Global warming is spoken in News channels and in big-Industry conferences. I have never heard or seen initiatives taken by countries to control.

A recent study tells that the process is giving back more than four times the energy that it takes to make biodiesel.

A research from the University of Idaho and U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that for every unit of fossil energy needed to produce biodiesel, the return is 4.5 units of energy.
This energy-invest and energy-return ratio is “energy balance.”

Biodiesel made from soybean oil has a high energy balance and the point to be noted is that the main energy source used to grow soybeans is solar.

We should take this into account when considering biodiesel’s greenhouse gas reductions.

Biodiesel is a clean-burning renewable fuel for diesel engines. It improves air quality and creates green-collar jobs.

Regards,
Ted

When will environmentalists realize they’re looking at the wrong issue, and backing the wrong solutions.

Landmark study re-models soot impact in climate change, rivals carbon
US researchers have remodeled soot emissions, concluding that soot is causing nearly 60 percent of the global warming impact of CO2, and because soot has a shorter lifecycle than carbon emissions (that can last for up to 100 years), tackling soot offers a “faster win” against climate change than carbon strategies.
The article, in Nature Geoscience, concluded that previous soot models had not previously accounted for the absorption of reflected sunlight. In possible confirmation of the data, significantly higher soot concentrations are found in the Arctic than Antarctic, and observations in the northern polar region show higher ice-melting rates not previously explained by the carbon emission model of climate change.
“Between 25% and 35% of black carbon in the global atmosphere comes from China and India, emitted from the burning of wood and cow dung in household cooking and through the use of coal to heat homes. Countries in Europe and elsewhere that rely heavily on diesel fuel for transportation also contribute large amounts,” commented nature.com on the sources of soot emissions.
UN Climate Change panelists urge focus on bio-char as climate urgency escalates
In Poland, panelists at the UN Climate Change meeting in Poznan advocated urgent action on climate change mitigation, saying that reductions in SO2 concentrations, which have a cooling effect on the planet although causing acid rain, have unmasked new dangers from black carbon that is trapping heat in the atmosphere and, after falling top the ground, is reducing the reflection of heat by ice and snow. The delegates advocated urgent attention to the potential of biochar as a carbon trapping strategy. Biochar, produced from biomass via a fast pyrolysis process that also yields gas and renewable fuel oils, was profiled last week in the Digest as a carbon-reducing strategy when the renewable carbon-rich substance is buried in the soil.
Today in Biofuels Digest discussion groups: “The agency singles out the use of ‘biochar”.
At LinkedIn:
Arturo Velez, CEO and Founder, Agave Project: “The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification proposes that the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) recognize practical efforts to improve soils’ ability to take up and store carbon as a greenhouse gas abatement technology, and include them in the Clean Development Mechanism, currently the main financing and technology transfer vehicle for climate change mitigation projects involving both developing and developed nations. The agency singles out the use of ‘biochar,’ a form of charcoal used extensively by Amazonian Indian cultures as a soil enhancement for centuries, as one means of doing so.
Researchers find that reducing soot, ozone and HFCs, whle adding biochar, will push back catastrophic climate change by 40 years
In Washington, researchers led by Nobel Laureate Dr. Mario Molina have found that the “dangerous threshold of 2?C warming” can be pushed back 40 years by reducing non-CO2 climate change agents such as black carbon soot, tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons, as well as expanding bio-sequestration through biochar production.
The scientists are reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that a binding legal agreement to cut HFC—the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty—has already delayed climate change by seven to 12 years.
A fast-action strategy presented in the paper is reducing black carbon soot, an aerosol produced largely from the incomplete combustion of diesel fuels and biofuels, and from biomass burning. It is now considered to be the second or third largest contributor to climate change.
Black carbon is responsible for almost 50 percent of the 1.9?C increase in warming of the Arctic since 1890 as well as significant melting of the Himalaya-Tibetan glaciers that feed the major rivers of Asia, providing fresh water to billions of people. Researchers consider black carbon an ideal target for achieving quick mitigation because it only remains in the atmosphere a few days to a few weeks and can be reduced by expanding the use of diesel particulate filters for vehicles and clean-burning or solar cookstoves to replace those burning dung and wood. With indoor air pollution killing 1.6 million people a year, global action to cut soot emissions would reap major benefits for both public health and climate.
Ground level or tropospheric ozone doubles as a major climate forcer and health hazard. It also lowers crop yields. A recent study reported that ozone’s damage to crop yields in 2000 resulted in an economic loss of up to $26 billion annually. It is formed by “ozone precursor” gases such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, methane, and other hydrocarbons, many of which can be reduced by improving the efficiency of industrial combustion processes. Reducing tropospheric ozone by 50 percent could buy another decade’s worth of time for countries to start making substantial cuts in CO2.
Biochar is one of the few promising “carbon-negative” strategies that can drawdown existing concentrations of CO2. The fine-grained charcoal product is a stable form of carbon, produced from pyrolysis, that can be plowed into soil where it remains for hundreds to thousands of years, also serving as a natural fertilizer.
• Bio-char from pyrolysis the fastest route to draw down CO2 to safe levels, say expertsIn Washington, Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, speaking at the Climate Change & Security At Copenhagen conference at Washington, outlines t…
• Landmark study re-models soot impact in climate change, rivals carbonUS researchers have remodeled soot emissions, concluding that soot is causing nearly 60 percent of the global warming impact of CO2, and because soot has a shorter lifecycle than carbon emissions (tha…
• UN Climate Change panelists urge focus on bio-char as climate urgency escalatesIn Poland, panelists at the UN Climate Change meeting in Poznan advocated urgent action on climate change mitigation, saying that reductions in SO2 concentrations, which have a cooling effect on the p…
• Time Magazine, The Independent (UK) profile pyrolysis of biomass into biochar as CO2-reducing strategyPyrolysis and biochar have surfaced as climate change-fighting techniques in separate reports in TIME and The Independent (U.K.). Both articles point to the rich, dark “terra prete” soils found in the…
• Biofuels Digest Special Report on Gasification & Pyrolysis: UN Climate Change Panel and bio-charPanelists at the UN Climate Change meeting in Poznan advocated biochar, produced from biomass via a fast pyrolysis process that also yields gas and renewable fuel oils. According to kirhagen,com, �…
• Today in Biofuels Digest discussion groups: “The agency singles out the use of ‘biochar”.At LinkedIn: Arturo Velez, CEO and Founder, Agave Project: “The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification proposes that the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) …

- from Biofuels Digest