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Forum: General Talk
12-15-2009, 02:31 PM
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So.... According to binary absolutist thinking, the content of the Climate Change Summit must be a wash because not enough concierges were hired? And you were complaining about the limos the other day.
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Forum: General Talk
12-11-2009, 11:40 AM
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And I thought *I* had a hard time at recess from time to time.
It seems the right-wing bullies got the worst of it, though.
You're clearly still there.
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Forum: General Talk
12-11-2009, 11:32 AM
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*shaking head.*
Pathetic.
"Go ahead and just dump tons of mercury directly in the rivers and lakes, but don't make me dispose of a few grams in a sealed unit once in a while..."
"Keep burning millions of barrels of oil, the seals on alternative fuel lines might possibly be made of some of it."
"Lazy liberals after my money! What? You want me to throw my recyclables into a bin a few inches to the left?! Commies! Proof of commies!"
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 01:19 PM
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But, hey, look on the bright side, conservatives. Maybe if you blame *me* enough for opening my mouth, what ain't working will start working and everything will become just peachy.
Enough, by the way. I've said what I had to say twenty times over.
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 01:16 PM
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As much as I can. Sorry if telling you you might be throwing something of use away to feel self-righteously helpless ain't enough.
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 01:05 PM
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I never claimed 'Ethanol' *was* the 'single magic bullet' you seem to keep demanding I 'prove' it is. Like I keep saying, what 'Ethanol policy and tech' has brought us so far is but half a tool. Sustainable internal combustion fuels and a system to use them aren't just going to burst forth from the head of Zeus, full and complete.
Like so much else in this world, it's 'parts.' You don't just throw your parts away and say, 'These are useless!' Especially not if you can't be bothered to put em together.
It's like, I hand you a nice old Super-Tak.
You don't throw the thing away cause you can say, 'This is useless without a body and an adapter!'
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 12:56 PM
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It's not 'the question' just because you decided to 'ask' it and claim repeatedly that I'm saying something other than what I've been saying.
This stuff you keep insisting I'm saying, and then setting out trying to 'prove' I'm saying, and that this thing you say I'm saying is 'wrong' ...Was never what I was saying.
I'm not actually very bullish on ethanol. I was countering an assertion made by Graphics that it's just a boondoggle which is of no possible use.
I again assert that the original idea is that the notion is to develop a market and infrastructure by which ethanol can supplant fossil fuels, (for particular applications) in the hope that, given a market for such internal combustion fuels, that a way would be found to produce such fuels without *choking the future.* I've also *repeatedly* clarified that where it was left at, it's turned into a mere subsidy for agribusiness prices and domestic fossil fuel interests, as much as there really are any of the latter.
If your question relates to other than that, ....your question is not relevant.
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 12:47 PM
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No, that's not the question. All this nattering on about what 'can't be done' in fact came from someone dismissing 'ethanol' itself as nothing more than what it's heretofore been limited to in practice: which is... Something the already-moneyed interests would allow so far to go no further than they can in fact preserve their profit margin on.
This is not an inherent limitation of 'ethanol,' just where political interests have *halted* development of it.
What I personally am *doing* is not burning a lot of vehicle fuel of any kind. This doesn't mean such fuels are of no use to anyone for certain specific purposes. Purposes which 'anti-environmentalists' continue to insist we cannot do without.
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 12:33 PM
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Actually, I've repeatedly suggested ideas that are much more efficient and sustainable than corn crops or sugar cane: Like mixed prairie grasses, or industrial hemp. People were big on algae for a while, there, too, but the technical problems mean that isn't looking as promising.
My assertion is: In your market-based system, if there is a *market* for the stuff, then someone may work it out. They won't work anything out if we sit here on our thumbs and don't actually *find out.* As a matter of fact, I know enough science and engineering to see that your blanket dismissal of possibilities, based, I might add, on artificially-binary thinking, is ill-founded.
No, I'm not an engineer. But I have some idea what they can do.
Oh. And what I *meant,* by the way, when I said, 'whatever is handy to the situation' means that you can process biomass into ethanol with *whatever* energy source is most convenient. It doesn't *matter* what it is, as long as it's there. Which is a lot more flexible than throwing up your hands and depending on OPEC. The *flexibility* is a *strength* of the idea. If it can be made to work.
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 12:24 PM
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Why the brackets?
Twenty words or less:
Whatever, among manifold possibilities, is handy to the situation.
I'm really amused, by the way, by the idea of a 'Liberal Fuel.' WTF? LOL. :)
Maybe it's a 'damn liberal' idea, but *maybe* 'For me or against me, forever and anywhere for any purpose,' if I can characterize conservative thinking... Is no way to build a system. You'd have us throw away all the parts and then say, "See, there's nothing!"
