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A comment on The electric car as a talisman of false hope. Parent comment

Re:The electric car as a talisman of false hope by dTal on Friday August 16, 2019 @08:44AM (#20714585)
Biofuel is carbon-neutral because the carbon comes from the atmosphere. It's fine to burn it because its emissions have already been bought and paid for in its creaion. The problem with carbon is digging it up, in an open cycle.

Renewable is a more strict term than carbon-neutral, it's true, but all "renewables" are by definition closed-loop and hence carbon-neutral.

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Re:The electric car as a talisman of false hope by acidburnNSA on Friday August 16, 2019 @09:03AM (#20714731)
This is a common but incorrect assumption. Biofuels are very far from carbon neutral. Renewable is in no way restricted to the desirable.

As an extreme case in point, wood in particular is a horrifying energy source due to health detriment from particulates.

Have a look at some data:

https://partofthething.com/thoughts/wp-content/uploads/ipcc-...

Source: Schlomer S., et.al., 2014: Annex III: Technology-specific cost and performance parameters. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...

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Re:The electric car as a talisman of false hope by dTal on Saturday August 17, 2019 @02:41PM (#20725539)
Setting aside other issues with it like particulate emission, how can it be anything other than carbon neutral? Where could the surplus carbon possibly come from?
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Re:The electric car as a talisman of false hope by acidburnNSA on Thursday August 22, 2019 @10:51AM (#20768715)
When biofuels are valuable, people clear forests to make biofuel. The carbon payback period can be up to 1000 years. It's called indirect land use change [1,2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILUC

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel#Greenhouse_gas_emissio...

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Re:The electric car as a talisman of false hope by yellowapple on Friday August 16, 2019 @11:19AM (#20716034)
Okay, but the problem we're trying to solve is the carbon being in the atmosphere, so even biofuel is objectively far worse than, say, solar.
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Re:The electric car as a talisman of false hope by dTal on Saturday August 17, 2019 @02:44PM (#20725552)
Making the biofuel takes exactly as much carbon out of the atmosphere as it releases when burned, so no it is not far worse from a global warming perspective.
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