xcel
07-30-2006, 09:44 PM
Enthusiasm for ethanol is in danger of swallowing corn crops, pushing up food prices. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20909-2292638,00.html)
ANJANA AHUJA - TIMES ONLINE - July 30, 2006
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Corn_for_fuel_or_food.jpg
Corn for fuel or food?
PRESIDENT BUSH doesn’t like all that funny foreign stuff. I mean oil, of course. Which is why he signed into law the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It demanded a doubling of the amount of ethanol and biodiesel in the American fuel supply by 2012.
One source of ethanol is corn (another is sugar cane), which, given its evocation of the American plains, could hardly be a more patriotic substitute. “Every time we use a home-grown fuel,” President Bush announced exactly a year ago, “we’re going to be helping our farmers, and at the same time be less dependent on foreign sources of energy.” Another powerful figure also eyed the gold dust in the cornfields: Bill Gates’ investment company poured $84 million (£45 million) into Pacific Ethanol to build a number of plants.
But all that glisters ... Scientists give warning that the enthusiasm for ethanol is in danger of swallowing corn crops, pushing up food prices. An analysis of the biofuels industry in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that all the corn and soybeans in the country would meet only about a tenth of America’s gasoline and diesel needs. While biofuels are seen as environmentally friendly, the growth of the raw materials requires pesticides and fertiliser. The research, led by Jason Hill at the University of Minnesota, also notes that ethanol yields only 25 per cent more energy than that used to produce it (soybeans do better, at 93 per cent).
“There is a great need for renewable energy supplies that do not cause significant environmental harm and do not compete with food supply,” Dr Hill writes.
The price of corn is expected to rise by a quarter this year to $2.45 a bushel (a bushel is about 56lb of shelled corn). One economist has given warning that this will affect the supply of cattle feed, which will have a knock-on effect on meat prices. In addition, there is a worry that the diversion of grain into petrol tanks will cut the amount left over to send to developing countries. Some City watchers, who have noticed a river of money flowing from Manhattan to the Midwest, speculate that the ballooning interest in ethanol stocks is in danger of creating a stock market bubble.
Dr Hill’s report suggests that the biofuels industry should shift its focus to prairie grasses, woody plants and forestry waste.
ETHICAL REVIEW boards are powerful groups within research institutions; without their approval, studies won’t happen. Such boards are usually run in-house, but they are increasingly being outsourced to for-profit companies. The trend has inspired a discussion in the Public Library of Science Medicine (PloS Medicine) about whether the introduction of the profit motive to the setting up of ethical review boards is itself an ethical no-no.
Trudo Lemmens, associate law professor at the University of Toronto, argues that it raises a fundamental conflict of interest, because large amounts of money can flow to institutions that agree, for example, to test a new drug.
Lemmens says: “Because commercial institutional review boards (IRBs) generate their income from clients with a direct financial interest in obtaining approval, they are affected by the very problem they are expected to curtail.” But Ezekiel Emanuel, who heads clinical bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, insists on a dumping of “the outdated ideology of for-profit bad, not-for-profit good”.
BY THE time you read this, I shall be holed up in a damp Somerset beach hut with assorted in-laws and children, very probably attempting to fry sausages in a nano-sized kitchen to the symphony of pelting rain and rattling windows.
Still, there’s a week in France to come. I was tickled to find that the second big journey of my summer odyssey - the Plymouth to Roscoff ferry route - is now of interest to marine scientists as well as to holidaymakers. Marinelife, the marine conservation charity, is to hop aboard Brittany Ferries to monitor whales and dolphins in the English Channel.
Common dolphins and basking sharks are known to frequent the shipping routes, but several at-risk species, such as the bottlenose dolphin and harbor porpoise, have been spotted there intermittently.
The idea is to track “hotspots” where cetaceans hang out, and gauge seasonal movements.
ANJANA AHUJA - TIMES ONLINE - July 30, 2006
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Corn_for_fuel_or_food.jpg
Corn for fuel or food?
PRESIDENT BUSH doesn’t like all that funny foreign stuff. I mean oil, of course. Which is why he signed into law the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It demanded a doubling of the amount of ethanol and biodiesel in the American fuel supply by 2012.
One source of ethanol is corn (another is sugar cane), which, given its evocation of the American plains, could hardly be a more patriotic substitute. “Every time we use a home-grown fuel,” President Bush announced exactly a year ago, “we’re going to be helping our farmers, and at the same time be less dependent on foreign sources of energy.” Another powerful figure also eyed the gold dust in the cornfields: Bill Gates’ investment company poured $84 million (£45 million) into Pacific Ethanol to build a number of plants.
But all that glisters ... Scientists give warning that the enthusiasm for ethanol is in danger of swallowing corn crops, pushing up food prices. An analysis of the biofuels industry in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that all the corn and soybeans in the country would meet only about a tenth of America’s gasoline and diesel needs. While biofuels are seen as environmentally friendly, the growth of the raw materials requires pesticides and fertiliser. The research, led by Jason Hill at the University of Minnesota, also notes that ethanol yields only 25 per cent more energy than that used to produce it (soybeans do better, at 93 per cent).
“There is a great need for renewable energy supplies that do not cause significant environmental harm and do not compete with food supply,” Dr Hill writes.
The price of corn is expected to rise by a quarter this year to $2.45 a bushel (a bushel is about 56lb of shelled corn). One economist has given warning that this will affect the supply of cattle feed, which will have a knock-on effect on meat prices. In addition, there is a worry that the diversion of grain into petrol tanks will cut the amount left over to send to developing countries. Some City watchers, who have noticed a river of money flowing from Manhattan to the Midwest, speculate that the ballooning interest in ethanol stocks is in danger of creating a stock market bubble.
Dr Hill’s report suggests that the biofuels industry should shift its focus to prairie grasses, woody plants and forestry waste.
ETHICAL REVIEW boards are powerful groups within research institutions; without their approval, studies won’t happen. Such boards are usually run in-house, but they are increasingly being outsourced to for-profit companies. The trend has inspired a discussion in the Public Library of Science Medicine (PloS Medicine) about whether the introduction of the profit motive to the setting up of ethical review boards is itself an ethical no-no.
Trudo Lemmens, associate law professor at the University of Toronto, argues that it raises a fundamental conflict of interest, because large amounts of money can flow to institutions that agree, for example, to test a new drug.
Lemmens says: “Because commercial institutional review boards (IRBs) generate their income from clients with a direct financial interest in obtaining approval, they are affected by the very problem they are expected to curtail.” But Ezekiel Emanuel, who heads clinical bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, insists on a dumping of “the outdated ideology of for-profit bad, not-for-profit good”.
BY THE time you read this, I shall be holed up in a damp Somerset beach hut with assorted in-laws and children, very probably attempting to fry sausages in a nano-sized kitchen to the symphony of pelting rain and rattling windows.
Still, there’s a week in France to come. I was tickled to find that the second big journey of my summer odyssey - the Plymouth to Roscoff ferry route - is now of interest to marine scientists as well as to holidaymakers. Marinelife, the marine conservation charity, is to hop aboard Brittany Ferries to monitor whales and dolphins in the English Channel.
Common dolphins and basking sharks are known to frequent the shipping routes, but several at-risk species, such as the bottlenose dolphin and harbor porpoise, have been spotted there intermittently.
The idea is to track “hotspots” where cetaceans hang out, and gauge seasonal movements.