Researchers Pooh-Pooh Algae-Based Biofuel 238
Julie188 writes "Researchers from the University of Virginia have found that current algae biofuel production methods consume more energy, have higher greenhouse gas emissions and use more water than other biofuel sources, such as switchgrass, canola and corn. The researchers suggest these problems can be overcome by situating algae production ponds behind wastewater treatment facilities to capture phosphorous and nitrogen — essential algae nutrients that otherwise need to come from petroleum."
Reserachers? (Score:5, Informative)
Timothy, please spell check your title.
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Reserachers?
I bet they are craptacualr [penny-arcade.com]...
Re:Reserachers? (Score:4, Funny)
Timothy, please spell check your title.
Oh, bother.
Never Mind the Typo. "Pooh Pooh" ?!?!! (Score:2)
I've always been more of an Eeyore man myself.
Poo-poo ? (Score:4, Funny)
Melchett: Is this true Blackadder? Did Capt. Darling poo-poo you? ...Blackadder, you know, if there's one thing I've learned from being in the army, it's never ignore a poo-poo. I knew a major, got poo-pood made the mistake of ignoring the poo-poo. He poo-pood it: Fatal error. Becuase it turned out all along that the soldier who poo-pood him had been poo-pooing alot of other officers who poo-pood their poo-poos. In the end we had to disband the regiment. Morale totally destroyed.....................by poo-poo.
Blackadder: Well, perhaps a little.
Melchett: Well then damn it all what more evidence do you need? The poo-pooing alone is a court martial offense!
Blackadder: I can assure you, sir, that the poo-pooing was purely circumstantial.
Melchett: Well I hope so,
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OBSimpsons (Score:2)
"We need someone who doesn't immediately poo-poo everything he eats."
"Well no, it usually takes a couple of hours."
Reserachers Pooh-Pooh Algae-Based Biofuel (Score:2, Offtopic)
Ok, but what about researchers?
Pooh vs Poo (Score:2, Funny)
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Somebody failed high school chemistry. (Score:5, Informative)
> ...phosphorous and nitrogen -- essential algae nutrients that otherwise need
> to come from petroleum.
Phosphorus and nitrogen from petroleum. Uh huh. Right.
Re:Somebody failed high school chemistry. (Score:5, Informative)
Phosphate fertilizer (ortho- or poly-phosphates) is synthesized in an energy-intensive process. Organic phosphates, like those from manure (or waste treatment plant effluent), help solve this problem.
For nitrate fertilizer, it's even more extreme. Please read about the Haber Process [wikipedia.org].
Yes, John, most fertilizer does come from fossil fuels.
So, yes, whoever wrote that made a mistake. However, it's no lie to say that fertilizer production uses a huge amount of fossil fuel.
Re:Somebody failed high school chemistry. (Score:5, Insightful)
So here's the logic: Algae requires nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen. Where does that come from? Normally in the wild, algae live off nutrients in water. In artificial environments, they are given these nutrients. The source of these nutrients is synthetic fertilizer. Ammonia based fertilizers are often created by the Haber process [wikipedia.org]. Artificial fertilizer requires petroleum to produce. Normally runoff is very high in these nutrients as they come from artificial fertilizers used on lawns and crops. Runoff enters wastewater and this high nutrient content creates all sorts of problems when discharged into the wild. Red Tide is caused by high nutrient runoff from the Mississippi. So kill two birds with one stone.
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Natural gas is often processed with petroleum as they are often in the same fields. Processing natural gas into hydrogen (steam forming) requires energy. The Haber Process requires energy. Most often electricity is required to run the machinery. The vast amount of electricity comes from fossils fuels.
Neither the hydrogen nor the electricity come from petroleum. Most fossil fuels and hydrogen sources are not petroleum. These distinctions matter in some areas like a consideration of the effects of radical oil supply drops (commonly called "peak oil").
