I read a scientific study today from CO2 Science that indicates biofuels may be harmful to the atmosphere. It is a well-documented reality that biofuels do not emit less CO2 than fossil fuels as they are purported to do.
Now, there is a scientific paper that suggests biofuels deplete ozone in the atmosphere. The ozone layer protects the surface of the Earth from intense solar UV radiation.
Image: a humorous look at how to put biofuels into your gas tank
The paper notes that nitrogen-based fertilizer used in the production of crops to be used in biofuels, cause nitrous oxide (N2O) to be emitted when burning them. N2O is yet another greenhouse gas that has been known for over 40 years to deplete stratospheric ozone.
The conclusion from the CO2 Science report follows:
In light of their findings, as [the authors] state in the concluding sentence of their report, “increased biofuels production and consumption could therefore be damaging to the ozone layer,” which would be detrimental to the biosphere due to the fact that the stratospheric ozone layer filters out much of the harmful UV-B radiation coming from the sun, which otherwise could do much damage to earth’s terrestrial plants.
I emphasized that last statement to point out the potential vicious cycle of destroying or adversely affecting the crops from which the fuels are made. This whole biofuel debacle is just another example of the liberal “superstition trumps science” untruth.
When Damsel snapped this picture of a seashell a couple of days ago, it reminded me of a class I took in school. One segment of this class studied the mathematics of pattern formations in nature. It was interesting to me then and has been interesting since.
If you stack squares of dimensions in the Fibonacci sequence and connect the base intersections with a smooth curve, you get a spiral that resembles that of the shell. In the diagram at the left, two squares of dimension 1 are located in the center of the spiral, and squares of 2, 3, 5, 8 and 13 are added to the rectangle stack.
