90 top global warming scientists have turned their sights on the biomass energy industry, until recently seen as allies, warning that biofuels sometimes increases rather than decreases greenhouse gas emissions.

By Lawrence Solomon

“There may be a public perception that all biofuels and bioenergy are equally good for the environment and are all lower in carbon emissions than fossil fuels, but that’s not true,” said one of the signatories, Dr. William Schlesinger of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in a press release yesterday aimed at the U.S. Congress. “Many produce just as much or more carbon pollution than oil, gas, and coal. If our laws and regulations treat high-carbon-impact bioenergy sources, like today’s corn ethanol, as if they are low-carbon, we’re fooling ourselves and undercutting the purpose of those same laws and regulations.”

That ethanol in your gas tank, the climate change scientists are telling us, could be bringing us closer to Armageddon by undercutting their efforts at saving the world. “Many international treaties and domestic laws and bills account for bioenergy incorrectly by treating all bioenergy as causing a 100% reduction in emissions regardless of the source of the biomass,” the scientists explain.”Under some scenarios, this approach could eliminate most of the expected greenhouse gas reductions during the next several decades.”

Read the rest of this story at Financial Post.

By Stephen Power And Ben Casselman

Three big companies quit an influential lobbying group that had focused on shaping climate-change legislation, in the latest sign that support for an ambitious bill is melting away.

Oil giants BP PLC and ConocoPhillips and heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. said Tuesday they won’t renew their membership in the three-year-old U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a broad business-environmental coalition that had been instrumental in building support in Washington for capping emissions of greenhouse gases.

The move comes as debate over climate change intensifies and concerns mount about the cost of capping greenhouse-gas emissions.

On a range of issues, from climate change to health care, skepticism is growing in Washington that Congress will pass any major legislation in a contentious election year in which Republicans are expected to gain seats. For companies, the shifting winds have reduced pressure to find common ground, leading them to pursue their own, sometimes conflicting interests.

Last week, the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Billy Tauzin, said he would step down as president of the industry’s main lobby in Washington, amid criticism from some in the industry over the alliance he made last year with the White House to support health-care legislation.

The administration had worked hard to persuade industry groups to climb aboard its major legislative initiatives—a tack many business interests saw as sensible following the Democrats’ big gains in the 2008 elections. But “unlikely bedfellows make for breakups,” said Kevin Book, managing director of Clearview Energy Partners, a consulting firm.

Spokesmen for ConocoPhillips and BP said the companies still support legislation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but believe they can accomplish more working outside USCAP’s umbrella. Caterpillar said it plans to focus on commercializing green technologies.

ConocoPhillips’s senior vice president for government affairs, Red Cavaney, said the USCAP was focused on getting a climate-change bill passed, whereas Conoco is increasingly concerned with what the details of such a bill would be.

“USCAP was starting to do more and more on trying to get a bill out without trying to work as much on the substance of it,” Mr. Cavaney said.

A spokesman for USCAP said it intends to continue its work. More than 20 other large companies, including oil company Royal Dutch Shell PLC and industrial heavyweights General Electric Co. and Honeywell International Inc., remain in the coalition with environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council. The USCAP said it expects to add new members in coming months.

“We think there’s momentum to get [a climate bill] done,” USCAP spokesman Tad Segal said. “President [Barack] Obama’s State of the Union address made it clear the administration is behind us.”

Read the rest of this article at Wall Street Journal.

Turning carbon into cold cash

From National Post

The closer the United States gets to adopting a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gas emissions, the more frightening it gets.

Not because the plan now under debate in the U. S. Congress would complicate the lives of energy producers, or impose new costs on consumers. Those drawbacks might be bearable if the system was truly designed to reduce emissions, and if the expense was reasonable. The alarm results from increasing evidence that emissions have become a secondary concern of a plan whose main purpose is to serve the partisan interests of the Democratic Party.

Jim Prentice, Canada’s Minister of the Environment, visited Washington this week to warn in no uncertain terms that the proposal before Congress would be a “prescription for disaster” for U. S. trade relations.

He was referring to “border tax adjustments” included in the U. S. bill, which would impose charges on goods imported from countries that do not match U. S. efforts to reduce emissions.

