Biofuels
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Biofuels are fuel that is made from formerly living things. A simple example is a wood burning fire, where the wood is the biofuel. Biofuels are designed to replace some of the regular gasoline that your car uses, thus reducing your carbon emissions. Currently, most biofuels in America are derived from corn and rapseed oil. Most engines cannot run on just biofuels, but can use a mixture of biofuel and gasoline.
The basis of using biofuels is that their production and use will generate far fewer carbon emissions, and thus help fight global warming. However, there has recently a lot of controversy over how the carbon emissions coming from biofuels are measured. Old measurements only looked at when they were burned in the car engine. But it is also important to consider the carbon emissions from the production of the fuel, as well as the impact of clearing land for crop use. In many cases, larges swathes of forest have been cut down to make way for more biofuel crops. The cutting down of these forests has the immediate impact of releasing thousands of tons of carbon emissions, and the long term impact of fewer trees absorbing less carbon from the atmosphere.
A study in 2007 by a Nobel laureate proved that biofuels actually contribute more to global warming than they fossil fuels that they replace. Their report did also have some hope for the future, saying that making biofuels from other things (namely grass) is likely to have a positive impact on global warming. However, for the time being, the unfortunate reality is that despite all the positive press that biofuels often receive, they are actually worse for global warming and carbon emissions.
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