Word: lande
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...climate than the fossil fuels they're meant to supplement. According to researchers at Princeton University and the Nature Conservancy, almost all the biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels, if the full environmental cost of producing them is factored in. As virgin land is converted for growing biofuels, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere; at the same time, biofuel crops themselves are much less effective at absorbing carbon than the natural forests or grasslands they may be replacing. "When land is converted from natural ecosystems it releases carbon," says Joseph Fargione, a lead author...
Many environmentalists have been making the case against biofuels for some time, arguing that biofuel production takes valuable agricultural land away from food, driving up the price of staple crops like corn. But the Science papers make a more sweeping argument. In their paper, Fargione's team calculated the "carbon debt" created by raising biofuel crops - the amount of carbon released in the process of converting natural landscapes into cropland. They found that corn ethanol produced in the U.S. had a carbon debt of 93 years, meaning it would take nearly a century for ethanol, which does produce fewer greenhouse...
Worse, as demand for biofuels go up - the European Union alone targets 5.75% of all its transport fuel to come from biofuel by the end of the year - the price of crops rises. That in turn encourages farmers to clear virgin land and plant more crops, releasing even more carbon in a vicious cycle. For instance, as the U.S. uses more biodiesel, much of which is made from soybeans or palm oil, farmers in Brazil or Indonesia will clear more land to raise soybeans to replace those used for fuel. "When we ask the world's farmers to feed...
...relying on them. But even Fargione doesn't argue that we should ditch biofuels altogether. Biofuels using waste matter - like wood chips, or the leftover sections of corn stalks - or from perennial plants like switchgrass, effectively amount to free fuel, because they don't require clearing additional land. "There's no carbon debt," notes Fargione. Unfortunately, the technology for yielding fuel from those sources - like cellulosic biofuels - is still in its infancy, though it is improving fast. In the end, the right kind of biofuel won't be a silver bullet, but just one more tool in the growing arsenal...
...colorful two-tiered wooden pagoda atop a stone base in the heart of the nation's capital, was reportedly set ablaze by a disgruntled elderly former fortune teller, Chae Jong Gi, who told the authorities who arrested him late Monday that the government had short-changed him in a land compensation deal...