U.S. farmers planted 92.9 million acres of corn this spring, a 15 percent-plus jump from last year. If you lumped all that land together -- not too hard to imagine, given that corn ag is highly concentrated in the Midwest -- you'd have a monocropped land mass nearly equal in size to the state of California. [..] ...Growing corn in vast monocultured fields requires heavy doses of synthetic nitrogen, but all of that fertilizer doesn't end up in corn plants. A good bit of it washes into streams which feed into the Mississippi River, then to be carried clear down to the Gulf. In a process known as hypoxia, all of that free nitrogen feeds a giant algae bloom, which ties up oxygen and destroys most life underneath: hence the "Dead Zone." Gulf Dead Zone: Bigger than ever (Gristmill) Gulf dead zone to be biggest ever (BBC)
Couldn't one harvest all of that miserable algae and turn it into biodiesel... or fertilizer? We really should stop growing so much GD corn. So many issues with it.
Agriculture can be performed with improved practices that have a significantly lighter impact on the surrounding environment. This is being done in the Everglades. These farmers have seen similar affects of damage to the Everglade ecosystem and have implemented various means of improving their systems. Farmers there now recycle their irrigation water, apply less quantities or less potent fertilizers and are establishing natural water filtration areas so that their surface run off is cleansed by strategically placed native vegetation (not unlike a rain garden) in order to remove pollutants and fertilizers from this water before it's returned to the Everglades system. http://www.geocities.com/oxfordcomma/everg...agri/index.html Agriculture is just a pittance of the problem. Residential and commercial areas contaminate most watersheds at a far greater rate than do agricultural areas. People on an individual level have to be educated that their green grass comes at an great expense to our environment.
Well, as an insider to the research world of Environmental Engineering, there is a growing consensus of Environmental Engineering researchers who look at ethanol production as a huge environmental disaster. The amount of nitrogen and phosphorus cycling that is speeding up due to the ramp up in corn production is likely going to compromise many of the freshwater resources in the central US, as well as other water bodies such as Chesepeake bay. Also, the common belief that ethanol is a cleaner fuel than unleaded gasoline may not be true. When Brazil switched to ethanol as its fuel source, its air pollution actually worsened. Here is FoxNews article discussing the research of one scientifically published article, indicating the possibility of an increase in air pollution caused deaths due to ethanol. Bottom line, don't use ethanol if you can avoid it. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266785,00.html
What about cellulosic ethanol? Is that any better for the environment than regular ethanol? I looked on wiki and it seems so only in that it can exist as a byproduct of waste sources. But they did mention that it requires more energy in the manufacturing process. What are your thoughts on this?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SSimon @ Aug 7 2007, 10:23 AM) [snapback]491831[/snapback]</div> It's true that green lawns are a big problem (and many people are unaware of this), and at least for commercial sites and golf clubs, lawns are more heavily fertilized than most agricultural lands. But still, there's a lot more agricultural land out there, and corn is one of the worst crops as far as intensive use of fossil fuels (fertilizer, herbicides, tractor runs). So you can't call it a 'pittance' of the problem. Ignoring alternatives to fossil fuels isn't the answer either. I still think cellulosic ethanol and reduced consumption are two of the biggest ways out of our dilemma. EVs will play a part, and there are merits for biodiesel and butanol, but they will probably only be bit players. Aside from all that, this headline is misleading. Ethanol accounts for maybe 20% of the corn produced. Corn is one of several crops grown in the midwest (cotton is another high-intensive-use one, I've heard). The dead zone by the outlet of the Mississippi has been around for several years (altho it has grown recently), so trying to tie it exclusively to biofuels is just looking for a convenient scapegoat. A bit more realistic than blaming Sudbury pollution on the Prius, but still misleading. Still, I'm going to use my bike as much as possible. And avoid foods high in corn syrup, but that's for different reasons altogether.
Cellulose ethanol holds promise. It doesn't compete with food for feed stock and can be made from a variety of waste materials (orange peels, wood chips, corn stalks, rice chaff, etc....). The trick is developing the proper enzymes to break down the cellulose into sugars that yeasties can work with. The other part is engineering better yeast. These things are being done and there are a handful of modest cellulose facilities in operation. Corn isn't a solution and as we've seen there are several problems environmental as well as economic. However, it's unclear how long it will be before cellulose methods can compete with corn. Given all of the bloody subsidies and handout, it might be a while. OTOH, corn can't possibly meet the goals that are being talked about for biofuels so these other methods have to supplement (actually, corn would have to supplement the others). So we're creating a market for these alternatives (second generation biofuels), theoretically anyways.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tripp @ Aug 7 2007, 07:20 AM) [snapback]491727[/snapback]</div> At least one company is trying just that over here. Results so far seem promising. More info here.