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The Haber ammonia synthesis process requires a source of hydrogen to run. It is just that currently the cheapest way to generate hydrogen is steam reforming of natural gas.
Which is to say, using the Haber process create fertilizer precursors will, in an economically realistic world, inevitably be based on reforming natural gas. So, fossil fuels will be extracted and processed in order to create biofuel. So much for carbon neutral.
I do like the idea of poopooing the algae, as long as there's enough water-t
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Nitrogen fertilizer (ammonia) is made from natural gas through the Haber Bosch process. Phosphorus is produced in a relatively small number of huge mines and shipped around the world by a supply chain powered by oil
Haven't you seen the BP ads? (Score:3, Funny)
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Obviously it doesn't mean that these elements are extracted directly from petroleum.
Methane (aka natural gas, a fossil fuel) is used as the donor for the hydrogen needed for the Haber process, and releases the carbon as CO2.
=Smidge=
Also (Score:5, Funny)
Christopher Robin was unavailable for comment.
Land values (Score:2, Insightful)
I think there's a production flaw here somewhere; I just can't put my finger on it.
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Because everyone wants to live right next to their local waste processing plant.
Re:Land values (Score:5, Interesting)
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Excess nitrogen comes from a wide variety of sources - here, the Hood Canal gets its excess nitrogen (IIRC) from failing septic systems and lawn fertilizer.
pooh-pooh? (Score:2)
Well, that's one way to add nutrients back into the system.
One other reason, Algae is more valuable! (Score:5, Informative)
Diesel, wholesale, is a couple bucks a gallon. Which means it is far FAR less than a dollar a pound.
A good algae is worth far MORE than that per pound as animal feed, dietary suppliments, etc. So why turn something that you can sell for $2/lb into something you can only sell for less than $.5/lb?
Re:One other reason, Algae is more valuable! (Score:4, Insightful)
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volume.
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Re:One other reason, Algae is more valuable! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually .. there are both yeasts and algae that literally -output- diesel as a byproduct of their metabolic processes. The researchers in this article focused on the conversion of algae to biofuels using heat and industrial processes, but this is not the technique currently in favor amongst the algae biofuel startups. Most have strains of yeasts (and algae) that were discovered around the world that have low yields of diesel fuel byproduct, and are working via rapid natural selection and genetic engineering techniques to increase the yield to commercially viable levels.
So, you get the valuable algae .. AND .. you get the diesel byproducts. It costs sunlight, and fertilizer plus some post processing and captures more carbon than is emitted by burning the fuel. Sounds pretty good to me.
Re:One other reason, Algae is more valuable! (Score:5, Insightful)
Reducing corn subsidies for biofuel, which we should do anyway, could drop the value of feed algae because we wouldn't be be turning so much corn into ethanol (assuming you could replace algae-based feed with corn).
The cost of petroleum is not just the wholesale price + taxes + mark ups. The cost also comes in the form of dependence on foreign oil and the security problems that causes, maintaining a military that can help ensure our access that oil, and the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels.
If ultimately they can't make the economics of algae growing work then clearly they shouldn't do it but there are other factors than the wholesale price of these commodities.
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This is America. We already produce more food than we could ever need. You're right, we should probably continue to do so, and to export that food to the rest of the world in exchange for their energy resources. But at any point that becomes unprofitable, we need large-scale, clean, renewable primary energy sources to fall back on. Luckily the same infrastructure can be used for both.
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At the current production level.
That's the problem with simplistic cost analyses; they ignore the fact that if a lot of something is produced, it tends to get cheaper. On the other hand the demand for algae for biodiesel would tend to drive costs up.
