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Record W1990690946 · doi:10.1007/s10584-013-0927-9

Biofuel’s carbon balance: doubts, certainties and implications

2013· article· en· W1990690946 on OpenAlexfundno aff
John DeCicco

Bibliographic record

VenueClimatic Change · 2013
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEngineering
TopicBiofuel production and bioconversion
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersDepartment of Environment and Primary IndustriesCanada Excellence Research Chairs, Government of CanadaU.S. Department of Energy
KeywordsBiofuelGreenhouse gasFossil fuelEnvironmental scienceNatural resource economicsCarbon neutralityClimate changeAtmospheric carbon cycleBiochemical engineeringCarbon cycleEconomicsEcologyWaste managementEcosystemEngineering

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Liquid fuels will remain valued energy carriers well into any upcoming period when CO2 reductions are sought. Biofuels are the presumed replacement for the petroleum-based transportation fuels that dominate liquid fuel use. Lifecycle analysis embeds a closed-loop model of biofuel-related carbon flows, making net CO2 uptake an assumption to be refuted. However, evaluating net CO2 uptake through dynamic industrial and agriforestry supply chains at real-world commercial scales is extremely difficult. All such estimates carry a great deal of doubt and cannot be verified empirically. A different perspective follows by anchoring analysis in the certainty that end-use CO2 emissions from biofuels are essentially the same as those of the petroleum fuels they replace. A first-order model of the globally coupled bio- and fossil-fuel system reveals conditions for biofuel use to provide an atmospheric benefit. No benefit occurs in the energy sectors where biofuels are used, but rather must be found elsewhere in locations of carbon absorption or retention. The implication is that climate mitigation efforts should focus on such locations and include any mechanisms through which net uptake (an enhanced sink or verifiable offset) can be achieved by biological, chemical, geological or other means. Although biofuels can play a mitigation role when certain conditions are met, deemphasizing biofuel production in favor of terrestrial carbon management may offer more immediate and effective ways to counterbalance the CO2 emitted when using carbon-based liquid fuels of any origin. Climate policies for transportation fuels should be reconsidered accordingly.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.010
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.029
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Commentary · Consensus signal: Commentary
Teacher disagreement score0.010
Threshold uncertainty score0.054

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0100.029
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0030.018
Scholarly communication0.0070.018
Open science0.0030.004
Research integrity0.0070.013
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0060.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.030
GPT teacher head0.222
Teacher spread0.192 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreCommentary

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations40
Published2013
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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