AgroWaste to Oil a Growing Market 472
EvilTwinSkippy writes "Last May Slashdot covered the story of Changing World Tech's opening of a plant that converts agricultural waste to oil. Fortune magazine has picked up the story, and followed up on their success. Apparently the turkey guts are not as profitable to recycle as hoped, the company paying $30-$40/ton for animal offal. They are producing diesel fuel at $80/barrel (compared to $50/barrel for petroleum derived diesel). However, the plant has been successful enough to spawn ventures in Europe and the U.S. A pilot plant in Philadelphia has successfully used the process to safely break down and extract oil from sewage, medical waste, electronics, even leftovers from petroleum refining. The solids are metal, pure carbon, and fertilizer. And aside from gas and oil, the only other thing the system produces otherwise is sterile water."
Economical? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Economical? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Economical? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that this process has the following applications:
1) Disposal of waste that costs more than 30$ per barrel to dispose of as-is.
2) Creation of oil in remote locations from waste - e.g., bringing plane flights of petroleum to a remote village in the canadian or siberian wilderness might make it cost more than 80$/barrel. The same would hold true on an even greater scale with antarctic coal.
3) Ensuring that there never will be an overly dramatic "oil shock" - while it wasn't a realistic prospect anyways, the ability to turn essentially anything organic (even people - soylent diesel, anyone?
4) Being a "clean fuel" source. Since all of the carbon involved was already in the system, there's no net increase in CO2.
Any other benefits?
Re:Economical? (Score:3, Insightful)
So numbers which do not add up in the US may in fact add up nicely in the UK, Japan or some of the European countries. And from what I read in the article this is exactly what the company is plan
Re:Economical? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Economical? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a basic energy balance concept that seems to escape most supposedly intelligent pundits on this issue. It's the sort of thing you're supposed to learn in 7th grade with rate problems: the world is a closed system, with energy in and energy out. Energy in comes from the sun, energy out is radiated heat. Over time there has been very slightly more energy in than out, which is stored as fossil fuels.
Ignoring the consequences of liberating all the CO2 ever captured in the history of the world over the next century, there's neither enough fossil fuel to last nor enough arable land to build an economy around a sustainable biofuel stream.
But Solar is trivial. It easily answers the world's energy needs at an entirely manageable cost.
A 16kWh/day (5.8E3 kWh/y) complete grid tie system costs $15k (12% efficient BP panels). 2E10 of these systems would power the whole world (volume discount?) which would cost $3.1E14 at today's retail which is roughly the GDP of the world for 7.5 years. Now figure you're asking BP to manufacture 4E11 solar panels... that's 400,000,000,000 panels. Maybe they'd be bit cheaper at that volume.
But we can reasonably assume typical cost reductions and a combination of PV and solar heating; the world uses 1.2E14 total kwh/year for all purposes, but only 1.3E13 kWh global consumption of electricity. If we replaced only electricity consumption for the whole world at RETAIL prices it would cost only 70% of the world GDP for one year and require only 4E10 panels and 5.6E10 square meters of land area - out of 1.3E14 available in the world, or 0.04% of the planet's land (0.4% to replace all energy consumed for all reasons with PV).
The US used 2.8E13 kWh total energy in all forms last year (3.6E12 kWh electricity) which would require 9.6E10 solar panels to generate or 1.3E11 square meters and $7.2E13 at retail. This would occupy 1.4% of our land area of 9.4E12 square meters..
We've paved 1.6E11 square meters: that is we've subsidized the auto and petroleum industry with a welfare gift of 1.7% of the total land area of the nation, more than it would take to be entirely energy independent.
Continuing the car comparison, our roadways, taxpayer financed at a cost of about $2M/lane mile or $340/sq meter, cost $1.9E13 in today's dollars compared to $7.2E13 to convert the entire country's entire energy use to PV. Realistically we'd convert only the electricity consumption of 3.6E12 kWh at $9.3E12 at RETAIL, less than half of what we taxpayers have given the auto and oil industry, not including the value of the real estate.