The secret is that competition tends to drive costs down to "normal profit" levels. If you could sell algae cheap enough to replace diesel, sooner or later somebody will undercut the algae as feed prices, unless one company has the exclusive rights to the mag
Give the green monster a chance! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's interesting (Score:4, Informative)
The company that I worked for commissioned a few studies on algae based biofuels. It turns out that the most efficient way of handling the material was to collect the algae in cakes and burn it in a reactor to make synthesis gas. Synthesis gas is a mixture of CO and Hydrogen. If you add steam, you could then perform a shift reaction to get methane or methanol. The main value of the process was not in producing fuel, or generating electricity. The main thing you could use it for was as a chemical feedstock. Methanol is a good starting point for many plastics.
(final comment, my spell checker wants to change biofuels to befouled)
EVERY biofuel is stupid! (Score:2)
Because it’s taking the space that is needed for OUR own food, the food for our animals, and the food for other animals.
It just takes away too much space for what it delivers.
We should primarily pursue direct sunlight/energy-storage conversions. Electrochemical (batteries), or chemical (fuel), or in another way. But based on the sun. Because that resource is, at least for a looong time, virtually endless. We could use more solar panels than there is space on earth. Simply by putting them on satellites
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Because that resource is, at least for a looong time, virtually endless.
Another way to put it:
Solar energy will literally last until the end of the Earth (and then some).
I can replace? (Score:2)
now I can replace my bio-diesel processing plant in my garage with a bunch of algae eating researchers?
How about reusing the leftover N and P? (Score:2)
How about reusing the N and P from the harvested algae? We only want the C-H chains for fuel, so it might be possible to separate the P and N from the harvested algea, and reuse it for algae fertilizer.
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To make fertilizer, you want fixed N (that is, N that is connected to carbon). Doing that is a big part of the energy cost in the fertilizer.
(this doesn't mean you can't come up with an algae good at fixing N; but there's plenty of N around anyway, N2 is most of our atmosphere. Such would be a good starting point for using algae to make fertilizer. My point is what we're really trying to get out of the algae is energy, which making fertilizer also requires).
Pond vs Bioreactor (Score:5, Interesting)
The article seems to be focusing on pond based algae biofuels as opposed to the bioreactor based ones that have been getting recent media attention.
They do mention the bioreactor based algae biofuels, but claim that the photo bioreactors are unlikely to scale efficiently and that unlined ponds are the most reasonable configuration. Of course, the paper they are using for this claim dates back to 1996. They really need to update their economic analysis reference.
Pooh-Pooh? (Score:2)
It's not that the researchers didn't like the idea of algae biofuel, they were just preoccupied with their plan for a helium lifter system to help them get hunny for their rumbly tummies...
Salt Water Biofuel (Score:5, Informative)
Rehash (Score:2, Informative)
Uh, (Score:2)
"essential algae nutrients.... come from petroleum."
FAIL
This should be tagged 'dontgetit'
And ecologically dangerous too (Score:2)
Financial pressure would inevitably produce a nice robust algae that produced biofuel that needed minimal or no refinement. In other words, you'd have an organic self-replicating oil producing machine.
Take this, accidentally let samples escape into ocean. See ocean die. Die. Die. Die.
All through the miracle of capitalism!
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Take this, accidentally let samples escape into ocean. See ocean die. Die. Die. Die.
I have a simple solution that involves algae-eating lizards, Chinese needle snakes and gorillas.
Agree re Biofilm and Switchgrass (Score:2, Interesting)
At the UW in Seattle we've had a number of patents (available via UW Tech) for biofuel from switchgrass, as well as biofilm approaches.
The algae methods have proven less promising, unless you're looking for specific oils that are otherwise derived from petroleum distillation.
Why do you have to design it on these limitations? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd heard a coworker describe an Algae plant his dad was developing round Texas. I uses waste water from some factory, and warm water off of a nuclear plant.
To conserve space and optimize for algae, it's all in clear vertical tubes -- so light gets to the top layer where the algae grows.
The water doesn't get used up because it's a closed system -- but it's waste water anyway.
Air bubbles up into it.
I would figure it would be pretty carbon neutral, except that you would avoid NEW carbon being introduced from burning fossil fuels. Any ORGANIC process is merely going to be recycling existing carbon for the most part.
