One Biofuel Fails, Researcher Says

I agree with this observation and Malaysia is a good example of it. Malaysia removed its natural forest where many endangered species of animals lived and in place of age old forest now they have these palm trees and forest fires. Perhaps they will face many other calamities also due to change in climate.

It is already very hot in India and soon snow will be melting from Hills of Himalayan. A Flash flood can eat away entire Pakistan if something like that triggers. Disasters in the waiting at many places on the earth.

So very true! I visited Malaysia last year and four things struck me! First as you fly over malaya to KL airport all there is palm plantations - nothing else, except houses and palm trees. thenflying across to Sibu in Borneo the wate suddenly changes to brown, the colour of Australian rivers...which is a story in itself... miles out from land. then youcan see the destroyed rainforest and teh mud pouring into the ocean when you get to land. Then travelling up the River from Sibu we came to a town that was 20 - 25 metres above the river level, which appeared to be at its 'normal' height, their was an old fort their with flood markers recording levels. up until the 1980's teh worst loods were around two feet up the wall, just below floor level. then in the 1990's and 2000's they jump two whole stories! what was worse was the river must have been over 5 miles across at those heights at the narrow points!

The 'problem' was 100% due to logging. All owned by one ethnic chinese family...the locals were 'moved on' without compensation.

All symptoms of the real problem... poor governance.

Palm oil would be fine fuel in warmer climates its pointless if you do more damage making it than mining mineral oil though..... all really a matter of good governance

You think Palm oil is OK but do not know the real story behind it.

USA was the biggest importer of Malaysia palm oil and in 1988 USA decided to defame Malaysian palm oil so story was planted in newspapers that Malaysian palm oil has high cholesterol. People stopped buying it and they did not know where to go with ship loaded with palm oil.

India was never a user of palm oil but government of India took all their oil half way way going back to Malaysia. Indian government issued this oil to poor at low price. India did not have money to pay to Malaysia so they offered their train wagons to Malaysia. Indian train wagons were not like Singapore metro so they dislike these but had no option but to take them.

So finally Palm oil became Indian rail wagons in Malaysia.

I think Malaysia is a good country and only they should stop copying Singapore buildings and culture. Other than KL there is hardly anything on their map worth talking about. I went by road in a Volvo car from Singapore and at the boarder crossing Malaysians were tearing the passport of Singaporean entering their country. Yes, there is lot of stress in the zone and we have seen it in Indonesia. Singapore feared this all the time with 50% Chinese population and 40% Malay population and 10% Tamil population.

I just hope people do right thing now and care for their country for millions of years and not just immediate needs. I care for earth as one identity and love people of the entire earth. You all are my true brothers and sisters right down to my heart. I will say that we all should care for our motherlands.

Shyam!

If you think that a story planted in a newspaper in the USA about the high colestorol of palm oil would stop americans from buying it, you have not seen the lines at our fast food resturaunts. They had to make trigycerides illegal to make people stop consuming them. Whater ever the reason for the USA not buying malysian palm oil, it was NOT the cholestorol story.

It is not the people but the government takes the decision to stop entry of any good and the department of customs is used for it. Cholesterol was the excuse story to negate the purchase of Malaysian palm oil. WMD is an excuse story for the Iraq war. I am not sure what was for Vietnam war. Some story will be planted for Iran also if Government thinks to act a firecracker game there.

I am sure people of America are not interested in any such games but Governments show power in this way as you make some people feel they are supper power men. Irrespective of the country this behaviour in people can be seen at many places on the earth.

Again I think the previous point was correct, our customs do not stop entry for high cholesterol. This is false. If customs stopped entry, there was another issue. More commonly there is a diplomatic dispute over the environment, human rights or oil, or there is a substantial direct listed toxic health hazard such as organochloride pesticide residue or residue of some other product illegal in US markets (or they were smuggling heroine, something like the columbians do with cocaine in their coffee). I would suspect the malaysian company was speculating on a product market, and this did not develop. As I recall the story, there was a huge speculation in southeast asia, every con artist business man out there, cheap labor and cheap land is good to destroy while speculating a market for a product. Obviously, it would need to be very cheap since the US currently produces at a much higher agricultural capacity then it needs for current demands for plant oils and ethanol, because of internal market pricing and USDA policies much gets wasted. USDA subsidizes our market prices to keep production capabilities up, but pay more than foreign growers cost to grow, mostly because our pay scale for labor is so much higher and unlike southeast asia, child labor for a wage of $0.25 a week for a whole family is strongly frowned on here (unlike with textiles, where it is a dirty little hidden secret in New York City). I would conceed however, that it was probably americans, dutch, or english speculators who were speculating on a US market for the product hoping to get rich by destroying the environment in a country where this was allowable and rip off american businesses here by undercutting the market. Maybe the US should close its borders off to trade with 3rd world nations like india and east asia that would resolve the unfair labor practices and trade issue, and eliminate much of the lack of health and safety QA/QC. Note the biggest distributors of amphetamines for meth production were Indian facilities of european chemical companies. Plus closing borders would mean the greens would really have to start understanding where their food, clothing, electronics and fuel actually comes from and how much it cost to produce. Plus think of all the money the US would save if we let Pakistan and Indian and China destroy each other, let the british and iranians do their thing, the arabs and israelis, all of eastern europe The only country that should be open to trade and US subsidization should be Mexico, since it is what we make it every day. To be thorough, maybe we could close all immigration too (since this is just another product of a foriegn country imported to undercut US markets that is of very little value in their homeland), except to mexicans and maybe canadians of course. 7 million computer engineers and no computers, lol, what is the plan there.