Converting the entire world to PV entirely as a collective effort would piss off the libertarians and the oil magnates (generally for different reasons) but doing so would cost less than the corporate welfare we've dumped on the oil and auto industries. Even today it's hardly insurmountable. Compared to the value of a zero emissions, entirely sustainable energy economy, it's trivial.
One argument I had with a friend about our capture of the Iraqi oil was over the counter argument presented by some math challenged conservative pundits (are any conservative pundits not math challenged?) that the oil costs would not offset the cost of taking Iraq, as if the suggestion that we are there to protect our oil was somehow ludicrous.
This argument ignores the most obvious counter that taxpayers are footing the $200B bill while Haliburton takes the profits, which before the invasion were going to Fr
Re:Economical? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're kidding right? Here in Iowa, we're having huge problems with all of the ag waste that we don't know how to get rid of. Hog farming alone is posing a serious threat to our rivers, as they can't use the *manure* fast enough (natural fertilizer, in the corn belt, and they can't even use that fast enough!).
> Growing targeted crops would be absurdly inefficient. At best photosynthesis
> is 2.5% efficient, compared to 12% for commercial
I've got trouble believing that (Score:3, Insightful)
If the typical person uses 50 gallons/day of water and flushes it down the drain, that's $6/person/day or $360/person/month. Water bills typically include sewage, and run a small fraction of that. Nope, doesn't pass first inspection.
This might be reasonable if you are talking about sewage solids, but that's a small fraction of most sewage and I'd want you to confirm your source and its
I've got trouble believing myself (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I've got trouble believing that (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to see how much sewage treatment costs vary, google it for yourself.
Re:I've got trouble believing that (Score:3, Funny)
That and give Tony Soprano his 'cut' off the trucking end of it....else CWT 'might' have some union problems flair up....
Re:I've got trouble believing that (Score:3, Informative)
Waste is usually stored up for about a year so that it can be applied to fields after harvest. Because of this, I think that the manure typically has a higher content of solids than what you'd see at a municipal waste facility. Also, hogs produce a lot of manure - I think that I've read that a medium sized con
Others have posted interesting stuff like that (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I've got trouble believing that (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Economical? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Economical? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Economical? (Score:5, Informative)
Perpetual Motion? I don't think you know what that means. They are adding TONS of turkey offal. That is where the energy is coming from. It isn't perpetual motion if you are constantly adding things (like, um, turkey offal).
Re:Economical? (Score:3, Informative)
Thermal depolymerization, Appel says, has proved to be 85 percent energy efficient for complex feedstocks, such as turkey offal: "That means for every 100 Btus in the feedstock, we use only 15 Btus to run the process." He contends the efficiency is even better for relatively dry raw materials, such as plastics.
Re:Economical? (Score:2, Funny)
Frankly, I'd love to see the Dakotas were turned into solar/wind farms with chicken crapping farms under them, piping the feces into contraptions that turned it i
Re:Economical? (Score:5, Informative)
No process can be 100% (or more) efficient -- the CWT process is about 80%-85% efficient. That means that the remaining energy is turned to waste, so it obviously produces less energy at the end than when it started.
However, when looking at usable energy, the system is highly efficient. Most of the energy in the CWT comes from the energy stored in the "feedstock" (turkey guts, etc.). This is energy that would normally be slowly released as waste energy as the feedstocks decomposed. instead, this process turns that energy into useful products, primarily diesel fuel. Removing the energy from the feedstock, the process produces about 4-5 times more usable energy than it uses.
Re:Economical? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Economical? (Score:5, Informative)
With the volatility of crude oil the way it is (heck, it's gone up over 5% today!) for no logical reason (they cite "unseasonably cold weather in the northeast US and Britain" - winter is always cold, and our reserves are higher than they were last year - go figure), any other alternatives that don't require a huge infrastructure change are welcome. Producing "petroleum" from waste is potentially a great way to reduce the volatility of crude oil.
It does nothing, though, to address the issues of using a carbon-based energy currency and the CO2 byproducts from that. It's definitely a novel idea, and the sooner we develop alternatives the better (it's a whole lot more difficult to develop alternatives when your reserves are depleted due to increased periodic costs - i.e., higher cost for crude oil).
