Veggie fuel article

[Charlie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/ny...l?pagewanted=1

For a 'Veggie Car,' Grease Is the Word

By JIM MOTAVALLI

Published: December 4, 2005

The fryers run all day at the Super Duper Weenie outlets in Fairfield and Monroe. The modest hot dog stands have been celebrated in magazines like Gourmet and Cigar Aficionado and on David Letterman's show, and every time there's more exposure, the lines grow.

Until recently, the restaurants had a disposal problem at the end of the week: 30 gallons of contaminated soy oil. To make it go away, the restaurants paid $40 to a Massachusetts-based rendering company.

But today, Super Duper Weenie's waste oil has become an asset, not a liability. Instead of piling up in a storage shed, it is filtered to remove potato starch and bread crumbs, then goes straight into the tank of the 1978 Mercedes 300D owned by Gary Zemola, an owner of the restaurants. The car, which bears the license plate SOYBNZ, has been converted from diesel fuel to 100 percent fryer-based biofuel.

"They laughed when I said what I was going to do," said Mr. Zemola of the Sandy Hook section of Newtown, wearing his trademark American flag head scarf and sitting on one of the Fairfield restaurant's bright red stools. "They said that dogs would chase me down the street. But now, with $2.50 a gallon gasoline, who's nuts? My veggie car is good for the environment and good for business. I'd be a fool not to do it."

The Mercedes was converted last year by Greasecar (www.greasecar.com) of Florence, Mass. The conversion includes a biofuel tank, filters, heat exchangers and plumbing to deliver the fuel to the engine. The engine can still burn diesel fuel. The conversion cost him $1,500, but the mechanically inclined can install it themselves for $795. Mr. Zemola said the car performs no differently than it did before.

Biodiesel only works in diesel engines, and while many people find it attractive, it is not an easy fuel to use. Because drivers usually can't pull up to a pump to refuel, most people who have converted their cars have to make the fuel themselves, which is not a simple process. And using the fuel could also void a new car's warranty.

"It definitely takes up time to make biodiesel," said David Henri of New Hartford, who burns biodiesel in his 1999 Volkswagen Jetta. "You have to be a dedicated person."

Because vegetable oils congeal in cold weather, biofuel vehicles start up using standard diesel in the winter, then switch to biodiesel after the car has been heated (either by electric heaters or the warming engine). Mr. Zemola's Mercedes can also run in sub-zero temperatures because the biofuel lines are encased in heater hoses to keep them warm. The Mercedes does indeed occasionally smell of French fries, and other times like popcorn or barbecue.

In a report issued this year, the federal Environmental Protection Agency said that biodiesel is better for the environment than conventional diesel. The agency said that burning B100, which is 100 percent vegetable oil, in a car reduces particulate matter by 47 percent, unburned hydrocarbons by 67 percent and carbon monoxide by 48 percent, but is dirtier in nitrogen oxide emissions.

Diesel vehicles also can run, without any modification, on a processed blend of 20 percent vegetable oil and 80 percent standard diesel fuel, called B20. Biodiesel can be made at home with the right equipment and by people who can safely work with chemicals like lye and methanol.

Mr. Henri, a convenience-store service technician, makes his own fuel from vegetable oil he gets free from restaurants.

"I've always been interested in the environment and in alternative energy in particular," he said. "And after 9/11 I felt a lot more urgency about it. I began researching biodiesel and converted a 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit to run on 100 percent vegetable oil. People really got a kick out of the smell. If you were following my car and got hungry for fish and chips, that's why."

Mr. Henri designed a biofuel conversion kit, using copper tubing, filters and separate fuel tanks, then converted six other cars for friends.

"Canola oil is great if I can get it because it has a lower cloud point, meaning it solidifies at a lower temperature," he said.

To make his biodiesel, Mr. Henri uses a processor based on an old hot water heater.

"You mix methanol and lye with vegetable oil, which causes a chemical reaction that strips the glycerin out of the oil," he said. "It takes two hours to mix the blend, then you have to let it sit overnight. It's a lot of work, but in one batch you get 55 gallons." He said the fuel flows better with the glycerin removed. Mr. Henri said he can make biodiesel for 60 cents to $1 a gallon.

