TIME Magazine's latest issue, April 7, 2008, has a great front cover article titled "The Clean Energy Myth". It's nice to many of the comments that have been bandied about in this forum finally hit the mainstream.
One aspect of the debacle, one that I must confess that I was not as aware as I should have been, was the amount of carbon displacement going on as a direct result of corporations and farmers attempting to cash in on the bio AE market and the horrendous damage it is generating. Their occasionally well-intentioned efforts to produce energy crops are ironically making things worse, much worse for the environment. For one thing, the amount of virgin forests being cut down to make way for cash energy crops is apparently releasing huge amounts of excess carbon as forests are slashed and burned, particularly in Brazil. Ironically, the article states that producing sugar cane is may very well be a good idea (certainly the lesser of other evils), however most farmers prefer to plant other so-called energy crops, particularly soybeans. They do so because they expect to make a lot more money selling the soybeans as an energy feed-stock as compared to sugarcane. And, of course, certain bio-energy crops particularly corn tend to consume more energy than they produce in the form of ethanol. The emerging energy global market is becoming totally f__ked up as priorities and economic incentives are being misplaced driving food prices through the roof, and its going to get worse. Even more now than ever do we need a shot in the arm, such as more breakthroughs in solar, wind, CF, BLP, as well as other more exotic AE arenas. The sooner the better. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.orionWorks.com' www.zazzle.com/orionworks