The charges are ostensibly intended to force countries like China and India to adopt similar emission-fighting measures. In reality, argued Mr. Prentice, they would act as “trade protectionism in the name of environmental protection,” allowing the United States to force up the price of imports to the benefit of American competitors. Mr. Prentice said Ottawa fully intends to match whatever greenhouse legislation the United States puts in place, but that might not avert the danger. It would still be up to Washington to decide whether it deemed Canadian protections adequate.

If Washington continues along the path toward discrimination, Mr. Prentice warned, Ottawa will take appropriate action — a clear hint at retaliation. A trade war would benefit no one, but would nonetheless likely be popular among labour unions, a traditional base of support for Democrats.

The U. S. plan would similarly boost Democrat fortunes by providing a multi-billion-dollar windfall to power producers largely clustered in states loyal to the party. As outlined by National Post columnist David Frum this week, the bill would include a system in which carbon emitters could buy the right to continue emitting by purchasing credits from cleaner companies. This is a key feature of cap-and-trade plans, but Democrats have stacked the deck by proposing to award allotments of emission credits, free of charge, to “clean” firms, which could then earn billions by selling them to big emitters.

Read the rest of this article at National Post.

By Paul Chesser

Never mind the allegedly detrimental effect biofuels have by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and therefore global warming — the Obama Administration will continue to blast CO2 in the atmosphere by burning vegetation. It’s not a surprise as the president talked about it during his campaign, but now the ugly details are coming out and the new subsidies are being unveiled. From a May 5  White House press release:

President Obama today announced steps to further his Administration’s commitment to advance biofuels research and commercialization.  Specifically, he signed a Presidential Directive establishing a Biofuels Interagency Working Group, announced additional Recovery Act funds for renewable fuel projects, and also announced his Administration’s notice of a Proposed Rulemaking on the Renewable Fuel Standard.

The BIWG is to be co-chaired by Obama’s superheroic force of top eco-bureaucrats: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Part of their responsibilities will be to:

• Immediately begin restructuring existing investments in renewable fuels as needed to preserve industry employment; and
• Develop a comprehensive approach to accelerating the investment in and production of American biofuels and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

Read the rest of this article at GlobalWarming.org.

Jason Lewis today, who in turn was filling in for Rush Limbaugh. Most discussion on the program centered on Global Warming. In the first hour, Sue’s guest was Chris Horner, author of Red Hot Lies. I followed to talk about GlobalClimateScam.com in the second hour and came back to discuss Minnesota Majority in the last half-hour. Listen here:

Sue Jeffers

Sue Jeffers filled in for

• Hour 1: Sue’s guest Christopher Horner discusses his new book disputing global warming.
• Hour 2: Sue continues the global warming discussion with Dan McGrath of Minnesota Majority.
• Hour 3: Sue talks about running for office with Jim Schottmueller and Dan McGrath.

Notes on the “Hockey Stick:” Global Warming Bombshell; Breaking the Hockey Stick; Documenting Global Warming Fraud; Hockey Stick a New Low in Climate Science; Hockey Sticks, Principal Components and Spurious Significance (McIntyre / McKitrick report)

Corn prices have more than doubled in the past two years, contributing to sharp rises in the price of virtually everything in the American economy. Obvious products like corn flakes and meat aren’t the only commodities affected. Soda, beer, motor vehicle fuel, medicines and even car parts rely on corn-based substances in their production.

Ethanol-based fuel gets fewer miles per gallon than petroleum based gasoline, and some argue that ethanol, though touted as a “green” fuel, actually produces more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuel.

In June, US Senator and candidate for president, John McCain said “Support for corn-based ethanol has been a case study in the law of unintended consequences.” 

The national Republican Party revised it’s platform last week during the national convention calling for a reversal of the energy bill signed by president Bush that mandates a five-fold increase in ethanol production and provides additional government subsidy. The new platform plank says the US government should end ethanol mandates and let the free market work. 

McCain says he didn’t push for the platform change, but supports it. He pointed out that ethanol mandates have led to “distorted food markets through crop land competition,” and are “depriving America of better and cheaper fuels.”

For his part, presidential candidate Barack Obama says he “strongly supports ethanol subsidies.”

