Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 9:53 pm Post subject: Re: The Mother of all Biofuels Debates (large scale)
nth wrote:
The solution is to change farming practices to a no till and minimal labor farm.
Change? I know of no serious farmer who isn't farming no-till. All they have is a planter and a combine.
I have a 212 acre farm in NW Missouri that made 200 bushels an acre of corn last year using no-till. Just herbicides. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 3:42 am Post subject: Re: The Mother of all Biofuels Debates (large scale)
halcyon wrote:
This is a long thread so my apologies, if this has been posted before.
I agree about the long thread thing.
It is pointless having threads that run for nearly 60 pages. Who could be bothered reading them all to see if the point you want to discuss has already been raised or not.
Threads should be closed for comment after about 10 pages.
Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 10:25 am Post subject: Re: The Mother of all Biofuels Debates (large scale)
kokoda wrote:
halcyon wrote:
This is a long thread so my apologies, if this has been posted before.
I agree about the long thread thing.
It is pointless having threads that run for nearly 60 pages. Who could be bothered reading them all to see if the point you want to discuss has already been raised or not.
Threads should be closed for comment after about 10 pages.
I suspect halcyon was referring to the width of his chart and post that ran off the page rather than the entirety of this thread.
"The Mother of all Biofuels Debates (large scale)" contains a lot of valuable facts, links, analysis, and opinion and is a useful history of an important discussion. I regularly call on my "Mother" and her ample bosom of searchable facts to pummel unsuspecting biofools. _________________ ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap
Manuel Rodrigues da Silva stoops over, wielding a machete to slice through bamboolike sugar cane stalks in a field that stretches to the horizon in southeastern Brazil. Dressed in a frayed T-shirt and dirt-coated blue work pants, he perspires in the 90-degree-Fahrenheit heat.
Suddenly, he feels dizzy and has to stop. It's not the first time this has happened. He's had headaches and pains all over his body for a week and has already been hospitalized once. Silva, who's 45 and started cutting cane this year, says he's reluctant to stop working. His pay and his job hinge on how much cane he can cut in a day.
The cane Silva slashes feeds an ethanol plant owned by Cosan SA Industria & Comercio, Brazil's biggest exporter of a fuel that politicians around the world trumpet as a clean, renewable alternative to gasoline.
Halfway through Silva's 10-hour shift, the slender, 5-foot- 2-inch-tall (1.6-meter-tall) worker collapses. He takes shelter under a bus, where he trembles with fever. That's where Sao Paulo state labor prosecutor Mario Antonio Gomes finds him as he inspects the plantation.
Gomes orders Elton Rodrigo Franco, a driver for the plantation, to take Silva to a hospital in Capivari, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) away. The sick laborer endures the one- hour trip in the only vehicle available, a two-seat Ford Pampa pickup with no room in which to lie down.
A doctor at the hospital diagnoses Silva with lung fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs that often afflicts cane cutters, according to the labor inspector's report. He may die if he keeps cutting cane, the report says.
No matter. There are plenty more where he came from. He's expendable. _________________ "Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3643 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 5:29 am Post subject: Re: The Mother of all Biofuels Debates (large scale)
Zardoz wrote:
No matter. There are plenty more where he came from. He's expendable.
Just like the rest of us. My job is classified as one of the top 10 most dangerous by the bureau of labor stats and I make $13.00 per hour doing it, but those are my choices. I don't expect people to feel sorry for me, and I certainly don't feel sorry for other people making other choices. Slaves and serfs are objects of pity, free people making choices are not. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 3:26 pm Post subject: Re: The Mother of all Biofuels Debates (large scale)
Quote:
Bio-energy with carbon storage (BECS): A sequential decision approach to the threat of abrupt climate change
Peter Reada, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author and Jonathan Lermitb
aDepartment of Applied International Economics, Massey University, Private Bag 112222, Palmerston, New Zealand
bEnergy Consultant, 2/109 Hill Street, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand
Available online 23 August 2004.
