The Problem with Biofuels

[@Irthex]

Biofuels make a great deal of sense, when they're made out of waste products. They don't make a lot of sense when they're the raw material is produced just to turn it into fuel. Extracting the potential energy out of things like human waste or used deep frying oil is sensible.

[@caferace8418]

@@krazyivan9733 Yeah, but nuke is bad. Well that's the mantra. Imagine how much better it would be if we had promoted nuclear energy and didn't rely on coal and natural gas.

[@bruhdabones]

@@caferace8418 nuclear energy is such an easy target for negative PR 😔

[@maxmustermann-cy9zn]

@@krazyivan9733 Or fusion. But also renewables.

[@neurofiedyamato8763]

@@krazyivan9733 Uhhh no... human waste is rarely required in the ecosystem. Human waste is in excess, not in demand. Eliminating some of that waste would help the ecosystem, not hurt it.

[@2Pains1Love]

@@krazyivan9733 ?? Ecosystem that relied on human waste?? You see that mountain of trash in mexico or trash island in the middle of pacific and call that ecosystem???

[@OPiguy35]

From central Midwest and my dad is a farmer...and an important and negative side effect that didn't get mentioned directly is that the increased demand for bio fuels drives increased demand for all inputs. Inputs such as chemicals and farm equipment where those chemicals (namely fertilizer and herbicides/pesticides) are being used more heavily and driving up costs. Farmers take on more agriculture operating (ag-op) loans (I worked in a bank on these loans) and their debt level increases as well increasing dependence on biofuels and continuing the cycle of increasing the use of double cropping and yet even higher inputs costs.

[@dzello]

The reason it didn't get mentioned is that's not a consequence of biofuel. The reason prices are driven up to a price where farmers are required to take loans is scale economics where big corporations owning a lot of farmland can get better loans than farmers. This means they can afford inputs better but farmers can't so they are forced to take loans. So regardless of biofuel or any production, farmers simply can't compete with corporations and would end up doing that anyways. This generally leads farmers to sell their land to the corporations. But it's not related to biofuels at all. Biofuels requiring more inputs just make it go faster if anything.

[@dzello]

​@@jarielrotta135 Yeh but like I said, it's absolutely unrelated to biofuels. It looks like this: Food: low imput amount, low output reward Biofuel: high input amount, high output reward So if a small farmer does food, he'll have to buy a small amount of input at an uncompetitive price and he won't have much of a margin of profit due to low output reward. He'll need loans to operate because otherwise he barely makes money so he needs to do things in mass. And if a small farmer does biofuel, he buys high amount of input at an uncompetitive price but his margin of profit is better. He'll need a loan to buy his inputs because it's expensive. Basically, regardless of if you do food or biofuel, a small farmer ends up taking loan, it's just a loan related to input or a loan related to output. And it's due to farmers not being able to compete with a corporation. In the long term, it means they end up unsuccesful. It's like a normal restaurant next to a McDonald's... It's rough competing with a massive corporation that can lower its prices that low.

[@dzello]

@@jarielrotta135 Basically, farmers have to take loans regardless of what they produce. Corporations either don't need loans or have access to better loans due to their sheer worth (lower interests).

[@Joesolo13]

@@dzello How exactly is that *not* due to biofuels? The demand for them is changing how farmers operate.

[@dzello]

@@Joesolo13 I kinda just explained it. It's unrelated to biofuels because regardless if farmers do FOOD or BIOFUEL, they'll have to take a loan of the exact same size if they want to make the same money. Biofuel is not changing how farmers operate whatsoever, what's happening is simply CORPORATIONS being too efficient which drives the price of inputs TOO HIGH for single farmers. Basically, even if biofuels literally didn't exist, farmers would experience the same situation.

[@dahasolomon7314]

After all these years of watching real engineering, this is the first time seeing Brian's face!

[@kanishka.b8550]

Well you haven’t seen all the videos then😁

[@clearsmashdrop5829]

First time for me too. Found his channel after the Spitfire video.

[@thelegend-e7919]

He shows his face on Twitter and Instagram a fair amount, check them out! Even got Sam from Wendover in there too.

[@rlicon1970]

Cool

[@rlicon1970]

@@thelegend-e7919 don't do none of those.

[@tobysarver8693]

This should be renamed "The Problem with Ethanol". Also, I would love to see a similar study on the energy inputs for producing gasoline.

[@SianaGearz]

This should be renamed "I'm shilling on Pimental even though every single other researcher disagrees with him, and I'm just gonna regurgitate his output uncritically".

[@toomanymarys7355]

They are quite low, actually. Huge refineries are amazingly efficient.

[@toomanymarys7355]

@@SianaGearz The other calculations are still pretty dire. Just not negative.

[@SianaGearz]

@@toomanymarys7355 "dire" is not how i would put it. "a little borderline", perhaps. It does highlight a related issue - meat consumption, but as long as it's sufficiently high, this is what basically absorbs the environmental impact of bioethanol and makes it sensible for the time being in the volume used. Lots of interdependent eco issues that need a systemic solution rather than debating one thing at a time in isolation.

[@philturchen2707]

@@wyskass861 according to Google it is 0.80kWh/gal gasoline. Now some of the missing context is what exact octane they are referring too. I would assume that the higher octane would be even higher. For my production facility (ethanol) we are at 0.47-0.50kWh/gal depending on the time of year (winter vs summer).

[@samsonsoturian6013]

Rural Kansan here: The rise of ethanol has driven a lot of farmers to install water pipes so they can turn wheat/soy fields into corn fields. That means the demand for corn is high enough you can make more money with one corn crop than you can with the double crop per year the wheat/soy method offers.

[@theuglykwan]

That kind of means this needs to be nipped in the bud now before it grows to a level where there won't be the political will to get rid of it. That is if we aren't already at that point.

[@goldenhate6649]

The kicker is? Corn is hella terrible for making biofuel compared to other sources. But lobbyist fucked it up

[@asylumking3642]

Also a great way to deprive your farmland of nutrients over some time due to monoculture farming

[@samsonsoturian6013]

@@goldenhate6649 don't blame lobbyists, as we all wanted it to happen including you mr. The fact is we tax gasoline and subsidize ethanol, making it artificially cheaper to use high ethanol fuel.

[@samsonsoturian6013]

@@asylumking3642 that not all that fair since two crops a year does the same thing. Getting lots of good crops involve a copious amount of fertilizer.

[@adamfaiz3214]

I like your aggressive and constructive criticism. This is probably unrelated, but can you do one for the oil palm industry ? Thank you

[@hpifwkak]

It is entirely & completely related. The scale of products derived from palm oil is on another level vs corn. Concentrating on ethanol (and corn-derived ethanol in the North American region specifically) is just too narrow a subset to lump up this video as “biofuels”, the title should have been “ethanol in NA” instead. The thermodynamics, environmental factors, economics and politics involved for the other elephants in the room are 1) biofuels derived from palm - not ethanol but methanol 2) the mandated blending of FAME / biodiesel in nations across the world (not just derived from palm but rapeseed too) 3) economics of competing against food crop.

[@scottwarthin1528]

I just finished reading Ch.6 of Bill Gate's 'How To Avoid a Climate Disaster" in which he says that THE primary cause of Indonesian deforestation is for, of ALL things, palm tree farms...(!) the extraction of exportable palm oil. There has just gotta be...there MUST be a better (non-carbon emitting, non-deforestation) way of doing things but not even Bill Gates had any suggestions.

[@scottwarthin1528]

@@hpifwkak I just finished reading Ch.6 of Bill Gate's 'How To Avoid a Climate Disaster" in which he says that THE primary cause of Indonesian deforestation is for, of ALL things, palm tree farms...(!) the extraction of exportable palm oil. There has just gotta be...there MUST be a better (non-carbon emitting, non-deforestation) way of doing things but not even Bill Gates had any suggestions.

[@1jh963]

Use palm oil for bio fuel use corn to feed the hunger of world

[@felixrahullowvigatarigan8693]

@@scottwarthin1528 the thing is, there are just not many plants that could beat palm trees in productivity. Compare the output of palm trees and other oil producing plants, it is a big difference. And with most of the palm plantation being in underdeveloped areas. It is really hard to switch to other industry.

[@MatthewSmith-sz1yq]

Thank you for mentioning aviation. I work on aircraft, and it's always so frustrating when people just recommend things like "ban fossil fuels" or "just make them electric" as viable solutions for aviation. They have been trying to find a good alternative to kerosene-based fuels, but there just isn't any other cheap fuel that has the same properties, namely the energy density. You not only need to bring fuel to carry the plane, you need to bring fuel to carry the fuel in the plane. Most biofuels just don't have that energy density, which means we would either have less range, or need to carry more fuel, and more fuel to carry that extra fuel. And batteries' energy density is laughable compared to Jet-A. The other thing that drives me nuts is suggestions to "be more fuel-efficient." In aviation, fuel is money. We already design the plane with fuel efficiency in mind. Winglets? Fuel efficiency. Weight reduction? Fuel efficiency. Ultra-high bypass turbofans? Fuel efficiency. Now, some airlines are even looking at flying planes in formation, like birds, to reduce drag, and increase fuel efficiency. I'm not one of those guys who think fossil fuels will always be the #1 supply of energy, but I also don't think it will ever truly go "extinct," at least not for a long time. I like to use the example of horses. Used to be, almost everyone owned and used a horse. In the US, there was probably more horses than people. However, cars came along, and suddenly the demand for horses plummeted. There was no longer a stable in every town, and roads were redesigned for cars, not horses. But, even to this day, there are some regions, especially rural areas without roads or infrastructure, where horses are better than a car. Even off-road vehicles still need fuel, and it's hard to get fuel in the middle of a grassy field. Although the demand for horses has plummeted to 1% of what it was, there is still a market. I don't think fossil fuels will go the way of the dodo, but more the way of the horse. In the next 30 or so years, I'm sure fossil fuels will almost entirely disappear from people's lives. Their cars will be electric, their houses powered by renewable energy. But there will still be niche markets that use fossil fuels, such as parts of aviation, automotive hobbyists, and certain industrial processes. The fossil fuel industry will still collapse, since the demand will be a fraction of what it was, but I doubt it will entirely disappear for a long time.

[@beenusirimanne]

In addition, think of all the military jets around the world... They won't be going electric any time soon, and when using afterburner most of those bad boys can go through about 10 litres of fuel per second... Fossil fuels are still very relevant imo.

[@mobiuscoreindustries]

That is because people will always attack the low hanging fruit that they can see and not the root of the problem that is always out of sight. The core of the fossil fuel problem isn't it's use in vehicles or in industrial processes, it's in energy generation. Electricity isn't just there to power up a house or recharge an electric car. It makes everything and literally has a knock down effect on every facet of our existence. A cheaper and more reliable energy generation leads to more capacity and lower prices. Lower prices means that not only does everything get cheaper (manufacturing, storage and soon transport become less expensive) but it also unlock new ways of recycling or generating resources locally from waste in ways that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. This makes me think of the spaceX construction at Boca chica, where they intend to create a solar powered carbon capture system, which would then collect ambient CO2 and water and produce oxygen and methane form literally thin air to use in the starship test facilities. Same goes for Tesla's battery reprocessing facilities within the gigafactories, which are an energy intensive process but will allow to reduce or downright eliminate the need for new resource intake. All of which depends on having access to cheap, stable energy. Whenever possible solar power should be used. It's the most reliable renewable energy that is accessible everywhere. However this can only be relied on as a baseload in countries with basically zero cloud cover and a lot of sunlight. Solar and batteries there should be enough to stabilize the grid. Nuclear reactors (especially SMRs or thorium ones) should be used in countries where solar energy is too unreliable. The cost of energy would go down, and with it our entire need for fossil fuels, only leaving active domains where the compact and energy dense nature of internal combustion and fuel engines can be exploited

[@Woody2194]

This is seriously the most legit and interesting KZbin comment I’ve ever read. Love your theory on how fossil fuels will become like the horse!