President Bush, in defending the policy suggested that new technology might come along that will allow economical production of ethanol from other biomass, like wood chips or switchgrass. He’s counting on the development of currently non-existent technology within the next nine years to meet the demands of the energy bill he signed in December and federal dollars are being invested in that research. Presently, not a single commercial US refinery is producing ethanol from anything but corn.

Failing the development of the theoretical new technology within a decade will leave US energy law in the precarious position of mandating something that is not physically possible. There is not enough corn farmed to meet the demands of the energy bill. As the forces of reality inch closer to currently unattainable ethanol mandates in the coming years, the price of virtually everything is likely to rise even more sharply than the preceding two years. Supply simply cannot meet the artificial demand imposed by government.

Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty has been leading the charge for increased ethanol mandates. During his tenure as chairman of the National Governor’s Association, he advocated increased ethanol usage nationally and in 2005, he signed a law doubling Minnesota’s ethanol mandate from 10% to 20% by 2013. “Only people on the far margins of the political spectrum oppose ethanol,” he said.

Minnesota’s increased ethanol mandate will not take effect unless a waiver can be obtained from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

By Roy Innis 

The U.S. civil rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s was one of the greatest social and political liberations in history. It gave African-Americans and other minorities new opportunities and new levels of success in virtually every walk of life.

But today we face unprecedented new challenges to indispensable but often neglected rights enunciated in our Declaration of Independence: “That all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

These fundamental rights are under assault in subtle, often insidious ways. Sometimes it is with the best of intentions, by good people who don’t realize they are impairing other people’s rights, hopes and dreams. At other times, it is by people who are willing, even determined, to sacrifice individual rights in the name of a proclaimed threat or greater common good.

One critical challenge involves restrictions on access to energy and economic opportunity - and thus on liberties and rights - in the name of protecting the environment.

Energy is the master resource of modern society. It transforms constitutionally protected civil rights into rights we actually enjoy: jobs, homes, transportation, health care and other earmarks of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. With abundant, reliable, affordable energy, much is possible. Without it, hope, opportunity, progress, job creation and civil rights are hobbled.

Laws and policies that restrict access to America’s abundant energy drive up the price of fuel and electricity. They cause widespread layoffs and leave workers and families struggling to survive, as the cost of everything they eat, drive, wear and do spirals higher. They roll back the progress for which civil rights revolutionaries like the Rev. Martin Luther King struggled and died.

They create unnecessary obstacles to the natural, justifiable desire of minority Americans to share in the American Dream. They prevent us from resolving conflicts through compromise and impose needless and unfair burdens on our poorest families. These regressive, energy-killing laws and policies deny minority and other poor families a seat at the energy lunch counter and send us to the back of the economic bus.

The Congress of Racial Equality and I care deeply about our environment. But we also care about having jobs, and affordable food, heat and transportation. We care about impoverished Third World families achieving their dreams.

We want to know that the environmental values we cherish really are threatened the way environmental activists say they are. And we want to know that the solutions they advocate really will safeguard those values, at reasonable cost, without creating enormous new problems, like global grain shortages.

Today, unfortunately, these common-sense requests are under assault by activists who want to eliminate fossil fuels, base public policies on unfounded ecological scare stories, and stifle debate by attacking anyone who challenges their assertions.

Energy reality must no longer be denied. Fully 85 percent of all the energy Americans use comes from fossil fuels. Add in nuclear and hydroelectric power, and we’ve reached 96 percent. Biomass (3 percent) is mostly waste from paper mills and sawmills.

A mere 0.8 percent is wind and solar power. These renewable sources are not alternatives to fossil fuel use. They are supplements. Just to provide electricity to meet New York City’s needs would require blanketing Connecticut with 300-foot-tall wind turbines that generate power only eight hours a day, on average. That is neither economically nor ecologically sustainable.

Read the rest of this piece at The Washington Times.

By Walter Starck

The most critical problem we now confront is not global warming or how to tax emissions, but providing enough affordable fuel to avoid severe recession before alternative energy can become reality. The Lucky Country faces a choice between disaster and a unique opportunity.

