Please paraphrase the abstract. <Abstract> Most prior studies have found that su
ID: 801631 • Letter: P
Question
Please paraphrase the abstract.
<Abstract>
Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%. This result raises concerns about large biofuel mandates and highlights the value of using waste products.
Explanation / Answer
Substituting biofuels for gasoline was supposed to revolutionize the greenhouse gas emissions by cutting down the amount of carbon emissions in the long run. The argument was that, the plants would grow absorbing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and release the same when the biofuel was burnt, hence reducing the amount of new carbon added to the atmosphere. But the corn ethanol industry in the United States has already been driven towards profit, hence the farmers started diverting food grade corn towards ethanol production in hopes of making bigger profits. The cultivation techniques include diverting food agricultural resources such as water, electricity for those pumps, agricultural equipment towards industrial fuel production. The agricultural equipment that are in use currently use high quality fossil fuels resulting in large amount of gas emissions in the process of growing fuel to cut down emissions, which undermines the entire process. Moreover, converting forest lands to farm lands has led to the decrease in the number of trees that can convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen, increasing the residual amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to increase in the greenhouse effect. The amount of electricity (is produced from burning coal) and fuel required by the production equipment involved almost doubles the emissions compared to using fossil fuels. This carbon resides in the atmosphere in the order of centuries and intensifies the affects on warming of the globe. In the case of switch grass, it’s a versatile crop that grows faster and can be readily used for the production of cellulose based ethanol. The lifespan of the crop is short and the amount of time the crop can be stored after harvesting is very limited as it dries up pretty fast. Hence the farmers keep the harvesting equipment running all the time to harvest and sell the crop as fast and as continuously as possible. This results in greenhouse gas emissions from the harvesting equipment undermining the whole purpose growing switch grass as a biofuel. This definitely raises concerns about growing biofuels in order to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. The production of these biofuels undermines the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions on their consumption. Generating energy from waste products would be beneficial as there are no production costs and production emissions involved that add up to the emissions released when the waste products are consumed in energy production. Most common technique is to trap the methane gas released from landfills because of microorganisms and use it as bio gas for fuel purposes.
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