[@IvanTre]

You can make oil from any biological or plastic waste if you have enough heat. It's not rocket science. If people weren't idiots about nuclear, it¨'d be fairly straightforward.

[@arsenioibay414]

@@IvanTre So ... how would you generate such heat?

[@vitorneves3054]

In Brazil we use 27% of sugarcane ETHANOL in our gasoline

[@danafletcher2341]

And E100 in flex fuel vehicles.

[@dennispremoli7950]

Wow, who could've guessed? Once again the core issue in the US is lobbying. Legalised bribery, illegal in most other countries. Literally, every core issue you find in the country can easily be tracked down to lobbying.

[@mjc0961]

America is run by corporations, not people. And yet every 4 years we get the propaganda that voting is important shoved down our throats. It doesn't matter who we vote for, corporate lobbyists are in charge.

[@zashbot]

@@mjc0961 honestly this is why I found the people literally crying that trump got elected so funny, do you not understand what’s going on here?

[@spacetacos7574]

Capitalism

[@Supreme_Lobster]

@@spacetacos7574 if only things were that easy. Capitalism is bad, but every other socioeconomic organization is worse so we work with what we have

[@rockyblacksmith]

@@Supreme_Lobster Those real-life iterations of capitalism that are closest to traditional socialism (i. e. those that empower their workers most within the economy) have a lot less of these problems to deal with.

[@ulti-mantis]

10:15 If you look closely, most of the sugarcane area is concentrated in the São Paulo countryside, which is about as far from the Amazon as Ireland is from Italy. The main drivers of deforestation in the Amazon are cattle ranching, soy farming, logging, and mining. The Brazilian southwest itself was mostly devastated by agriculture during the 20th century.

[@AppleSauceGamingChannel]

Most sugar cane producing areas now were once rain forest that was cleared for ranching, that essentially destroyed soil quality to the point of it no longer being useful for other crops. That there is virtually no rain forest left near large urban centers is proof of just how much has been destroyed. The opposite of 'proof' sugar cane production has no relation to the destruction of the Amazon. It is intrinsically linked to the cycle of environmental destruction that is the backbone of the the Brazilian economy

[@hippocelestial4306]

@@AppleSauceGamingChannel backbone of the brazilian economy? the agriculture industry represents only 6% of brazil's gdp. surely, there is a catastrophy happening due to amazonia's deforestation, but those farmers do not represent the sector as a whole. this cycle you mention does not describe what happens in brazil accurately, the dynamics of deforestation are much more subtle than that. sugarcane farmers are not the same group of people as the ones in the amazon. are they liberals who lobby for green policy? hell no. both would benefit from relaxed environmental policy, but not for the same changes in the law. my only point here is to "unlink" sugarcane to the amazon, these are two different matters and should be treated as such if we want less carbon emission and more carbon abosrption.

[@evannibbe9375]

@Daniel Meyers Wherever land is used to make biofuels, it forces farmers to take more land from elsewhere (the Amazon) to make food.

[@hippocelestial4306]

@@evannibbe9375 only about 10% of brazil's farmland is used for sugarcane, and about half of that is used to make all types of ethanol. there is no shortage of food in brazil, at least not in the production side. for every 3 liters of pure gasoline sold in brazil, it is sold 2 of pure ethanol, roughly speaking. if you think poor farmers are being displaced due to biofuels and that is why the amazon is being deforested, you do not know the problem at all. if tomorrow, all sugarcane land was made available to be used as food land, the amount of trees being cut in amazon would not change one bit. people take land in the amazonia because it pays off, no other reason. it's not because of the price of the soy or maize or whatever. the math is simple: i have X area of land, if i burn down some trees on no man's land (amazon), my area is now 1.5X. the problem is the lack of punishment for those who don't obey the law, they get away with murder. we don't even have a good record of what part of the land belongs to whom (the areas that are already farmland), some people simply say that the part they burned down was legally bought and it often sticks!!!!!!!!!!! what i'm trying to say here is that we use a lot of ethanol in mobility and it represents only a tiny fraction of our land use. also that this dynamic of displacement of crops being the reason for amazonia's deforestation isn't accurate. land is expensive, if some farmer has the opportunity to take it for free (with no repercussions), one probably will.

[@joegardhouse5285]

The references in this video are terrible and extremely out of date. The article by David Pimentel is from 2005 and is based off information from the 1980s. Agriculture and the ethanol industry has made extraordinary advancements since those times. This video makes me question everything written by Brian McManus. I really like this channel so I am absolutely shocked how bad this video is. On average, without subsidies, it costs a farmer about $3 to produce and transport a bushel of corn. This price includes the costs of all the energy and other inputs required to produce a bushel. In 2021, one bushel yields over 11 litres of ethanol plus 7kg of animal feed plus 0.4kg of corn oil. The energy contained in just the ethanol is 60,000kcal. Even if you use the out of date figure from this video of 6600kcal to produce a bushel that's a pretty good return on investment. But don't take my word for it, do your own research, but do a better job than Brian did.

[@MatthewStinar]

I first recognized there was something wrong with the ethanol industry when they announced they were building a coal fired ethanol plant near my home. Yes, they were going to burn coal to produce biofuel. Not green at all.

[@peterbakic4493]

Its evolving but backwards

[@RichRich1955]

It's about job creation nothing more.

[@MatthewStinar]

@@RichRich1955 Better for the environment and the economy to pay them to stay home in that case.

[@dirtypure2023]

@@MatthewStinar Better for the environment, sure. The economy... not so much.

[@MatthewStinar]

@@dirtypure2023 They are spending resources and labor to turn a given amount of energy into less energy. What they do is an economic loss. I'm estimating that the cost of paying them to stay home is less than the economic losses they cause by wasting energy. Those same resources could be spent producing something rather than wasting energy, which should more than cover the cost of paying those people to stay home. More realistically though, we should eliminate their jobs so they can become productive members of society instead of freeloading like they're doing now.

[@paifu.]

6:50 Energy negative process 8:15 Photosynthesis efficiency of plants vs solar panels 8:40 Biomass uses water

[@AndrewPick6]

Advanced biofuels are promoted because of properties that overcome the many disadvantages of ethanol (high hygroscopicity, low energy density, and costly purification) and plant-based biodiesel (high cloud point, tropical deforestation).

[@ayushtieari385]

Seaweed biofuels is only solution

[@carsonrush3352]

If you're dead set on making biofuel work, then switch to mesquite beans as the feed stock. It's one of the most desert adapted plants on the planet, using almost no water at all and growing in places that you can't use for normal crops. It also produces more ethanol per farm footprint than corn. It's also gluten free, high in fiber, high in protein, and self-sweetening. Lastly, it's a legume and a tree, meaning that it gives both shade and nitrogen to the soil underneath it, paving the way for other crops to be planted underneath. There's a reason the Native Americans called it the "Tree of Life". It's an incredible plant. The only issue comes with grinding the super hard seeds, which can be smashed using hammer mills or slow-cooked into the equivalent of baked beans. Speaking of Native Americans, we should also try switching from the monoculture agricultural strategy used with most corn farming. We could try growing the corn with beans and squash, which the Natives called the "Three Sisters", because they synergize and create a complete protein. The corn gives something for the beans to climb, the beans give nitrogen to the nitrogen-thirsty roots of the corn, and the squash covers the ground and prevents the growth of weeds.

[@Bearthedancingman]

I agree 100%. For biofuel to work we need to use crops that don't grow in highly fertile farmland that NEEDS to remain food growing land. Switchgrass can be grown in rocky dry soil, clay soil, sand, and even gravel. It also grows wonderfully in floodlands. All areas that don't grow corn or wheat. It's good for the environment and good for fuel production. Twice as much yield per acre as corn and 700% more yield per unit of fuel required for production. Mesquite would open up desert land as well. Potentially increasing rainfall in those areas and thus increasing plant life and providing better soil and habitats for wildlife. Lastly, he does mention in the video, algae, this can be grown in contaminated runoff water and it cleans the water of much of the contamination. Thus giving a useful side affect. I think looking to a -Single-source for biofuel is always going to have downsides. But the benefits of biofuel outweigh most of those drawbacks. But looking to multiple sources is where the benefits come from. In America we have millions of acres of nearly dead land. Huge swathes of desert or gravelly soil that is not growing anything other than a few weeds. We know of crops that can not only use that wasted space, but also improve the soil and even increase rainfall in those areas. Providing a benefit to both mankind and nature. Algae can be grown almost anywhere, in almost any water. Algae makes around 1000 gallons of biofuel per acre. Switchgrass makes around 80 gallons per acre. I don't know about mesquite, but the total production per acre is still higher than desert sand growing rocks. lol. Even just 20 gallons per acre would be useful and profitable. Although I'd assume it probably produces more like 40-50 gallons per acre. Between mesquite in the desert and switchgrass in the mountains, the soil will benefit as farming with non-chemical fertilizers and avoiding the use of liquid nitrogen, will enable the soil to build a layer of top soil so that production will increase over time. My dad started farming on sand with just 2 inches of top soil and after 9 years we had over 12 inches of dark top soil and our alfalfa was more than twice as tall and much greener than our neighbor's alfalfa.

[@christopherleblanc160]

Love Real Engineering, but I feel like this episode should have been titled "The Problem with Ethanol", not the problem with biofuels. Many of the objections to other biofuels raised at the end of the video either do not apply to all potential sources or represent cost/production inefficiencies that might be addressed with improved manufacturing techniques, advances in enzymatic processed or refinements in the plant stock used to start.

[@Bearthedancingman]

@@christopherleblanc160 I think that too often alternative energy is focused in the wrong places. Electric cars are a good idea and Tesla has proven it. There's still a ways to go, but it's a good way into it's development. As for industrial or commercial vehicles, hybrid diesel-electric systems seem to be completely being overlooked. Instead we see a focus on pure electric trucks. Diesel-electric is a system that could likely be retrofitted to existing trucks and heavy equipment. Combine that with continuing development of biofuels and the vehicles that actually produce the majority of pollutants might get cleaner without adding even more exhaust filtration that reduces fuel economy. Now I'm rambling. Sorry.

[@waynebow70]

@@christopherleblanc160 100%

[@rex5611]

let us not forget the potential of alge biofuel. im not against biofuel but corn is not the best way to do it

[@Joserider123]

“If humans could eat electricity, we would” That kid who licked batteries: *My goals are beyond your understanding*

[@moeron9172]

That same kid :- they called me a madman

[@alexsolosm]

I knew I wasn't alone!

[@moeron9172]

@@alexsolosm ayyy high five internet stranger

[@thecrazyfarmboy]

When I was a kid I put four 9volt batteries in series and touched the leads to my tounge... I had zero scientific understanding of what I was doing but I sure did learned something

[@ianh1504]

At least 15 kids have died from eating batteries

[@Dodgerific]

My thermodynamics teacher in College pointed the inefficiency of biofuels 8 years ago

[@acasccseea4434]

And any law of thermodynamics would favor more consumption of effective products over more effective consumption, so that max entropy is reached quicker, and the end of the world comes faster

[@justinokraski3796]

all fuels are inefficient, the question is whether we can continuously make it

[@dongster529]

Yet we are making more and more biofuels now, more than ever. Just look what Biden pushed for this year, its insane and unscientific.

[@dirtypure2023]

@@dongster529 Lots of insane and unscientific notions in American politics these days.

