Biofuels have developed in response to the high costs of oil production and to the problem of pollution created during petroleum extraction and refining processes.
But critics have said biofuel production causes food shortages by replacing edible crops with plants intended for use in fuels.
It could also reduce reliance on oil exportation as the primary economic industry of several nations in the region n
but all the resources that went into producing it including 25 percent of our fresh water and 4 percent of our oil.
or cooked into sauce and also includes capers peppers olives and olive oil garlic artichokes eggplant and ricotta cheese.
In Seward spilled oil slicked the water and caught fire. When the earthquake-triggered tsunami hit minutes later the wave was blazing It was an eerie thing to see a huge tide of fire washing ashore survivor Gene Kirkpatrick told National geographic magazine in 1964.
#Is Coconut oil Good for you? The Healthy Geezer answers questions about health and aging in his weekly column.
I read on the internet that coconut oil is great for your cholesterol and has other health benefits.
I thought coconut oil was very bad for you. What gives? Here's the advice of Dr. Walter C. Willett of the Harvard School of Public health Department of Nutrition:
I'd use coconut oil sparingly. Most of the research so far has consisted of short-term studies to examine its effect on cholesterol levels.
We don't really know how coconut oil affects heart disease. And I don't think coconut oil is as healthful as vegetable oils like olive oil and soybean oil
which are unsaturated mainly fat and therefore both lower LDL low-density lipoprotein or the bad cholesterol and increase HDL high density-lipoprotein lipoprotein the good cholesterol.
Coconut oil's special HDL-boosting effect may make it less bad than the high saturated fat content would indicate
but it's still probably not the best choice among the many available oils to reduce the risk of heart disease.
The 3 Types of Fats Explained Dr. Thomas Brenna professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University has done a thorough review of the literature on coconut oil.
He explains why coconut oil was given a bad name. Most of the studies involving coconut oil were hydrogenated done with partially coconut oil
which researchers used because they needed to raise the cholesterol levels of their rabbits in order to collect certain data.
Virgin coconut oil which has not been treated chemically is a different thing in terms of a health risk perspective.
Plant foods that contain saturated fat include coconut oil palm oil and cocoa butter. Saturated fat raises both the bad cholesterol and the goodcholesterol.
They're found mainly in many fish nuts seeds and oils from plants. Some examples of foods that contain these fats are salmon trout herring avocados olives walnuts and liquid vegetable oils such as soybean corn safflower canola olive and sunflower.
which makes the oil less likely to spoil. Using trans fats in the manufacturing of foods helps foods stay fresh longer have a longer shelf life
Why is coconut oil getting internet attention and a lot of buyers in health food stores? As Dr. Willett points out coconut oil seems especially effective in giving HDL a boost.
There are several forces creating this phenomenon. The coconut oil industry is working hard to win public favor.
There are scientists who are backing off from the damnation of coconut oil. And then there are vegans who abstain from animal products.
Many vegans use coconut oil as a butter substitute. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature. If you would like to ask a question write to fred@healthygeezer. com
#Tree Infesting Insects Love the City Heat (Op-Ed) This article was published originally at The Abstract.
The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Fracking or hydraulic fracturing operations by the oil and gas industries can emit significant amounts of methane.
and roasted a process that rids the nut of toxic oils and leaves its shell brittle and easy to remove.
Top 10 Cancer-Fighting Foods And in addition to the cashew's known nutritional benefits researchers have explored also the possibility of using the toxic oil found in the nut's shell as an antibiotic.
According to the researchers using cashew oil isn't an entirely new idea as the acid was used at one time in Brazil to treat leprosy.
Cashew nut oil as well as the leaves and bark of the cashew tree have also been used in traditional medicines in communities around the world to treat everything from toothaches to diabetes.
and oil industries or illegal settlers from destroying forests. Stronger rights mean less deforestation a lot less.
and are often gluten-free they may be fried in oils that are saturated high in and/or trans fats and many brands of chips are high in sodium.
