away they went….
Chinese Tallow are considered the third most productive biodiesel species behind algae and oil palm.
They grow in a wide range in the southern US and are considered invasive. I have about a dozen of them.
http://www.esrla.com/pdf/tallow.pdf
They grow explosively. They require no irrigation, tillage, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, and very little fertilizer. They are drought, flood, and cold tolerant. Indeed, the fear of wide scale cultivation is escaping from the farm and displacing native species. They become productive in 3 years and will grow to 100 years old.
The only “care” mine get are pruning so they don’t form an impenetrable jungle from the ground up as the branches start low on the tree and hang down until they touch the ground.
John F. Hultquist says:
August 7, 2011 at 11:56 am
“A few years from now there will be similar reports regarding wind turbines.”
Doubtful. My older daughter is environmentally concerned. The electric company where she’s at, she lives about 25 miles from me and has a different electric company than mine, offers “pure wind power” at $0.08/kWh. Most of you would give your left nut for electricity at 8 cents per kilowatt hour. Hell even I pay $0.11/kWh and I’m in non-profit cooperative and I don’t buy “green” energy.
James Evans asks:
“Genuine question: In what way is burning oil from “Jatropha” (whatever that may be) any better than burning fossil fuel oil, in terms of “climate change mitigation strategy”? Is the CO2 produced by Jatropha better than other forms of CO2?”
The carbon dioxide in the biofuel is just recycled from the atmosphere (the plant removes it from the air, ‘stores’ it as plant material and it is then released back to the air when burned). The carbon dioxide from oil or coal or nat gas is ‘new’ to the atmosphere, as it has been stored away underground for a few million years.
…… a well intentioned top down …. is, I think the key phrase here. Guys in suits in a boardroom thinking they’re the collective Chief Scientific Officer of an entrepreneurial start-up operation. Doomed from the get-go.
To add some balance here, there are real entrepreneurial operations that have been set up by real Chief Scientific Officers and businessmen. The best ones (for example, Amyris, Codexis, Solazyme) have gone public, ergo surviving the intense financial scrutiny of doing an IPO, and things are looking good in this truly entrepreneurial sector. They’ve done it by focusing on higher value specialty chemicals primarily (using synthetic biology or white chemistry), but cellulosic prices and microbiology look to be on course to intersect and make real biofuels independently of any subsidies.
Just standing up here for the scientists who are not scam artists. A couple of examples of where the industry is right now (Khosla appears to be updating his article to real time):
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/biofuels-primer-part-one-with-professor-khosla/
http://biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2011/02/04/resistance-is-futile-codexis-and-the-chase-for-low-cost-cellulosic-sugars/
Even the mentioned Wikipedia Jatropha entry hints at the level of the scam:
Extractable oil yields of 58 to 73 US gallons per acre, Time Magazine in 2009 said there could potentially be as much as 1,600 gallons of biodiesel per acre.
Biodiesel production must be substantially different for Jatropha compared to common vegetable oils, since I have never heard before of more than a 20x increase in volume produced compared to the starting amount of oil. Truly amazing, no wonder they saw such potential in it.
Or did they somehow think they could develop the plant for more that twenty times the yield than what it currently gets under cultivation? What other plant were they cultivating that made them think it was possible, and can they legally sell it in California for medicinal purposes?
James Evans says:
August 7, 2011 at 11:53 am
“Genuine question: In what way is burning oil from “Jatropha” (whatever that may be) any better than burning fossil fuel oil, in terms of “climate change mitigation strategy”? Is the CO2 produced by Jatropha better than other forms of CO2? (Really. I’m not trying to score points here – I just don’t get it.)”
The carbon in biofuel comes from the atmosphere. It’s called “carbon neutral” because the amount of CO2 that is emitted to the atmosphere by combustion is exactly the same amount taken from the atmosphere when the plant was growing. Fossil fuels on the other hand are carbon that was stored tens of millions of years ago and if we didn’t pump it out of the ground it would stay locked in the ground indefinitely.
Jatropha oil with a 15% snake oil blend.
MorinMoss says:
August 7, 2011 at 11:24 am
@Brian Johnson uk
Are you referring to a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)? One has yet to be built and the closest example, the ORNL Molten-salt reactor, never actually used thorium and was never used to generate electricity. While it sounds good, on paper, isn’t that what’s said about all the green projects?