[@altrag]

@@acasccseea4434 Well there's no technical reason why any of this would break the laws of thermodynamics - there's an immense energy input available that we only barely touch currently (ie: the sun). If photosynthesis was more effective at converting solar energy into sugars, this process could easily net several times more energy than we put in. Unfortunately that's not how things work. Maybe it would be possible to bioengineer photosynthesis to be more efficient (hence playing around with algae and whatnot) but natural plants like corn just don't cut it. Its the same problem with the idiots who say we should just "plant more trees" to fix climate change. Natural trees and plants just aren't anywhere near sufficient to do the job (never mind the fact that we're burning more trees than we could possibly re-plant thanks to the continual and accelerating destruction of the Amazon, and I'm sure the same thing happens in many lesser forests around the world as well that we just never hear about due to the Amazon taking up all the headlines).

[@huntermansuper6243]

You forgot to mention, corn can be feed to livestock and also kind of important in food security while petroleum is not. Huge petroleum refinery also destroys the land, not to mention sometimes it bring disaster to marine life.

[@leothefirst]

Brazilian here. What distroys the amazon the most is actually soybean plantation. Most of Brazil's sugarcane fields are further south in the state of São Paulo, nowhere near the amazon rainforest.

[@TheAhmedvienna]

Good point. Soy is being mostly consumed by animals. Which we in then as humans eat them. Why not eat the soy directly and skip the inefficient process of converting thay to meat..!

[@JohnnyJonathan]

It is not the soybeans, but the cattle. The Amazon soil is not fertile to farm anything, really.

[@orodrigodemoraes]

@@TheAhmedvienna because soy is terrible for your health. Specially if you're a man.

[@TheAhmedvienna]

@@orodrigodemoraes compared to the McDonald's?

[@oakstrong1]

Either way, subsistence farmers who previously had a healthy diet are now growing on one, unhealthy crop: their earnings are not enough to pay for the food that have also increased with the diminishing edible crops.

[@idrathernot_2]

American biofuel is 100% just a kickback to agricultural megacorps. The Brazilians are getting like a 7:1 return from sugar cane but we're getting 2:1 on corn.

[@crackedemerald4930]

I wouldn't cite Brazil for good farming practices. But that's surprising, i didn't know sugarcane was that... Potentially alcoholic.

[@idrathernot_2]

@@crackedemerald4930 yeah I won't praise the land management of Brazil but sugar cane itself is much more efficient than corn if you're going to do that.

[@claudiaroedel1368]

@@crackedemerald4930 sugar cane by itself has much more energy, more sugar, to be converted in Energy

[@SeaJay_Oceans]

Oil production is failing. Fossil Fuels will be mostly gone by 2080. Think fast. The Wall humans are about to run into is a near extinction level event.

[@SeaJay_Oceans]

@@ForzaJersey No need for food, light, heat... that's for boomers.

[@sluagh5534]

‘If humans could eat electricity, they would.’ Need a real engineering out of context video

[@skyfeelan]

the resource it takes to feed one person can be used to create electricity for a lot of people

[@xblade11230]

Its because electricity is more closer to pure energy We eat food, but because of our shitty digestive systems we get very little energy especially from plants All our energy comes from sunlight, so the plants needs to eat the sunlight, then we need to eat the plants (From video plants absorb like 1% of the solar energy) If we could eat pure electricity (imagine we took out our brains and put them into robot bodies like in alita) A couple of solar panels could feed a human Right now it takes 4 acres of fully farmed land to feed a single person for a year, if you want healthy diet with meat and eggs

[@gwho]

@@xblade11230 and the indigestion complications!! It's as gross as chemical fuels

[@ztac_dex]

1 liter of gasoline has 8,325,818 calories

[@anon5214]

@@xblade11230 Plants don't eat sunlight, plants eat carbon dioxide!

[@fernandocordeiro8830]

I'm surprised. Just an en passing mention to Brazil, despite we using Ethanol since the 80s? Plus pertty much all cars made/sold here nowadays can run with either Gasoline OR pure Ethanol, and it has been that way for over a decade.A little more detail on the maths for sugarcane would also be great. Honestly, Ethanol has been working REALLY WELL in Brazil. To the point pretty much everyone can power their cars with only Ethanol, as I myself do (Can't recall the last time I put Gasoline in ANY vehicle, probably over a decade ago. I always go for ethanol). Sure, Ethanol is nowhere near perfect, but it works well enough that Brazil can pretty much do away with Gasoline for fueling cars (We still need it for trucks and planes though, so there's that). And being able to stop using petrol, while not a solution in itself, seems like a pretty good step forward. In Brazil, when gas prices go up, people simply use Ethanol. It would be really nice to get your input on how that changes things, and what that can mean in the grand scheme of moving away from fossil fuels, after all, despite all problems with Ethanol, it is definitely not "fossil".

[@buildthis99]

So Carbon Dioxide along with Alcohol are now considered toxic byproducts, wow, so disappointing.

[@JoshF710]

I see mr real engineering has taken a more aggressive stance for the video title since the initial upload; I like it

[@Joe--]

What was the the original title?

[@termitreter6545]

Its just gotten more naive. Of course its not perfect, nothing is. But its certainly better than burning coal or oil, which has none of the CO2 recaptured, if you go by these numbers. This video is really poor, it doesnt really answer any conclusive questions about bio fuels.

[@JoshF710]

@@Joe-- same as the thumbnail: the truth about biofuels.

[@vighneshkannan7896]

@@termitreter6545 it says fund renewable instead of biofuels, that will lead to a greater return on investment

[@termitreter6545]

@@vighneshkannan7896 The thing is, you want a healthy mix of energy sources, not just rely on one or two things. So even if bio fuel is an inferior source, it might still have a place. And frankly, how is wind and solar power gonna help your cars with their combustion engines?

[@jaydoncampbell561]

"Whatever the hell a bushel is" had me dead

[@winstonsmith478]

It's a stupid Imperial measurement which, by the sound of his accent, originated in a nation adjacent to his.

[@SFKelvin]

Yeah, but he still used acre-feet when speaking about water usage.

[@TheOwenMajor]

@@winstonsmith478 Bushel is a very useful measurement, it's only stupid to city dwellers who have never needed it. A bushel provides a convenient bridge between weight and volume. Farmers measure their grain by volume, they know how many bushels their bin will hold. But when they go to sell it, it is measured by weight at the grain elevator. Bushels are useful because it is a weight figure that is based off volume, thus the farmer can know how many bushels he has by measuring the volume in his bins. Of course, this all seems very silly to the people who think food magically appears on their grocery shelves.

[@mgs02184]

five dozen, 60 ears

[@ronfullerton3162]

@@TheOwenMajor I feel your pain. To bad these young folks were not around agricultural and see what has happened during the past one hundred years. Someone other than the American farmer started the destroying the Amazon rainforest and other places to raise food. That broke the U.S. markets and ran thousands off of farms to cities for jobs. Farming destroying all the habitat? How about urban sprawl? People are moving to live in wildlife habitat, as well as prime farmland. You must remember farm ground has to have certain qualities, or it will end up like the grounds of the rainforests that are now abandoned because it is not the right type of ground to support agriculture over time. Who gets so much of the federal moneys? Usually urban land owners and multinational food companies. And nevermind small things such as alcohol fuels burn cleaner and doesn't possess some of the cancerous problems of other fuels. More care was taken of the land and the farm animals when the family living on and farming the land depended on that farm being successful. More and more ground is owned by people not on the land. Bill Gates is one of the largest private agricultural land owners in the U.S. Many livestock production operations, especially the large ones, are corporation owned and ran. There are many family farm operations yet. But they do not hold the real power. But if the markets are ruined again, corporate America will be in even a bigger strangle hold of this nation's food supply. It will be coming fairly soon as the electric vehicles take over for the i.c.e. vehicles. More family owned operations will fold unless more diverse crops are found. I grew up in a family farm operation. And I remained in ag-business till fifty years old. But us that loved that life are being pushed out for those who will only operate it as strictly a dollars and cents business. Not as an operation of life that it is.

[@w0mblemania]

"Siri, what is a bushel?" "You will arrive at your destination in 200 meters".

[@blaircox1589]

Is this the first time we've seen him??

[@DavidChipman]

@@blaircox1589 first time for me.

[@SomeDudeInBaltimore]

Ok thank you! I was beginning to think my Google Home speaker is retarded but now I know Alexa and Siri have the same problems.

[@oriraykai3610]

@@Teekles you seriously base your judgement of science on who gets "Nobel prizes for chemistry"? Do understand that it's easy to totally politicize a public relations gimmick like that? That's unbelievably naive thinking.

[@rockyblacksmith]

@@blaircox1589 I think he appeared at the end of 1 or 2 videos in the past.

[@mattuiop]

Its worth biofuel to go in the direction of byproduct priority. A good example is refined waste vegetable oil for diesel engines.

[@garchompy_1561]

yea thats where most of the field is going. when you grow crops like tomato, how much of the plant do we eat? even in the "easy" biofuel production from corn, the parts not uses to make fuel are fed to animals, its basically never just "this is grown to make only fuel" .

[@lucasdeoliveirapontes2789]

Sugarcane production isn’t destroying the amazon. The map you showed at 10:11 says it all, the main growers of sugarcane are located on Centro-Oeste, South and Southeast regions of Brazil hundreds of kilometers from the amazon. It is destroying the cerrado(A savanna like biome) and the almost entirely destroyed Atlantic Rainforest.

[@davidbuderim2395]

Biofuels are energy negative - my god, what the hell are we doing.

[@666Tomato666]

listening to lobbyists

[@iolithblue]

Buying jobs and having cars. Maybe we don't like those answers, but that is the answers

[@coreyfro]

Not all biofuels. This video is a steep drop in quality of this channel. Biodiesel's are 20% the CO2 release of petroleum diesel. This is still positive impact..it means my Biodiesel car has an eMPG rating of 180mpg. And who cares how inefficient photosynthesis is. Photovoltaic is 0% efficient at capturing carbon. Deforestation is a problem, but it's not a problem because of biofuel, it's a problem because humans are shit at managing public resources.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@@coreyfro We need to be gasifying crop residue, Miscanthus grass (farmed biomass), municipal solid waste, and sewage sludge to pass through the Fischer-Tropsch process to make liquid fuels in the gasoline and diesel fuel ranges.

[@werrkowalski2985]

​@@coreyfro Exactly, the video is misleading, all the problems mentioned in this video don't really matter much. On one hand he advocates moving away from fossil fuels, but on the other hand he is concerned with insignificant things like the fact that its energy negative, where is this extra energy coming and what is the carbon footprint of the process is what should matter, also, water is a renewable resource. It doesnt matter at all that the process is energy negative if the extra energy is coming from food, you cant use food as fuel. The inefficiency of plants is also misleading, ok, they capture just 1% of the solar energy, but cost almost nothing to plant, and emit less CO2 than photovoltaic cells, its frankly an idiotic point to compare efficiency of plants to photovoltaic cells in this context. The video covers an interesting topic, but the conclusion doesnt make much sense.

[@GoFlyThatKite]

“Alternative forms of energy” like NUCLEAR.

[@justanerd414]

All the politicians be like : "ooo scary word, nuclear scary"

[@mrthunderbird_]

Not even, the general public is uneducated and only associates nuclear with weaponry and destruction. Can't run a good campaign saying you're for nuclear

[@ef3675]

I don't wanna debate about long term ramification of nuclear waste, just that at the end of the day is just like oil: eventually you run out of fissable materials. Also bombs.

[@michahell1]

He already made a video about this topic - nuclear is too expensive

[@Marmocet]

@@ef3675 Nope. Nuclear power produces hardly any waste relative to the amount of energy produced. The waste is easy to deal with, and a lot of what's in "nuclear waste" is valuable in its own right (like xenon, for example). There is enough easily obtainable uranium and thorium to supply all of humanity's energy needs for hundreds of thousands of years, and if we run out, there's plenty more on the moon.