Abstract
Abrupt climate change (ACC) is an issue that ‘haunts the climate change problem’ but has so far been neglected by policy makers. This may have been because of an apparent lack of practicable measures for effective response, apart from risky geoengineering. If achieved on a sufficiently large scale, a portfolio of Bio-Energy with Carbon Storage (BECS) technologies, yielding a negative-emissions energy system, may be seen not only as benign geoengineering, free of the risks associated with other geoengineering, but also as one of the keys to being prepared for ACC. The nature of sequential future decisions is discussed; these will need to be taken in response to the evolution of future events, which is as yet unknown. The impact of such decisions on land-use change is related to a specific bio-energy conversion technology. The effects of a precautionary strategy, possibly leading to eventual land-use change on a large scale, is modeled using FLAMES (see Appendix A). Modeling shows that, using BECS, and under strong assumptions appropriate to imminent ACC, preindustrial CO2 levels can be restored by mid-century. Addressed to ACC rather than gradual climate change, a robust strategy related to Article 3.3 of the Convention may provide the basis for rapprochement between Kyoto Parties and other Annex 1 Parties.
What about this type of negative emissions energy?source: Energy _________________ The Beginning is Near!
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:53 am Post subject: Re: The Mother of all Biofuels Debates (large scale)
Last week I saw a garbage truck and chatted with the driver for a bit. This made me happy and somewhat less doomerific:
My town has invested heavily in a centralized bio-methane digester.
I get a cheaper garbage collection fee if I recycle certain waste and put all biodegradable refuse in a special corn starch baggie in a special bin. Tens of thousands of us do this. The biomass gets trucked to the digester and refined into motor fuel. The truck I saw looked almost exactly like the one pictured, except it had a 12-pack of gas bottles exposed on the sides where the diesel and brake air tanks normally are. The truck in the picture seems to have them shrouded. It had no auxiliary diesel tank, just the gas.
The driver said the only thing he noticed compared to diesel fuel was less noise, less smell and slightly less low-end torque, but not enough to be a problem. He refueled once a day, and seemed very positive and proud of his vehicle.
I have been skeptical about the bio-gas plant (I've gotten a boondoggle vibe from this), as the predictions seemed too good to be true. To actually see the end product of the system in action was enough to nudge me a good way towards the enthusiast camp.
The numbers released to the public is "10kgs of biomass (won't say wet or dry, there's a big difference) makes 1m³ of methane which equals the energy of 1 liter of gasoline" The plant has a capacity of producing "2,100m³ of gasoline equivalent" per year. (~550,000 gallons)
If this is true it means that my town can power many (most? all?) municipal vehicles purely from bio-gas. That's good news any way you look at it, even if it's nowhere near enough energy to substitute all fossil fuel consumption. The future looks a lot less like mad max if garbage gets collected, snow gets plowed, buses are rolling and so on.
Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 11:08 pm Post subject: Re: The Mother of all Biofuels Debates (large scale)
Are you saying that aren't doomed!?!?!? Intersting if so, then why do you hold out some hope? Alternatives aren't going to save us, nothing will. I would like to know how do you see this?
Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:10 am Post subject: Re: The Mother of all Biofuels Debates (large scale)
GreenOil08 wrote:
Are you saying that aren't doomed!?!?!? Intersting if so, then why do you hold out some hope? Alternatives aren't going to save us, nothing will. I would like to know how do you see this?
Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 2:41 pm Post subject: Re: The Mother of all Biofuels Debates (large scale)
GreenOil08 wrote:
why do you hold out some hope?
In order to respond meaningfully to your troll, we'd have to agree on what "doomed" actually means. If it implies the end of the personal automobile and annual vacations to Thailand, then by all means yes. If it implies certain death by exposure, starvation or gang violence, I'm more optimistic doom can be avoided. There are some positive developmental signs where I live (Sweden):
-My electricity comes from hydro power since I live on a producing river. Nationwide it's 50/50 hydro/nukes.
-There is rail infrastructure, and it's electrified.
-My home is heated with biofuel. There are few humans and lots of trees in my part of the world. The area heating plant has rail lines in place.
-It looks entirely possible that the aforementioned biomethane scheme may actually power the most crucial road vehicles where I live.
-People here aren't particularly violent, nor armed to the teeth. The general sense of entitlement is IMO nowhere near on par with what's common in the North American suburbanite psyche. I think real cooperation in the face of the coming difficult adjustments are a real possibility. I expect to see more moaning and bitching than violence and anger when things turn bad.
-while not the greatest of land for agriculture, a number of crops grow well enough up here to avoid starvation, even if the diet will become frugal by necessity.
-I live far away from anyplace less developed. External political unrest is unlikely to directly affect my area.
-My mailman rides an electric trike. This may seem insignificant, but to me it indicates that we're at least trying pretty hard here already, and have been for some time. Anything we've manage to get done before the crunch will be immensely valuable once TSHTF.
Not all of the industrialized world looks and works like the U.S.
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ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap 