Expanding domestic oil production will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and natural gas and significantly reduce the billions of dollars we send abroad each year.</
we do not want to use soybeans for diesel oil or corn for ethanol. That is not a good use of land.</
When the government steps up and it says that there is a requirement that you are going to have to take sulphur out of diesel fuel,
although the indirect impact could be even higher because of massive emissions from expanding palm-oil plantations, particularly in Indonesia.
which produce more emissions than conventional oil because of the energy-intensive extraction process. The low-carbon fuel standard could also prove a barrier to coal-based fuels,
Both groups clash with members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries who worry about falling oil demand as the world shifts towards renewable energy
and who want international aid to diversify their economies. Then there are major developing-world emitters such as Brazil, China, India and South africa.
and the oil industry will see them through the downturn. Verenium based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, secured US$90 million from oil company BP in August 2008,
and the two companies announced a joint venture this year. The joint venture has applied for a loan guarantee from the US energy department to build a commercial-scale plant in Florida,
only if oil was $90 a barrel or higher. The price of oil is around $65-70 a barrel.
One company looking to bring down costs is based Novozymes in Bagsv  rd, Denmark. In February, Novozymes launched its first commercially available enzymes for cellulosic-ethanol production,
and oil refiner Sinopec in Beijing to develop a process that uses maize stalks and leaves,
that announced a partnership with Chevron Technology Ventures on 14 september, claims to have engineered microorganisms whose enzymes can break cellulose down into simple sugars
whose seeds yield a diesel-like oil. Many had seen it as a potential saviour for marginal lands,
More than 130 companies were in the race, dominated by D1 Oils of London, which in 2007 had landed a $160-million deal with oil giant BP.
But this July, BP and D1 announced that their deal was off. And of 140 investments made in biofuels so far this year,
says analyst Harry Boyle of London-based New Energy Finance, only four or five have been in jatropha projects.
to produce the same amount of oil (W. Gerbens-Leenes et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci.
The split between D1 Oils and BP has hurt jatropha's reputation as a good business investment,
In a statement, BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams said that the decision to pull out of this is purely based on economics
In the meantime, D1 Oils has shifted from planting jatropha to focusing on basic research including starting a breeding programme to develop seeds with high oil yields
The farmers are guaranteed a price for the oil seeds they produce and so have an incentive to tend the crop
Zelt says that seeds optimized to produce more oil will be entering the market in the coming months,
not only reduce emissions and save oil but also result in consumer savings of roughly $3, 000 over the lifetime of a vehicle produced in 2016.
and are estimating that this policy will save 1. 3 million barrels per day of oil in 2020.
and produces higher-energy fuels that are interchangeable with current petroleum products. The next step is to scale the process up
and South San francisco-based Solazyme, LS9 struggled for funding in 2008 and early 2009 because of the drop in oil prices and the economic downturn,
including a strategic partnership with oil giant Chevron last September. The company plans to open a commercial-scale demonstration plant later this year.
Nature Newsthe burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil releases carbon dioxide that alters the balance of carbon isotopes naturally found in the environment an effect that is now being found in food,
is released that carbon from the burning of oil or coal, which has very little carbon-13 compared to that found naturally in the atmosphere,
The US Department of the interior has requested a scientific review of the possible ecological impact of drilling for oil and gas in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in the Arctic.
US President Barack Obama announced plans on 31 march to expand offshore oil and gas drilling,
dripping around 2 tonnes of oil and destroying coral.
Ardi may be more ape than human: Nature Newsa fight has broken out over attempts to drag'Ardi'-the oldest hominid skeleton found-out of the woods where her discoverers say she lived.
The oil spewing into the Gulf of mexico was stemmed partially this week, after BP managed to force a siphon tube into the leaking wellhead pipe.
But the political fallout intensified as Congress sought answers about the explosion of the Deepwater horizon rig.
separating safety and environmental operations from its oil-leasing arm. For more on the spill, see pages 274-275.
Nature Newsto many people, modern agriculture, with its industrial-scale farms and reliance on petroleum-based fertilizers, may seem a necessary evil one that has fed a growing human population while causing
BP's latest efforts to staunch the flow of oil from its wellhead in the Gulf of mexico have failed,
The'top kill'operation pumping mud into the gushing well was followed by a'junk shot'to block the oil leak with debris. Neither attempt worked.
-osc. no/9 june The 2010 Millennium Technology Prize will be awarded in Helsinki. go. nature. com/Eknzdu Number crunch 2 million-3 million The number of litres per day of oil
Oil gushed into the Gulf of mexico at a staggering rate from the damaged riser that had attached the platform to the well.
Chemical dispersants to break up the oil were applied at one of the highest rates in history.