[@Acelerado007]

In Brazil, our gasoline has aproximately 27% of ethanol, made from sugarcane

[@doge8530]

The first bite determines the front side of the Burger

[@RealEngineering]

Okay

[@TS-jm7jm]

@@RealEngineering just wanted to make a point about your video since you brought up solar, solar is mostly bad(because it takes up space and destroys undergrowth), wind kills birds and cost of running wind farms is higher over all that you get from energy output, electric cars are retarded because of what goes into making their batteries, ahem massive toxic lake in choyna, hydro, yea i agree with use of hydroelectric, and ofcourse nuclear is the best we have but people have had fear propaganda against it propounded into them for decades now, edit, also carbon neutrality is a retarded concept because the earth has been getting greener with rising carbon levels, whilst the temp has remained stable, so people taking fear porn of "we're all gonna die in ten years" which has been going on for decades is just silly, seriously more carbon in the air is a good thing, plastic however and toxic chemical dumps really are a legitimate problem, but including carbon in there is a form of well poisoning about actual legitimate discussions on environmental problems.

[@marcoyado]

Just what?

[@ImieNazwiskoOK]

@@TS-jm7jm Solar panels could be put into existing building, it would reduce power consumption and wouldn't take extra space. Such a thing would be most efficient in small towns and villages (because when there are a lot of skyscrapers there is not much light and area for them).

[@HermanVonPetri]

@@TS-jm7jm Fossil fuel pollution is estimated to kill 10 times as many birds, bats and vulnerable species as wind turbines. Wind farms tend to turn a profit after about 5 to 10 years of operation. And the larger the turbine is the more efficient it is, the slower it turns and less dangerous it is for birds. Compared to the toxic waste produced by coal mining, fracking, and petroleum drilling at least the batteries aren't burned every time and can be reused. For the fossil fuels you will just keep producing more toxic byproducts after burning everything you dug up over and over again. Hydroelectric cannot be expanded into new areas much anymore without destroying the land behind the dams, much like you complain of solar taking up space.

[@scharftalicous]

"This is not a green technology. The reality is that photosynthesis is an incredible inefficient way to turn sunlight into usable energy." This was not the video I expected but it is so spot on and that quite had blown my mind.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

Dedicated biomass probably isn't going anywhere. Algae definitely isn't going anywhere. Because the area of the collectors may as well be replaced with solar panels with 20% or higher efficiency compared to 1 or 2% for photosynthesis. Then use the electricity to run an amine carbon dioxide scrubber, an electrolyzer, a water gas shift reactor, and a Fischer-Tropsch reactor to produce liquid hydrocarbons in the gasoline and diesel fuel ranges. The truth is that we can use solar panels, electricity, and industrial chemical processes to fix carbon with higher efficiencies than nature has ever been able to. I also am interested in gasifying crop residue, biomass, municipal solid waste, and sewage sludge to make synthesis gas and putting it through the Fischer-Tropsch process to make liquid fuels. I'm a big supporter of nuclear energy for our electricity too.

[@Turbo_TechnoLogic]

@@gregorymalchuk272 So u think u can do better in a couple of years, taking into account all the possible and unimaginable consequences and effects, than nature has been perfecting it in 100s of millions of years?

[@alexxans1154]

@@Turbo_TechnoLogic while I get what you are saying I do have to add that nature does what is best for THAT species only. It does not take into account any other effects a change might have to any other species or the environment. What I'm trying to say is that sure nature does have ways of tackling problems, but those solutions are not always the best for us, cause there are many other variables that affect it. A plant might have low solar energy efficiency because it grows slowly so it doesn't need to evolve more efficiently photosynthesis

[@James-sk4db]

It’s a bit dumb, because if they hadn’t noticed plants survive when the sun goes in unlike solar power. It’s the stores of chemical power that bio fuel uses and it’s the fact that it is a store that makes it so much more useful as an energy supply. Much more efficient to cart around plants or oils to burn for power then electricity, which notoriously losses a huge chunk of its power in transmission.

[@Turbo_TechnoLogic]

@@alexxans1154 what do u mean by That species? Somehow in the end millions of species managed to form here and live together in a conpl3x system, relying on each other. While this and the balances change over time, it stood the test of time. Also, there must be a reason why things go at that pace or efficiency as they do, even if slower than some people want it to be.

[@madmanjoe]

In Finland we make bio ethanol from everyday food waste. This is a more sustainable way to produce it.

[@Eric1-373]

Indeed, mechanical engines(Diesel engines) run off of cooking oil or plant oil by product is a good backup incase of a solar flare. Last one hit as recently as the 1800's, taking down the telegraph communications in the U.S. at the time. If we had a solar flare that powerful today it would cripple or even destroy some countries.

[@cleitonfelipe2092]

You should not waste food. There goes your susteinability.

[@madmanjoe]

@@cleitonfelipe2092 Im talking about biodegradable waste, from peals of vegetables and all sorts of stuff. Of course it is true that you shouldnt throw out food, but it is a sad fact that people do it anyways and even if you ate all the food you ever bought, you are still going to have biowaste. Its better to make it into something useful than just let it decompose at a landfill. Nothing is perfect in this world. You really expect humanity to reach a point where there is no more biowaste in any form? I dont think so.

[@standowner6979]

@@cleitonfelipe2092 😥 estou decepcionado!

[@joegardhouse5285]

The references in this video are terrible and extremely out of date. The article by David Pimentel is from 2005 and is based off information from the 1980s. Agriculture and the ethanol industry has made extraordinary advancements since those times. This video makes me question everything written by Brian McManus. I really like this channel so I am absolutely shocked how bad this video is. On average, without subsidies, it costs a farmer about $3 to produce and transport a bushel of corn. This price includes the costs of all the energy and other inputs required to produce a bushel. In 2021, one bushel yields over 11 litres of ethanol plus 7kg of animal feed plus 0.4kg of corn oil. The energy contained in just the ethanol is 60,000kcal. Even if you use the out of date figure from this video of 6600kcal to produce a bushel that's a pretty good return on investment. But don't take my word for it, do your own research, but do a better job than Brian did.

[@gbear6919]

If you're using the cost to produce ethanol out of 1 bushel of corn, should you be looking at the net energy of the bushel as a whole? Distillers grains is used as feed for animals and DCO is being used for biodiesel, which would have a energy impact. Not sure if it would make a difference, but I'm curious...

[@robertadams6606]

I can tell you that Biodiesel is problematic, in that it clogs fuel filters. Nothing worse than driving & suddenly you have a filter clog you lose speed and can't get it back up to speed.

[@Dollapfin]

Once these were calculated into the equation the numbers became positive but we still need to find better ways because the environmental (not co2 or energy) impacts of such massive corn production is not factored in.

[@JoeyCarb]

Dead Dinosaurs: "Congratulations, you played yourself."

[@xypleth]

People still believe the dinosaur juice theory?

[@priatalat]

@@xypleth I think it's just more fun to think about. The idea of dinosaurs powering our world is way cooler than algae and other plant matter

[@xypleth]

@@priatalat That would be fine, as long as it's not covering up the true abundance of the natural resource and facts about it. Which probably is the exact reason for these "theories".

[@TR33ZY_CRTM]

@@priatalat With that said: *Algae and Plant Matter:* Congratulations, you played yourself

[@ansersoftware4463]

"Ethanol, a biofuel" you know, i'm something of a car myself

[@leerman22]

This injun only consumes ethanol. (this comment might get deleted by youtube)

[@WasFakestCenturyAesthetics]

one for you, one for me! heh heh heh heh heh -Homer Simpson on the ethanol-powered car

[@peterfireflylund]

Russia has a lot of "cars"...

[@mba4677]

Rofl!!

[@monad_tcp]

actually, cars use methanol, ethanol and buthanol mixed.

[@peterbeerman4982]

Biofuel needs to be created from leftover foods, not from freshly grown corn or types of wheat.

[@weirdshit]

That was the first video i have seen on that topic. It was definitely a good reuse of the left over oil. The exhaust was smelling like fried chicken however. lol.

[@jeromewright93]

Wastewater treatment plants use sludge to make methane. It's not very efficient and they only make enough to help heat the buildings on the plant.

[@leerman22]

You can turn it into fertilizers, producing that from scratch is energy intensive.

[@jeromewright93]

@@leerman22 Interestingly, compost isn't a fertilizer . It's a "soil amendment". No, it doesn't give dirt more rights, Lol. It makes more soil and that is really very important as agriculture depletes the soil not just of nutrients but actually destroys soil.

[@Redmanticore]

biofuels by themselves are not horrible, they do work. video means you just should use the biowaste product of industries for it, like cooking oil, grease, and such into biodiesel or renewable diesel. not raise eatable things for it. waste animal fats, oils, and grease can clog pipes and pumps both in the public sewer lines as well as in wastewater treatment facilities. you can even produce aircraft kerosene from such waste.

[@MarceloGosling]

Small correction: it's not the Amazon that is deforested for planting sugarcane here in Brazil. It's mostly the "Cerrado" biome (similar to the African Savannah)

[@marcouno8850]

Yes, in the map shown it places nearly 0% of sugarcane crops on Amazon biome. Most of the cane crops are shown in São Paulo, which is at least about 1000km from the closest little bit of Amazon forest. It's like saying that corn crops in Iowa are responsible for deforestation in Oregon. I'm not saying that deforestation and preservation of natural biomes isn't an issue. But most people talking about it internationally don't even bother to look at a map.

[@hilkmeister1382]

@@marcouno8850 mostly because their disingenuous. If they cared about the environment they would use the 1000’s of other arguments that would help the environment (for example, we should go green to remove our oil dependence on the Middle East which would allow us to have our men and women in the military to come home)

[@beaudavis3808]

@@marcouno8850 That also includes both Seeker and Just Have A Think.

[@Zuaquim1]

Yes, the Amazon is being deforested mainly to raise cattle and grow soybeans.

[@gordonlawrence1448]

@@Zuaquim1 Soybeans?

[@crito3534]

10:04 - This is i huge misconception about sugar-cane ethanol! Deforrestation in Brazil has little to nothing to do with sugar-cane. Recent deforrested areas are mostly used for grass growing for cattle. It happens Amazon climate and soil are not adequate for cultivation of current existing sugar-cane varieties.

[@joegardhouse5285]

Deforestation is a political issue not related to biofuels. The rainforests were being cutdown long before the rise of the biofuel industry. Ethanol is a clean burning carbon neutral fuel. Videos like this just give corrupt governments a scapegoat issue to cover up their negligence in protecting forests.

[@VitorFM]

Exactly! This video is a lie! Rainforest destruction has nothing to do with ethanol! Also, second generation ethanol are a lot better then what's said. Yes, algae fuel is still on RESEARCH, yet, some papers see future on algae biorefinery!

[@Klamev]

Yeah but people get really angry when you tell them that eating meat is not sustainable

[@thmadeym4556]

@@VitorFM the video isn't a lie..one part of it was wrong. There's a difference between getting a part wrong and the entire 15 minutes being a lie. Also, if you watched the video, he said the whole algae process is inefficient now but could be efficient in the future. Please watch the entire video before commenting next time

[@VitorFM]

@@thmadeym4556 no, 85% of the video is a lie. Some points are wrigh, this doesn't turn the rest ok.

[@Techno-Universal]

There’s also a few fish and chip shop owners that get free diesel fuel from whenever they change their fryer oil as they filter the old used oil and are than able to use it as biodiesel! :)

[@Error-xl3ty]

When real engineering uploads it’s a global event

[@buddingscientist170]

Right i was also waiting for new video of real engineering

[@patherek7914]

Yes it js

[@kp5343]

When it's global event, real engineering uploads

[@Robert_McGarry_Poems]

The soothing sounds of logic and discourse, with a mellow accent!

