What with fuel prices reaching higher altitudes, Boeing has become a fan of the Algal Biomass Organization. Hmmm, where could someone get thier hands on a seemingly endless supply of algae...

Photo Credit: 'earball's' Olympia photo set on Flickr.

Lots of folks have decided to drive cars powered by biofuels, feeling good about the switch from fossil fuels and hoping the biofuel decision is an ethical and effective response to global warming, but the science is starting to accumulate indicating that biofuels are not an effective answer.

I know this may not be what a lot of people want to hear. And it's no doubt true that if you simply measure the gases at the tailpipe, it would appear that biofuels are cleaner than fossil fuels, but once you start measuring the complete environmental picture of biofuels, it turns out that biofuels are simply not green. I don't believe that ethanol, biodiesel and the other internal combustion options for loco-motion have any real merit.

The NYT carries a story today here that covers two papers recently published in the journal Science that includes the following:

Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they discovered that, taken globally, the production of almost all biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.

“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.”

If you want to read the articles themselves, not dumbed down through the NYT, you can go to the journal Science online here.