Some of the oil was trapped well below the Gulf's surface, with undetermined effects. It seemed as though the spill might drag on forever.
but to an episode three decades earlier and about 1, 000 kilometres south, at an exploratory oil well known as Ixtoc I, operated by Mexico's national petroleum company Petr  leos Mexicanos (PEMEX.
it spewed some 475,000 tonnes of oil into waters northwest of Ciudad del Carmen on Mexico's Yucat ¡
His mission was to collect samples of any oil that might remain, and to interview local fishermen about their experiences during and after the spill.
the tide pools here were thick with oil. Development and road building have changed the shoreline significantly since then.
whether they exhibit the chemical signatures of oil from the Ixtoc I well. It is unlikely that the oil is having any significant ecological effects after weathering away for so long,
but the residue is a reminder of what the region experienced when oil first came ashore.
Thirty years ago, most fishing villages were isolated so that locals knew little about the disaster playing out just a few kilometres away.
to look for oil among mangrove trees. A few kilometres from the village, the team found patches of what looked like highly weathered oil.
Then Ch ¡vez called out, Hey Wes, there's a stinky one over here. The 2-metre by 1-metre mat of tar smelled distinctly of asphalt.
but that more productive ecosystems such as mangrove swamps or salt marshes the closest analogue to mangroves in the northern Gulf retain oil indefinitely.
it too generated subsurface oil plumes. That oil made its way around the Gulf, and at one point some beaches in Texas took an unexpected oil hit after it mixed with surface waters close to shore.
You didn't see anything and then all of a sudden you had oil on the beaches, Jernelã v says.
In broader terms, Tunnell, Jernelã v and other researchers familiar with Ixtoc I agree that its most important lesson is to continue studying the Deepwater horizon spill
and its impact especially after the oil stops flowing and the world's attention turns elsewhere so as not to be caught short next time.
Steve Murawski, chief science adviser for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration's National Marine Fisheries Service, says that he
Many fear that the oil will come their way, and they sympathize with those already affected.
on 9 november, oil group Chevron of San ramon, California, said it would buy the firm in a US$4. 3-billion deal.
Nature Newsbuffeted by the economic crisis and a drop in the oil price, US producers of corn ethanol are encountering increasing scepticism from the legislators on Capitol hill even as producers of the'greener'cellulose-derived ethanol struggle to move beyond basic research and development.
citing oil giant BP's decision to purchase cellulosic ethanol technology from the Verenium Corporation,
Oil-spill budget Scientists have welcomed a long-awaited peer-reviewed US government report on the short-term fate of the oil from the Deepwater horizon spill in the Gulf of mexico this summer.
the report supersedes an'oil budget calculator'published in August, which was reviewed not peer and was criticized for its lack of information about how calculations were carried out, uncertainties in estimates and overly optimistic press presentation.
although oil experts note a paucity of solid data on which to base estimates. See go. nature. com/j3ixm6 for more.
Oil and gas companies can still drill in the area, but federal agencies have to ensure that proposed activities don't jeopardize polar bears and their habitat.
a Malaysia-based company involved in palm-oil production, and will look at changes to biodiversity and the resources and processes provided by the ecosystem as the forest is logged
Spill science scarce The presidential commission investigating last year's huge oil spill in the Gulf of mexico has called for more science in federal decisions on oil production and spill response.
Business BP in Russian deal BP is joining up with Russia's state oil company Rosneft to drill in the Arctic waters of the Kara Sea.
Rosneft will get 5%of BP's ordinary shares, worth around US$8 billion. Environmentalists have protested against the deal as they grow increasingly vocal about the dangers of drilling in the Arctic.
Pollution fight US oil giant Chevron of San Remon, California, says that it will appeal a US$8. 6-billion fine imposed for environmental damages by an Ecuadorian court on 14 february,
The drilling was carried out in part by the oil company Texaco, which Chevron later purchased. Events Egypt's revolution offers hope to science Elated scientists joined celebrations throughout Egypt following the resignation of Hosni Mubarak on 11 february
after 30 years of presidency. With the military in interim control, the country's future is unclear,
and parts of Borneo) are the world's largest suppliers of palm oil, accounting for 87%of global production in 2008.
Given the rather coarse resolution of that satellite data, only large palm-oil plantations with closed canopies are easily identifiable,
and oil and gas operations Ethanol subsidies The US Senate has voted to end costly federal subsidies for producing ethanol from maize (corn).
and olive DNA, possibly from olive oil, in six of them. Other'hits'included DNA from legumes, ginger, walnut and juniper and from herbs such as mint, thyme and oregano.
oil and honey were traded, as well as fruit, fish, meat and resin. He says the DNA approach offers great promise for advances in terms of analysing amphora contents from archaeologically documented wrecks,
COMING UP4-8 december The triennial World Petroleum Congress the'Olympics of the oil and gas industry'meets in Qatar.