Tony Fouladpour, a spokesman for Volkswagen, said putting biodiesel in one of its cars could void the warranty.

"We condone the use of an up to 5 percent biodiesel blend, but customers are responsible for the corrosion that may result from using higher blends," he said.

According to the National Biodiesel Board, national biodiesel production was expected to reach 75 million gallons in 2005, triple the 25 million gallons produced in 2004.

Rich Reilly of Sandy Hook, owner of the Internet-based Biodiesel Warehouse (www.biodieselwarehouse.com), said he planned to build a commercial-scale biodiesel production plant, with a capacity of 10 million gallons of B100 biodiesel a year. He said he hoped to open the plant in 2006, but did not know exactly where.

Mr. Reilly said he first heard of biodiesel on the radio during a Howard Stern show in 2003, then sold his oil-change franchise to jump into the alternative fuel business full time.

"We can grow our way out of fossil fuels," he said.

David J. Friedman, research director of the Clean Vehicles Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said biodiesel would unlikely have that large an impact.

"From what I've seen of the studies that are out there, waste oils could only generate a billion gallons a year, which is 3 percent of our current diesel use," he said. "And with plant-based fuels like soybeans, you're competing with food crops. Everybody's looking for a silver bullet, but I think its overly optimistic to expect that we can replace even 10 percent of our fossil fuel needs with biodiesel."

Blended biodiesel fuels will also burn in home furnaces as effectively as in car engines, some companies that sell home heating oil said, although there was some concern that the fuel could damage furnaces. Devine Brothers, a home heating company in Norwalk that offers its customers a blend, has taken out billboards to trumpet the virtues of the fuel.

Customers of Santa Fuel in Bridgeport are getting a 5 percent biodiesel blend whether they ask for it or not.

"This is something we believe in as a company," said Peter S. Russell, the general manager. "It's a renewable product that is good for the environment. Five percent is not a lot, but it's a great start." Santa sells the fuel for $2.49 a gallon. The company also has a biodiesel pump in New Haven, where customers can fill their cars with a blend for $2.70 a gallon. Mr. Russell said no home heating customers have complained about the fuel, but several people have called to praise the company for using it.

Andrew Morin, president of Servco Oil, which sells a blended biodiesel, and also president of Cannondale Heating and Air Conditioning, both based in Wilton, said he didn't believe a low-percentage blend would harm furnaces, but higher blends might.

"I'm not aware of any issues with a 5 percent biodiesel blend, though there has been some speculation in the industry that it could be a problem at higher concentrations of 40 percent or more," he said. "I would definitely be wary of using B100 because of possible danger to gaskets or seals on pumps and filters."

Karl W. Radune, a mechanical engineer from Cromwell who planned to open a cooperative to sell biodiesel for home heating, said a few dollars worth of Teflon replacements will take care of the seals.

"You really don't need to make any serious changes to your furnace," he said.

Mr. Radune said he planned to produce 8,000 gallons of B100 biodiesel a week using equipment he designed himself. He said he would charge $2 to $2.50 a gallon.

If he can sign up 400 households, Mr. Radune said, his co-op will break even.

"My instincts kicked in and I decided to build something professional from stainless steel, not a rusty oil drum," he said. "I'm a capitalist, but I'm trying to do something fairly altruistic here. I see this as a way to create jobs in Connecticut, save farms that could make money from biofuel crops, and stop oil company price-gouging."

[daniel]

while this should be a small step in the right direction, here is Monbiot:

23/11/2004
Feeding Cars, Not People
Filed under:

* climate change
* food
* transport

The adoption of biofuels would be a humanitarian and environmental disaster

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 22nd November 2004

If human beings were without sin, we would still live in an imperfect world. Adam Smith’s notion that by pursuing his own interest a man “frequently promotes that of … society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it” and Karl Marx’s picture of a society in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” are both mocked by one obvious constraint. The world is finite. This means that when one group of people pursues its own interests, it damages the interests of others.

