When the Black Warrior River in Alabama got covered with an oily, fetid substance, the source of the pollution was traced to the Alabama Biodiesel Corporation plant, the state’s biodiesel plant, a refinery turning soybean oil into earth-friendly fuel. The spills, resembling Italian salad dressing, were 450 times higher than permit levels allow and are similar to others that have come from biofuel plants in the Midwest.

According to the National Biodiesel Board, a trade group, biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable and suitable for sensitive environments, but scientists say that position understates its potential environmental impact: As with most organic materials, oil and glycerin deplete the oxygen content of water very quickly, and that will suffocate fish and other organisms. And for birds, a vegetable oil spill is just as deadly as a crude oil spill.

Proof of the matter: in the summer of 2006, a Cargill biodiesel plant in Iowa Falls improperly disposed of 135,000 gallons of liquid oil and grease, which ran into a stream killing hundreds of fish.

Iowa leads the US’s biofuel production, with 42 ethanol and biodiesel refineries in production and 18 more plants under construction. The US biodiesel plants doubled in numbers over the span of a year: from 90 plants in 2006 to 160 plants in 2007. (Full)

To put things into perspective:
The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster off the coast of Alaska spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil. If one biodiesel plant – like the Iowa Falls plant – is able to dispose 135,000 gallons of waste, the current US biofuel plants have a “capacity” to release 21,600,000 gallons, having potentially at least twice the impact of the Exxon Valdez disaster. On a repetitive basis…
The potential impact: The Exxon Valdez spill covered 11,000 square miles (28,000 km²) of ocean, killing an estimate of 250,000-500,000 seabirds. Almost twenty years later, 26,000 gallons of crude oil remain in the sandy soil of the contaminated Alaska shoreline, declining at a rate of less than 4% per year. (Source)

Without proper legislation regulating the pollution caused by the biofuel plants, biofuel will do more harm than good.

More posts on The Road about biofuel, pollution, global warming and the environment.

Thanks to Elizabeth for the link.
Pictures courtesy Nelson Brooke (New York Times) and our-energy.com

Last year, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies.

For the first time, “Global Warming” was no longer the “Inconvenient Truth”. It became “The Mainstream Truth”.

And forgive me, but when something becomes mainstream, and certainly when “Green goes Commercial” and “carbon credits” become one of the most profitable investments (covered amongst others in this post), I just *have* to question it, even if the Non-Global-Warmers are all accused of being paid by bad-bad-baaad companies, I want to listen to their arguments.

Sooo, for the sake of “listening to the other side”, eat this:
Lawrence Solomon published “The Deniers”, a book listing “The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so”.

Here are some leading “deniers”:

Dr. Edward Wegman – former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences demolishes the famous “hockey stick” graph that launched the global warming panic. Dr. David Bromwich – president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology – says “it’s hard to see a global-warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now.” Prof. Paul Reiter – Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute – says “no major scientist with any long record in this field” accepts Al Gore’s claim that global warming spreads mosquito-borne diseases. Prof. Hendrik Tennekes – director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute – states “there exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies” used for global warming forecasts. Dr. Christopher Landsea – past chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones – says “there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity.” Dr. Antonino Zichichi – one of the world’s foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society, who discovered nuclear antimatter – calls global warming models “incoherent and invalid.” Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski – world-renowned expert on the ancient ice cores used in climate research – says the U.N. “based its global-warming hypothesis on arbitrary assumptions and these assumptions, it is now clear, are false.” Prof. Freeman Dyson – one of the world’s most eminent physicists says the models used to justify global-warming alarmism are “full of fudge factors” and “do not begin to describe the real world.” (Full)

Interested in global warming? Check out my other posts about global warming or environment issues.

Cartoon courtesy The Blue State and Cagle Cartoons. Picture courtesy Whittier College.

In less than 10 years, the price for a barrel of crude oil went from less than US$20 to almost US$100. Soaring fossil fuel prices, and the push for non-fossil fuel -either out of environmental concerns, or to create less dependency on foreign oil- had many governments stimulate farmers to switch from food crops to biofuel crops. As if they really had to stimulate farmers: the growing demand made biofuel a real profitable cash crop.

While we are not at a stage where we declare a full fledged worldwide food shortage, we might not be far off. According to a report, co-written by the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD), even without demand for the “green” fuel, recent falls in output – due to drought and low stocks – will keep food prices high. The study predicts prices will rise by between 20% and 50% by 2016. (Full post). Good enough to have the Executive Director from the UN World Food Programme state: “(… food) price increases bring some benefits for farmers, but for the world’s most vulnerable, food is simply being priced our of their reach. And for WFP, it means that we
can procure far less food for the same amount of funding than just a few months ago.

For more reading, have a look at: “An Agricultural Crime Against Humanity”
For updated humanitarian news, check out The Other World News
Crop picture courtesy SuperStock UK

When the Akademik Fedorov, our Russian pick-up vessel (the largest in the Antarctic by the way!) arrived at the island three days ago, the sky was covered. After they landed their big Mil-8 helicopter near our expedition camp, we loaded it up as much as we could, but the mist came in from above the sea and in minutes. The visibility turned real bad. So bad that the pilot had to fly on radar trying to find the ship back. The evacuation was aborted then. Three days we are now waiting to get off the Antarctic. On the ship, a few miles off shore, hot showers and proper meals are waiting for us. But it could just as well have been thousands of miles away, so un-obtainable it seems to us.

