The Japanese announced a huge ethanol agreement with Brazil just a few weeks ago.

At that time I remarked that moving ethanol from Brazil to Japan was about the longest trip in the world, and that nearby SE Asia was a better source for their alternate fuels.

In both this deal and the Brazilian one the Japanese gain ownership (or effectively so through leases) of huge tracts of land. That seems a good investment regardless of the immediate fuel payoff, if any.

For logistical purposes that ethanol from Brazil will probably end up being sold in NA or EU.

I think low land rain forests are doomed. The economic and demographic pressures are too strong.

Contrary to romantic ideals rainforest is not especially good at reducing CO2. And I suspect medicine will do fine without finding magic plants there.

But rainforests are home to unique plants and animals and peoples. And I wish the cards were dealt otherwise.

Forest does provide carbon sink – when it is young and growing. When it is mature, carbon balance is close to neutral.

Tropical rainforest is extremely powerful ecosystem, it is impossible to exterminate, and it very quickly reclaims back the land when people stop defend it from jungle invasion. Isn’t it just obvious, just from Kipling’s novels?

For some interesting information about species extinctions misconseption there is a chapter with references

http://www.cei.org/pdf/ait/chX.pdf

Merry Christmas and happy New Year to all.

K:

There are many changes in our way of life which make me optimistic about survival chances for wildlife. This is one of it.

I live in Vancouver, 2 million metropolis with substantial agricultural production in the city limits. Around the condo I live there are couple families of raccoons, wild (formerly domestic) cats, skunk, and a recently one freakishly big owl. All city around is infested with rabbits, squirrels, ducks, and gooses. Bold eagles and herons live and nest in city parks and open spaces. Pheasants prefer farms. More and more hawks are preying on rabbits. Wild swans and innumerous bird species are resting here during their migrations. City is constantly struggle to keep deer out of city skirts and coyotes out of city parks (they bite the kids who try to pet “the doggy”). Part of the city facing mountains have a ban on fruit trees planting and special procedures for garbage removal. No matter, black bear invasion is constant problem. About a hundred million salmon are running yearly in Fraser River, flowing through the city. River is populated with sturgeons, and very often visited by sea lions and cats. The only species luckily to be shy of the people are grizzly bears and wild cats, like mountain lions. All this supposedly wild life does not give a hood about people swirling around.

That’s to say, I see by my own eyes that people and wild life can happily co-exist, even in the big city.

I hope they got their math right about the economics of coconut into biodiesel, since coconut is such a tasty fruit with a lot of juice that can be sold at decent price as refreshment, and conut meat can be use to make all sorts of food in the Orient. What about palm oil, or algae oil with higher yield?

However, the most ethical practice would be to grow food crop to feed the hungry children world-wide, and to use the waste inedible biomass to make biomethane and hydrogen for even cleaner-burning engine and even higher efficiency. Methane/hydrogen mix can be use in diesel engine with some modification (glow plug or hot ceramic plug for ignition) at even higher efficiency with hardly any PM that can cause cancer and respiratory problem. I think that NOx is also lower in engines with methane/hydrogen mix rather than diesel fuel.

I don't have the technical knowledge to comment much on automotive engineering, but I do something about the science behind the study of biodiversity and these biodiesel projects are the worst sort of greenwashing.
To replace the incredible diversity of the rainforest with an unproductive monoculture is useless in every way. If there's one thing I've learnt from this website it is that there are far better alternatives than biofuels for replacing petroleum products.

The rainforest won't simply grow back except under exceptional circumstances. In Australia we have 3% of our pre-European rainforest. Much of it was cleared to grow sugarcane long ago and there's nowhere for it to go grow back to unless farmers abandon their land.I can't see that happening any more in Brazil than it will in Australia. K, Rainforest has far greater capacity to absorb Co2 and to cool the air than cropland because of its much larger biomass.