Oil supply

Over the past two years climate all over the world has inexplicably begun a pronounced cooling. This is contrary to all expectations from global warming theory and growing other evidence is also indicating that the threat has been overestimated. However, the obsession with catastrophic climate change seems to have distracted attention from a much more certain and immanent danger. The oil supply vital to the entire economy is not keeping up with increasing demand while presently all focus is on renewable energy solutions that will require decades to develop and implement.

Consider just a few key facts about oil:

• production is already in decline in some 50 nations;
• new discoveries have steadily declined for several decades and are far below depletion rates;
• oil exports are decreasing in most exporting nations as their own domestic demand increases;
• refining capacity has not kept pace with demand due to environmental restrictions and investment concerns over future supplies of crude;
• most existing refineries are designed for light sweet crude the supply of which is rapidly declining;
• future oil will increasingly be heavy sour crude which only a minority of existing refineries can use;
• the major producers have no reason for massive investment to increase production. The value of their remaining reserves is rapidly appreciating. Increased production would reduce prices and accelerate depletion. Expensive infrastructure for increased production would soon end up excessive to declining reserves.

Growth in demand, shortages and further price rises will slow the global economy for the foreseeable future. Fuel intensive sectors such as primary production, transport and travel will be hit especially hard.

Synfuel

Viable alternative energy is still decades away. Using commercially proven technology synthetic fuel from coal and gas could supply all our needs here in Australia at much less than the current price of fuel from oil. Only emission restrictions on CO2 stand in the way. “Clean” renewable technology is decades from becoming commercial.

The Australian economy is in a vulnerable position. Manufacturing is in decline and, at 13 per cent of GDP, is among the lowest in the developed world. The trade balance remains in chronic deficit even with the mineral boom. In April it became positive for the first time in six years but in May it was in deficit again, chiefly because of rising oil prices. Foreign debt is growing at twice the rate of the economy. It is now about 60 per cent of GDP, the highest in the developed world.

High commodity prices normally last only a few years before increased production, spurred by high prices, brings them down again. An end to the boom will result in a fall in the exchange rate of the Australian dollar, an even worse trade deficit and a crippling increase in the cost of foreign debt. An economy not dependent on imported oil would be a huge advantage.

Australia’s portion of global CO2 emissions is about 1.4 per cent or just six months’ growth in China’s emissions. Natural uptakes of CO2 over Australia’s land and Exclusive Economic Area of surrounding ocean absorb much more than this. Our net contribution to global CO2 emissions is already negative. Whatever we do or don’t do will be trivial to the global situation, either in quantity or even as an example. Why cripple the economy for an increasingly doubtful theory?

The opportunity

Global warming is a distant and uncertain possibility of a problem that most likely does not even exist, at least in the catastrophic form being predicted. It can only be meaningfully addressed by developments that will require decades to become effective and which, in any event, must be undertaken even without the threat of warming.

Severe economic hardship because of fuel costs and shortages, however, is an imminent probability. This could be greatly alleviated if not avoided altogether by development of our own liquid-fuel supplies. It would be far easier to do this now in a time of prosperity than trying to do it in a recession. Having such capacity already in place might well even avert a recession here altogether. Being energy independent would be a huge competitive advantage in a time of high energy costs and shortages everywhere else.

Although precaution in the face of uncertainty is sensible, the realm of hypothetical risk limitless. Many perceived risks turn out to have no reality. Remember the Y2K millennium bug scare? We cannot build fortresses against every shadow of doubt. Precaution too is not without its own attendant risk. Any proposed precautionary measure must be weighed against alternatives as well as consideration of its own consequences.

Obsessing over distant uncertain risks, while ignoring immediate consequences, is poor precaution. For Australia, drastic cuts in carbon emissions to prevent global-warming is to climate what anorexia is to obesity.

Read the rest of this article at ScienceAlert.com (Austrailia/New Zealand)

Nigel Lawson, the Iron Lady’s chancellor, scourge of the miners and father of the adorable Nigella, has joined the ranks of the climate change sceptics. He believes David Cameron’s green agenda is overblown, biofuels are useless and carbon trading resembles ‘nothing so much as the sale of indulgences by the medieval church’

An inverview of a global warming skeptic conducted by a believer.