RALSTON/AFP/Gettyalberta's oil-sands companies are required to reduce the intensity of their greenhouse-gas emissions under the province's emissions trading scheme.
It sets limits on the intensity levels of greenhouse gases emitted by Alberta facilities oil sands operations and coal-fired power plants,
accurate method for measuring the emissions from oil-sands tailing ponds, which store contaminated water, clay, sand and bitumen from oil-sands processing.
Many opponents of emissions trading programmes also argue that companies are likely to purchase carbon offsets instead of reducing emissions by adopting new technologies
For methane, the study identified 14 control measures that would target leakage from coal mining and oil and gas operations, emissions from landfills, wastewater systems, livestock manure and rice paddies.
Canadian oil sands: defusing the carbon bombenvironmentalists and many politicians have called the oil sands a planetary-scale threat as they fight to prevent further development of the resource.
Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart, both climate scientists at the University of Victoria in British columbia, listened to the rhetoric and decided to run some calculations.
Because of the energy-intensive process for producing oil from this region, it is true that greenhouse gas emissions are higher than average.
But their work underscores evidence that the environmental impacts of producing the oil sands are primarily local rather than global."
if all of the oil available in the Alberta reserves were to be burned. Their results suggest that complete development of the sands would boost the average global temperature by roughly 0. 36 °C,
But their calculations suggest that a full life-cycle analysis increases the overall emissions from oil sands by roughly 17%.
Oil from Norway and Saudi arabia is easy to produce and relatively clean in terms of overall emissions.
which is common in Nigeria the dirtiest conventional oils could be just as bad or even worse than crude from the oil sands.
A study published last week by researchers at Environment Canada in Toronto used satellite measurements to analyse emissions of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide from the oil sands2.
in particular, have increased alongside oil development in recent years and are on par with emissions from individual coal-fired power plants.
and cooked to produce oil, the development has resulted also in concerns about water pollution and eventual reclamation.
In situ production, by contrast, uses steam injection to liberate the oil underground, which reduces surface disturbance but actually increases greenhouse-gas emissions as a result of higher energy consumption.
But barring a precipitous drop in oil prices or a sudden imposition of carbon regulations, Canada will probably find customers for its oil one way or another.
The Obama administration cited concerns about the route chosen for the first proposal, leaving the door open to a revised application down the road,
Canada is also investigating other options for piping the oil directly into international markets. Concerns about global warming in general and regulations in places like California and Europe have spurred scientists to tackle life-cycle emissions for the full suite of energy sources in recent years.
Oil-sands vote ends in deadlockan attempt to assign a carbon footprint to oil obtained from oil sands,
However, policy-makers are stuggling to achieve this for oil-sands oil. Canada is the main obstacle:
if it discriminates against oil sands by making the value separate from, and significantly higher than, that for oil from other sources.
The value being voted on was 107 grams of carbon dioxide equivalents per megajoule 23%higher than that for oil from conventional sources.
Canada holds the world s third-largest store of oil after Saudi arabia and Venezuela if the oil sands are included,
and it is keen to export the fuel, via US refineries, to Europe. Canada is also in the midst of negotiating a free-trade agreement with the EU. Spain
Italy, Poland and Estonia voted against the proposal, and the Scandinavian nations for it. However, the United kingdom, The netherlands and France home to oil giants BP, Shell and Total,
respectively and Germany all abstained, so the vote ended in deadlock.""The whole issue is blowing completely out of proportion,
says one oil-company representative. Compromise proposals were tabled by, among others, The netherlands and Italy, and may still be taken up by the ministers.
They generally recognize the higher carbon footprint of oil extracted from oil sands, but do not single them out with a separate value.
Environmentalists agree that oil obtained from different sources should have different carbon footprints but few data are available on the actual emissions generated by other sources,
and that because oil-sand oil is known to generate more emissions, disincentives should be placed on its use.
Oil companies say that biofuels are the best way to meet the 6%emission-reduction goal.
According to most scientific studies including one by the International Food Policy Research Institute in WASHINGTON DC used by the European commission to prepare an impact assessment and legislation biodiesel from palm oil,
soya bean and rapeseed causes a similar level of pollution to oil obtained from oil sands
The oil sands debate has no legal implications on the biofuel issue, and a decision on one has no direct bearing on the other.
leaving high-volume efforts to oil company Total, based in Paris, and biofuel firm Cosan in S £o Paulo, Brazil, with whom it has signed joint ventures.