* As my physics prof put it: "The first law says the best you can do is break even, and the second law says you can't even come close."
Re:Economical? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Economical? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a crucial qualification. Its only carbon net-zero for the proportion of transportation fuels that can be effectively switched across to these alternative sources.
Anyone care to take a WAG as to what fraction of the USA's current diesel consumption
RECYCLING (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not making energy from nothing. This is capturing energy that would have normally gone to waste. Even better, it is capturing the energy in a highly useful form, oil.
You are correct that although what goes out may come right back in, energy will be gradually lost in the process. You still need a net input of energy. That could come out of the ground as it does now, in which case we would only be slowing down our mad dash to turn all the buried carbon in the world back into
Re:Economical? (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't this process consume more energy than it produces?
Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. Looks like they are getting more energy out of the recycling process than they're putting into it, which is a plus. OTOH, everything they're recycling ultimately took a lot of oil to produce, and they're not able to turn most of that back into oil.
I mean, think about it with just the turkeys. In order to raise a bunch of turkeys, it takes oil to get oil out of the ground. Then it takes oil to transport the oil to the United States. Then it takes oil to refine that oil into gas or other fuel. Then it takes oil to transport that fuel to its destination. Then the fuel is used in a tractor - which took a ton of oil to make - to grow the grain that the turkeys are fed. Oh, and the crops are fertilized with oil-derived fertilizers, so there's more oil dumped in the system. The grain is then harvested, consuming more fuel, processed and transported to where the turkeys are being raised. It took oil to build the factory farm where the turkeys are being raised, and they're fed a steady stream of pharmaceuticals that were made from and transported by oil. The turkeys are then slaughtered (they may be transported first, using oil), processed and typically frozen. They're then transported, in giant oil-gulping refrigerated trucks, wrapped in oil (plastic), to the local Albertsons. There, suburban housewives show up in their oil-guzzling SUV's to lug the birds home.
Now, even if you were able to convert all of the unused bits of the turkeys and their waste to oil or some other fuel at 100% efficiency, you still would only produce a fraction of the oil it took to raise those turkeys in the first place. That leaves a tremendous energy gap to be addressed, and we don't have any technology in place or on the horizon capable of filling that void. (Please, don't say "nuclear" anybody. If we tried to replace our petroleum consumption with nuclear, we'd rapidly run out of uranium and be left with a lot of dead nuclear plants. And South Africa, that bastion of political and social stability, has the world's largest reserves of uranium. We'd just be trading our problems in the Middle East for a whole new set of problems.)
Technologies like this waste-to-oil recycling will help to boost overall energy efficiency a teeny little bit, but they won't come close to providing a substitute for our colossal consumption of petroleum. Remember too, these technologies take oil to develop and construct, and that oil is about to become far more expensive, making these technologies less and less efficient as a result. Unfortunately, global demand continues to skyrocket, while global supply may well have peaked (thanks to political instability, if nothing else). This does not bode well for our oil-based civilization.
Re:Economical? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Economical? (Score:5, Interesting)
By the later definition, nothing is economical, and we shouldn't even bother getting up in the morning.
Sterile water? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sterile water? (Score:2, Funny)
good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:good (Score:2)
And besides, I doubt there are enough turkeys to make this thing work in very large scale...
Re:good (Score:2)
So cheaper fuel in the fall season?
Re:good (Score:2)
You forget inflation: when the barrel reaches 80 of today's greenbacks, it'll already cost like 100 of tomorrow's dollars or something.
Then again, another conflict against the Axis of Evil[tm] and the barrel could reach 80 of today's dollars very quickly anyway...
Re:good (Score:2)
The thing is, they don't make enough of the stuff to justify under cutting petro oil. Even at $80 a barrel now, they are able to sell the stuff to environmental types. They would likely not
SEWAGE! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SEWAGE! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SEWAGE! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SEWAGE! (Score:4, Funny)
Cost (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cost (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Due to problems like Mad Cow disease, many countries have banned feeding animal waste to animals. The U.S. has not banned this. As a result, CWT is paying for waste products that under other circumstances, they would actually get money for disposing of. This is why they're planning on building in Europe -- because acquiring the raw material becomes an asset, not a liability.