By John-Paul Flintoff

I can’t pretend I’m expecting to get on with Nigel Lawson. In fact, I’m worried that I might lose my cool – say something I’ll regret, perhaps even bop him on the nose.

On receiving his new book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, I find myself handling it as though it is toxic; I even flinch at the expression of fierce intellectual arrogance in the author’s photograph.

When I start reading, though, I’m dismayed to discover that I agree with considerable amounts of what Lawson is saying – especially about the current biofuel madness – while also disagreeing with other chunks.

As energy minister under Margaret Thatcher, Lawson masterminded the war against the miners, and as chancellor of the exchequer he launched a series of controversial privatisations and deregulated financial services. Lately, he’s raised my blood pressure even further by pooh-poohing the idea of climate change and resisting any attempt to address what most people accept as a pressing reality. In fact, according to the Lawson view, I – like many others – am a deluded fool for growing food in the garden, cycling everywhere, flushing the minimum possible amount of water down the loo (using an Interflush), and generally making do and mending when things fall apart.

Still, it’s hard to disagree with him about biofuels, on which new European Union regulations came into effect last week, requiring petrol to contain at least 2.5% biofuel, a figure that will increase in future.

“Biofuels,” he says, “have become one of the European Union’s latest fads. It’s far from clear that ethanol produces more energy than is used in its own production. In the second place, it requires a vast amount of land to produce a relatively small amount of ethanol. This not only antagonises environmentalists, upset by the destruction of rainforests for this purpose, but has also led to a marked rise in food prices – in particular the price of grain.”

Last year the Chinese government suspended its production of ethanol for precisely this reason. Now dozens of other countries that are experiencing grave food shortages must wish more would do the same.

In person, Lawson appears less intimidating than his photo. Though no longer startlingly thin – his weight loss, some years ago, gave him the unexpected opportunity to become a bestselling diet guru – he’s by no means fat. And instead of scowling, he twinkles, disarmingly.

We meet at the glamorous home of his daughter, the TV cook Nigella, and her husband Charles Saatchi, the adman turned art collector. Lawson himself now lives in France. Sinister lifelike sculptures – an old codger, a woman pushing a pram – loiter in the hall and on the stairs. Among the many other artworks are several large pots by Grayson Perry.

To begin with, I tell Lawson I’m glad somebody of his background has made absolutely clear the uselessness of biofuels, carbon trading (“it has done nothing to reduce emissions, merely awarded subsidies to selected emitters”), and carbon offsetting (“a scam . . . it resembles nothing so much as the sale of indulgences by the medieval church”).

If we seriously wanted to reduce emissions, he says, we’d have to impose a carbon tax across the board – but this government lacks the confidence to do that. Not that he’s bothered about emissions, anyway. And so we come to climate change . . . or we would, but Lawson thinks the term is specious: it was only adopted, he says, because recent evidence suggests that global warming has almost stopped.

Read the rest of this interview at London’s Sunday Times.

By Paul Chesser 

With food and gas prices skyrocketing, several state climate commissions are ignoring the backlash against the suddenly antiquated policy of plant-enhanced petrol, as they hope to stop the alleged future global warming catastrophe.

Why? Because before they even get started, panelists and their hired management team (in most cases), the Center for Climate Strategies, forbid any discussion of global warming science outside the prevailing mainstream media take of the last 10 to 15 years — that is, that carbon dioxide emissions must be curbed dramatically to stop the trend. Don’t you understand that the “science is settled”?

That premise extends also to CCS’s standard menu of “solutions” to climate change, but now even the MSM has turned against biofuels. That’s ignored in roughly two dozen states, where in most cases governors (both Republican and Democrat) have appointed climate commission members, and push proposals that will increase costs of carbon-based sources (oil, coal) of energy while subsidizing inefficient resources like wind, solar, and crop combustion.

Read the rest of this piece at The American Spectator.

By Linda C. Runbeck

A recent Pioneer Press column by Sen. Amy Klobuchar called for a federal energy policy with multiple strategies, or in her words, ’silver buckshot,’ to bring gas prices under control and increase our energy reserves.

A good approach, but she fails to include the simplest and most easily accomplished ways to reach that goal — including some that she, as a U.S. senator, could put on the table tomorrow.