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 12:20 PM
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As is building anything, older tech or new. Yes, there are costs. To anything, including increasing 'capacity' to burn fossil fuels.
(Down here in the US, the 'nuclear' thing turned out to be a boondoggle, too, but we may find ourselves forced to look for potential there, as things are going.)
Again, people who want us to 'stay the course,' (which course is, 'Drive this puppy right into the ground at full throttle) are always, and *have* always been saying, "Any particular thing is not 'the' solution, so do nothing but make it worse our way."
That won't work. This is certain.
If people want to say, 'No one thing will work, do nothing at all,' I say, Get out of the way.
My only assertion here is that this does not *have to be.* Alternatives won't magically appear, but that's where work and innovation could come in.
Like those 'dual fuel' SUV's we've had for years? I can't vouch for SUV drivers' safety records 'on alcohol,' but I haven't noted any particular tendency for them to explode or anything. :)
Oh, not the F'n light bulb thing again.
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 11:50 AM
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Well, thank you for adding a lot of nothing to this debate. 'Natural gas' is nice, and as I mentioned, it seems some thawing ground up north is about to release a lot of methane, ....certainly we may as well burn it to keep us warm and/or make us go rather than burning it at the top of an oil well, but it's still a fossil fuel that is being added to the biosphere.
And you can tell your grandkids how proudly you mocked environmentalists, how bout. If they aren't asking you, "What's a tractor, Grampa?" One way or another. :)
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 11:23 AM
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Hey, you're the one all about the 'market.' The point of the ethanol thing was so that there would be a *market,* which some enterprising people would then be motivated to *innovate* about, and serve profitably and sustainably.
That didn't happen cause it was essentially halted where existing energy and agribusiness interests could still make their money. It's not the 'ethanol,' it's... That no one has taken or been able to take that next step.
There was *supposed* to be research to this end, all along. *That* part got de-funded under Bush to protect the existing moneyed interests. (And, yes, I'm aware that Democrats *also* pushed the corn ethanol in agricultural states who were in trouble thanks to falling food prices relative to the price of real estate and money) ...So we're left with half of a potential tool and some greenwash. Doesn't have to be that way, though.
See? Just cause it's 'no good' *now* doesn't mean it inherently has to be 'no good' *forever.* (And this cannot be said for just burning gasoline and saying, 'Environmentalists are stupid.' ) But you actually have to like, *work on it.*
Get it? What you see as an 'Ethanol issue' divorced from the progress of time and systemic thinking, but rather just a 'thing' to be judged upon, is just *part* of something that can be a good tool for certain purposes.
As that useful tool, what we've seen of 'Ethanol' is just the 'market based' *handle.* We still need to see if we can forge and fit a head on it.
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 11:15 AM
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The 'end of story' would be if no one can find a biomass input that makes it possible to have a net gain. Or, more specifically, make a concentrated fuel out of something besides, essentially, another concentrated fuel. If you can grow something sustainably and power the processing of it with something besides fossil fuels, looky looky. You have something like gasoline without burning fossil fuels. It won't do that unless it can be made so, though.
Ok, here's some science for you: if you grow something sustainably and then burn it, you aren't *digging up carbon and *adding it* to the ecosystem.*
This is different from taking trapped carbon from underground, *burning it* and adding it to the biosphere.
See where that goes? Like I was saying about the sugar cane in Brazil: what they're doing there is taking a long-term carbon sink, namely the Amazon jungle, (and its soil) raising crops out of that stored carbon, (till it washes away and they have to cut more) and then burning that portion they can get into some sugar cane. That's why that's a Bad Idea.
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 10:58 AM
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I know what you're saying, Parallax. All *I'm* saying is that if you get your metaphorical tenners off of an alternative energy source, even five bucks worth of concentrated fuel is 'free money.'
It'd be more 'efficient' to plug my K20d into a generator, and not bother making batteries, but that doesn't mean we don't make the Li-ions and find them strangely *useful.*
I don't know how much clearer I can be about this: as the ethanol is produced now, no, there's no gain. But if the infrastructure is in place, it can be *improved.* Just giving up and burning fossil fuels directly... Has nowhere to go.
And I'm *not* claiming it's a *the* solution, even given that. Just that it is *a* solution, again, for certain very specific problems, among those problems being transition to other ways of getting about.
Not even saying it's necessarily the *best* solution possible even for applications where internal combustion really makes sense: for instance, we've got sh*tonnes of melting permafrost up there, and if it's gonna melt anyway, we're better off burning the methane than letting it loose entirely, if it can be captured. Which is a big if I have zero ideas about, though with irony I note it's making it hard to get to the oil wells. :)
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 10:38 AM
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Corn is not the only source that we have in America. Using it for ethanol was intended to prop up some ruinous agricultural product prices while we were having a financial 'boom'
Again, it was never supposed to stop there.
