alt.energy.renewable

On Oct 2, 8:27 am, Trygve Lillefosse
wrote:
> On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:50:12 -0000, Fran < ...@ > wrote:
> >On Oct 1, 2:22 am, Some Guy wrote:
> >> Fran wrote:
> >> to the corn that comes into the plant and you sell that by-product back
> >> to the farmer and completely recover the cost of your feedstock. You
> >> then are simply looking at the different plant operating costs to
> >> determine the cost of your ethanol.
> >That sounds plausible, though the problem here is that cattle/
> >livestock for food is itself more energy intensive than agriculture
> >for food. It takes far more water and land and fuel to deliver a gram
> >of protein to a consumer from livestock than from soy or other protein
> >crops, for example. Accordingly, from a nutritional, energy or fossil
> >fuel standpoint, including the offset from animal feed is misguided.
>
> When it comes to pollution, the wery best would be if we all were
> vegetarians.

Exactly ...

> But, assuming that livestock will be raised, to do it
> with less impact on the enviroment is not that bad either.
>

That's true, but ... you can't zero rate the food/other use value
components' contribution to greenhouse and emissions more generally
without distorting the analysis of cost-benefit, unless you can claim
that such practices are compelled because every alternative approach
to meeting humanity's need for food (or some other essential good)
would be as bad.

It's clear that raising food from animals (and producing clothing and
textiles from them) is less efficient in energy/environmental terms
than other approaches based on the raising of crops. So while
nutrient, clothing etc are essentails, producing them by suboptimal
means are not. And if we decide to sporduce them by suboptimal means
for reasons of aesthetics or whatever, then these net extra costs
should be fully accounted in the calculus of benefit.

> Personaly I prefer meat from sheep. They are mostly raised with whats
> called "extensive grazing". Meaning that they mostly just walk around
> and eat grass etc. I assume that the enviromental impact from raising
> sheep in this way does not pollute wery much.
>

There's actually some evidence that feeding them on grains such as
wheat leads to lower GHG emissions. Then of course, they are competing
with food for humans.

Fran

> With cows, it should be mandatory to use the methane from the
> "manure-basement" or whatever it's called. Most milk/cow farmers (At
> least in Norway) just collects the manure and went off the methane
> untill they spread it out at spring-time.

Agreed. But you can't keep cattle indoors, so unless you are going to
force them to expel all of their gases and manure into receptacles at
both ends -- I can't imagine who that could be operationally or even
technically feasible -- let alone humane, you are going to get a lot
of GHG emissions. Also, those large areas of grazing land, if not used
by grazing animals, could be returned to to open savanna, or forest,
forming greater carbon sinks. That opportunity cost has to be
accounted for too. Then there's the cost of irrigation (power and
water) and run off if you fertilise.

A large part of the land in the US that is set aside for "food" is
actually land used to raise food for livestock. If this land were
substantially returned to the commons with only that portion required
to produce the proteins, carbohydrates, HDLs and micronutrients
essential to feed the populace retained, the balance would be in
favour of us humans and our biosphere.

Fran