Ken (Catskin)
Universal Rabbi of the House
Reged: Nov 24 2000
Posts: 3180
Loc: Redmond, Oregon
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...crimes against humanity!
UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told German radio Monday that the production of biofuels is "a crime against humanity" because of its impact on global food prices...
In recent months, rising food costs have sparked violent protests in Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritania, the Philippines and other countries.
In Pakistan and Thailand, troops have been deployed to avoid the seizure of food from fields and warehouses, while price increases fuelled[sic] a general strike in Burkina Faso...
It argued that the target would require large amounts of additional imports of biofuels leading to the accelerated destruction of rain forests. The agency also questioned the environmental benefits of biofuels...
"There will be nothing left to eat," he added.
The first generation of green fuels -- biodiesel and ethanol-- are made from wheat, maize, colza, sugar beet etc, also used for human and animal feed.
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I know it's not RTKBA related - I'll have to delete this post....
<sigh>
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Bob Mc
Mountian Lion
Reged: Oct 05 2000
Posts: 1681
Loc: Fort Jones, California, USA
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Why? Just move it over to the General Forums.
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If you can't do it with a dog, it probably ain't worth doin' anyway.
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Tackdriver
Big Hairy Gun Nut
Reged: Jan 31 2001
Posts: 2330
Loc: Phoenix, AZ
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That is such a bunch of hooie.
When push came to shove, we figgered out how to burn wheat and animal fat. Now let them foreign fools figger out how to drink crude
I like the biofuels myself. I just wish a feller could buy them in more places.
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I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself.--DH Lawerence
Edited by Tackdriver (Mon Apr 14 2008 10:26 PM)
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Tackdriver
Big Hairy Gun Nut
Reged: Jan 31 2001
Posts: 2330
Loc: Phoenix, AZ
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And Im not heartless by no means. I like the rain forests. I really do. Unfortuneatly I have no suggestions as to how to keep them safe from harm. None that would work anyway.
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I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself.--DH Lawerence
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draculasbrother
Bishop
Reged: Oct 29 2001
Posts: 983
Loc: Langley, B.C., Canada
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Actually I agree with the fellow. The people being hurt by this are the poor people that exist around the world in large part because we have since WWII made cheap grain available to them. This has allowed them to increase above the normal carrying capacity of their subsistance farms and move into the cities. They do not have the option of eating petroleum as Tack suggests because they do not have it either.
Cutting off their established food supplies is a crime against humanity. To do it for the sake of inefficiently converting that grain to fuel is a real piss off. To make fuel using a waste rich and water consumptive process while at the same time preventing the installation of modern clean and efficient hydrocarbon cracking plants is just nutty.
The turmoil that likely will flow from this around the world has great potential to make Islamofacism look like a tempest in a tea cup.
Drac
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Mike Harter
Avenging Angel
Reged: Nov 05 2000
Posts: 2426
Loc: Fresno, CA, USA
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Quote:
....we have since WWII made cheap grain available to them. This has allowed them to increase above the normal carrying capacity of their subsistance farms and move into the cities.
Fascinating. I can only imagine how few people out there understand the truth behind this little piece of social engineering.
It's what I admire most about you Dave; you've been places and seen stuff. And apparently, you were awake during the process. 
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Mark P
Administrator
Reged: Jun 21 2005
Posts: 981
Loc: Arizona
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Quote:
To make fuel using a waste rich and water consumptive process while at the same time preventing the installation of modern clean and efficient hydrocarbon cracking plants is just nutty.
Cut the access to cheap grain and increase the price over here to 'stimulate' the economy so that folks pay more tax, which can then be used to buy more grain at even higher prices to be sent overseas in humanitarian aid to feed the people that are starving because they don't have access to cheap grain. Makes sense right? 
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
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kevthebassman
Disciple
Reged: Feb 04 2007
Posts: 315
Loc: Eureka, MO
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Here's a post of mine from another forum regarding biofuels and the problems associated with them:
Quote:
The problem, as I see it, is going to be water. Corn needs to be irrigated, and it needs a LOT of water to be distilled into ethanol. If we were to switch over to all ethanol, we would be using a whole lot more water than we already do, and we're depleting the aquifers already. The Ogallala Aquifer under Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, etc is going to be gone in 30 years at the current pace.
Quote:
3.One bushel of corn yields about 2.8 gallons of ethanol.
Here's the problem though. In 2006, we grew 11.1 Billion bushels of corn, total. 11.1 X 2.8 = 31 billion gallons of ethanol fuel if we turned 100% of our corn crop into ethanol.
