[Ratmagiclady]

YOU brought up Kyoto/Bush.
'Bummer is free to sign the Kyoto Accords today.

No, I did not say that. I quoted it.



(testing)

[Phil1]

I'm happy to help you out:

'China and India are two different cases, for one thing.

For another, China may be the ones who capitalized on it, but it's the US that opposed even something so humble as the Kyoto accords, while China built coal-fired plants and we outsourced our manufacturing there.'

[Parallax]

I'm happy to help you out:

'China and India are two different cases, for one thing.

For another, China may be the ones who capitalized on it, but it's the US that opposed even something so humble as the Kyoto accords, while China built coal-fired plants and we outsourced our manufacturing there.'

Oooooooooooo, you're gonna git it now, Phil!

[Ratmagiclady]

We're going to have to delay today's 'Let's make ad hominem attacks against RML to scroll off the topical stuff' session for the moment.

Phil still launched into a tirade ...apparently including claiming something about me being graphically-described as... what, 'too stupid to use contraception,' (Isn't that interesting, given what people usually try to disqualify me from speaking over) ...all based on misatrributing something I quoted, Parallax.


Still. All you guys go into attacking me over saying, well, even if you get your way, the world loses. Even if climate change somehow turns out to be not such a big deal, the worst we get is.... Less polluted? Less dependent on ever-redoubling quantities of what ain't getting any cheaper?

[Phil1]

'Phil still launched into a tirade ...apparently including claiming something about me being graphically-described as... what, 'too stupid to use contraception,' (Isn't that interesting, given what people usually try to disqualify me from speaking over) ...all based on misatrributing something I quoted, Parallax.'

Please try and understand. That stuff is all fine for you and your friends. I really am OK with it and what ever 'feels good' so to speak. I just don't see where I would be inclined to pay for it voluntarily much less have the gov't force me to pay for it. I am not mad you, your friends, your gender or persuasions. You spoke of responsibilities....I will happly pay for my mistakes and learn from them. You and your friends pay for yours is all I am saying. I hope that helps.

Back to the original post and perhaps you can tell us how this is like Rev Jesse Jackson counseling Bill Clinton on family values:

'1,200 limos and 140 private jets. $5 says half of them left the heat turned up back home too. Limos had to be imported for the conference. I'm so glad I redid my weatherstripping last summer to save the world.

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges - Telegraph'

[Parallax]

.........Phil still launched into a tirade ....................

Oh the irony!!!!!!!! You calling someone's 2 line response a tirade. *Some* people use 30 column inches just to say "I don't agree with anything or anybody".

[Wheatfield]

'
Ethanol is a subsidized joke.

Ethanol is also hugely inefficient. I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head, but even turning the Alberta Tar Sands into gasoline nets better energy efficiency than turning corn into ethanol.
It takes more energy to produce a liter of ethanol than the liter ethanol will give back when put to work.
Conventional oil is something like 85% efficient, Ethanol is something like 15% inefficient.

[Ratmagiclady]

Ethanol is also hugely inefficient. I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head, but even turning the Alberta Tar Sands into gasoline nets better energy efficiency than turning corn into ethanol.
It takes more energy to produce a liter of ethanol than the liter ethanol will give back when put to work.
Conventional oil is something like 85% efficient, Ethanol is something like 15% inefficient.

Glass 15 percent empty?


As I said, *corn*-based ethanol is a joke of agricultural subsidies. The only thing "green" about it is that if you have an ethanol infrastructure, you can make that ethanol out of more sustainable things, like prairie grasses and such. This is not how the politics worked out, of course, but thank agribusiness for that.

And if we could get the *corn* and convert it in a less-fossil-fuel-intensive way, that would make it greener, too, not that we don't need the food crops in the world anyway, especially if population control remains a taboo, but people have basically stopped looking into that in a serious way. Again, not cause of 'The Left' but because of 'big oil' etc.

It's not a panacaea, but if the process of growing and converting the corn can be made greener, then you have a combustible carbon neutral fuel which can store energy for things like vehicles in a portable way. (For the meantime, at least it can fuel a car off the dreaded coal without paying Saudi Arabia) But it won't be 'green' until that process can be made to use more sustainable energy (and hopefully biomass) inputs. See?

[Phil1]

The current US corn to ethanol is a poor energy source but really good for AMD and the corn states. The corn states are where all the E85 stations are anyway. Calif has about 35 in the whole state of which a good number are private or gov't refueling depots. The newer technology supposedly showing some promise is a cellulose to ethanol process which uses trash vegetation in a bio reduction to make ethanol. If I remember correctly it took a lot of heat to do it and time. The good use of ethanol is a low delution of gasoline (less than 10%) to replace tetraethyle lead and the later toxic gas additive. The last I heard the gov't pays about 55 cents a gallon subsidy on ethanol to the corn industry. Ethanol produces about half the BTUs that gasoline does and it's mileage is significantly less than an equivelant using gasoline. I think the retail pricing is about the same as gas too.

Brazil has had some success with it using sugar cane which is a far better raw material. Interestingly enough we have a 55 cents special tariff on imported ethanol for fuel purposes. It's fuel use in Brazil is dropping as Brazil, in it's wisdom, drills for oil and has made some really big oil discoveries. I guess the liberals have been slow getting to Brazil to stop that sort of thing.

