http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/15/235031/984#3
Main issue sidestepped
As usual.
The main issue? Burning biomass as fuel prevents plants from removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil.
No, the carbon cycle of biomass to fuel to CO2 back to biomass again is not a closed loop. because it interupts the natural carbon sink activity of the soil/biomass ecosystem.
If one put algae growing collectors on rooftops and made fuel from that and burned it, with no GHG energy asdded for refining or transport, it would be a closed loop.
But as long as land space that naturally stored carbon, before the advent of chemical ag,is used to grow fuel, or food crops where the products are washed into rivers in the form of manure and crop waste, as in cAFO agriculture, the cycle is not a cycle. The carbon that was stored out of the atmosphere is emitted as GHG in the form of methane, CO2, or other even worse GHGs.
What is the solution? Organic agriculuture where manure and crop waste are returned to the soil and no fuel farming. Energy from crops only as food and byproduct in the form of biogas from organic fertilizer production. With as much of the carbon as possible returned to the soil.
When will this reality be aknowledged? My guess is never, as long as chemical ag is the norm. Folks will keep on thinking that fuel farming is a green cycle.