It also won't *last*....or help the environment, if they keep cutting down the Amazon to grow sugar cane off the stored carbon in jungle soil that would otherwise be bound up. Before, of course, it washes away into the ocean.
It's actually neither sustainable nor 'green' to do that, even if it's more 'efficient' in the short term. Heck, they release more carbon clearing the forest than they might save. It's also destroying a carbon sink in the process. Now *that's* a net loss all round.
You need other sources than food crops. Industrial hemp (Which people still think you can get stoned on and thus oppose) ...aforementioned prairie grasses: things that don't involve so much destruction of the land and can come back year after year without so much water and fertilizer use. (these things are actually part of how using corn is a net loss)
Again, the problem is that research on these other sources was cut, so we're left with half a system that doesn't solve anything. But could still be useful.
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Forum: General Talk
12-10-2009, 10:22 AM
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Yes, but the sources *do* matter if you need a high-performance fuel that is light to carry *anyway,* ...bear in mind that these applications, while they take a pretty disproportionate amount of long-chain hydrocarbons we could be using for something besides driving around in circles, are only a fraction of our fossil fuel use. A significant one, but only a fraction. If it can be produced sustainably, say, with use of wind power and some other biomass inputs than our food crops, well *then,* ethanol becomes helpful.
It is not helpful unless and until this is done, though.
If the inputs aren't coming out of expendables, it doesn't *matter* if it's a 'net loss' to concentrate some of that energy in a useful form. The point of gas and diesel engines isn't that they are *not* a net loss, but rather that they are light and portable.
For most uses, electric is better, *but.* If the energy is coming from *inside* the biosphere or something like the Sun, more directly, 'Ethanol' can be a useful tool.
The difference between ethanol and just burning the gas directly is that, if you have a market for the stuff, you can *then* develop ways to produce the fuels sustainably. Any energy input, and many kinds of biomass, can be used to make the same kind of fuel. But these inputs and sources of biomass *have to be developed.*
As I said before, it was never intended to stop with agribusiness and Big Oil profits.
No, 'Ethanol' isn't 'the solution,' ...it's not even *a* solution until someone actually does the work of taking the *parts* and putting them together.
Some of those 'parts' are an infrastructure to distribute it and vehicles and similar machines able to run on it.
Many jobs currently running on gasoline and such can be done with other power sources and motors, and these things should also be done. Not all of them, though.
Funny how these absolutist terms are only directed at anything potentially-greener.
Again, my assertion was that it's not the idea of 'ethanol' itself that turned into a boondoggle, but rather that the process of developing it was simply cut down to and essentially *halted* where existing big oil and energy and agribusiness interests could profit off it.
But if someone develops a truly greener *source* and *process* to make ethanol, then we're cooking. The inputs do not have to be fossil-fuel based.
Understand? If the stuff is made by 'inefficiently' using some more wind turbines or geothermal heads or wave action or whatever's handy, you still get a concentrated fuel without digging up hydrocarbons and burning them. What is dismissed as 'Ethanol is a net loss' is only *part* of a system that can be developed. The notion was to create the market for the stuff and incentivize someone to find a way to make greener stuff to sell there.
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Forum: General Talk
12-09-2009, 06:54 PM
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What *you're* missing is that it doesn't have to come out of buried *hydrocarbons.
Actually, the point is, it doesn't have to be a food crop, either.
No, ethanol isn't 'the' answer, but it is a very good solution to a very specific set of problems. (If anyone cares to work out where the inputs come from. As an agribusiness and Big Oil boondoggle, no, not so much. But it doesn't *have* to be that way. Again. Speaking of 'grass,' hemp would work)
Namely, as vehicle fuels.
And, yes, this would actually have to involve developing the rest of the system. Namely, again, other energy inputs and preferably, other sources of biomass than our food crops. Again. Almost like a 'system' of some kind.
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Forum: General Talk
12-09-2009, 03:41 PM
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If creatively-incompetent etymological arguing was gonna get us out of this, Blue, you wouldn't be complaining about where my health insurance came from, I assure you. We're trying to talk engineering here.
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Forum: General Talk
12-09-2009, 03:32 PM
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*Again,* that's not the point. I don't 'want' to use coal to produce ethanol, but you *can.* Understand? If you want to run a car off coal, you have a Stanley Steamer. A much heavier thing. If you use the coal in a big plant that turns corn oil into fuel, you still get to drive your Land Rover.
You *can* also use greener things that don't happen to be very efficient for vehicles to carry around to do the same.