That included around 650,000 hectares granted to two palm-oil giants; the move will affect the land and lives of more than one million Liberians.
The growing middle class, especially in Asia, is hungry for food, oil and minerals. Africa is most at risk
agricultural biotech giant Monsanto and retailer Walmart together with producers and environmentalists to negotiate environmental certification standards for products such as soya beans, palm oil,
soya and palm oil could have the greatest impact on carbon (see'Food versus forests').'With more than US$4 million in seed money from Norway, the consortium plans to announce an initial round of projects in the run-up to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de janeiro (Rio+20) in Brazil in June.
which has been working with Swiss food company Nestlã and the world's second-largest palm-oil producer, Golden Agri-Resources in Indonesia,
and stripping a palm-oil firm of a permit to develop carbon-rich peatland.""No other country has done anything like this,
But what remains is being cleared rapidly for palm-oil or wood-pulp plantations or is being logged re,
Sizer welcomed the government s move to retract a permit awarded to Kallista Alam, an Indonesian palm-oil company,
its joint owners Royal dutch shell and Iogen Corporation said in a statement. Iogen Corporation would not comment further on the story
growing concerns about climate change, rising energy consumption and dependence on foreign oil  have prompted countries
Fluctuations in the price of oil also pose a challenge for the industry, says Wallace Tyner, an energy economist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
the price of oil must surpass US$120 per barrel, he says, which the US Energy Information Administration s Annual Energy Outlook 2012 suggests may not happen until 2035 if at all.
But wheat, rice and oil prices have not matched their 2008 highs so that will help to stave off a similar crisis,
what could be the largest surge in global oil production since the 1980s, says a report from Harvard university s Belfer Center for Science and International affairs in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Contrary to fears of a peak in oil production, the report suggests that global oil-production capacity could expand from 93 million barrels per day in 2011 to 110.6 million barrels per day in 2020.
The increase is driven by advances in the production of unconventional oil, such as that trapped in tight/shale formations. 6-10 july In Ottawa,
Palm-oil boom raises conservation concernspalm oil was touted once as a social and environmental panacea a sustainable food crop,
presenting evidence that palm-oil farming can cause damaging deforestation and reduce biodiversity, and that the oil s use as a biofuel offers only marginal benefits for mitigating climate change.
But even as the environmental case against it grows stronger, the palm-oil business is booming as never before."
"Oil palm is such a lucrative crop that there is almost no way to stop it, says William Laurance, a forest-conservation scientist at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia.
And on 28 Â June, the Malaysian palm-oil company Felda Global Ventures (FGV) earned US$3. 2 billion in the second-largest initial public offering (IPO) this year after Facebook,
Although Malaysia is now the world s second-largest producer of palm oil, it is running out of viable land for new oil-palm plantations, according to the US Department of agriculture.
Such expansion is driven by the steadily rising demand for palm oil, mainly from the food sector,
But the emerging biodiesel market is also thirsty for the oil. In principle, biodiesel made from palm oil could be environmentally friendly,
because the carbon dioxide released when it is burned is roughly the same as that absorbed as the plant grows.
In January, after the US Environmental protection agency (EPA) found that palm-oil fuels emitted only 11-17%less greenhouse gas than diesel over their entire life cycle,
it suggested that the oil should not be classified as a renewable fuel. Although a public consultation on the matter concluded in April, the EPA has not set a date to issue its final ruling.
But the European union (EU) continues to encourage the use of fuels based on palm oil. The EU has a binding target to raise the share of biofuels used in road transport to 10%by 2020
and most of that is expected to be met by blending biofuels such as palm oil with conventional fuels.
By 2020, around 40%of Ketapang will be given over to palm oil, up from 6%in 2007-08.
Palm oil would be much more sustainable if it were managed responsibly, says Nigel Sizer, director of the Global Forest Initiative at the World Resources Institute,
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil (RSPO), an international nonprofit association based in Zurich, Switzerland, that brings together conservation groups
and palm-oil firms including FGV, says that it will not certify oil grown on land that was deforested to farm the crop.
But many are sceptical that the RSPO, which was established in 2004, can effectively police the industry s rapid growth."
But in the face of what Laurance calls"a green tidal wave of oil-palm expansion,
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