And each day we wake up, we hope for the fog to clear up, but it does not. Luckily it does not storm anymore. For weeks on end, we have been fighting against the storm, the snow, the cold, and now, everything seems quiet outside. Dead quiet. Since we landed here, the only sign of life we have seen is a few birds which seem to nest at the bottom of the glacier, hundreds of meters below our camp. The only connection to the ‘other side’ of the world, the ship, we have, is our radio.

Willy’s voice comes crackling through the speaker. “Peter I, this is Fedorov, over”. Ralph takes the microphone, and answers the call. “Sorry, still no chance for helicopter flights”, says Willy.. Martin and him are the only two from our crew of nine who got onto the one and only flight we had to the ship. Three days ago. Three days. We are bored. After the excitement of landing on the island, building up the camp, setting up the radio stations, and in two weeks, breaking the world record – we made 62,000 radio contacts from this island, 10,000 more than the previous record- and the excitement of the first sight of the Fedorov, our pickup vessel, we have nothing to do anymore, but to wait. Wait for the weather to clear up. Reading a bit, making coffee, eating some of our survival rations, sleeping, reading, eating,… We can not do much else. But to look at the grey sky of course.

In the afternoon, as by miracle, we start to see a faint sun through the clouds. The cloud cover becomes patchy. Would there be a chance? Willy calls us on the radio saying they will give it a go. As if we were bitten by a snake, everyone jumps up, and gets dressed. Indeed the clouds are breaking up. At times we can even see the sea. Somewhere the ship is there.
Half an hour later, we hear the roaring noise from the big helicopter. We fire up a smoke signal, and turning the low hanging clouds into orange. The pilot spots the signal and very slowly descends, touching down onto the snow. As by magic, the clouds disappear. While the pilot keeps the turbine generators running, the back doors open up, and the heli crew jumps out. They make signs we have to hurry. We drag boxes, crates, bags towards the helicopter, and stuff as much gear as we can into the haul. Half an hour later, they lift off.

We take a break, hoping the weather stays clear. And it does. In no time, the gray-orange helicopter hovers above our camp again, approaching our landing site. Again we drag all we can, as fast as we can to the helicopter. Some stuff is too heavy to carry, so we drag it over the snow, pushing and pulling with all the weight we have, with all the force we can handle. If we don’t make use of this break in the weather, god knows when the next opening would come.

And we have plenty of gear. Tons of it. Masts, tents, antennas, boxes of radio equipment, personal stuff, left-over food rations, heaters, fuel barrels, gas bottles, generators, tools. All of it is carried, dragged, to the helicopter.
Three hours and several flights later, there is nothing left, but two tents and a survival kit. Now is the critical moment. If we take down our last two tents, we have no more shelter. If a storm comes up, we will have real difficulties to set it up in the wind. Would almost be impossible to put the huge heavy-insulated covers over the metal frames. Ralph, our expedition leader, looks at the sky. “Let’s do it. Let’s break it up”, he shouts. Like animals we ‘attack’ the shelters. In no time, the covers, frames, wooden floors are all dismantled and stacked up, bagged and tied.

The last helicopter flight comes in. We stack all material in it. The last things to go are the white trash bags, with our human waste. We promised the Norwegian authorities who gave us the landing permit for this isolated island, we would take everything off. And everything has to go. Even the human waste. The pilot looks at the bags we carry. He opens one of them and looks inside.. With a disgusted face, he says “Njet”, making signs as if we are crazy. We start a discussion. In the end, I shout, trying to lift my voice above the noise of the engine turbines, in my most simple English: “Shit no go, we no go!”.. The pilot smiles, and gives in. We dump the bags of frozen waste into the helicopter, and get on board. The engines rev up and the huge propellers start turning, chopping into the air. With a deafening sound, the huge thing lifts up, and before we know it, we hover several meters above the ground.

Through the small windows, we gaze at our camp site below. There is nothing left to witness our presence on the island. Nothing but our footprints and two square imprints of where our last two shelters stood, soon to be wiped away with the fresh snow. Soon our presence will be covered, erased from this island’s memory.

Is this symbolic to our presence in the world? Is all of it just temporarily setting our footprints on the earth’s surface, and the moment we go, the moment we leave this existence, those prints are wiped away, to be forgotten? We come, think we can conquer it all, but still, all is temporarily… As I look at the pensive faces of my companions, I smile… At least on this ride, we also took our shit with us! Hopefully they will not ask that from us when we go to heaven. And if so, would St.Peter at heaven’s gate have the same look on his face as the pilot? And would we answer the same to him too: “Shit no go, we no go?”

Continue reading The Road to the Horizon’s Ebook, jump to the Reader’s Digest of The Road.

2. A lot of Crap!
Read an article today about the amount of garbage the world produces.. As an example, every day, the US [not trying to pick on the US, but it was the only figure I found!] produces enough non-recycable waste to fill the New Orleans Superdome twice. That is 230 million tons of solid waste per year. The amount of pollution and toxic leaching produced by a landfill receiving 1,000 tons per day of waste is 22,000 lbs. After a landfill closes, it is estimated that emissions could remain constant for as long as 30 years.

3. Let’s launch “Crabs for Crap”!
I think I will run for prime minister, with only one single programme item: I will introduce the use of Clipperton land crabs in the processing of our waste in ‘developed countries’. Think I stand a chance?