And scientists "poo-pooing" organic energy is kind of an ironic statement -- I'm sure I'm not the first to notice.
Phosphorous and NItrogen... (Score:3, Interesting)
... do NOT come from petroleum.
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Seriously, look up Haber Bosch as well as inorganic fertilizers. They are made by consuming huge amounts of fossil fuels.
So you're saying this is the *only* way. I disagree.
Rather I will argue that a symbiotic environment that includes nitrogen fixing microbes may suffice for nitrogen requirements.
Going a step further, assuming production of the ferts requires ENERGY (not necessarily that of fossil fuels), we could source the energy from renewable resources such as wind, hydro, solar.... And ideally we would just use the elecriticty produced, but since we may also need oil-fuels for a stretch into the future, we could use
Re:Energy is conserved by law of physics (Score:5, Insightful)
Hold on there, I for one do want to be next to a nuclear power plant.
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Oh yeah? Well you know what nuclear power plants emit? Water vapor. The silent killer.
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Did you know that water vapor is many times more effective as a greenhouse gas that CO2? You know what that endangers? Polar Bears, the other silent killer.
This message was brought to you by Steven Colbert.
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Surely, you jest; In fact, hot water emissions are about the worst day-to-day thing {and not a trivial issue} aside from the toxic residue, {which hopefully won't punish us too badly.} ;p
Re:Energy is conserved by law of physics (Score:4, Informative)
I think you mean dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO for short).
hydrogen dioxide is also known as "hydrogen peroxide", which is a relatively harmless bleaching agent, and it contains more oxygen than DHMO, so it's got to be healthy.
nuclear power news (Score:2)
The East Goes Nuclear While the West Heads for the Caves
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THE EAST GOES NUCLEAR WHILE THE WEST HEADS FOR THE CAVES
by Michael Billington
January 18, (LPAC)—In the midst of the greatest international financial crisis in modern history, all of Asia, including, emphatically, the Russian Federation, is engaged in a process of rapid expansion of nuclear power construction, a source of great pride to the nuclear producer-nations, and of
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Ah. LPAC stands for LaRouchePAC. I thought the rhetorical style was familiar.
Re:Energy is conserved by law of physics (Score:4, Insightful)
Safer than living next to a coal plant, that's for sure.
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Why not? It emits one hell of a lot less radiation and other pollution than a coal-fired one does.
Do your homework before you consign everyone to freezing in the dark.
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Sure, I'm all for it, provided that (a) we don't treat this as a miracle cure for our petroleum dependency (because then we'll be dealing with nuclear fuel dependency) and (b) the costs of decommissioning the plant and handling spent fuel are factored into the construction and operation costs.
Re:Energy is conserved by law of physics (Score:5, Insightful)
for b: the cost of decommissioning and cleanup have never been counted for when building a coal plant. While those costs have always been considered for nuclear plants. That is one of the reasons coal is perceived as cheaper.
a: its not a miracle cure, buts more than just a few steps in the right direction. The US has one of the largest supplies of uranium, both mined and in the ground. With the more efficient feeder-breeder reactors, it can meet our needs for hundreds of years and that is if it was our only energy source.
A strong mix of feeder-breeder nuclear reactors and efficient solar thermal plants, we would be well on our way to complete energy independence with very low pollution for the forseeable future.
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You're not seriously comparing asbestos to nuclear energy, are you? Can you name one person who has been hurt by a properly running nuclear plant that was a result of the plant being nuclear (as opposed to coal, ect.)? Some statistics: here in the US, you have a greater chance of being Barack Obama (1/3 million) than you have of having been hurt by a US nuclear plant (0/3 million)
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I think you've over-estimated the chance in being Barack Obama by quite a bit. Your estimate for being hurt by a nuclear power plant seems right on, though.
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Uh, rounding error.
Hydroelectric (Score:3, Informative)
And besides, they don't build nuclear plants in the city, they build them out in the middle of nowhere.
