Global warming ;Ethanol May Add to Global Warming

Looking for various possibility to control Glabal Warming effect
Clearing Land for Biofuels Will Aid Warmingstudy


Clearing land to produce biofuels such as ethanol will do more to exacerbate global warming than using gasoline or other fossil fuels, two scientific studies show.

The independent analyses, which will be published today in the journal Science, could force policymakers in the United States and Europe to reevaluate incentives they have adopted to spur production of ethanol-based fuels. President Bush and many members of Congress have touted expanding biofuel use as an integral element of the nation's battle against climate change, but these studies suggest that this strategy will damage the planet rather than help protect it.

One study -- written by a group of researchers from Princeton University, Woods Hole Research Center and Iowa State University along with an agriculture consultant -- concluded that over 30 years, use of traditional corn-based ethanol would produce twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as regular gasoline. Another analysis, written by a Nature Conservancy scientist along with University of Minnesota researchers, found that converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands in Southeast Asia and Latin America to produce biofuels will increase global warming pollution for decades, if not centuries.

Tim Searchinger, who conducts research at Princeton and the D.C-based German Marshall Fund of the United States, said the research he and his colleagues did is the first to reveal the hidden environmental cost of producing biofuels.

"The land we're likely to plow up is the land that we've had taking up carbon for decades," said Searchinger, the lead author. Estimating that it would take 167 years before biofuel would stop contributing to climate change, he added, "We can't get to a result, no matter how heroically we make assumptions on behalf of corn ethanol, where it will actually generate greenhouse-gas benefits."

Researchers said the findings applied to other forms of ethanol-based fuel as well, at emissions rates that varied depending on the nature of the land being converted and the crop being grown on it, with sugar cane ranking as the most efficient. The results of the studies are significant because industrialized countries are pushing so aggressively to boost biofuel production as an alternative to gasoline. The recently passed energy bill mandated the production of 36 billion gallons of biofuels annually by 2022, compared with about 7.5 billion gallons today. Just last month, the European Union's Transport Ministry proposed a directive calling on member countries to power 10 percent of their transportation with biofuels.

The studies emphasized the time it would take to pay back the "carbon debt" created by clearing land to grow biofuel crops, in the words of Joe Fargione, central region science director for the Nature Conservancy, but biofuel industry officials -- as well as administration and congressional officials -- said it is unfair to judge ethanol in its current form, because the industry continues to make technological advances.

"This is a good way of showing where we are, not where we're going to be," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who is chairman of a House global warming panel and who helped write the energy legislation. Noting that the measure set benchmarks requiring any new ethanol plants to produce a fuel that is 20 percent more efficient than gasoline, and even more stringent standards for advanced biofuels, he added, "Once you set the standard, then it's going to drive where the investment is made, where the breakthroughs are."

James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said he remains convinced that many biofuels produce substantial environmental benefits.

"Like any issue, there are ways to do it right and there are ways to do things wrong, and the same is the case to biofuels," he said. "We move as rapidly as we can to second-generation [biofuels] because those offer the best opportunity for a low environmental profile."

Brent Erickson, executive vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization's industrial and environmental section, said using renewable resources always made sense in the long run, compared with gasoline and diesel fuel.

"It makes no sense to continue burning fossil carbon, which is essentially carbon that has already been sequestered for millions of years in the Earth's crust, and which when burned releases carbon dioxide and also creates a carbon debt that can never be paid back," he said. "It is much more logical to produce biofuels that recycle carbon, even if a short-term carbon debt is created. Even if it's 167 years, you're still better off than burning oil that can never be paid off."

But an array of senior scientists who work on climate change, including Missouri Botanical Society President Peter H. Raven and William H. Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, sent a letter to Bush and congressional leaders yesterday urging them to reconsider their energy policies in light of the new studies.

"While politicians in the U.S. and Europe have tried to craft policies dictating that new biofuels will not come at the expense of clearing land, the papers show that sometimes land conversion is often an indirect result of this expansion," the 10 scientists wrote. "There is an urgent need for policy that ensures biofuels are not produced on productive forest, grassland or cropland."

Alex Farrell, a professor with Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group who concluded in 2006 that biofuels produce a net environmental benefit, said the paper by Searchinger and his colleagues changed his mind.

"The qualitative result that biofuel produced on fertile land has higher greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels is almost certainly true, even if it's only by a certain amount," Farrell said in a telephone interview. "But we can make better biofuels. The right thing to do is to give the biofuel industry the incentives and support to move to a more sustainable production method."

One of the biggest tests will come when the Environmental Protection Agency issues its analysis of the climate impact of biofuels, which according to the energy bill must include "direct emissions and significant indirect emissions such as significant emissions from land use changes."

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), a member of the House Energy Committee, said policymakers would have to rely on scientists to help them sort out such questions.

"Our challenge really is to find out a way to quantify these things, so when you adopt a policy, you factor in these land use issues," Inslee said, adding that the new findings point out that "we ought to be open to new science, but we also have to continue with upward leaps in biofuels."