[@TheWaynester101]

Shit gets real

[@MirorR3fl3ction]

"growing stuff we cant eat" oh boy wait till you look at how much water Grass Lawns use.

[@mjc0961]

And the fuel/energy wasted on mowing them constantly.

[@ben5056]

Sure but the alternatives aren’t much better

[@stdesy]

You don’t eat your lawn?!

[@gl15col]

@@ben5056 I am converting my lawn to prairie. After the first year, it does better if you don't water it (not how it evolved to grow) and with careful planning it will be a drift of native flowers all summer, which is great for pollinators. It protects itself against native bugs it also evolved to coexist with.

[@spacetacos7574]

That’s just disgusting I’ve always hate lawns

[@starsoffyre]

Cool, the company I'm working in is investing heavily in algae biofuel research. Though I'm not working on that project, I'm interested to see whether it will be successful in the next few years.

[@williamwalsh4912]

Exxon Mobil?

[@starsoffyre]

@@williamwalsh4912 Yup

[@WG55]

I've seen studies of algae biofuel, and the biggest problem is the energy efficiency of water extraction.

[@kormocziaron4362]

OK, but algae is not produced on farmland, it is made of sh*t. So I think it should be calculated differently. Like the producion cost should be reduced by the cost of waste water treatment. Even if it is not cost effective, it is still beneficial.

[@Brandon_letsgo]

Biofuel are useless from a energy point of view. Economically is total out of question. The 10% ethanol mandante is criminal at best. If it gets reduce to zero, the cars will run more per litter of gasoline. That's what really reduces emissions. Another crime is the federal government giving 7 Billion a year to corn farmers directly. That's makes no sense at all. Plus, diverting roughly 50% corn crops to ethanol productions incrises the price of food.

[@jesse44991]

Nuclear energy is the future.

[@nitsuanew]

The line of the day: "What the hell is a bushel?"

[@tomcorwine3091]

What the hell is a Hectare?

[@loklan1]

Followed closely by "if humans could eat electricity we would".

[@oldmanfromscenetwentyfour8164]

@@loklan1 If humans could eat electricity they would! Especially in the US, they'd put hot sauce on it and they'd be Obese.

[@joegardhouse5285]

The references in this video are terrible and extremely out of date. The article by David Pimentel is from 2005 and is based off information from the 1980s. Agriculture and the ethanol industry has made extraordinary advancements since those times. This video makes me question everything written by Brian McManus. I really like this channel so I am absolutely shocked how bad this video is. On average, without subsidies, it costs a farmer about $3 to produce and transport a bushel of corn. This price includes the costs of all the energy and other inputs required to produce a bushel. In 2021, one bushel yields over 11 litres of ethanol plus 7kg of animal feed plus 0.4kg of corn oil. The energy contained in just the ethanol is 60,000kcal. Even if you use the out of date figure from this video of 6600kcal to produce a bushel that's a pretty good return on investment. But don't take my word for it, do your own research, but do a better job than Brian did.

[@FrateVideoMaker]

@@tomcorwine3091 h = 100, area of 100mx100m = 100 m^2

[@samsonsoturian6013]

Correction: The not-sugar part of the corn is a high protein mush that makes great cattle fodder. Not wasted.

[@robsengahay5614]

You’re making the assumption that industrialized cattle production is an efficient use of resources too and a sensible means of generating human fuel (ie calories). It isn’t.

[@oldnick6709]

I stopped watching when he called an electric vehicle electronic. Calling himself engineering expert and doesn‘t know the difference between electric and electronic. Idk man seems sus.

[@Jeremy-gy7me]

@@oldnick6709 It's both though???

[@skyfeelan]

@@oldnick6709 well, he is just a human, he can make mistakes, if this is the first video of RE that you watch, I suggest you watch another video of his first

[@samsonsoturian6013]

@@oldnick6709 not important

[@joyl7842]

Not surprised at all about the inefficiency of this industry when you say it's popular amongst lobbyists. That's like their staple.

[@TRUMP_WAS_RIGHT_ABOUT_EVRYTHNG]

Never was about saving the planet. It was a scam to get more money for a cheap ridiculous vegetable that my 3 year old helps me grow every year lmfao. Corn Is cheapest. Veggie in the store , corn for gas not so cheap. Let's just used fossil fuels until they get fusion thing down to consumer level id drive a truck with fusion power lol probably have a shitload kf horsepower and get 30000 miles on the reactor before needing a switch arooo

[@joegardhouse5285]

The references in this video are terrible and extremely out of date. The article by David Pimentel is from 2005 and is based off information from the 1980s. Agriculture and the ethanol industry has made extraordinary advancements since those times. This video makes me question everything written by Brian McManus. I really like this channel so I am absolutely shocked how bad this video is. On average, without subsidies, it costs a farmer about $3 to produce and transport a bushel of corn. This price includes the costs of all the energy and other inputs required to produce a bushel. In 2021, one bushel yields over 11 litres of ethanol plus 7kg of animal feed plus 0.4kg of corn oil. The energy contained in just the ethanol is 60,000kcal. Even if you use the out of date figure from this video of 6600kcal to produce a bushel that's a pretty good return on investment. But don't take my word for it, do your own research, but do a better job than Brian did.

[@Kiyarose3999]

Algae Bio Fuel is Carbon Neg and is grown in Photo Bio Reactors(PBR) that produce 5000 gallons of Bio Fuel per Acre p/a. Permanently sequestering 1 Ton of atmospheric CO2 for every Barrel, also is fed waste water so cleaning it in the process!

[@drd6416]

They will not do that as it SAVESthe planet. They want to TAX is to death so they manufactured fake catastrophes to get you to buy their fake solutions

[@jimurrata6785]

The reality is, this is a federal subsidy for Big Agra. (Cargill, Bayer, ConAgra, etc..) Also this is not sweet corn that humans want to consume.

[@schristy3637]

Guess he does not know it feed corn and it takes 4 peck to make a bushel. Look up palm oil biodiesel that is what they use in the EU. That is really messed up.

[@jimurrata6785]

@@schristy3637 I think The U.S. is the only country that doesn't call it maize anyhow. Yes, monoculture palm plantations are horrible for the rainforests and all that ecosystem. Pressing it into oil and shipping it across the globe, to convert it into bio-diesel and burn it in an ICE is a horrific waste. A lot of people talk about Bio-diesel, but no one talks about converting the glycerol created to butanol. This is a pretty good stand-in for petroleum gasoline in warmer climates. But our focus should be to eliminate inefficient internal combustion engines entirely.

[@crhu319]

Yes it's crime.

[@jstanotherone1]

also the "waste" is fairly high in protein about 30% and used in animal feed and actually works better than regular feed corn as it is more easily digested.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@@jimurrata6785 I don't understand why there isn't more interest in using crop residue, Miscanthus grass (farmed biomass), municipal solid waste, and sewage sludge to be gassified to make synthesis gas and passed through the Fischer-Tropsch process to make liquid fuels in the gasoline and diesel fuel ranges.

[@CaptainMarvelsSon]

Happy to know that someone agreed with me after a decade of being criticized for saying this.

[@gordonlawrence1448]

I'd like to see the same calculations done for Bio AvTur jet fuel. I think it could actually be worse.

[@rurathn5534]

Stfu

[@marcuswillbrandt5901]

Mostly by people who are not even able to calculate this kind of stuff by themself I assume? Those people who feel woke but just repeat that something is good because someone said it's green are basically the bane of my existence....

[@therabbithat]

I think you'll find that "bio" means good

[@jatpack3]

@@therabbithat bio weapons

[@AnythingMachine]

Biofuels follow essentially the same logic as that thing in the matrix about raising human beings to extract their body heat

[@CarFreeSegnitz]

Matrix was worse in that there was no mention of where the inputs came from. Apparently not from solar, if cutting off the sun were actually possible. Nuclear? Hydro? Dragon piss? The movie ran as though humans were the primary energy source, which we aren’t, which no life ever is. Biofuels are an atrocious idea but at least it honestly harvests from solar energy as the primary energy source. What Real Engineering fails to mention is all the fossil fuel inputs that go into growing the biofuels: pumping water, tractors, fertilizers, harvesters, transport. On net I suspect it takes more fossil fuels than the energy contained in the resulting biofuels. A negative return on energy investment. *edit: thanks everyone who pointed out that at 7:00 Real Engineering does point out the negative energy return.

[@travcollier]

I had almost forgotten that particular bit of stupidity... Damn you for reminding me ;) While that metaphor isn't really wrong, it isn't quite right. Biofuels are *fuels*. You always lose some energy converting it into a fuel. The question is wether the benefits, like ease of storage, transport, and conversation into the sort of energy you want, are worth that loss. If an organic (as in chemistry) fuel has desirable properties, biology is likely going to be a good way of making it. There's also the whole "stuff we are producing anyway which would otherwise go to waste" angle. Remember gasoline used to be the trash fraction left over after making kerosene. Finally, biofuels can be made from some energy we just wouldn't capture otherwise. Related to the waste point I suppose. Anyways, sort of like how meat production on rangeland which isn't suitable for agriculture ends up adding total available food despite the fact that animals only turn a small fraction of the calories they consume into meat. We wouldn't be able to consume the calories they use. Well, we can't efficiently consume a lot of the energy used by the plants which we can turn into usable biofuels. Of course, a lot of the current implementation of biofuels isn't so sensible. But there are sensible implementations.

[@chapter4travels]

Or farming low energy-dense, intermittent sources like wind or sun.

[@psikot]

Except it doesn't work. Waste heat is wasted, unless you are the Matrix.

[@Merthalophor]

@@CarFreeSegnitz Most definitely not. What's happening is that you need to input 20% from external sources. You could look at like this: You're amplifying the energy 5 fold - give 1 watt, get out 5 watts. You still need to provide 1 watt to get 5 watts, so it's not energy neutral. But you don't enter 5.5 watts to get 5 watt.

[@cristinanovillo8731]

Just keep in mind that other renewables create huge enviromental problems due to the mining of the components they need, which, btw, are also finite

[@crazycolbster]

It's a game of tradeoffs with other renewables being vastly more useful to our social order. Be careful to not fall into the "But sometimes" trap.

[@hstapes]

@@crazycolbster What about nuclear?

[@crazycolbster]

@@hstapes My personal opinion on nuclear is that the new construction takes far too long to solve climate problems on its own. We don't have 10 years for new plants without doing something now. Existing plants, however, should never be taken offline. Shutting down a functional nuclear reactor is climate malpractice

[@unchosenid]

To replace the amount of energy just the US gets from oil products we'd have build 1400 new gigawatt level nuclear power plants and double or triple the electric grid. Never mind the resources needed to build power storage or batteries. Renewables will NEVER do that. The entire green movement is a fever dream designed to force us back to how we lived in 1850. I can only wait to see how this new algae ruins the environment once it gets out.

[@Ewr42]

Most ethanol in comes from sugarcane, corn, or beets; either way, It's a plant. You bury it where it's exposed to rain and it just grows from dirt, air, water, and sunlight. It's actually nuclear energy from nuclear fusion in the sun, albeit chemically stored as fructose. The vegetable matter that's left stores a lot of CO2 and could be used in biocrete, or be burned for heat(like for distilling the sugarcane-cachaça into ethanol) composted to fertilize crops, fed to cattle/farm animals... Ethanol is more than carbon 0, it's carbon negative and then much more! The worse problem is by far overwhelmingly huge fields under monoculture practices and distribution of it through diesel fueled trucks (there's e100 trucks and trains, ideally the infrastructure for the latter would be built and used for that), but small local farms could supply most of the local needs of a city, whilst bigger farms produce a reserve to be used if there's increased demand somewhere. Ethanol is truly green, more than it could be asked for. Using it means actively fighting climate change. Especially if we store the CO2 and stop using gasoline to use ethanol(the engine mod is faaaaaaar cheaper than a hydrogen car or a Tesla, which aren't even truly green alternatives) in its place. Sunlight has fed all energy on earth at some point somehow. It is the one true energy source we have. Ethanol is about harvesting it and storing it as a liquid by consuming excessive atmospheric CO2.

