Food Or Fuel? Researchers Critical Of Biofuel Targets

On the face of it, biofuels seem like an ideal short to medium-term solution for reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

After all, they could not only be grown at home--reducing dependence on foreign oil--but growing crops is also a renewable process, and net CO2 emissions are lower than burning fossil fuels because the crops absorb CO2 as they grow.

Everybody wins. Apart from, that is, consumers of domestically-produced food. That's the warning from William Kolby Smith, a doctoral candidate at the University of Montana.

As Wards Auto reports, Smith predicts that almost 80 percent of existing U.S. farmland would have to be devoted to producing corn for ethanol, if current biofuel production objectives are to be met.

That would take away a huge amount of the current land devoted to food crops. While the U.S. could import the deficit, that seems as counter-productive as relying on imports for oil.

The current Energy Independence and Security Act, published in 2007, sets a U.S. biofuel target of 35.9 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022--up from 10.6 billion gallons today.

Smith's study, published in the American Chemical Society's Environmental Science & Technology journal, admits that those targets are achievable. However, unless biofuel technology moves on significantly from current levels, 80 percent of the current crop harvest would have to be displaced.

Alternatively, Smith suggests the conversion of 60 percent of rangeland productivity. Rangeland is non-farmed land, such as grasslands, prairies and savanna. It's typically used for livestock grazing, and current figures show that as much as 36 percent of U.S. land is classified as rangeland.

The report warns that such widespread change in land use could pollute freshwater and even accelerate global climate change.

It seems that the debate over the viability of biofuels will continue to rumble on for the forseeable future.

What do you think our best option is for the future production of biofuels? Let us know in the comments section below.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's 126th birth anniversary: Google remembers with a doodle

Google's doodle today pays tribute to legendary German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe on his 126th birth anniversary. The building in the doodle is the SR Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, regarded as one of masterpieces of Mies. The building comprised only glass and steel in its exteriors.

Regarded as one of the pioneers of modern architechture, Mies is said to have never taken any formal architectural training. He worked with several architects before he developed his own style. Like many of his post-World War I contemporaries, Mies wanted to establish a new architectural style that could represent modern times. He strived towards an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of free-flowing open space, according to Wikipedia. He is known to call his buildings "skin and bones" architecture.

A few years after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and the government-financed school he was heading was closed down by Nazis, Mies emigrated to the United States. In the US, Mies became the head of department of architecture at the Armour Institute of Technology, Chicago, which later came to be known as the Illinois Institute of Technology.

In 1944, Mies became an American citizen, severing all his ties from his native Germany. Mies architecture, with its origins in the German Bauhaus and western European style, became the popular choice for several American buildings like cultural and educational institutions, public agencies and many large corporations.

Some of the prominent buildings designed by Mies include Farnsworth House (Illinois), 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments (Chicago), Seagram Building (New York City) and Museum of Fine Arts (Houston). Ludwig Mies died in 1969 in Chicago at the age of 83.

Google doodles are the decorative changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists and scientists. The first doodle was created by Larry Page and Sergy Brin in the year 1998 to mark the celebrations of the Burning Man Festival.