It is hard to think of a better example than the current enthusiasm for “biofuels”. Biofuels are made from plant oils or crop wastes or wood, and can be used to run cars and buses and lorries. Burning them simply returns to the atmosphere the carbon which the plants extracted while they were growing. So switching from fossil fuels to biodiesel and bio-alcohol is now being promoted as the solution to climate change.

Next month the British government will have to set a target for the amount of transport fuel that will come from crops. The European Union wants 2% of the oil we use to be biodiesel by the end of next year, rising to 6% by 2010 and 20% by 2020.(1) To try to meet these targets, the government has reduced the tax on biofuels by 20 pence a litre, while the EU is paying farmers an extra 45 euros a hectare to grow them.

Everyone seems happy about this. The farmers and the chemicals industry can develop new markets, the government can meet its commitments to cut carbon emissions, and environmentalists can celebrate the fact that plant fuels reduce local pollution as well as global warming. Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, biofuels can be deployed straight away. This in fact was how Rudolf Diesel expected his invention to be used. When he demonstrated his engine at the World Show in 1900, he ran it on peanut oil. “The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today,” he predicted. “But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum.”(2) Some enthusiasts are predicting that if fossil fuel prices continue to rise, he will soon be proved right.

I hope not. Those who have been promoting these fuels are well-intentioned, but wrong. They are wrong because the world is finite. If biofuels take off, they will cause a global humanitarian disaster.

Used as they are today, on a very small scale, they do no harm. A few thousand greens in the United Kingdom are running their cars on used chip fat. But recycled cooking oils could supply only 100,000 tonnes of diesel a year in this country,(3) equivalent to one 380th of our road transport fuel.

It might also be possible to turn crop wastes such as wheat stubble into alcohol for use in cars – the Observer ran an article about this on Sunday.(4) I’d like to see the figures, but I find it hard to believe that we will be able to extract more energy than we use in transporting and processing straw. But the EU’s plans, like those of all the enthusiasts for bio-locomotion, depend on growing crops specifically for fuel. As soon as you examine the implications, you discover that the cure is as bad as the disease.

Road transport in the United Kingdom consumes 37.6 million tonnes of petroleum products a year.(5) The most productive oil crop which can be grown in this country is rape. The average yield is between 3 and 3.5 tonnes per hectare.(6) One tonne of rapeseed produces 415 kilos of biodiesel.(7) So every hectare of arable land could provide 1.45 tonnes of transport fuel.

To run our cars and buses and lorries on biodiesel, in other words, would require 25.9m hectares. There are 5.7m in the United Kingdom.(8) Switching to green fuels requires four and half times our arable area. Even the EU’s more modest target of 20% by 2020 would consume almost all our cropland.

If the same thing is to happen all over Europe, the impact on global food supply will be catastrophic: big enough to tip the global balance from net surplus to net deficit. If, as some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people.

This prospect sounds, at first, ridiculous. Surely if there was unmet demand for food, the market would ensure that crops were used to feed people rather than vehicles? There is no basis for this assumption. The market responds to money, not need. People who own cars have more money than people at risk of starvation. In a contest between their demand for fuel and poor people’s demand for food, the car-owners win every time. Something very much like this is happening already. Though 800 million people are permanently malnourished, the global increase in crop production is being used to feed animals: the number of livestock on earth has quintupled since 1950.(9) The reason is that those who buy meat and dairy products have more purchasing power than those who buy only subsistence crops.

Green fuel is not just a humanitarian disaster; it is also an environmental disaster. Those who worry about the scale and intensity of today’s agriculture should consider what farming will look like when it is run by the oil industry. Moreover, if we try to develop a market for rapeseed biodiesel in Europe it will immediately develop into a market for palm oil and soya oil. Oilpalm can produce four times as much biodiesel per hectare as rape, and it is grown in places where labour is cheap. Planting it is already one of the world’s major causes of tropical forest destruction. Soya has a lower oil yield than rape, but the oil is a by-product of the manufacture of animal feed. A new market for it will stimulate an industry which has already destroyed most of Brazil’s cerrado (one of the world’s most biodiverse environments) and much of its rainforest.