_____________________________________________________________________________
Perhaps you should watch this short, 16 min video:
MorinMoss says:
August 7, 2011 at 11:24 am
@Brian Johnson uk
“Are you referring to a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)? One has yet to be built and the closest example, the ORNL Molten-salt reactor, never actually used thorium and was never used to generate electricity.”
Wrong. A 75 megawatt LFT research reactor was built and operated at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the 1950’s and 1960’s and operated continuously for ten years. Some claim that uranium reactors won the day because they produce weapons grade fissile material. I’m not so sure about that. Maintaining the right chemistry in a LFTR is not easy since it doesn’t burn spontaneously like enriched uranium. The fuel needs constant processing including enriched uranium as an ignitor. Given the technology has been around for 50 years it seems like someone would have brought it out of mothballs long before now if it had any significant cost advantage.
“…millions of marginal farmers and landless people were encouraged to plant Jatropha…”
“…more than 10000 small farmers have established Jatropha plantations and many more have done so in the rest of East Africa…”
“…bringing misery to millions of poorest people across the world…”
And yet the rabid fecal munchers have the unmitigated gall to claim that “Big Oil” is evil.
@ur momisugly Brian Johnson uk says: August 7, 2011 at 10:51 am Biofuel should be banned as should wind farms and solar panels in the UK
I am fascinated by the latest stats from UK’s DECC. Wind made up 5.6% of the 89GW of installed power, but the MWh of energy they delivered in 2010 was 0.4% of the total. That works out at an effective load factor of 7%. I agree with Brian – wind farms don’t seem to make much sense.
What I would like to know, is, WHERE do the self-identified physicists (like Typhoid -er- Typhoon) from the Rossi Cold Fusion thread stand when it comes to questioning the veracity and viability of a project like this (yet Rossi and his privately-funded/private-industry funded project gets the Third Degree by ‘science’) …
.
Bah! How could anybody have been so stupid as to invest in such an obvious scam? It defies the imagination!
Now tulips, on the other hand, there’s a solid investment with guaranteed returns! Or, there’s this up-and-coming can’t-miss firm called the South Sea Company; crackerjack payoff, trust me. Better yet (and don’t spread this around), dot-coms; wave of the future; sky-high potential!
Oh, you’d rather invest in something more tangible? My friend, I have just one word for you: sub-prime mortgages. They’re backed by honest-to-goodness solid real estate property, and that never goes down!
No? I can see you’re a wise and careful investor, sir, so for you I recommend the most solid investment of all; rock-solid, in fact. Over 200 years of steady, reliable returns, renowned as the safest haven ever for jittery investors around the world: United States Government debt, backed by the full faith, honesty, and competence of the politicians in Washington, DC. The highest AAA rating in the world, and–
No??? Dang. Well, you force me to reveal my trump card, sir, the surest investment in the universe. I dare not speak its name, but I will reveal that until recently there was one born every minute. Nowadays it’s more like every second, especially in places like Washington, Sacramento, Canberra, and London, so the growth potential is obv– Yes? Excellent! How much would you like to invest, Mr. Pachauri?
This scam took down many farmers. Environomics at its worst.
From Dave Springer on August 7, 2011 at 12:27 pm:
Great, another Asian Invasion to worry about. Here in Pennsylvania we’re getting regularly hammered with Public Service Announcements about the Emerald Ash Borer beetle that could wipe out every ash tree in the US. (“Don’t move firewood! Buy it where you burn it!”)
Have we forgotten about the chestnut blight brought in with Chinese and/or Japanese Chestnut trees that virtually eradicated the American Chestnut tree?
Kudzu.
And now you gleefully announce you are actively harboring an invasive Asian species? Have you no shame?
The final paragraph of this excerpt from Alan Wood, The Groundnut Affair
(THE BODLEY HEAD: LONDON, 1950) is rather amusing …
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/groundnt.htm
“Workers in the area ten years later would occasionally find tractors buried in depressions. The explanation was that the tractor drivers were paid according to the number of hours their tractor engines were running as recorded on a timer attached to the engine. Some drivers found that they could drive their tractors off in the bush and find a depression where the tractors were out of sight. The drivers then could go into town and drink for eight hours before collecting their tractors and collecting their pay. However after that much drinking they sometimes could not find their tractors and the tractors would be covered over the years by wind-blown dirt and dust.”