In 2005 we used 385 million US liquid gallons of gasoline each day. 385,000,000 X 365 = 140,525,000,000 That's 140 billion gallons of gasoline.
140 billion gallons minus 31 billion gallons still leaves us with a 109 billion (with a B ) gallon shortfall. Ethanol isn't going to solve our problems. It isn't even going to come close if we plan on eating any of our corn or feeding any of it to our livestock. Lets also remember that with more of our potential food being put into our gas tanks, food prices are going to climb.
[url=http://www.grains.org/page.ww?section=Barley,+Corn+&+Sorghum&name=Corn"]Corn info]Corn info[/url]
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_usage_and_pricing]gas info[/url]
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_usage_and_pricing]Gasoline info[/url]
[url=http://www.grains.org/page.ww?section=Barley,+Corn+&+Sorghum&name=Corn]Corn info[/url]
Edit: Can't get the damn links to work.
Edited by kevthebassman (Wed Apr 16 2008 04:32 PM)
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clemthegem
Dervish
Reged: Feb 15 2005
Posts: 449
Loc: Laurieton,NSW, Australia
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So many ideas that seem great on paper dont look too good after careful examination. I thought about using shark liver to make biodiesel. At present I discard it and always wanted to find a use for it. I gave up the Idea , mostly because I thought it was too much trouble , but also because that liver is'nt totally wasted , its eaten by all sorts of creatures so it goes back into the food chain. This is something no scientist ever seems to consider when talking about by-catch discards.
Dont forget aquaculture either , pulling huge quantities of low value bait fish out of the wild to feed farmed fish. Who wins and who loses there.
CLEM
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John-Henry
King Hell Dictator
Reged: Sep 25 2000
Posts: 4384
Loc: McNeal, AZ
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Quote:
Actually I agree with the fella.
The funny thing is that Al Gore does too; I don't know how he got into the middle of this, considering that he's made the exact same argument with regard to biofuels.
Oil topped $115.00 per barrel today; if that keeps up the market will winnow the idiots (and the mid-western Congressmen who are slaved to the farm economy, and to hell with everyone else).
Grain-based biofuels are inefficient, wasteful, and costly (more costly than burning gasoline, by many measures), and only in the U.S. of A. could we so vociferously advance such a bad idea.
I'm not one to automatically assume that the United States is the best and the brightest at everything (how can one with The Shrub as President?) but it does sadden me a little that Brazil had a majority of their motor vehicles running on sugarcane-based ethanol in the 1980's, long before the U.S. had any real idea that current conditions could arise.
There are lots of alternative feedstocks that can be used to make ethanol that are higher-yielding and non-edible, and that don't impact global food supplies; unfortunately our current crop of politicians are too short-sighted to see the big picture at the moment, although as I mentioned corrective measures are coming in short order.
Barak hob-nobs with Gore all the time, among other things.
John-Henry
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Ken (Catskin)
Universal Rabbi of the House
Reged: Nov 24 2000
Posts: 3180
Loc: Redmond, Oregon
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Al Gore bragging that he played a critical role in passing current biofuel mandates, making him the 'father of ethanol' eh?
"I was also proud to stand up for the ethanol tax exemption when it was under attack in the Congress -- at one point, supplying a tie-breaking vote in the Senate to save it. The more we can make this home-grown fuel a successful, widely-used product, the better-off our farmers and our environment will be." - Al Gore
ooops, I guess he didn't see that one coming.
The motto among both Democrats and Republicans on bio fuels seems to be "If it sounds good, push it," and a gullible American public seduced by climate change hysteria and "Going Green!" - is buying into it. I'm not cutting Bush any breaks on this one. He's as bad as the rest.
Edit: Of course on the other hand, the real problem in the world is that there are just to dam many people - maybe this *will* help...
Excuse me, I'm feeling grouchy today. Congratulations again on snaggin the best chick in the valley. 
Edited by Ken (Catskin) (Wed Apr 16 2008 06:28 PM)
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draculasbrother
Bishop
Reged: Oct 29 2001
Posts: 983
Loc: Langley, B.C., Canada
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Mark, you are taking a simplistic view of this situation that is developing and knowing how inteligent you are I suspect you are pulling my wires just to see me jump. What I see as the crime against humanity is that first we made grain so cheap that small farmers working by hand could not compete in the market place. They left their farms to go to the city in part because the city paople were eating our cheap mass produced food stuffs that in some cases are sold at a sometimes deep discount into the third world. These people are hungry even in good times. When food imports are reduced the people that miss even more meals are at the lower end of the economic spectrum. When the cost of food goes up by a small fraction most of the world's poor meet that increased cost not by paying more, but by buying less. The stress put on the food distribution system now has to be seen to be believed. Basic staples such as grain and rice have as much as doubled in price due to taking ethanol grain out of the market and by inflation.
