Is biofuel relly contributing and is geothermal really...?

Question

is biofuel contributing to higher food prices alongside oil?

and everyone keeps saying geothermal is renewable but i also heard that it technically isn't? so whats fact and whats fiction?

Answer 1

1. Biofuels really are contributing to higher food prices. About 30% of the American corn crop went to biofuels this year, reducing the supply available for food.

http://www.ethanol.org/index.php?id=77&p...

http://www.hollywood.com/news/Ethanol_Pr...

How could that help but increase food prices? And not just for the prices of products that are obviously made from corn:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/busine...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

Just how much of the food price increase is due to biofuels is a harder question because there are other factors contributing to higher prices.

2. As for geothermal being renewable, it depends on how you use it and on what time frame. The Earth is going to cool no matter what, and using geothermal energy is going to cause it cool a little faster, but we are talking about tens of thousands of years here, as long as we don't take the power out too fast.

For example, drilling a hole into a pool of hot water and draining it might be using it as a non-renewable resource. (Still, it does not emit greenhouse gases, etc.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_...

On the other hand, drilling deep holes, running pipes, and let the Earth heat the water we pump into the pipes would be using it as a renewable resource as long as we did not take heat faster than the surrounding area could bring it back in (that's why you need long pipes covering lots of area - which is why it hasn't been economical until recently.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_...