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Except for the one right here: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS298US298&q=1513+University+Ave+Madison,+WI+53706&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=1513+University+Ave,+Madison,+WI+53706&gl=us&ei=LcJYS7m2K4y6Nt2Y0MkE&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CAkQ8gEwAA [google.com]
-Rick
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Is that a functioning power plant, or a research device?
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Hey, cool, that's just a few blocks down the road...
On a side note, Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR, and Reed College, in Portland, OR, both have reactors on campus. the Reed college one, you don't have to be in an engineering program to use it!
Re:Energy is conserved by law of physics (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't mind living next to nuclear power plants. As a matter of fact I did. In fact it was the primary employer for my town.
Really? Did you work in Sector 7G, too?
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I'll add my voice to the chorus - I wouldn't mind living next to or near a nuclear power plant either.
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This should be modded +10: Fucking Prophetic.
Disclaimer: I'm biased, because I've been saying the same thing.
Re:Energy is conserved by law of physics (Score:5, Insightful)
Some true some false there. Electrons aren't created during power generation, but they are moved around. They don't come from mass. There does have to be a power plant and saying 'use hydrogen and there won't be any pollution' is definitely missing the issue.
Algae biofuel = solar power harvesting via photosynthesis. The algae contain more energy once grown, but it might not be worthwhile to do all the extra work to get that energy into a useful form. It is theoretically possible, but so are highly efficient solar cells. Only time will actually tell.
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I'm not worried about living next to a nuclear power plant. I grew up right near one... Just a mile or two outside of town. Of course I'm not the average American, so I can see your point...
But the nice thing about power plants, as opposed to internal combustion engines in your cars, is that they're centralized. One big chimney, instead of hundreds or thousands of them. A single chimney to inspect, regulate, filter, clean, whatever.
Sure, you've got to get the power to your cars... So there's transmiss
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I'm not being judgmental against you here, but it's true that one head, two eyes is the norm.
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Is half a brain the norm?
You are more likely to be negatively impacted by living close to a coal plant than a nuclear one.
Nuclear reactors are "scary" and have the potential to "release all the crap at once".
Whereas coal plants are a constant source of not-immediately-lethal-but-still-nasty pollutants.
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Whereas coal plants are a constant source of not-immediately-lethal-but-still-nasty pollutants.
Very true and those pollutants contain radioactive components. In fact, if you could extract all the uranium from a ton of typical coal, it has more potential energy than if you burned the coal.
As the VP nominee said, "There's no such thing as clean coal".
Re:In a related development... (Score:4, Insightful)
He's no longer the president. Time to move on.
quick (Score:5, Funny)
someone inform Cheney of the news
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Flying chair jokes, though, are still fair game.
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Yeah, because Steve Ballmer is *still* CEO of MS.
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Yeah, and chairs have been flying every day for the last 5 years.
Re:People don't realise this... (Score:5, Funny)
[Citation Needed]
\O/
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/ \
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* [self-referentially cited in this post. That makes it 100% Truth, right?]
Re:People don't realise this... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean organic? Going vegan would probably let us double the world population considering the huge amount of grain and soy that's fed to animals.
Oil and natural gas won't last forever. The most optimistic estimates says 30 years before peak production rate, and we hit shortages on a growing planet. What's the plan to feed ourselves after that? Grow bigger and crash harder?
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And other people don't realize that with simple crop rotation the same results as industrial fertilization can be achieved. In fact a US university has had a running crop rotation experiment going for over 100 years that has demonstrated yields equivalent to industrial farming.
You may not realize it but the only reason we have to use fertilizers is farmers don't rotate crops anymore. We could re-institute crop rotation with little impact to food production and eliminate the use of fertilizers.
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"If the entire population of the world went vegan, we'd survive for about a decade."
