Biofuels

Fundamentally, we make a couple of quick, inexpensive switches to our energy systems. And we start eating better and more nutritious food and we win; win; win, hands down. And we save money.

All the ethanol and biodiesel can be grown using organic type agriculture with absolutely insignificant chemical use. It is a total lie - a piece of PR disinformation - to suggest that biofuels require fossil fuels for their production.

BIOFUEL TO FUEL ALL THE AMERICAS

On the square paddock shown in South America we could grow enough sugarcane and palm oil to power every vehicle in all the Americas. And it would be much cheaper than what we do now.

Currently Brazil uses the equivalent of a 175 km (108 miles) square sugarcane paddock. The very tiny green spot on the right, to produce annually some 18 billion litres of ethanol. That's enough to run seven million cars on pure ethanol for the year. And please note that today Brazilian rain forests take up 100 times as much land as Brazilian sugarcane farms. So there is a lot of land available to solve the global warming problem. Sugarcane production currently uses one third of one percent of Brazil's total land area.

The now depleted mid-US prairie soils can rapidly be returned to the fertility and depth shown in this early photo. (From the papers of late Professor William A. Albrecht. University of Missouri College of Agriculture, and courtesy of Chuck Walters, Jr.)

BIOFUEL TO FUEL ALL OF EUROPE

On the paddock shown in tropical Africa we could produce enough biofuels to supply all of Europe.

If that paddock was extended east to the coast it could grow the rest of the biofuels to allow us to close down every oil well in the world. It is no wonder their marketing people are so insistent that we must “protect the tropical rain forests”.

BIOFUEL TO FUEL AUSTRALIA

Australia's total requirements for transport fuels could be grown in that tiny area in North Queensland. A bigger paddock and it would need to export fuel.

ENOUGH BIOFUELS TO PUT OIL OUT OF BUSINESS?
YES, AND IT'S EASY

Biofuels can power all the world's self powered transport vehicles. The crops grow best in the wet and warm tropics. That's why we are so induced and encouraged to “save the rain forests”. When it's really to save the wealth of the oil cartels and the oil countries.

The biofuels, ethanol and biodiesel are most easily and most economically produced from sugarcane and oil palms. Both grow best in the hot wet tropics where farmers can produce 7,500 litres of ethanol or 4,500 litres of oil from one hectare, every year for ever. That's approximately 900 gallons of ethanol and 500 gallons of diesel. At around US$85 a barrel, biodiesel and sugar based ethanol are way cheaper than petroleum based fuels. But easily manipulated world oil prices in the past have successfully frightened off substantial investment in biofuels. Nations must use tariffs to set minimum petroleum import prices to stop such systematic back stabbing.

The current anti-biofuel campaign concept is to argue that producing biofuels will lower the quantity of food produced in the world, and people will starve. To make this a plausible argument it is necessary to concentrate biofuel thinking and production onto grain crops. It is thus marketing wisdom for the oil industry and their supporters to quietly promote grain subsidies to farmers and grain/ethanol subsidies to producers.

To them it's the lesser of two evils, for sugarcane is by far the best plant in the world for ethanol production. With sugar production you harvest the plant's sap. It tastes sweet but has no nutritional value. Grains are seeds and are full of nutrients and contain minerals extracted from the soil and so many of us humans live, almost entirely on seeds. That creates a nice PR scenario. There are no minerals in sugar. It's made from atmospheric carbon dioxide, sunlight and rain. The oil sheiks and oil barons are terrified of Citizen Cane.

At around US$55 a barrel, biodiesel and sugar based ethanol are cheaper than petroleum based fuels. But easily manipulated world oil prices have successfully frightened off substantial investment in biofuels. Nations must use tariffs to set minimum petroleum import prices to stop such back stabbing. That will make it happen. Their new campaign is biofuels starve all the children. And you can't grow biofuels without lots of petroleum fuels to drive the tractors. That's rubbish.

When you mix a vegetable oil with ethanol and with a small quantity of a suitable catalyst they chemically combine to form biodiesel and glycerin (glycerol). You can do it at home. Currently the best and cheapest vegetable oil comes from the tropical palm oil tree (Elaeis guineensis). It's now the most common oil palm. There are virtually no nutritious soil minerals in palm oil. In that it's just like sugar.

Both sugarcane and the oil palm grow best in tropical rain forest lands. So for some save the rain forest is a very logical cause, to create and promote. However it is now conceded by biologists and chemists that tropical rain forests are neither an active carbon sink nor a net producer of oxygen. It was all just marketing. Biodiversity thus now becomes the prime marketing image. (Cynical maybe? But maybe we need to be.)

A massive switch to biofuels has to happen .