[Ratmagiclady]

The current US corn to ethanol is a poor energy source but really good for AMD and the corn states. The corn states are where all the E85 stations are anyway. Calif has about 35 in the whole state of which a good number are private or gov't refueling depots. The newer technology supposedly showing some promise is a cellulose to ethanol process which uses trash vegetation in a bio reduction to make ethanol. If I remember correctly it took a lot of heat to do it and time. The good use of ethanol is a low delution of gasoline (less than 10%) to replace tetraethyle lead and the later toxic gas additive. The last I heard the gov't pays about 55 cents a gallon subsidy on ethanol to the corn industry. Ethanol produces about half the BTUs that gasoline does and it's mileage is significantly less than an equivelant using gasoline. I think the retail pricing is about the same as gas too.

Brazil has had some success with it using sugar cane which is a far better raw material. Interestingly enough we have a 55 cents special tariff on imported ethanol for fuel purposes. It's fuel use in Brazil is dropping as Brazil, in it's wisdom, drills for oil and has made some really big oil discoveries. I guess the liberals have been slow getting to Brazil to stop that sort of thing.

If Brazil is incentivized to cut down the Amazon for sugar plantations, Phil, that's far from helping.

As I said, the ethanol *infrastructure* has some promise in terms of sustainable vehicle fuels. It can *potentially* use different energy inputs to get the energy density people expect out of vehicle fuels.

But it's not 'green' if it's just using more Big Oil products to grow and burn the food crops. It was never intended to stop there.

[Phil1]

'It's not a panacaea, but if the process of growing and converting the corn can be made greener, then you have a combustible carbon neutral fuel which can store energy for things like vehicles in a portable way. (For the meantime, at least it can fuel a car off the dreaded coal without paying Saudi Arabia) But it won't be 'green' until that process can be made to use more sustainable energy (and hopefully biomass) inputs. See?'

Ahhh no. We have no coal fueled cars here at least in this part of the country and I have been in the automotive field on a manufacturing level for only 47 years. I think the Saudis are big in oil.

The ethanol formula is:
C2H5OH.
C= carbon
Biodiesel and most any other 'bio' is carbon based.

Corn ethanol fuel is a subsidised waste and will die a natural death without gov't cash keeping it afloat. It cannot compete with gasoline/diesel at anything less than $5-6 a gallon gas in the real world.

[Ratmagiclady]

'It's not a panacaea, but if the process of growing and converting the corn can be made greener, then you have a combustible carbon neutral fuel which can store energy for things like vehicles in a portable way. (For the meantime, at least it can fuel a car off the dreaded coal without paying Saudi Arabia) But it won't be 'green' until that process can be made to use more sustainable energy (and hopefully biomass) inputs. See?'

Ahhh no. We have no coal fueled cars here at least in this part of the country and I have been in the automotive field on a manufacturing level for only 47 years. I think the Saudis are big in oil.

The ethanol formula is:
C2H5OH.
C= carbon
Biodiesel and most any other 'bio' is carbon based.

Corn ethanol fuel is a subsidised waste and will die a natural death without gov't cash keeping it afloat. It cannot compete with gasoline/diesel at anything less than $5-6 a gallon gas in the real world.

You're not hearing me.

Making ethanol from corn ends up using just as many fossil fuels, to grow, fertilize, and process that corn into ethanol. That's why the ethanol thing turned out to be just another way for Big Oil and agribusiness to greenwash: but it wasn't supposed to stop there.

What are presently fossil fuel inputs that come out about even by the time you burn the corn crops... don't have to be fossil fuel inputs. And the biomass doesn't have to be food crops.

But the big money and Bush halted things there.

You can process even corn into ethanol by using any energy input for that process: that includes coal or, hopefully, something more sustainable. You could run those plants off wind farms, even. Then you'd start seeing benefits... If you have a place to sell the ethanol.

If you have a place to sell the ethanol, there is a reason to *make* the ethanol.

No, you don't turn *coal* directly into ethanol, but you can at least use it to run the conversion plant. Not that it's clean, but at least the coal is domestic.

And we can do better.

Again. *get it?*

[Blue]

You're not hearing me.

On a serious note, the only way humans are going to be 'green' is to revert back to Cro-Magnon era. (What ever 'green' really means considering it is a political, anthropocentric term.)

[Ratmagiclady]

:laugh:

On a serious note, the only way humans are going to be 'green' is to revert back to Cro-Magnon era. (What ever 'green' really means considering it is a political, anthropocentric term.)

Would that be your plan? You can run off and do that whenever you like. Cause I'm still figuring we may as well give this 'civilization' thing a go.

(Btw, strictly speaking, this is *still* the Cro-Magnon era.)

Accordingly. Ug. Take alternative energy. Munch biomass. Make truck go. Still have truck. Less death. Ug.

The President can't sign a treaty without it being approved by 2/3 of the Senate as per the U.S. Constitution. I'm not sure it is a good idea for a sitting President to even be at such a meeting.

That's one of the reasons the recent announcement of the EPA was such a big deal. There is an un-elected government agency writing legislation and policy which will be enforced by bazaar czars with no congressional oversight.

Blue in this case both words are appropriate: Bazaar and Bizarre.


We are organic life forms are we not? Since we are carbon based. Given that wouldn't oil, since it is also carbon base be organic also? And since it comes from biological sources isn't it also a "biofuel"?