On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 10:06:05AM -0400, Appal Energy wrote: > >One thing that's not entirely clear to me is > >argument of biofuel not increasing amount of > >carbon in environment whereas fossil fuels do so. > > Nothing "tricky" about the issue at all Rafal. > > Carbon dioxide of plant origin returns to the plants with each growing > cycle. This is called "carbon neutral." > > Carbon dioxide of fossil fuel origin is not recycled annually, as it > takes millions of years for coal, natural gas and petroleum to > regenerate. Therefore it's considered to be "carbon positive ."
That's why I mentioned about assumption of fossil carbon included or not in circulating carbon share. > There are arguments that plant-based fuels aren't entirely carbon > neutral due to the fossil fuels that go into their production at > different steps in the process. However, they remain considerably more > carbon negative than fossil fuels. True, agreed. > Your "trickiness" as you call it is really more of a "blind" rather than > anything perplexing, revolving around gross carbon dioxide outputs. Yes, > essentially the same amount of carbon dioxide is produced annually, no > matter if the sources are plant-based or of fossil origin. However, > global CO2 levels essentially plateau after one year's use of > plant-based fuels, while they continue to rise under a regimen of fossil > fuel use. I meant "trickiness" rather as the kind of question raised in some talks and debates I've heard. It was the argument as to why plant-based fuels are not so good for warming environment because of emission they introduce anyway. It was a bit like playing with facts to avoid those less comfortable for the speaker. Thank you! -- cheers, Rafal Szczesniak **mir[at]diament.ists.pwr.wroc.pl Samba Team member mi***[at]samba.org +---------------------------------------------------------+ *BSD, GNU/Linux and Samba http://www.samba.org +---------------------------------------------------------+ _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
