Talk:Indirect land use change impacts of biofuels

Nature of this article

When I created this article I was aiming for a worldwide view with a neutral point of view, as this is indeed a very controversial topic, that is why there is plenty of references on controversial contents, with both sides of the discussion reflected. You are welcome to collaborate, improve my NPOV, but all unreferenced edits or from non WP:RS will be speedily deleted. Also, I left hidden some text with an outline of the rest of the article, showing how I plan to continue developing this article. Since most of the references are already in the published part of the article, please feel free do use them to do your own edits. I will continue working on expanding the article during the following days to raise it at B class.--Mariordo (talk) 23:54, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

• Work plan: Today I concluded the lead containing all pertaining facts and issues to the best of my knowledge, and as updated as possible. It is a bit too long but I though necessary to include so much to keep NPOV. Now I will slowly work sections to expand on these topics and issues. Since most of the sources are technical papers, I will try to summarized results with and without ILUC in tables/boxes, including Wang (Argonne) latest estimates for several ethanol pathways, Searchinger estimates, Fargione's six debt scenarios (since they applied to both direct and ILUC impacts), CARB estimates (not limited to the April ruling) and EPA's proposal. Suggestions are welcome, and please feel free to contribute (there is and outline and plenty of material hidden) and correct any factual error I might inadvertently made. I hope to develop all this in the next following two weeks.--Mariordo (talk) 04:18, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
  • PS If you have new or interesting materials, or other reliable sources but do not want to edit yourself, please leave me here the links, I will check it out.--Mariordo (talk) 04:20, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Today I finished my first take on the article, as current as possible, and I will do updates from time to time. I left most of the controversies, with the exception of California's LCFS, very short and fully ref so anyone interested in the details can follow the links in those refs. As California is the only regulation already approved which includes ILUC, I decided to expand only in these case. As other regulations reach a final ruling with specific quantification of ILUC, I plan to expand as they are approved, and about the debates. As requested before, make suggestions here if you do not want to edit yourself or let me know of interesting or new materials leaving the link here.--Mariordo (talk) 04:03, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Indirect land use change impacts of biofuels/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 01:39, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Well written

(a) the prose is clear and the spelling and grammar are correct

There were some grammar issues, but these were very rare and I corrected them myself. I would advise another thorough copyedit before an attempt at WP:FAN just in case I missed anything. Aside from that, well written.

(b) it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, jargon, words to avoid, fiction, and list incorporation

The only concern I have is that the lede section is, in my mind, a bit too long. Recall that this section is intended to be an overview of the article. Admittedly, a long article should have a relatively long lede section, but I think that 5 fairly large paragraphs is a bit overdoing it. If this could be trimmed to 4 and some of the detailed deferred to the article content, this would be good. However, this concern is insufficient for me to pass this section. This is just advice to be acted upon in the future (such as before an FAN).

Factually written and verifiable

(a) it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout

Well referenced

(b) it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines

Details and quotations are appropriately cited

(c) it contains no original research

Despite the high potential for WP:OR here, I can find no evidence of it. Everything is well referenced by a reliable source

Broad in its coverage

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic

Very broad in its coverage. A reader coming to this article will be able to get a good overview of the issue.

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

Detailed, but to the point.

Neutral

it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias.

Well balanced article on a controversial topic.

Stable

it does not change significantly from day-to-day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

No ongoing content dispute

Illustrated, if possible

(a) images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content

One of the images was inappropriately tagged. However, I was unconvinced of the necessity of this image, so I removed it (and added it to my list of things to follow up on). The others are free and appropriately tagged.

(b) images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions

Images are relevant and have captions, but we may have too many (this is something to consider for future improvements)

General comments

This is a very well written article. With some work, it is easily a contender for featured article. It could use another pair of eyes for a copyedit. While the article was good in grammar/spelling, I did catch a few mistakes (that I cleaned up myself because they were minor). Another thorough review would be helpful. I'm only concerned about the images (and only slightly). I recognize that finding images directly related to this topic is difficult because it's not a tangible topic, however, the number of images in the lede, for example, may be overshooting the mark. This is something to consider for future work, but will not hold up this article from GA. Well done.

Overall

Overall pass. A well written article.

Needs some work

Obviously a lot of work has gone into this article and there is much useful info being presented. But I agree with the GA reviewer that this article needs copyediting (have added a ce tag) and the lead needs to be trimmed. I also think that at 97kb the article is too long and that there are many long sentences which need to be broken up and re-written for clarity. For example, the meaning of these sentences eludes me:

A paper published in February 2008 in Sciencexpress by a team led by Searchinger from Princeton University concluded that once considered indirect land use changes effects in the life cycle assessment of biofuels used to substitute gasoline, instead of savings both corn and cellulosic ethanol increased carbon emissions as compared to gasoline by 93 and 50 percent respectively.