Think of the poor as so many cattle in a feed lot. Now imagine what happens when all of a sudden without warning the farmer cuts off the feed or only supplies enough that specially gifted cows are able get sufficient feed. There will as anatural consequence be some kind of serious crowding at the feed trough.
That basically is what we have done to many of the world's poor.We caused the problem to a substantial degree by dumping cheap agricultural products in the third world and we sure as hell exacerbated the problem by cutting off their food supply in a time frame too short for them to mediate the immediate effects.
Sense of family is to a major degree stronger in the third world than here where many of us get fixated on our toys and comforts. The payback for mommy and daddy watching their bunch of very skinny kids and dead babies will likely provide interesting times. The political opportunity derived from reduced expectations and widespread family/economic hardship is just too great not to be exploited. It for example put Sandanista guns in the hands of people that a scant time before were perfectly happy with their lives.
Drac
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draculasbrother
Bishop
Reged: Oct 29 2001
Posts: 983
Loc: Langley, B.C., Canada
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Kev
It takes about 4 gals of water to produce a gal of ethanol even without adding in the water to irrigate the crops.
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Mark P
Administrator
Reged: Jun 21 2005
Posts: 981
Loc: Arizona
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Sarcasm doesn't work over the internet I guess Dave. I wasn't pulling your wires, just coming at it from the government point of view. Which, as you pointed out, is asinine.
As the saying goes, "If it doesn't make sense it makes dollars".
Anyone who has taken a science class knows energy is the capacity to do work and that the transfer of a unit of energy from one form to another is how work is done. There are other definitions though and the one that is employed by government is, "the capacity for vigorous activity". No work is done, but there is certainly a lot of movement. 
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
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kevthebassman
Disciple
Reged: Feb 04 2007
Posts: 315
Loc: Eureka, MO
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Quote:
Kev
It takes about 4 gals of water to produce a gal of ethanol even without adding in the water to irrigate the crops.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh man, there are some Corn lobbyists who do NOT want that little bit of information to be made public.
Even at the current pace, the aquifer under Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas is going to be gone in 30 years. Imagine how quick it will go dry if we start trying to turn our fresh water into gasoline.
I hope you desert boys are thinking about how you're going to get water in the future. It damn sure isn't going to be from a well if they keep tapping those aquifers. The municipal wells will go deeper than yours, and you'll likely be high and dry before anyone in the cities (the people with the power) ever has to skip filling their swimming pool.
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disco1946
Mouse Dipper
Reged: Jul 01 2007
Posts: 546
Loc: Mesa, Arizona
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Kevin,
The aquifer under Arizona is enough to last for about 200 years. Sure, It is deep, about 1400 feet in some places, but so far we haven't had to tap it. I am really surprised you didn't know this. I thought you knew everything about anything.
Dave 
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I'm not a complete idiot. Some essential parts are missing.
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ChrisA
Arch Deacon
Reged: Mar 29 2007
Posts: 671
Loc: Belle Plaine, IA
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Tough crowd, I guess none of you make a living or even a part of your income from course grains. Until recently the average Midwestern grower received a 6% ROI. Why stick with it then? Well, at least we didn't encroach on Denver or Calf.
Oh, it takes 0.7 pints of water to produce one KERNAL of corn. Figure 1750 seeds/lbs. and 56 lbs./bushel and Iowa's 2007 average corn yield at 171 bu./acre and what do you get? Then figure an acre inch of rain equals 27,280 gallons and Iowa's average rainfall of 32".
More later, I gotta run
Chris
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draculasbrother
Bishop
Reged: Oct 29 2001
Posts: 983
Loc: Langley, B.C., Canada
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Chris
That is an amusing set of numbers. They suggest that we will consume more than 1400 gallons of water for each galon of ethanol produced from corn. Much of this will be discharged as steam/water vapor which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The farming end of the cycle produces an abundance of NO which is 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
At current corn prices the cost for the corn feedstock is about $2.50 a gallon before we even start the industrial conversion and transportation to the site of consumption.
Let us not forget the efficiency of the energy conversion for this process. We generate all this waste and consume all of this excess energy to net out between 40% and 80% of the energy consumed to produce the ethanol.
