Edit: see this for numbers: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/3/4/18216045/ren...
Oil is releasing carbon from prehistoric atmospheres.
So basically you are pumping fuel into a black box, and out comes bioful (which has tax breaks as well, if I remember correctly)
It is a left picket right pocket game.
It's a problem that could be solved over time if using green energy for the agriculture.
No... not remotely. While these things you mention are a big threat, and truly terrible disasters themselves, they pale in comparison to the planet changing disaster that is Climate Change.
Nearly all it comes from some variety of grass. Be it corn, sugar cane or some foraging grass. Trees are way too inefficient to be practical.
This seems like a testable claim. Is there research about this subject that could confirm or debunk this claim?
The proponents of it probably know that its numbers don't look great, so they don't push for research that thoroughly audits it.
It's also difficult to thoroughly audit the carbon costs of a complex supply chain that has to move tens and hundreds of millions tonnes of lumber - when the costs greatly vary based on how the lumber was sourced.
Even if you use the fast growing forests used for paper in places like Oregon, there is still petroleum used in planting, cutting and fertilizing biofuel forests. In many ways, it's even worse for the environment than just burning the oil directly.
Baring some massive breakthrough in fusion, society as a whole needs to consume less energy, purchase less stuff and make durable goods that last a lot longer (a cellphone should last 8 years, not 3). Mass consumption is going to kill our environment a lot faster than energy consumption or CO2 emissions. CO2 pales in comparison to the ecological devastation in Chinese factory cities, the large amount of plastic particulates/trash in our oceans and completely unsustainable economic doctrine of infinite growth.