2. The U.S. government currently offers a $1/gallon tax credit for certain bio-diesel fuels. The CWT does not currently qualify for this credit because of the language of the law. If that is changed, there are 42 gallons per U.S. barrel, meaning a $42/barrel tax credit, which as far as I know, is as good as cash.
Tax credits (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure if this is a good thing. Subsidies usually result in overproduction and overconsumption, financed by the taxpayer. If we want to "fix" the problem, let's tax petroleum to pay for all the defense costs of the oil shipping routes instead of the taxpayer paying more for other things.
Re:Cost (Score:2)
Confusing title... (Score:2, Funny)
No, never mind. I don't want to know.
Price may not be a problem for long (Score:5, Interesting)
The real problem is that there just aren't enough turkey guts in the world to replace crude oil, and the grain that the turkeys are fed is produced by an agricultural industry that is totally dependent on petroleum-derived fertilizers and pesticides.
Re:Price may not be a problem for long (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but this is not a turkey-specific process. Consider, e.g., biomass (waste or otherwise). From TFA [mindfully.org]:
Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end , he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that.
Re:Price may not be a problem for long (Score:5, Funny)
That's one phrase I never thought I'd ever see.
Re:Price may not be a problem for long (Score:4, Funny)
OMG! Oilent Green is made out of people! People!
Re:Price may not be a problem for long (Score:2)
All this is doing is getting greater efficiency from the existing cycles that are there. These ultimately get their energy from the sun. I still don't think, though, that waste would produce the energy used by the modern society. I was reading something somewhere that to run the world on biodiesel (admittedly not waste, but growing plants specifically for making fuel) some huge proportion of the world's crops wou
Re:Price may not be a problem for long (Score:2)
Non-sequiter. The problem of hunger isn't the availability of crops (hell, we pay people to not grow food int he U.S.), it's distribution.
Re:Price may not be a problem for long (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Price may not be a problem for long (Score:2)
pipe the output of every bathroom in the city into a plant that turns that
waste into usable light crude. All it would take is to build a plant where
the sanitary sewer dumps out.
Added benefit would be that there would be less pollution into rivers and such.
not just turkey parts (Score:2)
First, if you had read the article (this time, or the last time thermal depolymerization was mentioned on slashdot), you would know turkey offal is only one type of feed that can be used. Any sort of agricultural waste will do. Any sort of organic waste, i
Fertilizer derivation (Score:4, Informative)
High natural gas prices have driven some users to petroleum fuels, so the demand for fertilizer is increasing petroleum demand even if it isn't a direct petroleum product.
If their manufacture involves petrochemicals and their use increases the demand for oil, you might as well call them petroleum-derived.petrochemicals (Score:3, Interesting)
The cheapest source of methanol and ethanol are also petroleum, but I certainly don't consider those petrochemicals. You can make pretty much anything from petroleum. I could synth
Re: (Score:2)
Last link through fark? (Score:2, Interesting)
Medical waste? (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't it be truly ironic if the medical waste was liposuction fat (think Fight Club)? Then, the clinical obesity afflicting one in three Americans would itself be powering the automobiles that are, in part, responsible for the obesity.
Re:Medical waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you mean is, we should power our vehicles with our own body fat?
I know a more efficient way: it's called "cycling".
Re:Medical waste? (Score:2)
I know a more efficient way: it's called "cycling".
I agree wholeheartedly with you, which is why I cycle to work every day. However, the problem with the cycling approach is that it skips out a crowd-winning step in the drive -> get fat -> liposuction -> biodiesel cycle: there is no satisfying consumption of Krispy Kreme, Twinkies, etc etc.
Re:Medical waste? (Score:4, Funny)
That depends on your definition of "efficient."