A second paper published in the same issue of Sciencexpress, by a team led by Fargione from The Nature Conservancy, found that a carbon debt is created when natural lands are cleared and being converted to biofuel production and to crop production when agricultural land is diverted to biofuel production, therefore this carbon debt applies to both direct and indirect land use changes.

-- Johnfos (talk) 04:33, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Include global warming wikilink and Portal:global warming

Per "EPA Confirms Most Corn Ethanol Worsens Global Warming Pollution", and article contents in general. 141.218.36.152 (talk) 23:25, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Is that relevant to Indirect land use change impacts of biofuels? It seems more directly related to biofuels. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:32, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Biofuels and global warming. So ... 141.218.36.152 (talk) 00:08, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

So, put the link in biofuels. The problem is not related to land use. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:11, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

What link? 141.218.36.152 (talk) 00:13, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Global warming wikilink and Portal:global warming. There's no reason for it to be here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:16, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

What? The global warming connection is already here (in the article), only the portal is not. 141.218.36.152 (talk) 00:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

No, it isn't in the article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:21, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that the global warming portal includes articles mainly related with the science of GW, climate change, and the economics of climate change. Therefore, articles related to technologies or fuels aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should not be included in that portal. These articles and ILUC belong to the sustainable transport and renewable energy portals (which are already included in the GW portal as related portals, just check by yourself here).-Mariordo (talk) 03:56, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Mariordo, the issue is including P:GW here, not this there. 99.56.120.249 (talk) 03:26, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyedit

I ran through this and reduced the word count by ~1/3. I repeatedly removed repetitive contextual info (e.g. replacing "blah relating to X" with "blah" in a section titled "X").

The article has a spectacular number of refs, but the effect is to overwhelm the reader. Better to pick the best ref for the point and move the rest to "See also" or drop.

I tried to consistently replace present tense with past tense and added "as of" type language to anchor sentences that used language such as the ephemeral "currently".

I concur that the article continues to show too much detail. I reduced that only slightly.

The article would be improved if it discussed (or ref'd an article that discussed) the models that underlie this discussion. As of 20111, the article is too much about the politics/policies and not enough about the science, which is the bit that will endure.

I'll do another pass to clean up any errors that I introduced, although I think that if I looked at this with fresh eyes, I might spike another 1/3 of the text... Lfstevens (talk) 08:44, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Lfstevens, please let me know when you are finished with the last clean up pass, so I can begin a quick check of the improved article. Regarding the concerns you raised, I think you trimmed it already to a more reasonable size. About the content, the article is indeed dealing with a very contentious subject, both scientifically and politically. For this type of article I followed the style used in the global warming controversy articles, which have excess of refs to avoid edit wars, and, in order to keep NPOV, both/all sides are given equal weight. Despite EPA or CARB having rule the standards, the controversy continues. I think it would take some time since this is a very new field which is attempting to simulate the world's present and future agricultural use of land (I do not think the science will not reach consensus any time soon), and in the public debate you have the advocating environmental groups versus the ethanol producers, both in the US and Brazil, which face different challenges due to the differences between corn and sugarcane as feedstocks.--Mariordo (talk) 05:29, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm done at this point. Fixed some ambiguous refs this AM. I'm fine with discussing the controversy, but brevity has value, too. Cheers.

Good to see some improvements being made here. I plan to read through the article some time soon. But initially I was surprised to see this statement in the lead: "The primary purpose of biofuels is to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that affect climate." What sources do we have for this claim?

Surely one of the primary purposes of biofuels is oil price moderation. According to Francisco Blanch, a commodity strategist for Merrill Lynch, crude oil would be trading 15 per cent higher and gasoline would be as much as 25 per cent more expensive, if it were not for biofuels. Gordon Quaiattini, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, argued that a healthy supply of alternative energy sources will help to combat gasoline price spikes.

Another basic purpose is to substitute renewable transportation fuels for non-renewable. According to the International Energy Agency, biofuels have the potential to meet more than a quarter of world demand for transportation fuels by 2050.

So biofuels have several important roles to play, and I was surprised to see CO2 reduction being singled out like that. Johnfos (talk) 23:04, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually the copyedit of the lead left a definition of ILUC that is wrong. Just check the original here. Now that the copyedit is finished, and since technically this is a complex subject, I intend to check the edits to make sure the original meaning as supported by the RS has not been lost. Unfortunately nowadays I do not have much time available, so I will do it piecemeal, but during the first week of December I will have more time for editing to complete it. Other editors are welcome to contribute in between.--Mariordo (talk) 03:36, 17 November 2011 (UTC)