For example, Klobuchar said President Bush should “use his bargaining power” with OPEC countries to get them to increase their oil production, yet she neglects discussion of our own domestic sources.

Domestic energy production will stabilize energy prices and create independence from foreign oil. Shouldn’t our leaders be talking about such proven sources as nuclear power, hydropower and clean coal and putting on the table such winners as more refineries and domestic drilling?

Of course they should, yet Congress continues to vote to put vast sources of energy off-limits. Some regions, like the Outer Continental Shelf and Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, are known to contain huge reserves of oil and natural gas.

These proven solutions are not without their down-sides and environmental costs — and Congress must intensify the demand for technological answers — but we are a producer nation that is totally dependent on abundant and reliable energy. Our domestic supplies of coal, oil and natural gas offer the most immediate hope for a nation whose energy needs are increasing, not decreasing.

High gasoline prices are a worldwide problem of supply and demand spiked by increasing demand from China and India and near-capacity production. When Klobuchar puts the blame on traders and the futures market and proposes new regulations, she risks hurting U.S. investors and distorting the very market that operates to warn us of pending limited supplies and increased worldwide demand.

Alternatives to fossil fuel are essential, but they must pollute less and be cost effective and efficient to produce. Unfortunately, Klobuchar’s alternatives score poorly. The ethanol mandate she claimed victory for in late 2007 requires a 700 percent increase in ethanol production by 2022, but will come at a huge cost of increased food prices and reduced supply.

Despite assurances from Klobuchar that cellulosic ethanol is just around the corner, a February 2008 study from Iowa State University concludes it’s a risky bet that it can supply the billions of gallons Congress mandated by 2022, and it’s even more expensive to subsidize than corn-based ethanol.

Klobuchar is also poised to penalize oil and natural gas producers with increased drilling fees on public lands while Congress leans toward increased taxes and elimination of tax deductions. Such responses will translate directly into higher prices at the pump and slow the development of domestic energy supplies. In fact, the extremely low oil prices of the 1990s mothballed many small domestic producers; now, they should be encouraged to get their production facilities up and running again.

Higher fees and taxes on energy producers will further penalize the consumer and the legions of small investors and retirees whose investments in mutual funds or diversified retirement plans stand to lose.

Klobuchar is right: The nation needs a “smart, strong long-term energy strategy.” While conservation and alternative fuels must be included, alone they do not meet current or future needs. Until we find the “bridge” to more environmentally friendly energy alternatives, we must depend on proven sources of abundant and cost-effective energy to supply our food and fuel our homes, jobs, businesses and transportation.

Congress should focus on encouraging domestic energy production and making sure our U.S. energy producers are working overtime to increase our energy reserves. What we don’t need are counterproductive efforts by Congress that disadvantage U.S. companies working hard to produce the proven conventional energy resources that keep us moving. Whether it’s a silver bullet or silver buckshot, we have to make sure we’re aiming at the right target.

Linda Runbeck is a former Minnesota state senator and is president of the American Property Coalition, based in St. Paul.

By Peter Robison, Alan Ohnsman and Alan Bjerga

The U.S. Postal Service purchased more than 30,000 ethanol-capable trucks and minivans from 1999 to 2005, making it the biggest American buyer of alternative-fuel vehicles. Gasoline consumption jumped by more than 1.5 million gallons as a result.

The trucks, derived from Ford Motor Co.’s Explorer sport- utility vehicle, had bigger engines than Jeeps from the former Chrysler Corp. they replaced. A Postal Service study found the new vehicles got as much as 29 percent fewer miles to the gallon. Mail carriers used the corn-based fuel in just 1,000 of them because there weren’t enough places to buy it.

“You’re getting fewer miles per gallon, and it’s costing us more,” Walt O’Tormey, the Postal Service’s Washington-based vice president of engineering, said in an interview. The agency may buy electric vehicles instead, he said.

The experience shows how the U.S. push for crop-based fuels, already contributing to the highest rate of food inflation in 17 years, may not be achieving its goal of reducing gasoline consumption. Lawmakers are seeking caps on the use of biofuels after last year’s 40 percent jump in world food prices, calling the U.S. policy flawed.