[@jakejones8225]

1:20, "this begs an important question, why?" because the corn lobby wants more money lol

[@chaklee435]

that's the first answer. But really, the corn lobby only matters because the electoral college effectively gives rural areas more political power.

[@rafafr9]

Just Call it "Big Corn"

[@HermanVonPetri]

@@chaklee435 And especially the senate. The way states were drawn up is basically a nationwide gerrymander in favor of people who won't live near other people.

[@R_V_]

@@chaklee435 That's the reason they get federal money, but even without the electoral college they would get (tons of) state money.

[@joelshuman]

It's more that the presidential primary elections have their first contests in Iowa, so candidates are susceptible to pressure from the corn lobby when they campaign there. "Big Corn" can run ads against them in a relatively cheap media market and derail entire candidacies just for a realistic take on Ethanol.

[@ecovoycanada]

I'm always amazed by the variety of means we can invent to self-destruct.

[@limb.dondototohasstartedso7288]

Cheers

[@blooeagle5118]

Do you have any better options?

[@JustinL614]

@@blooeagle5118 Nope

[@ecovoycanada]

@@blooeagle5118 Of course : ANY option is better. Look at the numbers (…and watch the video). You can’t “grow”energy efficiently. We humans have to get our energy from food because we can’t get it any other way. But for machines, we can do better. Any way is better than using precious soil. That’s just a fact and it’s well documented.

[@harrkev]

@@blooeagle5118 Bloo Eagle: listen to the science instead of the leftist activists.

[@DanielVCOliveira]

Imagine using corn to make your ethanol. *This post was made by the sugarcane gang*

[@leerman22]

POTATOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@JJAB91]

Having fun destroying the rainforest? Hows that 20 year breakeven doing?

[@suprithAnCom]

Yeah sugarcane ethanol is better I guess, anyway it's byproduct of sugar production, why make ppl drunk when we can drive cars from it.

[@Yuri-bt4wl]

@@suprithAnCom It is not a byproduct, it is either/or.

[@Yuri-bt4wl]

@Daniel Oliveira EU QUERO É CACHAÇA CACHAÇA CARAI

[@aadityamohan9962]

5:08 😂😂😂😂😂😂 that imperial unit joke

[@jachtk893]

When I was in Britain I lived near a McDonald's. I often see large truck went to McD collecting waste oil for making biodiesel I think that's not so bad

[@responsiblejerk2328]

Depends how much energy is expended in the process and yielded from the product.

[@HanSolo__]

@@responsiblejerk2328 Works just like regular diesel. Less clean but will do in most of the old construction types of engines.

[@wotzatfa]

biofuel is made for the oil. the fried oil. so there it is waste converted in energy. Not the same...

[@fnfjack8743]

Are you sure the truck wasn't DELIVERING the waste oil TO McD for making fries?

[@wotzatfa]

@@fnfjack8743 nope, only the used oil is taken, filtered, de waterised and then put in the tank. The is not a "new" tech. Army 6x6 truck or even 4*4 are using this type of oil since the fifties.. As long as the engine is bigger than a six litres engine, cooking oil can be used as diesel. Smaller engine don't like it that much.

[@IAmNumber4000]

Wow! I never knew “green crude oil” was a thing. That sounds like a big deal.

[@hj2479]

Been having to correct and educate people who aren't biologists (and even some uneducated biologists) for years. It was great to finally see someone with pretty large reach set the record straight.

[@joegardhouse5285]

@@hj2479 The references in this video are terrible and extremely out of date. The article by David Pimentel is from 2005 and is based off information from the 1980s. Agriculture and the ethanol industry has made extraordinary advancements since those times. This video makes me question everything written by Brian McManus. I really like this channel so I am absolutely shocked how bad this video is. On average, without subsidies, it costs a farmer about $3 to produce and transport a bushel of corn. This price includes the costs of all the energy and other inputs required to produce a bushel. In 2021, one bushel yields over 11 litres of ethanol plus 7kg of animal feed plus 0.4kg of corn oil. The energy contained in just the ethanol is 60,000kcal. Even if you use the out of date figure from this video of 6600kcal to produce a bushel that's a pretty good return on investment. But don't take my word for it, do your own research, but do a better job than Brian did.

[@WTH1812]

FYI: a bushel is 4 pecks

[@wovasteengova]

Wtf is a peck

[@bruhmoment5465]

@@wovasteengova one quarter bushel

[@WTH1812]

@@wovasteengova ... a peck is 2 gallons (dry measure) or 4 baskets (field measure) or 15 minutes (mosquito swarming hot afternoon sun pea picking measure) ... or 1 cheek (affection measure) or 5 Academy Awards nominations with 1 win/Dead Mockingbird (Gregory measure) ... a standard peck holds 8 kittens, but due to the laws kittycatodynamics a bushel holds only 1 cat

[@AdamBechtol]

:p

[@WTH1812]

@@CharlesNauck ... a gallon is a standard unit of measurement. For example, a gallon of milk is a liquid measure. There is also a dry measure called gallon, which by volume equals one half peck. ... Dry gallons are not directly measured by kitten units as they get confused and wander off looking for the milk.

[@critiqueofthegothgf]

there's actually a way easier way to reduce the carbon footprint of the populations commute. it's called better urban planning and building alternative forms of transportation

[@MichaelSmith-ij2ut]

5:20 I was not expecting such a handsome bushel.

[@VitaliyCD]

😹

[@bradys.7967]

Forreal I didn't realize the narrator was such a stud 🤣

[@BW-qf4cl]

Biodiesel is great when it's just recycled cooking oil.

[@joncalon7508]

I too was wanting to know his thought on Biodiesel. Any feedstock for fuel that is already used once is a good thing, but making a feedstock just for use as a fuel and that’s it? No.

[@nguyenthituyetmai9075]

Just imagine when the US realize dat

[@telurkucing5006]

Or waste production from cooking oil refinery or high ffa cooking oil

[@apollomars1678]

@@joncalon7508 dont forget, that we allready throw away massive sums of our plant production from all areas, but wont mix it in the corn to produce biofuels, because thats a different technology with less profit margin, but better CO2 statistics.

[@froilanflorentino1252]

IKR? The main source would be fast food chains, culinary schools, restaurants, etc...

[@malr2014]

Woah I’ve been watching your videos for years and this is the first time I’ve seen what you actually look like. I was not expecting that at all!

[@gregorypapas9354]

EIA estimates corn ethanol produces 1.3 to 1.7 times energy used to produce it and in the future cellulosic ethanol could yield more than 4x energy used for production. Time for a new video

[@EArtVideos]

Sugarcane in Brazil is not cultivated in the Amazon but in the south of the country. These cultivations are highly efficient and do not play a role in Amazon’s deforestation

[@booradley6832]

Correct. It is the cattle farming industry that is seeing the destruction of the rainforest increase, as far as I am aware. From what I know, the ground cleared from rainforests isnt even fertile enough to grow continual crops of sugarcane. Slash and burn sees a few crops of grass grow then it dies off and everything moves along.

[@revell7156]

@@booradley6832 I agree with both you and OP. Deforestation for cattle is a real situation. To exacerbate the concern, as more forrest is cleared for cattle grazing, more Forrest has to be cleared for... wait for it... CORN, for cattle consumption. It's a self licking ice cream cone.

[@bobhope369]

Someone needs to tell Brazil that since they say otherwise

[@jblyon2]

Sugarcane also makes ethanol many times more efficiently than corn. Fun fact, the corn lobby got the production of ethanol from sugarcane banned in the US to make sure we're locked into ethanol from corn, which consumes more high-sulfur off-road diesel fuel cultivating and harvesting the corn than the ethanol we get out of the process.

[@kikobarros76]

A wise comment! congrats!!!

[@ethanj454]

Very well done, as usual! However, I would like to point out something that you overlooked. When the sugar has been turned to alcohol, the rest of the mash is still fed to livestock. So it's not that 100% of the feed value of the corn goes to ethanol as you assumed in your analysis, it's just the sugar portion of the corn. I am sure that one factor won't redeem ethanol all by itself, but I know people that jump up and down, hopping mad when people miss that fact because in their minds, it does make all of the difference. I would love to quantify this and to know what portion of the feed value is removed when the corn is reduced to ethanol and distillers mash.

[@nenmaster5218]

PROBLEMS could exist though, as pointed out by KZbinr Joe Scott.

[@WassimMurr]

Your name is suspiciously close to 'Ethanol'

[@scottmcshannon6821]

but it doesnt really matter if there is some food value; all that matters is that it takes more energy to make the so called "fuel" than you get back when you use the fuel. so its a losing proposition from the word go.

[@ethanj454]

@@scottmcshannon6821 yes and no. It has two purposes. The inputs may not be worth the outputs when just automotive fuel is the output, but the inputs may be worth less than the outputs when you count the automotive fuel value plus the feed value. Put it this way, how many resources would you need to make that livestock feed without the distillers mesh that already exists because of the ethanol production?

[@ethanj454]

@@WassimMurr you got me. I'm an alcohol-ish.

[@MrSplodez]

"The united states is a powerhouse..." Me: Of the cell

[@FirestormX9]

United Mitochondrion of Cell

[@downstream0114]

-emia, meaning presence in blood.

[@williamwimmer5473]

Me: of war crimes and crimes against humanity

[@y33t23]

Downstream01 YES

[@timobatana6705]

If you say Mitochondria and your girl does not say "the powerhouse of the cell" . She aint your girl

[@Future_Fuels]

I am an engineer in the Biodiesel industry. The biggest problem with this industry is subsidies. It's not sustainable on its own. Congress fluctuates between giving it and then taking it away. So small innovative producers can't compete in the market place. We deal with used feedstock, low value products that need further processing. The renewable fuel standard mandates drive up the cost of food oils, regardless of the used oils. I did make biodiesel from the algae in the Great Salt Lake, but like you said it's too was expensive. I think the answer is to make petro fuels cleaner. Scrubbers and better more efficient air cleaning capabilities. The air cleaners currently cause all the problems with vehicles and drive up costs. A semi truck used to last 1 million miles. Now because of the exhaust filters that are extremely hard on engines they go about half that. It seems we are going backwards in that technology. The powers that be would rather scrap all that and sink the money into unproven tech that may or may not work, probably because old reliable isn't sexy.

[@wyattblessing7078]

I'm a fuel transporting truck driver. Every thing Gary Clark said is correct. Our trucks have none stop DEF and exhaust reburning issues. We have more down time per truck, and much much shorter truck life spans. Out of a fleet of 50 trucks, we can expect to have 10 of them down at a time for exhaust related mechanical issues. That in turn drives up cost for fuel transportation to stations. I love the cleaner emissions and hope that we can find a better solution to limit emissions than the current system. Also the rising cost of food at stores has a direct relation to biofuel production. Animal feed is rising in cost as less grains are available to be sold to rancher's.

[@inspiringmind9430]

What's your opinion on sea weed biodiesel??