There are lots of nice pictures of wildlife co-existing with people and it is something we should maximise but human alteration of the landscape is always accompanied by lower biodiversity. In Australia this means things like seagulls and possums thrive. A racoon fills the same sort of ecological niche in North America. These species are the generalist feeders that aren't fussy and often grow fat on the things we throw away. The species that don't thrive are those that have narrow sets of environmental requirements and food sources. There are countless species that lose out from habitat alteration and climate change because they are so specialised that they can't adapt to a change in food source or different climatic conditions. Tim Flannery's book "The Weather Makers" contains an excellent discussion of these issues.
The basic mistake in many of the posts above is to treat the natural environment as if it is a mechanical system. It is far more complex than that, so complex that we are only just beginning to understand it. Observing a few bears, racoons or coyotes near the city is nice but it is a poor measure of ecosystem health and biodiversity.

Nice! K, you just did a great job illustrating what a quasi-sentient goon you really are. Thanks and happy holidays!

I have been writing as K. But I did not write the comment at 2:49:28 today. I repeat. Someone else did that. And they should not. I don't blame anon for being angry.

It is a flaw of blogging that anyone can write as K or even as anon. I know no way to avoid fake postings.

anon:
I am not sure of all the people I know better than. It is just foolish to post like that. But I certainly don't care if the guy represents God if I disagree with him. Dogma in, garbage out.

critta: I think you didn't read my postings very carefully.

Look at my post of 3:55:46 pm on Dec. 24.
Look particularly at the third paragraph from the end. I supported your position and agree with a lot you say. Your sneer about what I wrote directly to Andrey (and no one else) about wildlife I have personally obesrved is totally unjustified.

continuing critta: I think you will find that rainforest does not necessarily sink more CO2 or do more cooling. From my reading it would depend upon the crops chosen as well as specific aspects of the forest. Not all RF are alike but I believe the crops have the edge.

add critta: you seem to mistake what I expect to happen with what I want to happen. Try reading the end of my very first post up at 10:08;56 a.m. Dec 24. . I don't advocate clearing rain forests, I just expect it.

anon: I'm sorry you got the crap sent as "K". I didn't send it and therefore don't apologize. But you have been pretty silly beginning with your first post. Your technique of just saying you know people who are right and calling others fools is useless. If you look carefully you will see that I answered your points specifically in each post.

Critta:

You apparently do not comprehend what really is happening with wildlife in NA. “Couple of bears” have seen in Vancouver are small part of quarter million black bear population thriving in British Columbia (out of 600 thousands populating NA). NA deer overpopulation (comparable with human population of GB) is on-going disaster, with about quarter million deer killed annually with vehicle collision. This is despite US number of active hunters of more than 10 millions. California is encouraging wild boar hunting all year round, for any person from around the world, without hunting license, hunting limit, or tag fee. About the same is happening with overpopulation of snow goose (about 30 millions in western Canada), treating to destroy their feeding grounds in Canadian North. Foolishly restricted to hunting Canadian goose become on-going environmental disaster and major nuisance in Canadian cities. Hunted ducks seems do not care and are terribly overpopulated, to the degree of threatening capacity of their habitat. Wisely restricted to hunting species like eagles, herons, swans, etc. very quickly got the idea that humans are no threat to them, and begin to live and nest in city parks, farms, and open spaces.

Agricultural lands in NA are, actually, shrinking at alarming pace, returning sizeable amount of habitat back to wildlife. To being exact, the most bioproductive habitat to native NA wildlife is not pristine forest. It is forest intermittent with artificial clearings, and most important of all, with patches of agricultural fields, like corn. It is well researched and known fact, utilized by substantial industry of human-controlled hunting properties all around US.

Reforestation of New England is the phenomenon of the magnitude not seen in all humankind history.

Now, I do not know the picture for Europe or Australia. And certainly the picture for developing countries is totally different. The only thing I wanted to say is as follows: in developed countries, like in US and Canada, intensive sustainable agriculture coupled with active wildlife conservation and management, already managed to demonstrate dramatic increase in general wildlife numbers, including rare, habitat-inflexible, and endangered species.

The rest of the world could follow, by becoming civilized and rich. And there is no way around this.