It is shocking to see how narrow the focus of some environmentalists can be. At a meeting in Paris last month, a group of scientists and greens studying abrupt climate change decided that Tony Blair’s two big ideas – tackling global warming and helping Africa – could both be met by turning Africa into a biofuel production zone. This strategy, according to its convenor, “provides a sustainable development path for the many African countries that can produce biofuels cheaply”.(10) I know the definition of sustainable development has been changing, but I wasn’t aware that it now encompasses mass starvation and the eradication of tropical forests. Last year the British parliamentary committee on environment, food and rural affairs, which is supposed to specialise in joined-up thinking, examined every possible consequence of biofuel production – from rural incomes to skylark numbers – except the impact on food supply.(11)

We need a solution to the global warming caused by cars, but this isn’t it. If the production of biofuels is big enough to affect climate change, it will be big enough to cause global starvation.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. The European Union, 8th May 2003. Directive 2003/30/EC: On the Promotion of the Use of Biofuels or Other Renewable Fuels for Transport. Official Journal L 123 , 17/05/2003 P. 0042 – 0046.

2. Eg Monsanto, no date. The Biodiesel Revolution. http://www.monsanto.co.uk/biofuels/071202.html.

3. British Association for Biofuels and Oils, no date. Memorandum to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. http://www.biodiesel.co.uk/press_rel...vironmenta.htm

4. Robin McKie, 21st November 2004. Forget the tiger. Put some mushrooms in your tank . The Observer.

5. Department for Transport, 2004. Petroleum Consumption: by Transport Mode and Fuel Type. http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/group...ats_031767.pdf

6. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Crops for Energy Branch, 17th November 2004. Pers comm.

7. ibid.

8. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2004. Agriculture in the UK 2003. http://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/p...3/chapter3.pdf

9. Lester R. Brown, 1997. The Agricultural Link: How Environmental Deterioration Could Disrupt Economic Progress. Worldwatch Paper 136. The Worldwatch Institute, Washington DC.

10. Dr Peter Read, 20th October 2004. Good news on climate change. Abrupt Climate Change Strategy Workshop. Press Release. http://www.accstrategy.org/goodnews.html

11. House of Commons Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 29 October 2003. Seventeenth Report. http://www.publications.parliament.u.../929/92902.htm

[daniel]

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The Biofuel Dilemma | Jamais Cascio
A Newly Electric Green – Sustainable Energy, Resources and Design see all posts in this category

Biofuels such as biodiesel may prove to be a useful transition technology for the move away from fossil fuels and into the Bright Green world. While they currently cost more than fossil fuels, a new process from the Tokyo Institute of Technology may bring down production costs dramatically. But attractive as they are, biofuels pose some sticky problems. Fortunately, a solution may be at hand.

There's much to like about biofuels. They can replace fossil fuel uses without requiring significant modification of machinery. Since they are generally derived from vegetation, they're close to carbon-neutral (as the next crop of plants will take up the carbon dioxide released from burning the previous biofuel crops). Biofuels like biodiesel produce significantly fewer particulates and carbon monoxide than regular diesel, and produce few of the sulfur emissions leading to acid rain. And while some regions hope to become biofuel powerhouses, the ability to make biofuels is not limited by geography, so cartels and "peak production" won't become problems.

But biofuels have some notable drawbacks, too. Making biofuels from plants already in demand for food, such as soy, corn and canola/rapeseed, raises the prices of the food versions and reduces available supplies. And increased demand for biofuels is triggering the expansion of agricultural land, with devastating results in some areas. According to this week's New Scientist, the clearing of land in south-east Asia for palm oil production is the leading cause of rain forest destruction in the region; Brazil faces a similar problem with soya plants, already the primary cause of deforestation prior to the biofuel boom.

The solution may be to stop looking at new crops for biofuels, and to start looking at waste biomass.

The use of agricultural material for food and industry is not 100% efficient. Tons of biomass waste remains after the "useful" plant products are gone. Take sawdust -- wood product manufacturing produces millions of tons of sawdust every year (the state of Missouri alone produces around 760,000 tons of sawdust, while British Columbia produces over two million tons annually). Some of that can be reused, but much of it simply goes to waste. A new German process, however, could turn sawdust and other biomass wastes into high-quality synthetic fuels.

