In the March 27th issue of Time Magazine, an in-depth article entitled “The Clean Energy Scam” by Michael Grunwald is indicative of how rapid the descent has been for biofuel in the eyes of environmentalists and mainstream media.  One isn’t sure whether to cheer or be derisive - after several years of relentless molding of public [...]

Since publishing “Jatropha Reality Check” we’ve received comments, but also direct emails to the Editor.  Many of these were from growers - and one new writer, a grower also located in Madagascar, provided some interesting insights.
“We planted Jatropha in 2003 and have been taking care of the plantation by pruning, irrigating, applying fertilisers and managing [...]

Back in 2005 we published the feature “Jatropha in Africa - Fighting the Desert & Creating Wealth.”  About two years later we rewrote the editor’s introduction to this story, stating, among other things “the yields claimed in this story have been challenged by many of our readers, and the author may have been optimistic.”  Today [...]

Today the BBC ran a story entitled “Grass Biofuels cut CO2 by 94%.”  This 94% is meant to be in comparison to fossil fuel, based on the fact that a recently grown biofuel, when burned, can only release as much CO2 as it absorbed when it was growing.  Thus biofuels are considered ”carbon neutral.”  The BBC story [...]

Earlier this month, in our post “Biofuel’s Potential,” we compared the best case biofuel yields today - about 10,000 barrels per square mile per year - to the best case biofuel yields in the future according to many biofuel experts - about 50,000 barrels per square mile per year.  To summarize, the difference between 10,000 barrels [...]

If the present is problematic, that doesn’t mean the future has no potential.  We have railed against the catastrophe in progress throughout the tropics, as the last rainforests are razed to grow sugar cane and oil palms.  Over and over, we’ve reminded readers to beware of carbon taxes and carbon trading schemes, because European carbon [...]

We have just published an interview with noted climate scientist Roger Pielke, Sr., a retired professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Since July 2005 he has written and maintained Climate Science, a blog that serves as a scientific forum for [...]