I just happens to be in USA at that period and was on United Nations Program in Dominican Republic. As this thing came out in open and was talk every where and then governments were involved.

Imagine if India Government has to buy something that its people never tried before. We never used Palm Oil in India and our population uses whatever they produce locally. This means only Kerala State will use coconut oil and not the rest of the India and this is so for each small part and food is more like like zone food.

It is only after great efforts, people used refined veg oils and those produced it contaminated the oil with pig fat. People finally rejected and only few use such oil. Maximum population uses what they can see as pure one. In cities it is impossible so cities use all type of dirty things. Palm oil came as a surprise to all and I took 1L of it to know what it was and there after never used again.

If you think USA will not use its laws dynamically then look at various measures taken at times. No one will go from government to each customs but law or virtual law is made and enforced only a phone call away to the top authorities. I am not talking about a business of a person but that of a country which goes through many meetings with governments and agreements only to fail at times. In this case it was more than dumping duty I suppose but I may be wrong. I will never know every thing than what comes out in the news. That may be one reason, news are planted for people to get some idea the way government wants and things behind may differ all together. So you are right.

"All symptoms of the real problem... poor governance."

Some might suggest the real problem is greed.

Dear All, The comments on the palm oil derivatives for use as a biofuel is really an eye opener but not conclusive.

Really thinking from the view point of global warming and the benefits of derived biofuel, we have to make a comprehensive study on the comparisons between deforestation effects and global warming effects and then conclude. I hope these issues are well thought of and facts documetned so that no country or region in the world makes any kind of kick-off for biofuel applications.

Biofuel from oil palm.... It becomes clear that growing crops for fuel simply is not an efficient way to go, as shown for bioethanol (sugar cane) by Cornell University in Brazil and USA over 20 years of research. The current investment/subsidies and plans for biofuels both uneconomical and impractical. In the meantime a whole industry (lobby + farmers + factories + endless cohorts of well paid consultants/lawyers + government institutions) has developed which will push this nonsense ad-infinitum. Next: Catching catch cow-farts with butterfly nets to run our cars? Let us put the (likely hundreds of millions dollars in biofuels? A lot more? I have no idea how much, but big business in USA and Europe) in serious technology: safe nuclear, fusion, maybe cheap and efficient solar.

To replace anything with something Else is never as efficient, economical etc. but with supplies that are running out we eventually may have to settle for second prize.

Safe nuc power may be better if found. but in the mean time we must explore, develop and improve alternative sources.

Extreme care must be taken not to detrimentally disturb nature in the process.

Existing vegetation (natural forests etc) must be preserved. The steady decline can be witnessed on satellite images.

Alwas peopels from the field of forestory say lets keep the natural forest they are pesimists of the technology. Infact man made technologies may result in sum un expectable hazardes as human mind is limitted. I think using bio fuels may result some invironmental impact but comparing to the conventional fuel it is butter.

I think you will find that there is no iminent danger of supplies running out so long as the per barrel price of oil remains over $50, and ideally over 75 dollars. Then all the easily recovered shale oils become a sensible option.

The other issue is _{^CO2 I}If we can grow EXTRA bio fuel feed stocks on land which does not have current forestry then there is merit in it. If we are using corn as a feedstock, that just pushes up the price of corn. The calculation must be made on technical balance of carbon effect, not on the short term greed of governments and landowners etc.

Just like to share with you, a company called Dynamotive Energy Systems ( www.dynamotive.com ) is using heat pyrolysis technology to convert agricultural or forest residue into biofuel named BioOil.

Different from biodiesel or bioethanol, BioOil uses absolutely the Waste as feed, no need for plantation of special tree like palm, therefore causing less, if any, ecological harm.

The answer to global warming is to stop using heat engines of all types. Petroleum powered engines are archaic and at best only 35% efficient. The rest of the petroleum is wasted as heat. With the world's consumption of oil is already at record levels so it only stands to reason the climate will also heat to record levels. We can generate power without generating heat with today's technology. Hydroelectric and wind power generation are two examples. Cold fusion, if it exists, offers a non heat source of power. Environmentalists calculate that by eliminating all gasoline powered autos and devices we could reduce the earth's heat load by 15%. Electric autos with batteries charged by solar, wind, hydroelectric or some new non heat producing technology would end that petroleum fueled heat load and reduce CO and CO2 plus oxides of sulfur, nitrogen and other compounds to zero. Smog would become a thing of the past and perhaps the issue of global warming could be resloved without the politics.