Last year, and many times before, I took issue with the idea of bio-fuels.

Several posts (see Lose-Lose for a recent one) have excoriated bio-fuels since they are produced from crops, adding more pressure to an already troubled world agricultural system that must double its production in the next few decades to feed a couple of billion more people and raise the nutrition of a billion food insecure people already here. The continuing degradation of environments from industrial agriculture and the biodiversity losses from expansion make it pretty clear that "dirt burning", as bio-fuel use is sometimes called, is self-punking. This cure for the various symptoms of fossil fuel use is as bad or worse than the disease.

That was far too gentle.

. . . as we've looked at biofuels more closely, we've concluded that they're not a practical long-term solution to our need for transport fuels. Even if all of the 300 million acres (500,000 square miles) of currently harvested U.S. cropland produced ethanol, it wouldn't supply all of the gasoline and diesel fuel we now burn for transport, and it would supply only about half of the needs for the year 2025. And the effects on land and agriculture would be devastating.

It's difficult to understand how advocates of biofuels can believe they are a real solution to kicking our oil addiction. . .

. . . allowing a net positive energy output of 30,000 British thermal units (Btu) per gallon, it would still take four gallons of ethanol from corn to equal one gallon of gasoline. The United States has 73 million acres of corn cropland. At 350 gallons per acre, the entire U.S. corn crop would make 25.5 billion gallons, equivalent to about 6.3 billion gallons of gasoline. The United States consumes 170 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel annually. Thus the entire U.S. corn crop would supply only 3.7 percent of our auto and truck transport demands. Using the entire 300 million acres of U.S. cropland for corn-based ethanol production would meet about 15 percent of the demand.

Devastating, and not just to agriculture. See Bag Brides for some recent thoughts about ethanol, agriculture and subsidies.

Have you noticed that activists, advocates and politicians always have crushingly stupid ideas? But it doesn't matter if they can sell it to some constituency. The brain dead followers of such politicians apparently don't even care that their whole platform is rubbish. All that matters is if their bastards can beat the other bastards and seize control of the machinery of state. There ought to be a law!

Update:

What if leaves, stalks and other cellulosic materials are used instead of corn grain?

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today released an ambitious new research agenda for the development of cellulosic ethanol as an alternative to gasoline. . .

The roadmap responds directly to the goal recently announced by Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman of displacing 30 percent of 2004 transportation fuel consumption with biofuels by 2030.

What percentage of 2030 fuel needs is that? If it's only 30% of 2004 needs it will be much less of 2030 needs.

The roadmap identifies the research required for overcoming challenges to the large-scale production of cellulosic ethanol to help meet this goal, including maximizing biomass feedstock productivity, developing better processes by which to break down cellulosic materials into sugars, and optimizing the fermentation process to convert sugars to ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is derived from the fibrous, woody and generally inedible portions of plant matter (biomass).

The focus of the research plan is to use advances in biotechnology -- first developed in the Human Genome Project and continued in the Genomics: GTL program in the Department's Office of Science -- to jump-start a new fuel industry whose products can be transported, stored and distributed with only modest modifications to the existing infrastructure and can fuel many of today's vehicles.

hmmm, well, the map is not the terrain. I suspect that by the time all these discoveries are made and are suitable for industrial use that we will also have better ways to do transport. But the discoveries made in this research will likely have other applications too.