[@Future_Fuels]

@@inspiringmind9430 you need to extract the oil in the seaweed to make biodiesel and seaweed is only 1 to 5% oil (dry weight) . So you would have to process 90% water then 1 to 5 % of that 10% after drying to extract very little valuable product. Contrast that with algae which is between 25 to 60% oil. More feedstock per bulk weight. It would be more feasible to make cellulose ethanol, but then again seaweed is 90% water so you still have a processing problem. I don't see it as being a solution because of the manpower involved and logistics of extracting from the ocean and process steps involved. That is why oil is so cheap. Because it's already hugely energy dense and then fractioning provides a multiplicity of valuable products and is relatively inexpensive to process. It would be fun to do though.

[@inspiringmind9430]

@@Future_Fuels Thanks for the clear doubt 🙏🙏

[@rockharvey5787]

I remember when I first encountered ethanol mix on a cross-country road trip. I remember being glad for the cheap gas, until I noticed that I was getting 10-15% worse MPG. On the way back home I avoided the ethanol blends, but now that’s all anybody sells.

[@xyzpdq1122]

Ethanol is also terribly destructive on small 2-stroke engines

[@Kar90great]

I bet most engines at present are not ethanol suitable

[@combatarcher3101]

Its the only thing they can sell

[@leovang3425]

@@Kar90great yes and no, older engines may have problems with ethanol, most modern engines can handle E10 (10% ethanol) but anything higher is where things get iffy

[@bennemann]

If you get 10-15% less MPG but the ethanol blend is more than that percentage cheaper than pure gasoline, then why are you avoiding it?

[@detonaterdavis3948]

You missed an important detail when you said that ethanol production is an energy negative process. You forgot that ethanol isn’t all that is produced, there is a byproduct, distillers grains. Farmers feed those distillers grains to cattle, so we use more of the energy from the corn than just the ethanol.

[@dennispike7858]

Having grown up in Iowa and the grandson of farmers who grew corn, the opening of this video is inaccurate regarding how the corn crops are used. Most of the corn is grown for animal feed for cows, pigs, chickens, lamb, etc.; the next is for corn syrup which has replaced cane sugar as a sweetener in most products. Less than 1% is used for sweet corn (the variety humans eat), pop corn and corn meal for baked goods. The corn grown for animals, also called field corn, is the primary feed stock for corn based ethanol.

[@slartybarfastb3648]

This is true. However, with more corn being used for ethanol, there is less available for animal feed. This drives up price of feed which inevitably increases cost to livestock farms and the price of meat to the end consumer. Then, 10% of the price of gasoline is now tied to the price of corn ethanol. And vis a versa. If energy consumption increases, more ethanol is needed as well. As more is needed, a higher percentage of animal feed is instead used for ethanol. This again drives the cost of food and energy upward. Tying the price of food to energy is folly. It reduces the efficiency of both industries and the environment. During boom times, a million acres of natural land and forest is plowed under for additional corn. During recession and/or lower energy need, these million acres go fallow. The trees and habitat lost take decades to recover. The entire point of the process is to help the environment, but instead only drives up cost and destroys millions of acres of carbon dioxide absorbing trees while ruining wildlife habitat.

[@abredolflincler1423]

@@slartybarfastb3648 after the starch is fermented, you get left with residual material that is rich in protein and fat and used as livestock feed

[@slartybarfastb3648]

@@abredolflincler1423 But at what cost? Is it worth losing a million acres of natural habitat annually?

[@abredolflincler1423]

@@slartybarfastb3648 yeah totally

[@abredolflincler1423]

It’s either nuclear power or alternate sources of hydrocarbons, other than that you’re still gonna get global warming, you gotta get big to compete with the Oil Cartels

[@adamkeating9977]

I think you forget that oil puddles will rise up, so whether it pollute our lands (just use what the earth gives us) and the electric grid cannot support everyone driving ev cars (plus some people actually need a truck that can haul weight)

[@game-f-un-limitedgamer8958]

"Today more than half of the corn goes into the production of ethanol." Yup, we call it vodka.

[@Silverdev2482]

@pinned by Real Engineering dont trust him its spam probably a bot trying to scam you

[@xxxBradTxxx]

Bourbon is made from corn

[@fnfjack8743]

@@xxxBradTxxx damn, it is! Just looked it up. so, we better not waste corn on biofuel!

[@randomrealistictone2231]

Isnt that potatoes ?

[@cosmicHalArizona]

That is made from potatoes junior

[@martinsoos]

Not all Biofuels are the same. I would never put bio algae in that category, not when we must pay to process human waist anyway.

[@haifutter4166]

@@doge_fish4820 He also pointed out how much greater the potential of algae oil is, and that it could quite possibly become the fuel for areas, where we can't subsidize liquid fuel with batteries. The only thing that could have been mentioned though is that researchers found an algae strain, that directly excretes its surplus in oil which reduces the overall cost by 80% (great, but still not enough).

[@khatharrmalkavian3306]

Stay away from my waist, pervert.

[@haifutter4166]

@@khatharrmalkavian3306 My brain autocorrects while reading without me realizing. Took me a moment ... XD He should probably correct his spelling.

[@martinsoos]

@@haifutter4166 The title is 90% of what sticks in our brain and that affects where money is placed.

[@haifutter4166]

@@martinsoos That might be true, but my last answer was directed at -waist- waste

[@Slateproc]

"this begs the important question; why?" MONEY!!

[@wafflescripter9051]

US has abundance of farmers as a national defense strategy to feed everyone in case of trade embargoes. Spending this abundance on ethanol when not needed for eating is rational given that you'd produce the corn anyways.

[@lonestarr1490]

@@wafflescripter9051 If you wouldn't go on offending the whole world and his wife all the time you wouldn't have to fear trade embargoes of that scale. You still behave as if you're in the middle of the cold war causing a buttload of problems along the way and still have the nerve to call everyone naive who deems your prepper ways unfounded.

[@wizard_of_poz4413]

@@lonestarr1490 uhh sure thing

[@josephdestaubin7426]

@@wafflescripter9051 I've watched in the past 20 years as more and more of our food is imported because Americans can't just eat corn and so much of our land is being diverted from other foods to the production of corn. The fact is that this policy has made us less food secure not more food secure. And with fracking we no longer need biofuels to be energy secure..

[@wafflescripter9051]

@@josephdestaubin7426 we can eat just corn, we just don't want too

[@adamstephenson6088]

I would love to see a video on using hemp vs corn. It needs less water, less fertilizer, less land, and can be grown faster.

[@randybobandy9828]

Hemp isn't energy dense when it comes to sugars. It's mostly leaf and stem

[@alejandrocastro6323]

Hemp would actually be less efficient than corn for ethnol. Technically you you can produce ethanol from any biomass. the most efficient is sugercane. It requires half as much production time and cost. Unlike corn you don't have to turn starch into suger then into ethnol. Produces twice as much than corn per hectare.

[@ThisIsInput]

Imagine how advanced we'd be scientifically and medically if so much of our money wasn't wasted because of lobbying.

[@TheZachary86]

Where’s the renewable lobby?

[@VariantAEC]

@@TheZachary86 Didn't you watch this video??? Some of the money spent lobbying was wasted promoting biofuels based on corn byproducts. The rest was wasted on promoting wasting fossil fuel making solar panels, wind mills and clearing land to make meager amounts of intermittent energy that needs to be subsidized by other forms of energy primarily fossil fuels anyway.

[@TheAgentTexas]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of lobbyist is that they fight for their industry. So I'm thinking lobbyists CAN be a good thing if government policy is going to actually do something bad even thought the politicians are thinking it is going to do good. We often focus on the bad apples but I think there might be a lot of good wins for everyone that have come about through lobbying. Thoughts?

[@VariantAEC]

@@TheAgentTexas Lobbists could be good thing that was the intent and that is of course what we do when we as individuals band together to call up our state representatives to file a complaint or lodge any kind of requests, concerns and recommendations for improvements. Unfortunately many lobbying groups work with corporations and thusly have serious conflicts of interest and they stand to lose a lot if they don't get their way so corporations will fight tooth and nail to pump money into the system using the government to cut them checks in the hopes the they'll keep investing on empty promises of a green future and lazy politicians will keep on reaping kickbacks to look the other way. I might be wrong in my political terminology but I believe it's called "cronyism". It makes capitalism as a whole look bad but this isn't how capitalism is supposed to work in fact it cronyism capitalism at all it's a branch of corruption.

[@TheAgentTexas]

@@VariantAEC Ya that makes sense. You did use say "many lobbying groups" though. Which I guess the root of my point is that we as humans tend to focus on the bad without seeing all the good. I guess because it makes for a more emotionally charged story. It would be interesting to see instances in history where lobbying was a big win for everyone. That being said, I do pretty much agree with you although I also can't verify the terminology either :)

[@mattdombrowski8435]

To be fair, there is a very good reason to have some ethanol in gasoline: it's what they used to replace tetraethyl lead.

[@teardowndan5364]

And in cold climates, ethanol is used as fuel anti-freeze to absorb moisture so it doesn't freeze inside the fuel system or cause random engine performance issues when the fuel pump sucks in a blob of water condensate from the tank's bottom. If 10% wasn't required by law for normal gasoline, you'd have to add 2-5% yourself at a significantly higher cost.

[@bofty]

I can't find a source for that claim, can you link me one? Also, virtually zero cars run on lead fuel these days so if that's why they use ethanol, they can stop. Except maybe vintage cars, and there's other lead replacements that are used for these.

[@Sweet-Vermouth]

@@teardowndan5364 do you have a source in the price thing? I'd like to know more about that.

[@mattdombrowski8435]

@@bofty www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-a-brief-history-of-octane "In the early 20th century, automotive manufacturers were searching for a chemical that would reduce engine knock. In 1921, automotive engineers working for General Motors discovered that tetraethyl lead (better known as lead) provided octane to gasoline, preventing engine knock. While aromatic hydrocarbons (such as benzene) and alcohols (such as ethanol) were also known octane providers at the time, lead was the preferred choice due to its lower production cost. Leaded gasoline was the predominant fuel type in the United States until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began phasing it out in the mid-1970s because of proven serious health impacts." Also, you misunderstand the reason why cars don't need leaded gas these days. Cars don't need leaded gas because we use another octane booster. If you get rid of the ethanol, you have to either bring back the lead or start using benzene, which has it's own suite of serious health effects.

[@JAMESWUERTELE]

@@teardowndan5364 ethanol absorbs moisture out of the air, from any vented fuel system. Ethanol is the enemy of engines, carburetors, small engines. I don’t run ethanol fuel in anything I own. Junk!

[@brianbeck3615]

To be clear “increasing the value of their crop” is wrong. The farmer doesn’t see anything extra, it’s just makes corn based products cost more

[@JarbasCoqueiro]

Here in Brazil the minimum concentration of ethanol in the gas is 25% (E25) and almost all gas stations have E100 but the cost is usually 10% to 20% higher per mile so people don't use often

[@marcouno8850]

True. It depends on your vehicle though. For my car, if ethanol costs more than 72% of the price of gas, running on gas is cheaper. For the past 3 or 4 years, on the city I live in, I've used E100 most of the time. However, on the last couple of weeks it has been cheaper to run gas and it's really noticeable how many more MPG you get.

[@dragonbeast6337]

The energy output also depends on quality. If the government were to fund a few large scale biofuel factories with high quality which would be around 30 million it could easily make them energy positive. Compared to the current 150 Billion dollars on Carbon dioxide solutions in the US, this alternative seems rather cheap. Also Biofuel could use food waste making it even more efficient

[@stay_on_ground2351]

Americans dictionaries be like: Corn: Corn flower Corn bread Corn meal Corn fuel

[@nicholashernandez4367]

corn syrup

[@volvo09]

Corn pop

[@kawasakiapache3103]

Corn man

[@beaclaster]

corn flour

[@onlyone2674]

Corn corn

[@brunokd2]

What is responsible for deforestation of the amazon forest is not sugarcane, but mainly soybeans. Sugarcane is cultivated in other areas and in the map that you showed doesn’t cover the amazon.

