I'm pretty ignorant about biofuels although I can say with complete certainty that they are bad. Always! I don't need to have researched it to know any better, but I, and I am sure anyone here, can see I am not alone.
Okay, now kids, keep your eye on the claim:
No, it doesn't. Sugar cane can only be grown a few seasons on the poor soil, then it's slash and burn more forest to clear way for new sugar cane fuels. Once you start dumping fertilizer on fields to grow sugar cane you've lost the energy battle.
Aha! A counterclaim. A very clear and unambiguous one. It is this:
Brazil does not have a sustainable biofuel economy because it can only create enough biofuels by eradicating areas of forest that cannot be replenished. If true this disproves the claim that Brazil has a sustainable biofuel economy. Can WildCat's argument hold?
Well, apparently Brazil's sugarcane biofuels are NOT grown in the Amazon and instead on sustainable land. This is a bit of a body blow but WildCat strikes back with an argument from incredulity(1), and a quick special plead(2):
Sorry, I'm extremely skeptical of the claims of the Brazilian government. These are the same people who can't even stop illegal logging - and it's pretty damned impossible to have illegal logging unless lots of government officials are paid to look the other way.(1)
At any rate, Brazil can only meet its needs with sugar cane now because the country is poor and few people have cars. If they finally do become more prosperous (and Brazil was going to be "the next big thing" for 50 years now) they'll have to import oil.(2)
Sure, Brazil
claims to have cracked down on slave labor, slash and burn, and deforestation, we shall see.
But Zap! WildCat's refusal to believe the Brazilian government turns out to be a red herring as the source of the evidence given wasn't the Brazilian government. So, WildCat strikes again with an Almighty Distractor!(3)
The reality is that Brazil
can't even stop illegal logging.(3)
That should be a simple thing to solve, after all you can't hide a 40' log in a modified gas tank to smuggle it out, or build illegal logging roads without anyone noticing, or moving all the necessary massive equipment around in secret.
Illegal logging happens because the government officials tasked with stopping it are being paid off. And when the government is shown to be corrupt on this scale, well I'm certainly not going to accept their data at face value.
But Spin0's having none of it as he reminds WildCat of his earlier claim (in bold originally). So WildCat makes another attempt with a sneaky quotemine about an entirely different country. (4)
"Growing sugar cane has long been recognized as a threat to primary forest. Once the soil is exhausted, growers move on to exploit a new piece of land. Slash and burn agriculture can damage irreversibly the jungle’s capacity to renew itself."
http://www.un.org/webcast/864.pdf(4)
But dammit! Someone's spotted that WildCat has been bluffing and hoped that no one would figure out it wasn't about Brazil at all! There's only one thing for it. WildCat is going to pretend that Brazil is entirely irrelevant in the first place. (5)
Are you claiming that slash and burn in Panama is different somehow than slash and burn in Brazil?
(5)
It's the same everywhere you burn down rain forest to plant crops. Rain forest soils are poor, at best you get just a few seasons of crops.
And even growing sugar cane in the non-rain forest areas creates environmental problems.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/09/tsao-20120924.html
And as far as Brazil's laws and corruption goes:
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0821-cerrado.html#1grL6AR772cofH5x.99
You can have all the laws you want, but unless they're actually enforced they're meaningless.
But D'oh! Again WildCat's flailings and prevarications have been noticed. This would certainly ruin reputations for honest arguing in others, but fortunately WildCat still has one trick up his sleeve. Make a brazen attempt to pretend that biofuels was irrelevant to the discussion(7) and a nice cheap attempt at ridicule into the bargain(8).
"In 2004 it was estimated that, in Brazil alone, 500,000 small farmers were each clearing an average of one hectare of forest per year. The technique is not sustainable beyond a certain population density because, without the trees, the soil quality soon becomes too poor to support crops. The farmers have to move on to a virgin forest and repeat the process. Methods such as Inga alley farming have been proposed as an alternative to this ecological destruction.[4]"(7)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn
You know DC, I assume that the person reading my posts has at least a modest amount of knowledge of the subject at hand. You are one of the few people on the planet who is concerned about the environment yet has no clue about how slash and burn farming techniques are destroyiong rain forests, especially in Brazil.
I half expect you to next demand evidence that the country of Brazil even exists.(8)
Ho ho! I love that one about claiming that Brazil exists. Unfortunately, while his opponents steadfastly refuse to fall into that trap, they still persist with their boring insistence that WildCat has spectactularly failed to support his own claim above. And so, with a final flourish, WildCat makes an even more audacious claim that he has a pie chart which proves him right (despite proving him wrong) and links to it.(9) And why not bet the house at this stage, anyway?
But the main reason it happens is because the government is corrupt and the laws on the books don't get enforced in practice.
Even if that's 100% true (and it's not) that the growth is already pushing plantations and cattle ranches into the Amazon rain forest. If you're growing sugar cane in the sustainable areas, that means you're pushing production of other goods (such as cattle) into the rain forest.
And 20-25% of Amazon forest deforestation is due to
agriculture, much of it for biofuels. (9)
Of course, following the link shows no mention of biofuels at all.
Wow!