Corn ethanol, as it's been halted at, is a boondoggle for Big Oil and agribusiness, ...*but* if a market for it and vehicles that can use it are developed, then you *can* use other sources of biomass, and other sources of power, to produce that ethanol in a carbon-neutral way and still have the energy-density of what internal combustion engines need to run on.
Again, it was never intended to stop there.
You *could* make ethanol off sustainable mixed prairie grasses, algae, or whatever, run the conversion plants off of a wind or hydro plant, and *then* it would be green. 'Efficiency' is less of a concern if you aren't burning expendables to get the inputs to begin with. The big resistance to electric vehicles is in fact the lack of energy density.
If you're just going to burn cheap oil and burn food to make an 'eco' gasoline, then, no, it's *not* 'green.' But.
People want their internal combustion cars. The inputs of making the fuel *can* be made greener. (This is where it's unlike just burning the fossil fuels to begin with) The fact that they have *not* so far does not make this not so. or make 'Ethanol' a no-go.
Are we clear, here? The plants that make the ethanol may *presently* just run on fossil fuels, but they don't *have* to. They could run on *anything* and still make a portable, carbon-neutral, wheelie-popping fuel. It's not about the ethanol, just about where the moneyed interests stopped things recently.
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Forum: General Talk
12-09-2009, 03:09 PM
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If I were, why are you asking why I'm so afraid of making money?
I bring it up because the very climate of intolerance some claim they are using to 'defend' something against, is the very thing that tends to lead civilizations to collapse... Cause scapegoating me at every opportunity may feel 'powerful' to you, even 'righteous,' but...
It's not helping.
You asked if I understand 'ramifications.' I get to see about nothing but ramifications, here.
Can't say it does wonders for keeping a generally-sunny disposition unfailingly so.
The 'ramifications' say we're more boxed than you'd like to admit. And that it's not about *me.* Or what 'issue' you think I represent.
The 'ramifications' are, ...nothing you want, per se, has a future.
Hurting or attacking me, or Al Gore, science itself, or whoever you like to spend all *your* energy defending head-in-the-sand denial ...won't change that.
You have no future, only fears.
You're always trying to deny what *happens* and then paint some scary ideological picture of what *could* happen as if it *will* happen according to your own conspiracy theories.
It won't help. And we don't actually have time for this, as a people.
I have a little time, myself, but it seems you're bent on wasting even that, the lot of you righties.
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Forum: General Talk
12-09-2009, 02:42 PM
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Frankly, I'm just trying to get past the thing that happened with 'ethanol,' never mind the feared ramifications, Mr. Already Thinking Your Overdeveloped Florida Is Communist. :)
The ramifications are, if you're right, and we keep on this course, we're already screwed.
Making it worse won't help that far-fetched scenario. Most who advocate it just think that personal wealth means the favor of a God who'll beam them out before it hits the fan.
The ramifications are, you're only held back from becoming as ugly as your talk is, by certain promises of personal gain which your own policies have been steadily-undermining, while deflecting the anger about how it hasn't worked at various scapegoats.
Including 'intellectuals.'
You want it simple. And 'righteous.' And to consider yourself a 'winner' even if you demand playing a game in a way 'we' must eventually lose. You use every dodge and blindness and obfuscation to avoid it, even if someone else laughs all the way to the bank at how they've manipulated you into thinking *I'm* the 'enemy.'
'Enemies,' my friend, are *easy.*
Doesn't mean that you'll gain anything if you 'win' your 'war.'
And that's how it keeps getting worse.
'Ramifications?'
I know the ramifications.
I figure we have about a one in ten chance of playing our current position into shaping a world that isn't as desperate as your 'Left behind' fantasies. But of course, less tidy.
The other ninety percent says you aren't helping with your posturing and mean-spirited shortsightedness.
And, by the way, when I get upset about the scapegoating, it's not just fear for my own skin or even those of my loved ones... I'm kind of used to that, actually. It's cause, As the scapegoating increases, and the incivility gets more violent and irrational, ...It's not just more daily threats to me... It's a sign people would rather give up and revert to base instincts. And I know that doesn't save civilizations.
(Some say 'People being gay and all this we freak out about leads to empires falling.' It's not so. Falling empires freak out about gays And all the rest. That's a big part of how they fall. Cause they're looking at anything but what needs to be done. I assure you. And if I can snap a few people out of that fixation, or someone like me can, then our tax dollars are well spent on keeping me alive. If I can't, it really won't matter. So here I am. )
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Forum: General Talk
12-09-2009, 02:06 PM
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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.
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Forum: General Talk
12-09-2009, 01:59 PM
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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?*
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Forum: General Talk
12-09-2009, 01:43 PM
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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.
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