[@guyhosse3308]

This video is total BS.

[@g.west2372]

As a vegetarian, i think its funny how fast he brushed over "90% farmland used to feed humans... And animals" In the EU were (don't know the date of the study) 78% of farmland used to feed animals

[@lukefuller284]

"Green crude oil" that is literally green hahaha

[@tafsirnahian669]

Groove street crude oil

[@UnlimitedGreenWorks]

@@tafsirnahian669 same old biofuel. Same old Bustah!

[@chrislaing7153]

9:00 Easy solution - Brawndo, cos it has what plants crave. It has electrolytes

[@robmaule4025]

That was an amazing addition with the bushel definition! Totally didn't see that coming.

[@johnmcmickle5685]

Except that a bushel of grain determined by a dry weight. www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/feed-grains-database/documentation/

[@robmaule4025]

@@johnmcmickle5685 er... I don't really care, I just thought it was funny tbh!

[@johnmcmickle5685]

@@robmaule4025 well the conversion is not accurate and I think people should knw that. Grain buyers purchase on weight. You cannot measure the volume of a hundred or more loads a day at say 38,550 kg (85,000 pounds) per load.

[@acjohnson1986]

@@johnmcmickle5685 Yeah that really annoyed me. And not all bushels are equal, a bushel of beans weighs more than a bushel of corn (60 lbs for soybeans vs 56 lbs for corn). It was a way to convert from volume measurements to weights a long time ago. Yeah its archaic, but we still measure oil by the barrel, how is that any better?

[@en0n126]

Neither did the Alexa next to my computer, which proceeded to answer Brian's question.

[@Th3Shrike]

I know I've been slacking on these videos but when did you start doing face revels

[@davidmin3583]

He was always face revealed on insta

[@sohamgandhi1545]

The very comment I was searching for.

[@nextlaunch1]

Also in the video with the F16s

[@raytan956]

that time a couple years ago when he did the video on metal properties and heat treating

[@rennanchagas6174]

The information about brazil is misleading! The new crops areas are used mainly for cattle or soybeans! sugar cane production is mostly in southeast where agricultural land is old and not rain forest. Sugar Cane ethanol is actually much better. Carbon footprint reduced and much more productive than corn by area

[@v1n1c1u55anto5]

His own shitty map shown in 10:13 was MEANT to say exactly that, but he is too biased to understand It.

[@checkoutmyyoutubepage]

@@v1n1c1u55anto5 So a simple mistake is biased. Biased against what? Seems like you throw that word around a lot.

[@mike-barber]

Genuine question, because I don't know the situation in Brazil: Is sugar cane production displacing cattle farming? If we're just pushing cattle (or cattle feed) into the rain forest, it's not helping matters.

[@rennanchagas6174]

​@@mike-barber No, it is not. Sugar cane high productive and for ethanol industry in brazil is mostly produced in Sao Paulo and South Minas Gerais where the usines are. It replaced old coffee farms. There is also on north east litoral where it sugar cane has been produced since 16th century. Cattle may be displaced by any crops because it seeks cheaper and less productive land. but blaming sugar cane is actually wrong

[@mike-barber]

@@rennanchagas6174 thanks, that makes sense! I definitely agree with you that the video got the sugar cane/rain forest angle wrong. From what you've said, it's not an indirect problem either.

[@Stabacs]

Why solar energy may be more effective, isn’t the issue that solar panels need rare ressources to be produced? So we are limited in how far we can actually go with solar power energy production, right?

[@nicholaspratt8473]

FACE REVEAL! :D Now this is REAL Engineering!

[@Just_Sara]

He did a video a few years back with Alec Steele too, if you wanna see him swing a hammer and test out some material properties of steel, both hardened and not.

[@zhcultivator]

This is the first time I have seen his face ngl

[@aconite72]

@@zhcultivator Same. He doesn’t look at all like I imagined lol

[@joncalon7508]

Yes. I also love the break in the video for him to learn what volume a bushel is…

[@jaredhiggs9316]

I live in a part of the United States where we plant a lot corn I've never realized this I hear all the time on the radio they push for this stuff hard

[@christosvoskresye]

You should try living in a coal mining area, where people are desperately hoping we can go back to the good ol' days of the 1890's.

[@psikot]

The corn lobby has a lot of money.

[@5353Jumper]

Yep, propaganda media paid for by the oil & gas industry to keep us reliant on their products as long as possible even if it leads to massive global tragedy for the entire race. Short term profit thinking and failure to adapt. Exactly the same as the push to hydrogen power. They push the hydrogen agenda because the best way to produce hydrogen is by using hydrocarbon, thus "saving" the petroleum industry from waning demand if transportation goes EV. Also the gas companies can distribute hydrogen through existing infrastructure with minor changes to their retail endpoints so they retain their retail network. If everyone gets EVs and just plugs in by their house or shopping mall parking lots then the gasoline industry loses its oligopoly on transportation fuels. So the old dinosaur industries is pushing hydrogen and ethanol because if they cannot convert the world to their type of new energy then they will have to face the truth of waning petroleum demand. Problem is ethanol and hydrogen though potentially slightly better than 100% petroleum fuel, are still way worse for the environment than solar/wind/nuclear/hydro electricity. So they are basically paying for advertising to propaganda the population into a terrible solution is not even a solution but will still lead to our destruction. Just to preserve their profit margins. Also the lobby to ban next generation nuclear is paid for by the petroleum Industry. And the lobby against setting up rare earth mining in North America. And the lobby to end subsidies for wind and solar projects.

[@jaredhiggs9316]

@@christosvoskresye yeah I do live in Minnesota where they sell a lot corn and we do have radio broadcast talking about how ethanol is good

[@wcdeich4]

The problem is they keep making ethanol from only the ear of the corn. The FDA even approved genetically modified corn that produces its own enzyme so you can convert the entire corn plant into ethanol using the cellulosic ethanol --- but they still keep using only the ear. I think the proves the corn lobby only cares about farmers making money & political power, not the environment.

[@kurwamacjebanapizda]

The best ethanol from corn is that included in bourbon xD

[@maroon9273]

There is great alternative within biofuel. We have algae, bio-oil/gasoline, bio-butanol, green/renewable waste to energy/fuel, waste to energy/fuel, biogas, bagasse, gold, yellow and white hydrogen.

[@joaogabriel-qu3vj]

In Brasil, after the oil crisis in the 70, automakers started making only ethanol cars and now almost every car sold is flex, they can be feed with gas or alcohol or both. Our ethanol in Brasil is mostly produced with suggar cane

[@GuilhermeAlves-br4wr]

Sugarcane in Brazil is produced a thousand miles away from the Amazon florets. Even your video showed that. Soy in middle west Brazil is much closer to Amazon florest.

[@leonardomeneguetti5908]

Well said, my friend. Misinformation about Brazilian agriculture is an US and EU lobby task force for uncompetitive advantages.

[@wilhellmllw3608]

Boa

[@theodorco5649]

There was another gigantic rainforest in exaclty this spot. There is more than one single big Rainforest in South America. Most of it has already been cut down, so its a nice taste to see what can happen to the Amazon rainforest.

[@theodorco5649]

So i would say that you are the one spreading missinformation

[@theodorco5649]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Forest if you dont belive me

[@kylebroflovski5333]

Great video, and highlights one of the main problems with a lot of “green” technologies which don’t actually help. Instead of just doing things that sound good we should be doing what is actually going to help.

[@aidanquiett668]

Considering that the same video mentions we should put more money into hydro fuels, I'm not entirely sure he understands his own message

[@psikot]

Buy an electric car.

[@ImieNazwiskoOK]

@Robert Seasrs It can mostly

[@psikot]

@Robert Seasrs Nope, the batteries and motor are more valuable and can be sold for home battery backups and used as spare parts.

[@psikot]

@Robert Seasrs 80% of what's in an electric car is in a gas car and can be recycled. How is motor oil, filters, spark plugs, injectors and gasoline recycled?

[@binuboruah3590]

Reducing use of Automobile is the final Alternative

[@markmeripa]

"RAIN MAKES CORN, CORN MAKES WHISKEY"

[@tarnished9108]

WHISKEY MAKES MY BABY A LITTLE BIT FRISKY"

[@none-dv3bg]

@@tarnished9108 don't give whiskey to your child, he will become a lobbyst

[@yigitalpalakoc]

@@tarnished9108 ? More like Pillbo Baggins

[@johnbinnie5697]

In Scotland we make Whisky and make biofuel from the waste produced. So we get whisky and biofuel.

[@markmeripa]

@@none-dv3bg i turned out okay. Atleast thats what my bartended told me

[@OzixiThrill]

A point to be made about aviation's future regarding carbon-neutrality: It doesn't have to be carbon neutral or better. If it ends up as the singular industry that remains carbon positive, the odds are, humanity will end up at net negative carbon emissions. And at the end of the day, that should be the goal.

[@TheArtikae]

@Ian Ramos To return to preindustrial atmospheric co2 levels.

[@OzixiThrill]

@Ian Ramos It's primarily to minimize the effects human industry has globally, while forcing nature to be in an equilibrium that very much suits human life.

[@mbsb1376]

@@OzixiThrill No matter what happens, humanity won't find a way to exploit nature without changing the equilibrium in some way. Everything has a disadvantage to it.

[@OzixiThrill]

@Ian Ramos Right now, we're (unintentionally) forcing nature to rush well ahead with the carbon cycle. So you're definetly wrong on that part. Also, all the carbon that's currently tied down will also start bursting out, which will result in unprecedented levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Don't forget - The fossil fuels we've bruned were carbon that were extremely unlikely to ever enter the "carbon cycle" ever again. We put "back" in carbon that was never "meant" to be put back in. One of the likeliest result of that will include unmitigatable droughts all around the world, along with salt water contamination. Also, amongst the "some species that go extict" is a list of highly important pollinators. Which, since we rely on them for much of our pollination of crops, will do massive damage to our agricultural industry. Which will make us, humans, run the risk of extinction, while guaranteeing massive struggles and gigantic population decline. The carrying capacity of the planet without agriculture is under a billion, FYI.

[@OzixiThrill]

@@xxlegolas Honestly, any form of nuclear power would work perfectly well for that.

[@Kriegter]

"As technology advances and life becomes more comfortable than ever, humans turn dumber than ever." - Sun Tzu

[@leggonarm9835]

That's what they said about reading, but it's essential now.

[@liesdamnlies3372]

That doesn’t sound at all like Sun Tzu.

[@jinolin9062]

@@liesdamnlies3372 no shit Sherlock.

[@liesdamnlies3372]

@@jinolin9062 And who shit in your corn flakes this morning?

[@jinolin9062]

@@liesdamnlies3372 the whole point of the joke is that sun tzu has never said as such.

[@travisbrewer9049]

Plants are a good option for many things. The problem is how the plants are grown.

[@engelag]

In college, I did a term paper for my agricultural waste management class for the feasibility of converting citrus processing waste to ethanol. I estimated 18 month payback on gross margin, without government subsidies. Much later, the first of these plants was built. So, don't assume that we need corn to produce ethanol.

[@blackrabbit212]

I suspect the corn thing has more to do with political lobbying than science, as there are other plants out there with much higher production potential.

[@engelag]

@@blackrabbit212 I recommend using food processing wastes that are high in starch or sugar. Sugar beet pulp, after removing most of the sugar? When I worked for Trinity Engineering (Minnesota), one of our customers, the Grist Mill, told us that he was offered to take over a food processing line, but it produced large BOD. BOD mostly means sugar and starch. So, he could have made ethanol from it, or feed cattle, or both.