Correction to my LFTR post. It was Oak Ridge not Livermore. It was 7.5 megawatts not 75 megawatts. It was operated continuously for 5 years not 10. Aside from those details the rest is accurate.
Moreover, it is single-liquid where the chemistry is difficult to maintain (ORNL was single liquid). In dual liquid the chemistry is easier but there is no known material with the requisite properties for the plumbing other than graphite which doesn’t hold up long enough under high heat to be practical – it becomes brittle and cracks. Any modern incarnation has unsolved materials problems to deal with. Piping made with copper-reinforced graphite cloth is being talked about but no ones knows if it will work or not. The single liquid design it is still too difficult to control the chemistry. In the single liquid design one of the great difficulties is that highly corrosive chemicals are produced in the liquid that will destroy the plumbing if not constantly (and expensively) removed as it is generated.
Old technologies abandoned for “political reasons” that sound too good to be true invariably are just that – not true – and hauling them out of the dustbin of history for a second look is just a way to get a payday for the principals without ever producing anything of value.
This sounds mostly like wishful thinking. Perhaps not as wishful as fusion reactors but shares the same basic problem in that no known materials can stand up in the operating environment long enough to make operation economical.
@Dale Rainwater Dave I’ve seen that video before and other longer ones featuring Borrowmee and Sorenson.
It’s very interesting and promising but it’s still at the research / early experimental phase. Far too soon to be thinking of ditching other technologies and burning more coal. Really, the US should stop worrying about terrorists seeking bomb material, shore up their existing nuke infrastructure and START REPROCESSING nuke waste.
@Dave Springer
LLNL? Do you have links? I think you have some facts wrong – Oak Ridge, not Lawrence Livermore; late 60s not since 50s; seven-point-4 not seventy-five megawatts; ran (not continuously ) for about 5 yrs, not 10.
Also, while U233, bred from thorium, was used as fuel towards the end of the experiment, it was NOT BRED IN THE REACTOR, and no thorium blanket was ever used. So, while it’s very likely this would work, it has never actually been done and it’s unlikely that, even if the engineering challenges turn out to be relatively easy, that we would see commercial deployment of thorium reactors in less than 20 years.
“…oil productivity is hugely variable.”
The sense of urgency and head-long rush for biofuel created by CAGW has created such disasters. Gone is the ‘years of research, experience and understanding’ required to underpin thriving agriculture. The investment (including research funding) has been too much too soon.
Take microalgae for example, while I’ve no doubt that the Craig Ventors of this world have reliable high-oil producing strains up their slieves, research teams quickly find that high oil content does not always equate with fast growth and ease of cultivation. Some strains are easier and less costly to harvest, but these aren’t always the good oil producers; contamination and predation can be problems. That’s not to say it won’t happen, but I reckon anyone who is in the microalgae game needs to be sure they can stick with it for the long hall.
Even growing willow for biomass is not with out problems and careful cultivar selection is important to reduce susceptibility to disease.
@dave38 August 7, 2011 at 11:32 am
thanks for the link to the groundnut scheme. It’s a perfect example of the application of will over commonsense.
Don’t tell me, the production potential was greatly hyped beyond the reality, right? I will bet that if you look at the reporting over the years, the reported potential walked up with each report. An initial expected range was probably documented somewhere. The high end of that range then became the baseline expectation. The same thing happens with wind and solar production expectations. Wind farms are sold with “capacity” numbers that far exceed, often by over 300% of actual production.
I have seen this sort of thing in every single alternative energy scheme that has come down the pike.
The iceman cometh says:
August 7, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Do you have a DECC url for this reference?
I am fascinated by the latest stats from UK’s DECC. Wind made up 5.6% of the 89GW of installed power, but the MWh of energy they delivered in 2010 was 0.4% of the total. That works out at an effective load factor of 7%. I agree with Brian – wind farms don’t seem to make much sense.
I’d like to point it out to my local MP.
Many thanks in advance
@Dave Springer
I see you corrected your post shortly before I responded. I don’t doubt thorium will be a significant player – one day – but that day is not here and not soon