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DanS
Crown Killer
Reged: Sep 14 2003
Posts: 2172
Loc: St. Louis, MO
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One of these three will be our "New Decider" in a few months. I'm sure they will fix all our problems.
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If it's not worth doing, then it's certainly not worth doing right.
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ChrisA
Arch Deacon
Reged: Mar 29 2007
Posts: 671
Loc: Belle Plaine, IA
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All I know Dave, is that times are good here and I'm going to make the most out of it. Damn expensive to feed cows though.
Chris
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Tackdriver
Big Hairy Gun Nut
Reged: Jan 31 2001
Posts: 2330
Loc: Phoenix, AZ
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Chris,
Boy My Dad woulda been doing backflips for 6%ROI.
When I was growing up, most years were were slightly negative or at a break-even point. We only had 132 acres though and that was part of the problem.
Anyhoo, the past 2 years have been the only time in memory when his farm income was really worth the trouble it caused.
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I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself.--DH Lawerence
Edited by Tackdriver (Sat Apr 19 2008 12:06 PM)
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ChrisA
Arch Deacon
Reged: Mar 29 2007
Posts: 671
Loc: Belle Plaine, IA
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Dave,
Those numbers may have been a bit high; after refiguring I still come up with about 4500 gallons of water to produce a bushel of corn.
Here's a link to some interesting facts, although one could say it's from an organization with a dog in the fight.
here
Chris
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draculasbrother
Bishop
Reged: Oct 29 2001
Posts: 983
Loc: Langley, B.C., Canada
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Okay that means the number is 1800 gallons in total where as the number I used before was the extra water above and beyond the average rain fall. It is still a lot of water.
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ChrisA
Arch Deacon
Reged: Mar 29 2007
Posts: 671
Loc: Belle Plaine, IA
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Certainly is!
Chris
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Mark P
Administrator
Reged: Jun 21 2005
Posts: 981
Loc: Arizona
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If one cooked ethanol from a synthetic sugar that was self replenishing, like yeast, used solar to produce the heat and the steam from the cooking was forced through a turbine in a closed system so as not to lose water, that'd be pretty damn efficient I'd imagine. They key and the part that I don't believe exists, is the magic sugar.
Would make a hell of a home setup though if it could be scaled. While the sun is up you're producing power through the turbine and when it goes down you burn the ethanol that was produced to spin a generator.
Eh... just pondering. I don't have TV.
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
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Mark P
Administrator
Reged: Jun 21 2005
Posts: 981
Loc: Arizona
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I googled a bit. Seems ethylene is pretty close to what I was pondering and they do the whole turbine deal when they manufacture it. Except Their machines are scaled a bit more than I was thinking about.
Quote:
A typical world scale ethylene plant (about 1.5 billion pounds of ethylene per year) uses a 45,000 horsepower cracked gas compressor, a 30,000 horsepower propylene compressor, and a 15,000 horsepower ethylene compressor
I'm not sure if one could make a 45,000 horsepower gas cracker that runs on solar power very easily. Hell I don't even run a microwave.
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
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johnclif
Apostle of Humility
Reged: Jun 24 2008
Posts: 12
Loc: Western Washington
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...not our resources.
Last I checked, we had over 800 years(!) of known oil reserves in the US and Canada, at US current consumption rates, in oil sands and oil shale. We can get the oil out at around $70 a barrel using today's technology, and I'm sure we'll figure out how to do it cheaper. Of course, it would help if one of the presidential candidates would stop pissing off Canada to the point where they're thinking of inviting someone else besides us to develop their oil sands and shale. Hint: not McCain.
We have at least 50 years of known oil reserves off of the US coasts. US law prevents our drilling for it, but Venezuela and China and Cuba are looking to come get it (in international waters, more than 12 miles off our coasts). Hmmm.
How much oil was spilled when Hurricane Katrina went through the Gulf? Not a drop. We know how to drill offshore without polluting.
Our problem isn't lack of resources, it's that we are unwilling to allow ourselves access to our resources. Other countries, like Brazil, China, etc., don't have enough people with enough money to be stupid about it the way we are.
We need to get to this oil, to keep our economy going and so that we can send our petrodollars to Americans rather than folks who would just as soon spit on us. This oil will buy us the time to come up with new technologies (see http://www.ls9.com/) that will allow us to cheaply and easily get petroleum from waste biomass (corn stalks, sugar cane bagass, suburban yard waste, meat processing, etc.).
One political party is anti-oil. One isn't. Who we choose for president and Congress will make a difference. It's not enough to care, and to have good intentions. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
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