Baidu, Sohu Served With New Suits By Music Companies

Baidu, the king of China’s fast-growing Internet universe, may be facing its toughest challenge yet following a fresh lawsuit, filed in a Beijing court early this week by the world’s three biggest record companies, Sony BMG Music, Warner Music and Universal Music. The trio are attempting to stop rampant music piracy.

The three record companies are asking the court to order Baidu to remove all links on its music delivery service to copyright-infringing tracks to which they own the rights.

Baidu (nasdaq: BIDU - news - people ), whose shares are listed on Nasdaq, plummeted by as much as 9.27%, to $230, on Wednesday, marking the steepest fall amid a general decline for the day among Chinese Internet stocks listed in the United States.

Separately, Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) BMG, Warner Music and EMI (other-otc: EMIPY - news - people ) Music’s China affiliate, Gold Label Records, plan to take joint legal action along similar lines against popular Chinese Internet portal Sohu (nasdaq: SOHU - news - people ), which is also listed on Nasdaq, and its affiliate Sogou, a proprietary search engine, after the Chinese New Year holidays, which end on Sunday. The aim is, again, to stop the portal’s search engine from offering links to thousands of Web sites that provide unlicensed access to music downloads.

Sohu is the official sponsor of Internet content service for the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games, gaining the exclusive contract to build and host the summer Games’ official Web site. Its shares were hammered as well, dropping by 6.46% to close at $43.30 on Wednesday.

Another company, Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) China, which is operated by Alibaba (other-otc: ALBCF - news - people ), is also being served with a fresh lawsuit at the behest of the record companies' trade group, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, for its refusal to comply with a landmark ruling in December in a higher court in Beijing, convicting it for mass copyright infringement violation against Chinese law.

None of these Chinese companies have yet responded to the new suits. The record giants were encouraged by the IFPI's December legal victory in Beijing against Yahoo! China, but they continue to be frustrated by the difficulty of making the ruling effectual in a country where law enforcement is notoriously fragile.

But the December ruling may be a harbinger of things to come. If reaffirmed, it will have broad ramifications for China’s Internet companies, Baidu above all, which have drawn heavy traffic by offering Internet users free but illegal music downloads. So popular are the music services that Google, which has been slow in catching up with Baidu in China, was reported this week in The Wall Street Journal to be in the late planning stages of a joint venture with a Chinese online music company that would permit it to provide free but licensed music downloads in China.

According to the IFPI, China has "potentially the largest online music-buying public in the world, with as many broadband connections as the United States," and the trade group reckons the market overwhelmingly consists of pirated music; around 99% of potential sales are circumvented through illegal downloading. At an aggregate size of a mere $76 million, China’s legitimate music market accounts for less than 1% of global recorded music sales, it said.

John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of IFPI, said: "The music industry in China wants partnership with the technology companies--but you cannot build [a] partnership on the basis of systemic theft of copyrighted music and that is why we have been forced to take further actions."


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Google Set To Bring Free Music To China


Beijing (dbTechno) - Google may not be in the best of graces in China, but that is not stopping them from forming a joint venture with Chinese online music company, Top100.cn to bring licensed music downloads to China.

Google is heading to China to bring their free digital music market.

Google is going to sell free, licensed music downloads to people in China.

They have apparently already worked out a deal to do this with Universal, and are now in talks with Sony, and EMI.

The company has stated that every single music download will have a watermark on it so that they can trace where it goes on the web. They will also be high-quality audio files.

Google is making the move to compete with Baidu, which is popular for music searches and is still the top dog in China.

Google To Offer Free Music Downloads For Chinese UsersGoogle Inc., world’s number one Internet search engine, is targeting one of the largest online markets in the world, China, to offer free digital music downloads via the Web, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. So far, there has been one official confirmation from Universal Music, but other major labels such as EMI Group Ltd. and Sony BMG Music Entertainment are said to be in talks for the new services as well, sources familiar with the matter have said.

The Chinese music market has less of a legal side to it, while its piracy phenomenon is far more widespread than in North America and Europe. Google’s latest experiment could prove to be a lucrative deal, if the company will be able to reach an agreement with the major music labels. At the same time, Google will have to face Baidu, the number 1 Chinese search engine, currently dominating the market in the country.

“We were late entering the China market, and we’re catching up,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said last April, as the WSJ reported. “Our investment is working and we will eventually be the leader.” Baidu.com has been struggling with numerous searches for unauthorized music downloads, which has raised concerns from the music companies trying to protect their interests. Google is currently working on making quite an entrance on the Chinese online music market, with offering a free download music service.

The difference between Google’s efforts and what other competitors like Baidu Inc. and Sina Corp have to offer is that both Chinese companies have streaming music on their web sites, but they’re not downloadable. Google wants to turn that to its favor and start the new service within the next weeks. Since its debut on the Chinese market, Google came to a 26 percent market share and it’s growing stronger every year.