Scientists accuse California Air Resource Board of bias

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Biofuels are once again becoming a hot topic in legislative circles.  After falling off of the radar screen due to a continual onslaught of negative press and scientific reports claiming that biofuels impacted the environment more negatively than fossil fuels, a resurgence of sorts is taking place in the scientific community.  No doubt, feeling a building confidence in the field of second generation biofuel with Energy Secretary Chu at the helm, a group of over 100 of the nations top scientists wrote a letter to governor Schwarzenegger asking him to reign in the California Air Resource Board’s unjustifiable bias concerning the “alleged indirect, price-induced, land conversion effects” of second generation biofuels.

Exactly what they were referring to is similar in nature to the concept that global warming skeptics use to cry foul when computer programs are used to simulate changes that might occur if certain variable are input into the system.  More and more these days, powerful supercomputers are being used simulate possible scenarios and likelihoods of occurrences that the human mind allegedly is incapable of computing.  In the case of biofuels, several factors are considered simultaneously in order to determine the sustainability of the industry as it grows in its commercial applications to reach the 36 billion gallon per year mandate proposed during the Bush Administration.

The factors that are being considered against the biofuel industry include deforestation, malnourishment, global warming, and other changes in normal forestry and agricultural practices.  Critics of the biofuel industry claim that using biomass to produce transportation fuel on a commercial scale will lead to dramatic changes in land use, as well as a surge in deforestation that will occur globally if a biofuel marketplace is established.  They make these claims based upon computer models that take into account all of the steps along the biofuel production train.

In order to meet the 36 billion gallon per year mandate, computer models predict that a considerable amount of conservation land will have to be taken out of ‘retirement’ and brought back into production; in order to grow the plants, an increase in the amount of fertilizer and water will be needed; in order to process the biomass into fuel, copious amounts of energy will be needed in order to power the refining facilities; since no ethanol pipeline is established, more energy will be needed to transport the fuel to marketplace; displacing food crops will result in massive starvation epidemics; finally, since ethanol produces less fuel efficiency in the cars that it is burned in, an increase in the amount of fuel necessary to power America’s automobile fleet will be necessary…or so claim the computer models.

The more than 100 scientists based their objections to the proposed rulemaking procedures for low carbon fuel standards at the California Air Resource Board on two basic principles.  First, the science of computer-modeled scenarios is far too limited and uncertain for regulatory enforcement; and second, the indirect effects are often misunderstood and should not be enforced selectively.

In addressing their first objection, the letter that the more than 100 scientists wrote to governor Schwartzenegger stated bluntly that “the ability to predict these alleged effects depend on using an economic model to predict worldwide carbon effects, and the outcomes are unusually sensitive to the assumptions made by the researchers conducting the model runs”.  Further, the letter stated, “by definition, these models assume zero innovation, which means they could not have predicted the 500% increase in corn yields since 1940, the tripling of wheat yields since 1960, or the 700% increase in yield that can occur if farmers in developing countries adopt higher yield seed varieties and more  efficient farming practices”.  They also stated that “the modeling outcomes are applicable to the set of assumptions used for that particular run, but are not particularly relevant when there is a shift in policy, weather, world economic conditions, or other economic/social/political variables”.

In addressing their second objection, they tried to make the Air Resource Board aware of the arbitrary definition of indirect effects that has set up in the industry.  Biofuels already have a direct carbon effect; they take energy to harvest and produce.  The criticism is that indirect effects tack on another set of carbon prices to arbitrarily inflate the carbon costs of biofuels. “Indirect effects are those that allegedly happen in the marketplace as a result of shifting behaviors.  Penalizing a biofuel gallon for direct AND indirect land use change is the equivalent of ascribing the carbon impact of land converted to produce biofuel feedstock, as well as the land needed to produce another allegedly displaced supply chain.”

For example, “deforestation (which) is currently occurring in places like Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia as a direct result of logging, cattle ranching, and subsistence farming”, will ultimately be...

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Read the full article at:

http://www.examiner.com/x-2903-Energy-Examiner
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