I am in decent shape, and only rarely am I able to obtain a speed of 60MPH on my human-powered bicycle, and even then only for moments at a time. (Usually after colliding with a vehicle traveling at 60MPH.)
Re:Medical waste? (Score:3, Insightful)
A motor vehicle is a far more effective transportation system, in that it can achieve higher speeds, move larger loads etc etc
The guy on the bike is always going to be more efficient, if only because he's not carrying a ton or so of metal and plastic around with him.
Regards
Luke
It's a start. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's important that we research these alternatives now. There are certain uses for petroleum that we can't reproduce via other means -- powering our cars and homes isn't one of them.
Re:It's a start. (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree. I have yet to see a viable technology that will allow us to replicate the current level of service we get from jet airliners for air travel. I think they will be burning kero for a while yet. While there is always the option of returning to sailing ships (and solar electric powered airships for the optimistic) I think that air travel will be the last mode of transport
Re:It's a start. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's a start. (Score:3, Interesting)
Further compounding the troll, the
Enjoy:
---
Spock: I realize that command does have its fascination, even under circumstances such as these, but I neither enjoy the idea of command nor am I frightened of it. It simply exists, and I will do whatever
Wow, some new technology... (Score:2, Funny)
You mean like what you get when you stuff dead trees and foliage in mud, burry it deep underground under billions of tons of rocks, and wait a few million years?
$30-40 a ton for offal? (Score:5, Funny)
B)What's Darl McBride's address again?
Why Turkey Guts? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/28/cow.fire.ap/ [cnn.com]
You misspelled "is" (Score:4, Funny)
There, better.
Re:Why Turkey Guts? (Score:2)
mad cow, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really stupid. If politicians weren't in the pocket of industry, this would be outlawed. Make that OUTLAWED! Then, maybe the slaughterhouses would be _paying_ to have the offal disposed of - and not by dumping it anywhere they own a piece of land, either.
Voila! Suddenly the product becomes directly competitive with petroleum.
Re:mad cow, anyone? (Score:2)
More of an irate cow actually. (Score:3, Informative)
Mad cow disease is caused by cows eating COWS (or sheep). The US has banned canabilistic feed. But remember that most diseases are species specific and by feeding turkeys to cows and cows to turkeys you prevent the spread of disease as efectivly as turning them into oil.
But remember that by doing this you will make the cost of feed go up which will make the cost of meat go up...
Re:More of an irate cow actually. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oil from medical waste???? (Score:4, Funny)
There are some good alternatives out there... (Score:4, Interesting)
They are out there, we need to find them.
this was done in 1985 (Score:2, Funny)
Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey! (Score:5, Insightful)
(God as my witness, I honestly thought turkeys could fly.)
The problem with the process, as I read the article, is that while thermal depolymerization may scale for any one particular type of waste, no single TD process works as well for all types of waste.
If you're already running a turkey plant, it may be economical to spend $1M to render down turkey guts into $1.1M worth of oil. (Spend time in phase 1 than in phase 2.)
If you're already running a tire dump, it may be economical to spend $1M for the same plant, with the dials set differently, to render used automobile tyres into $1.1M worth of oil. (Spend more time in phase 2 than phase 1.)
The problem is that the process isn't continuous and efficient for all input waste types, such that not worth spending $100M for a really big plant to render 3000 incoming truckloads of raw organic matter into $110M worth of oil, because you can't. You have to separate the truckloads of "stuff with carbon in it" into piles of cow/pig/turkey bones, human bits from hospitals, raw sewage, chickenshit, pigshit, spammer, plastic bottles, used tires, and run different processes to get the most valuable materials out of each of the three waste streams.
Neat idea for small and medium businesses with a uniform waste stream. Not gonna change the world.
Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey! (Score:3, Insightful)
this will become one of many tools at our disposal that will help us deal
with our energy consumption habits.
Seems too good to be true (Score:2)
I hate being such a skeptic.
Ricers will love this (Score:2)
River B:That's nothing. My ride runs on recycled turkey shit...er, I'll just get my coat.
Produces? (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing will never get off the ground unless it produces some money.
