For the love of Gaia, now it turns out that blessed biofuels are a “greenhouse threat.” The New York Times reports:
The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.
These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.
The destruction of natural ecosystems ? whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America ? not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces. …
?When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially,? said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. ?Previously there?s been an accounting error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis.?
Meanwhile, some scientists are sounding like Scooby-Doo’s Fred in describing the Sun: It’s quiet … too quiet. Investor’s Business Daily reports:
Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.
Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.
This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.
Tapping reports no change in the sun’s magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.
*beat*
Well, I guess to save the planet from global warming we need to promote biofuels!
