Some Biofuels Doing More Harm Than Good

A scientific paper in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. We are killing people to stop 'global warming.' Sadly, this comes as no surprise. Using foodstuffs as fuel is a bad idea because it drives food prices up and is not "energy dense."

ABSTRACT 

Higher global demand for biofuels, driven mainly by policies in 

industrialized countries with the stated purpose of enhancing 

energy independence and retarding climate change, has 

contributed to rising global food prices. As a consequence, more 

people in developing countries suffer from both chronic hunger 

and absol ute poverty. Hunger and poverty are major 

contributors to death and disease in poorer countries. Results 

derived from World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO) 

studies suggest that for every million people living in absolute 

poverty in developing countries, there are annually at least 5,270 

deaths and 183,000 Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) lost to 

disease. Combining these estimates with estimates of the 

increase in poverty owing to growth in biofuels production over 

2004 levels leads to the conclusion that additional biofuel 

production may have resulted in at least 192,000 excess deaths 

and 6.7 million additional lost DALYs in 2010. These exceed 

WHO’s estimated annual toll of 141,000 deaths and 5.4 million 

lost DALYs attributable to global warming. Thus, policies 

intended to mitigate global warming may actually have 

increased death and disease in developing countries.countries. 

Since hunger and poverty are major contributors to 

death and disease around the world, it is, therefore, 

conceivable that the higher demand for biofuels could add to the 

global burden of death and disease.

If that were the case, it would, ironically, militate against one of 

the reasons offered to encourage biofuel production, namely, to 

reduce the health effects of global warming, particularly in devel- 

oping countries. It would also reduce the perceived net benefits 

of policies designed to encourage biofuel production, whether 

they are instituted to reduce global warming or enhance energy 

security. 

Cellulosic ethanol (i.e., ethanol not made from foodstuffs) is a better idea than corn ethanol not just because it is not made from foodstuffs but because it is somewhat more energy dense than ethanol made from corn.

Currently, earth's temperatures are level to falling. There is no global warming emergency at the present time. As I have written on multiple occasions, we should know whether global warming is a serious problem in another 2-4 years. Regardless of whether GW is serious, a non-problem, or something in between, it is past time to reverse some of these counterproductive global warming "cures."

Hat tip: WattsUpWithThat