“Using food for fuel has created some unintended consequences: food shortages, the high price of livestock feed,” said Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican. “I think it’s leading a lot of people to wonder whether our corn-based ethanol goals need to be adjusted.”

Read the rest of this story at Bloomberg News.

By David Mercer 

Not long ago, the fledgling ethanol industry was the darling of investors, farmers, the federal government and a lot of Americans who liked the idea of turning corn into fuel.

But suddenly, it doesn’t have nearly as many friends.

Rising worldwide food prices and shortages have spurred calls in Congress to roll back the federal requirement that increases the amount of ethanol and other biofuels blended with the nation’s gasoline supply. Critics say so much corn is being used for ethanol that there’s less available for people and animals to eat, raising prices of everything from tortillas to meat.

What’s more, investors who bought into the industry in good times aren’t seeing the returns they’d hoped for as once-record profits began to fall.

“Consumers are starting to get restless and Washington is starting to listen,” said Morningstar analyst Ann Gilpin, who follows Decatur, Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland, the country’s second-largest ethanol producer.

The ethanol market would be severely limited if Congress rolled back the federal mandate that calls annual increases in the amount of biofuels added to the fuel supply — 9 billion gallons by the end of this year, increasing to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

That would most hurt companies that rely exclusively or primarily on ethanol, which include a mix of small, often locally owned distillers — already under pressure since ethanol prices fell and corn prices rose sharply — as well as larger publicly traded firms like VeraSun Energy Corp., the country’s top ethanol producer.

“If you sell one product and the only reason there’s a market for it is because the government makes a law requiring consumption — if that law goes away, obviously you’re in trouble,” Gilpin said.

The odds of Congress changing that mandate this year are slim because the 10 states — mostly in the Midwest — that produce over 80 percent of all American ethanol have between them almost half of the 270 electoral votes needed to win a presidential election, said analyst Kevin Book of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co.

After the election, though, sentiment could change.

Read the rest of this story at Business Week.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

ROME — In the past year, as the diversion of food crops like corn and palm to make biofuels has helped to drive up food prices, investors and politicians have begun promoting newer, so-called second-generation biofuels as the next wave of green energy. These, made from non-food crops like reeds and wild grasses, would offer fuel without the risk of taking food off the table, they said.

But now, biologists and botanists are warning that they, too, may bring serious unintended consequences. Most of these newer crops are what scientists label invasive species — that is, weeds — that have an extraordinarily high potential to escape biofuel plantations, overrun adjacent farms and natural land, and create economic and ecological havoc in the process, they now say.

At a United Nations meeting in Bonn, Germany, on Tuesday, scientists from the Global Invasive Species Program, the Nature Conservancy and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, as well as other groups, presented a paper with a warning about invasive species.

“Some of the most commonly recommended species for biofuels production are also major invasive alien species,” the paper says, adding that these crops should be studied more thoroughly before being cultivated in new areas.

Controlling the spread of such plants could prove difficult, the experts said, producing “greater financial losses than gains.” The International Union for Conservation of Nature encapsulated the message like this: “Don’t let invasive biofuel crops attack your country.”

To reach their conclusions, the scientists compared the list of the most popular second-generation biofuels with the list of invasive species and found an alarming degree of overlap. They said little evaluation of risk had occurred before planting.

“With biofuels, there’s always a hurry,” said Geoffrey Howard, an invasive species expert with the International Union for Conservation of Nature. “Plantations are started by investors, often from the U.S. or Europe, so they are eager to generate biofuels within a couple of years and also, as you might guess, they don’t want a negative assessment.”

Read the rest of this story at New York Times.

In early 2007, two University of Minnesota economists forecast that biofuels would sharply increase food prices by 2020, leading to a steep rise in the number of empty bellies in the world.

How wrong they were. Soaring rates of hunger didn’t take a generation. It took a year.

The president of the World Bank recently estimated that 100 million more people around the world have slipped into hunger in the past year, in the wake of soaring oil and food prices.

“The kinds of price increases that we were using out to 2020 already have occurred and been exceeded,” said Benjamin Senauer, one of the authors of an article in Foreign Affairs magazine that raised dire warnings brushed aside by the biofuels industry.

Read the rest of the story at the Star Tribune