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Campfires last night 21-Feb-2011 At 10:33:25 AM Gavo

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Im not sure if we are "burning" it faster than we are replacing it. Certainly we are destroying the forests faster than they can regenerate and a large part of that is razing/burning by farmers to graze livestock. Not sure how we as wood-heater or campfire users fit into it though but absolutely, we are destroying it faster than it can come back. Hooray for forward-thinking.

Yes you are right, ethanol at the moment generally comes from cane-sugar. This is because the fermentation process that leads to ethanol is straight forward from cane sugar because it is richer in the simpler form of sugar "hemicellulose". Other plant materials contain cellulose + hemicellulose (and lignin) which means the cellulose needs expensive and high-energy hydrolysis to make the sugars accessible to the microorganisms. At the moment its too costly to do but if more money went into researching ways of breaking down these complex sugars and reducing the cost of the enzymes or processes needed, ethanol could possibly compete with fossil fuels and then we could be using a fuel which is less efficient, but is made from waste plant material (think how much "waste" is left over after harvesting crops..thats all potential feedstock for ethanol production) and the best part is that yes CO2 is an emission of combustion with ethanol, but it is also part of the carbon cycle.. brilliant!

But of course.. that means more money has to go into research and its hard to sell that side of it. People seem happier to keep using something that "works" no matter what the cost and not think too far forward. There is research in this area, just not enough.