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by schmidtleonard 298 days ago
The unsubstantiated faith critique swings both ways: the amount of biofuel hate that came out of that one time agricultural land use adjustment is truly diabolical.

Like, "ok, you win, but if I drop this gigantic adjustment onto your math, then I win," and an honest conversation would then move to whether or not the adjustment was justified but that's not what happened, the conversation turned into yelling at anyone who didn't want to take the outcome-determinative adjustment on faith. Lol. Being a crusader doesn't make you wrong, but it does make the whole accusation of unsubstantiated faith / appeal to reason quite hypocritical.

1 comments

No doubt, it's a double-edged sword.

And to be clear, I wouldn't have a problem if only the facts were put down: current methods, advantages (probably compared to other methods) and drawbacks. But to say this is "potentially offering a more sustainable alternative to fossil fuels" is like saying: "I can use a 74GW data center and a prompt to get the answer to 2+2, it potentially offers a more sustainable alternative to calculators."

You say that, but is it true?

The science keeps walking away from the Searchinger 2008 result (100g GHG/MJ iLUC for corn ethanol) and towards the biofuels industry claims that this was absurdly high, yet green rhetoric still behaves like the argument was 100% settled in 2008 and anyone who thinks otherwise is a shill.