Steven Fitzpatrick/Biofine (Score:2, Informative)
Supply, Demand, Refinement, Scale (Score:5, Interesting)
I've done some research on this topic and found out that californias agricultural waste which is mostly funneled down into a southern californian dessert lake area could supply enough fuel to satiate the US oil supply.
There is enough un-inhabitable land area in southern california to process all of this waste and thus fully liberate the US from foriegn oil, not to mention create a replenshible power supply compatible with our current prevelant technology (gas based power).
The greatest contorl over per barell pricing is from the supply made available from oil producing states greatly controlled by OPEC. As world consumption increases and known stock piles decrease and cease over the next 30 to 50 years the price per barrell will continualy rise. And will certainly exceed 80$ a barell probably within the next five to ten years.
The only reason oil is at 50$ per barell is due to it's massive scale, if waste based oils had even a hundreth of the scale that our current oil industry uses, or even a thousandth of the money, industry and investment it does, we would probably see prices drop well below the 50$ mark.
And this is speaking of the technology in it's current form. Though it may have some initial ineffeciences which have made the cost 80$ a barrell, cost saving measures through natural refinment of the processing of waste will undoubtably greatly improve the procedure within the next few years and continue.
I would say that 80$ a barrell is an astounding accomplishment which given the finite and defintie bounds of drill based oil will rapdily become an extremly attractive alternative fuel source.
Im surprised at the pesimisitc tone from slashdot. I also speculate that in the next ten years or so we shall see the major players seek control over this new market to sell oil to the world market as their drill based supply dwindles.
--VISION
BioDesiel (Score:5, Interesting)
BioDesiel is the fuel of the (achievable) future, IMHO. Untill we can get Fuel Cells at reasonable prices or batteries get much better power density (or portable nuclear reactors are invented and safe) then getting peopole over to BioDesiel (which conventional Desiel engines can be easily modified to handle) is the solution.
Plus, the exhaust smells like french fries so McDonald's should be pushing this because it will increase demand for their product. McDonald's: Bringing you the green future through fast food cravings ;)
Re:BioDesiel (Score:2, Informative)
Re:BioDesiel (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, I believe AgroWaste-oil can be used in polymer production, something not true of BioDiesel.
Seriously... what's with the black-and-white world view?
$80 per barrel (Score:4, Informative)
Re:$80 per barrel (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't forget fuel taxes - not sure what they are, but they make up a substantial portion of that $2.30. If you are filling up and avoiding the "revenuers", then the savings would be as described. If not, then the s
1 Barrel == 42 gallons (Score:3, Informative)
Actual Cost Effective bioprocessing company (Score:2, Informative)
There goes my big idea (Score:2)
Ah, darn. I guess that makes these futures I bought in turkey guts pretty useless.
Smell (Score:2)
Two Cost Factors (Score:4, Informative)
The first is their exclusion from a tax break for biodiesel. This looks like a gross oversight which they may be able to get corrected. The article mentions this as being equivalent to a $1/gal. reduction in production costs, which would be significant.
The second is the cost of raw materials. Animal wastes are accounting for $15 to $20 per barrel. If they can source a raw material that is either free or they can charge to process, half or more of their cost difference vs. traditional diesel will be removed. The other option would be to remove the current primary market for animal byproducts, use in animal feed. This increases the viability in Europe.
If they could get both of those changes enacted, their cost per barrel could be near zero, certainly competitive with traditional sources.
Re:Sigh...I see the protest signs now (Score:2)
Re:Shame.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Shame.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, actually it means exactly that. And since you're evidently unable to think for yourself, I will illustrate:
Digging up oil and burning it releases carbon that was previously sequestered underground. Result: significant net positive release of carbon.
Recycling Turkey offal by turning it into oil and burning the result releases carbon that was originally absorbed by plants which were fed to the Turkeys. Re
Re:Shame.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, you're so much better than those idiots.
And everything from the clothes you wear, the pizzas you eat, and the beverages you drink just magically appears in the store shelves every day without any dependence on fuel too.