Stanford Researcher: Biofuel (ethanol) is bad for you

**Dr.Kamiya** · May 5th, 2007 03:23 AM

(hopefully not a repost, mods please delete if it is)

Fox news alert heh. Interesting stuff, but take this with a grain of salt.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,269886,00.html

From hybrid cars costing far more than they save in the way of fuel economy to Northern latitude forests causing global warming, to mercury-containing compact fluorescent light bulbs potentially turning homes into toxic waste sites, it’s becoming more apparent every day that green-ness is not necessarily what it’s cracked up to be.

Perhaps you have fallen (as did President Bush and the Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005) for the ethanol lobby’s line that ethanol is a “cleaner-burning fuel.”

You may then be quite chagrinned to learn about a new study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology (April 18) from Stanford University atmospheric scientist Mark Z. Jacobson concluding that ethanol poses substantial health risks.

Less than a week later, a study published in Chemistry and Industry, a journal of the Society of the Chemical Industry, reported that biodiesel, another alternative motor vehicle fuel, “could increase rather than reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional diesel.”

According to the media release, researchers compared the emission of greenhouse gases by the two fuels across their overall life cycles from production to combustion in cars.

Though the results showed that biodiesel (derived from rapeseed grown on dedicated farmland) emits nearly the same amount of carbon dioxide as conventional diesel when burned in an engine, growing rapeseed emits significant levels of nitrous oxide (laughing gas), which is 200 to 300 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Unfortunately for the greenhouse gas-crazed European Union, rapeseed-derived biodiesel is the major biofuel used across Europe and was expected to play an important role in helping the EU to meet its greenhouse gas reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. Under a 2003 EU directive, biofuel use is supposed to increase from 2 percent of all transport fuels to 10 percent by 2010.

Oops.

But we ought not be too surprised. It’s part-and-parcel of the folly of eco-panic -- like the ongoing problem with the fuel additive known as MTBE.

While further study of ethanol and biodiesel are needed, the current round of alarming results raises lots of pressing questions that ought to be considered before we take another environmentalist-prodded MTBE-like plunge into The Great Green Unknown.

**Asus700** · May 5th, 2007 11:24 AM

interesting... medyo ot but...

for the most part, the environmentalist cracking down on the use of gasoline and diesel citing environment reasons are pure hogwash.

heck, the rotting trees in the jungles of amazon contributes more to global warming than the combined emissions of all cars in the united states, according to a recent study.

the explosion of mount pinatubo affected the environment around the world for the last 15 years than all the industrial emmissions generated for the last 15 years.

climate has changed for the past thousands of years without man having anything to do with it. there was the ice age, with no vehicle running at the time before it happened.

i beleive in taking care of the environment, its being good stewards of what God has given us. but crude oil has also been given to us by God to be used as it should be.

**CPY61** · May 5th, 2007 01:15 PM

This would be interesting, but like every new technology further studies have to be made to draw consistent and replicable conclusion. But with all things being equal, going green would somehow give us consumers an alternative rather than being wholly dependent on petroleum. (Biofuel can be manufactured in each respective countries, as oppose to OPEC & non-OPEC controlled oil)