Could you provide some details that is awfully vague.

Bioethanol Japan in Osaka is a commercially operating cellulosic ethanol plant. Pacific Ethanol in Oregon is modifying their plant in Oregon to use cellulose. At least 6 commercial scale plants are under construction in the US (Chesterfield, Missouri; LaBelle, Florida; Irvine, California; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Arlington, Virginia; Broomfield, Colorado) and scheduled to come on line this year. There is another in Georgia and a few others as well. There are several others in Canada and Europe that are under construction and should come on line in the next year or two.

Biofuel boosters should be pushing hardest to end the current policies. The damage these policies are causing will wreck the brand of all biofuels.

Even future ones that are effective at replacing petroleum.

Who here has argued against targeting any biofuel subsidies away from food crops or away from crops that would require deforestation?
You seem at last to acknowledge that biofuels could be an effective replacement for petroleum. What biofuels do you see as having this potential?

Actually, what we have had from ethanol boosters on this threads is endless hand waving combined with links to non commercial, not ready for prime time, utterly unproven vaporware.

Vaporware doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. As has been pointed out, while none of the plants are currently commercially operational, some are in the process of becoming so, while others are just test sites. That puts it well above the level of vaporware.

US and European biofuel policy is causing deforestation right now, full stop end of story. No amount of hand waving can change that fact.

Sure, lets end deforestation. Lets use prairie grass or water tanks. But that's a change in focus, not a change in policy.

US biofuel policy is causing great economic and ecologic harm right now. Somehow, when faced with all of this information biofuel boosters still push for the continuation of the US biofuel policies that have caused this damage.

I believe that, in this thread at least, they have been pushing new technologies that don't cause that damage. Surely you will agree that biofuel technology that doesn't cause economic or ecologic harm should be allowed to develop.

Biofuel boosters should be pushing hardest to end the current policies. The damage these policies are causing will wreck the brand of all biofuels.

And then what policies will take their place? Do nothing to advance biofuel technologies? Do you have an alternative to the current policies that will allow for continued research and development of biofuels?

Every _current_ technology had multiple places where it could have, and often did, fail. Failure alone isn't enough reason to stop research into a technology, certainly the mere possibility of failure is a terrible reason not to try.

Fair points. But still no reason to support the current US biofuel policy including subsidies and mandates.

Biofuel boosters should be pushing hardest to end the current policies. The damage these policies are causing will wreck the brand of all biofuels.

Even future ones that are effective at replacing petroleum.

Perhaps you have missed the dozen or so comments where we have already disproved the need for clearcutting?

Actually, what we have had from ethanol boosters on this threads is endless hand waving combined with links to non commercial, not ready for prime time, utterly unproven vaporware.

US and European biofuel policy is causing deforestation right now, full stop end of story. No amount of hand waving can change that fact.

Neither can the biofuel boosters studied ignorance of the stacks of data that show this to be true.

US biofuel policy is causing great economic and ecologic harm right now. Somehow, when faced with all of this information biofuel boosters still push for the continuation of the US biofuel policies that have caused this damage.

The mind boggles at this callous stubbornness.

What comes out the exhaust pipe is vastly different than what comes out of the plant as it decompsoses. The nature of the former will more directly deliver CO2 to the upper atmosphere, increasing the concentration of Co2 at that altitdude.

Oh? We have different varieties of CO2 now?

Add to that the idea that to grow such matter as it needed, we'll be looking at wholesale clearcutting to create more farmland. Do you suppose that's going to change the total CO2 picture?

Perhaps you have missed the dozen or so comments where we have already disproved the need for clearcutting? Or maybe, like the CO2 argument, you just don't care that you're wrong.

We could junk the current program and still fund research into workable alternatives to petroleum.

So far you have been arguing that any technology that isn't currently commercially successful should be junked. By that criteria, we should stop funding fusion research too, even through that holds the most promising long-term energy solution.

As I said before cellulosic ethanol has considerable technical hurdles to overcome. There are abundant places for the process to fail utterly on the path between theoretical feasibility and actual useful production.

Again your criteria seem impossible for all but the current existing technologies. Every new technology has multiple places where it can fail. Every _current_ technology had multiple places where it could have, and often did, fail. Failure alone isn't enough reason to stop research into a technology, certainly the mere possibility of failure is a terrible reason not to try.

You have thusfar argued against the only realistic avenue of creating a proven working alternative.

Mostly because it is neither.
Have you anything else to offer?

You don't get a choice in buying it or not. Either you understand in, or you don't. If you understand it, you know that biofuels don't add new carbon into the atmosphere, like oil and coal do. If you don't understand it, you say stupid things like "biofuels add CO2 to the atmosphere".

Wrong.

What comes out the exhaust pipe is vastly different than what comes out of the plant as it decompsoses. The nature of the former will more directly deliver CO2 to the upper atmosphere, increasing the concentration of Co2 at that altitdude.

Add to that the idea that to grow such matter as it needed, we'll be looking at wholesale clearcutting to create more farmland. Do you suppose that's going to change the total CO2 picture?

