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Category Archives: Biomass
60 minutes promotes biomass scam
Preface. Hey 60 minutes, do some fact checking first. Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, … Continue reading
Book: John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”
Preface. This contains excerpts from John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”. It’s one of my favorite books about natural resources, exploring the role wood has played in the rise and fall of civilizations since they … Continue reading
Power density of biomass, wind, & solar take too much land to replace fossil fuels
Volumetric versus specific energy density for selected energy carriers. Source: Palmer, G. 2020. Energy storage & civilization: a systems approach. Springer. Preface. Vaclav Smil writes “The fact that wind, solar, and biomass have incredibly low energy density per square meter … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Biomass, Coal, Hydropower, Natural Gas, Oil
Tagged alternative energy, biodiesel, biomass, coal, ethanol, natural gas, oil, renewable energy
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Vaclav Smil on wood
[ I’ve extracted bits about wood from Smil’s book about materials below, read the book for the larger context. Enormous amounts of wood were used in former civilizations with much smaller populations than today, so it’s clear we can’t go … Continue reading
Overview of the renewable fuel standard, U.S. House hearing 2013
House 113-61. June 26, 2013. Overview of the renewable fuel standard: Government perspectives. House of Representatives. [Excerpts from the 104 page transcript follow] Key points: The implicit premise that cellulosic and other advanced biofuels would be available in significant quantities … Continue reading
Posted in Renewable fuel standard RFS, U.S. Congress Transportation
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Peak soil: Industrial agriculture destroys ecosystems and civilizations: Biofuels make it worse
Preface. In 2018 I thought it was time to reorganize this post, as it grew more and more bloated and disorganized with new information. Eventually it turned into my 2021 book Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative … Continue reading
Posted in Alternative Energy, Biofuels, Biomass, Energy, Peak Biofuels, Peak Topsoil, Soil
Tagged aquifer depletion, biodiesel, biofuel, climate change, EROEI, EROI, erosion, ethanol, fertilizer, hunger, peak soil, pollution, topsoil
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No, we’re not going to make ethanol out of CO2 and stop global warming
Preface. In the article below Robert Rapier debunks the research paper proposing to convert CO2 into ethanol. The researchers were honest and said “that the process is unlikely to be economically viable.” But the press spun it into a major … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Biomass EROI, Critical Thinking, Far Out, Other Experts
Tagged critical thinking, EROEI, ethanol
2 Comments
Why studies come up with different Energy Returned on Invest (EROI) results: can it be fixed?
[ There are many issues with biofuels beyond their trivial to negative energy return on investment (EROI). In Peak Soil I point out that current industrial farming techniques are destroying topsoil about 15 times faster than pre-fossil fuel economies — … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, Biomass EROI, Charles A. S. Hall
Tagged biomass, EROEI, EROI, ethanol
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How burning biomass made us human
[ This is a book review of Wrangham’s “Catching Fire: How cooking made us human”. Fire enabled us to have larger brains from the increased calories in cooked food, held carnivores at bay, killed bacteria, and gave us many other … Continue reading
Are biofuels a sustainable and viable energy strategy?
Preface. In 2000, Melanie Kenderine at the U.S. Department of energy stated that: “This nation has abundant biomass resources (grasses, trees, agricultural wastes) that have the potential to provide power, fuels, chemicals and other bio-based products” (136). That’s a good … Continue reading
Posted in Biofuels, EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested
Tagged biofuel, EROEI, EROI, net energy, subsidies
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