Comments:Neste Oil to build world's largest biodiesel plant in Singapore

Latest comment: 15 years ago by Ciimatefirst

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This kind of development is catastrophically dangerous. Peer reviewed science (summarised and linked here) shows that most biofuels are carbon positive with some including palm oil producing carbon debts of up to 1500 years. ie the upfront release of carbon will not be recouped until the 1500th year of growing the agrofuel - this when Hansen is setting the stabilisation level for carbon at 350-300ppm and we are at 387ppm and rising.

Some of these lifecycle analyses don't even take into account the loss of carbon sinks as the indigenous ecosystems such as rainforest, the life-support mechanisms of the planet, are trashed. Many of these ecosystems are nearing the tipping point of collapse. The UN Environment Agency estimates that the Borneo rainforest could reach a point of no return by 2012. This has prehistorically been the resilience 'bank' that has kept some functioning carbon cycle going in periods of climate extremis, allowing recovery over the millennia. If this goes - and this is where the palm oil industry is doing the greatest damage - we have no map out of this climate catastrophe.

-Ciimatefirst (talk) 10:39, 5 July 2009 (UTC)Reply