Is that really that hard to understand?

As I said before cellulosic ethanol has considerable technical hurdles to overcome. There are abundant places for the process to fail utterly on the path between theoretical feasibility and actual useful production.

The link below gives a good summary of these issues.

The Logistics Problem of Cellulosic Ethanol

The logistics of collecting and storing a million tons of corn stubble each year for an ethanol refinery are mind-numbing.

It would take 67,000 semitrailer loads to haul the baled stubble out of the field. That's 187 truckloads a day, or one every eight minutes. To complicate matters, the need for trucks, machinery and manpower would come during harvest, already the busiest time of the year on the farm. And that's where a massive federal initiative into cellulosic ethanol may find its biggest bottleneck - on the farm.

Even this ignores the fact that in many areas that organic material is needed to rebuild soil nutrients and would not be available as a feedstock.

You said,

A few commercial scale ethanol plants are in operation and more large commercial scale ethanol plants are in construction now. The plants currently in operation use several grasses including switch grass.

Could you provide some details that is awfully vague.

You also said about my posts

You have thusfar argued against the only realistic avenue of creating a proven working alternative.

We could junk the current program and still fund research into workable alternatives to petroleum.

And lets be honest $ 100 / barrel crude provides massive incentives and money for the development of a workable alternative to petroleum products.

To my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong) there is not one single commercial scale plant that is producing ethanol using the feedstock your link talked about.

A few commercial scale ethanol plants are in operation and more large commercial scale ethanol plants are in construction now. The plants currently in operation use several grasses including switch grass. Any cellulosic ethanol plant could use the prairie grasses mentioned in the linked article.
The linked algae article describes a commercial plant coming online. Dave linked video of an operating algae biofuel plant.

Until there is a proven, working alternative...

You have thusfar argued against the only realistic avenue of creating a proven working alternative.

Follow the links I provided and read. The most promising biofuels are native prairie grasses. That is what has traditionally grown there. This natural system would be taken advantage of and "enhanced." It is not the typical strip and replant operation.

I did and what your link described was complete, unmitigated vaporware.

To my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong) there is not one single commercial scale plant that is producing ethanol using the feedstock your link talked about. The yields are estimated and if history is any indication there are numerous technical issues that will make scaling up and commercialization of the process unfeasible.

Yet the ethanol subsidies and mandates remain in place and they are causing enormous, environmental, economic, and social destruction.

Until there is a proven, working alternative we should use the environmentally friendly alternative to biofuels ... oil and natural gas.

The growing is the problem. As soon as you strip out the native range or forest massive amounts of sunk CO2 are released in the atmosphere.

Follow the links I provided and read. The most promising biofuels are native prairie grasses. That is what has traditionally grown there. This natural system would be taken advantage of and "enhanced." It is not the typical strip and replant operation.

Algae as a feedstock is the same story. Both face considerable technical hurdles before they can be commercialized.

Again follow the link and read. Algae biofuel plants have already been built and are coming online.

Might as well end the subsidies because the biofuel that meets that criteria does not exist.

Again this is incorrect, as the links provided showed. There is a lot more out there as well. The argument you are now making was more or less true several years ago. It is no longer true.

Yearling go to feedlot at (ballpark) 800-900 pounds, and are fed to a finished weight of (ballpark) 1200 pounds...Probably closer to 30 percent

In the neighborhood of 40% of that 1200lbs ends up as meat for the consumer. The final several months on the fead lot are about adding muscle and fat rather than bone mass etc. The cows are gaining 300-400 lbs, primarily of meat and fat. The final butchered 1200lb cow yields 450-460lbs of meat.

Shipping costs are already included:-) FOB

In your environmental calculations?

Lets emphasize that last point again, biofuels are worse then fossil fuels from a GHG perspective.

Again, some biofuels are worse then fossil fuels from a GHG perspective. Others are far better.
That some biofuel practices do more environmental harm than good is not an argument to stop biofuel production. It is an argument to target practices that have a net positive yield such as the types I have mentioned.

In Indonesia, the forests will be cut down and habitat destroyed unless it is made more economically viable for the people to preserve that environment than to destroy it. If the trees are removed for chopsticks or palm oil the end result is the same for the habitat. Even when the habitat is officially preserved that preservation is often only on paper.

Using oil-fueled tractors, or clearing CO2 scrubbing forests is bad for the environment, yes, you're right about that.

But that is an implementation problem, which can be resolved, and is being resolved.

(bold emphasis is mine)

Could we agree that the politicians should have had the implementation issues worked out before they mandated the use of biofuels?

I am certain that permanent environmental destruction is going to be done long before the implementation issues are resolved.

The only question is how much damage and how bad it will be.

Why are biofuels fueling deforestation?

the scientific community is deeply concerned by a proposal by the Indonesian government to turn vast areas of Borneo’s remote and biodiverse rainforests into oil-palm plantations. The proposed expanse of monoculture threatens to obliterate the region’s legendary biodiversity