Nonsense. If the world went vegan, we'd be able to use far less land to feed the same number of people, because we wouldn't be feeding crops to farm animals. Less than 30% of the crops we feed to farm animals is returned to us as an edible product; 60-95% of what we feed them is burned off as calories or turned into inedible or undesirable bodyparts like bone.
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That's not quite true. The vast majority of the world's livestock farms aren't on land that's suitable for arable farming. Furthermore, without the livestock farms you are wholly dependant on petrochemical-derived fertilisers and human waste for farming - but it turns out that to make human waste from sewage plants safe to use as fertiliser, you need lots of petrochemicals. Oops.
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"The vast majority of the world's livestock farms aren't on land that's suitable for arable farming."
Perhaps that's true if you count the number of individual farms, but definitely not if you count the animals involved. Most farm animals today are NOT fed on grass and bush that's growing on land that is unsuitable for human-edible crops. Most are in big industrial farms and fed on corn and soy and other grains.
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"but arable farming uses an unholy amount of petrochemicals. "
Begging the question of what is a "holy" amount of petrochemicals....
Population size (Score:3, Informative)
Population size makes a big difference. It wasn't until around 1800 that the population of the Earth was close to 1 billion. We're now adding that many people in less than 20 years but we are NOT adding enough land to take care of that increase.
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Of course rather than burning algae we could eat it. Specially breed and genetically modified algae of the larger varieties, with stem, leaves and storage pods. Algae modified to imitate other food sources, fruit, vegetables, dairy, meat, carbohydrates and sugars, designed to be eaten raw or processed, and all designed with low allergen rates. It can all be done pretty closed cycle apart from nutrient and energy inputs, with the only output being safe, edible and low harm foods, all with the least possible
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Not to mention there are as many people in the US now as there were people 1000 years ago, and as many people in England (not the whole UK, just England) as there were people 2000 years ago.
Re:People don't realise this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Going vegan would actually decrease the amount of land needed, since it's more efficient to just make wheat/corn, instead of making wheat/corn and then (inefficiently) converting it to steak.
You're really not getting this. Cows don't eat corn, they eat grass. This is why in most of the world, cows are fed on grass or grass-like feed (hay, silage etc) with relatively small amounts of things like oats and wheat. Over here, we make a lot of use of "draff" which is spent distillery mash - malt that's been boiled up for the sugar to be used in brewing. The other important thing that you're missing is that a lot of the "undesirable" stuff that your cow food gets turned into is actually cow *shit*. You let this compost for a while (it helps to mix it with straw and burn it, but that smells awful) and yay, free fertiliser *without* petrochemicals. All this stuff about livestock farming "using up all the water" is just nonsense - cows don't magically make mass disappear. They are not nuclear reactors. They drink water - quite a lot of water - and either pee it out (yay, nitrogen compounds, just what nitrate-poor grassland needs) or sweat it out (okay, water vapour is the most significant greenhouse gas, I'll give you that). Either way nothing is lost for the water cycle. Eventually more fresh water just falls from the sky. Oh, here comes some now!
Even better than cows are sheep, which can eat tough heathery plants and tough grasses that not much else can eat. We hardly have to feed sheep at all over the winter (maybe a little bit of draff mixed with shredded sugar beet - yes, technically something you could feed humans. You get enough sugar already, fatso). The good bit about that is you can make use of farmland that isn't really suitable for arable farming. Go and have a look at pretty much any country that has hills (ie. not rolling cornfields like the middle states of the US), and work out how you're going to plant it.
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Until this decade one of the major problems with diesel engines is the perception that they were "dirty" compared to a gasoline engine. You could see the exhaust easier, so despite the fact that diesels put out less greenhouse gases than gasoline engines they appeared to be "bad for the environment".
That's funny because truth matched perception. Who'd have thought that? As it turns out, there's a good case for the particulate matter, nitrous oxides, etc, stuff that diesel engines produce a bunch of today, to be pollutants. There isn't a good case for "greenhouse" gasses being pollutants.