Steve Brown, Shell's London-based commercial manager for biofuels, says the result is a domestically produced fuel that outperforms both petroleum and plant oil-based biodiesel. Brown says studies that account for each joule of energy consumed in growing or pumping feedstock and fuel production show motoring on gasification biodiesel produces 85-90 percent less climate-changing carbon dioxide than using fossil diesel, while conventional biodiesel offers only a 50 percent reduction.

Using Choren's biodiesel also generates less soot and smog because the fuel contains none of the sulfur found in conventional diesel and few aromatic hydrocarbons, such as benzene. Carmakers DaimlerChrylser and Volkswagen, which helped finance Choren's pilot plant, test-drove on its fuels and measured a 30-50 percent drop in exhaust soot and up to 90 percent less smog-forming pollutants, compared to the cleanest grades of conventional diesel.

Of course, this isn't the first attempt to make biofuels out of otherwise waste biomass. As I noted back in June, University of Wisconsin researchers figured out a better method of converting plant carbohydrates into fuel, using a biomimetic process. And just a few days ago, Jeremy posted about work done at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory using "jungle rot" fungus as a natural method of breaking down cellulose for use in ethanol production.

We should be careful not to imagine that biofuels alone will replace our use of fossil fuels. We need a much bigger change -- a combination of high-efficiency systems, redesigned communities, and energy produced from clean, renewable sources. But changes of that scale take time. Biofuels, like hybrid cars and rooftop solar panels, are a kind of bridge technology, helping us get to where we need to go without cutting us off from our existing systems. It's crucial that our use of them doesn't make things worse in other ways.
Posted by Jamais Cascio at November 26, 2005

[willoweyes]

Thank you, Daniel, for posting these articles re the problems with biodiesel. As Wendell Berry pointed out in the early '80s, the crops that are grown to produce biodiesel presently consume petrochemicals at every stage of production--just think about it. The fertilizers--the tractor fuel--the fuel to move the product hither and yon.

Basically, biodiesel is a perpetual motion machine con game--in my opinion. You can't get out more than you put in, even with the help of photosynthesis. Our farming methods are too wasteful for biodiesel to add up to a solution.

It's just stupid to continue pouring cooking oil, biodiesel, fossil fuels down the insatiable gullet of the private automobile.

[sidecross]

I agree with willoweyes once again. It seems to me the use of ‘Veggie Oil’ is like taking Methadone if you are a junkie.

Yes it does help, but in the end who wants to line up for methadone or veggie oil?

[Agent Smith]

hahaha... i was just about to make the methadone comparison.

another aspect of biodesil/veggie oil fuel, is that it isn't 'non-polluting', it just isn't putting out the same pollutants, and since it hasn't been used en masse yet, those pollutants are scarce in the atmosphere so far.

still biomass fuel, biodisel, veggie oil, etc. is a more effecient use of our limited Planetary resources for the time being...

...IF applied to a 'mass transit'/effecient shipping model of consumption. (i.e. heavy rail infrastructure.)

otherwise it's just pissing in the wind.

transition rather than complete disinegration, might be nice.

...and we do have techniques for plant, and soil cultivation that far outstrip the current methods.

have a great weekend.

[daniel]

Definitely all of this is going to be important as a bridging technology. Ultimately we will find constructive ways to use the fusion reactor that is 93 million miles away to fulfill all of our needs for energy. We will learn to create all the "free energy" we need.

Growing algae off of sewage and then processing it into biofuel is another good possibility. I liked the sawdust example as well.

[craazyman]

Ethanol could reduce fossil fuel need: study By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
Thu Jan 26, 4:13 PM ET


Ethanol -- alcohol produced from corn or other plants -- is more energy-efficient than some experts had realized and it is time to start developing it as an alternative to fossil fuels, researchers said on Thursday.

While some critics have said the push for ethanol is based on faulty science and mostly benefits the farm lobby, several reviews and commentaries published in Friday's issue of the journal Science argue otherwise.

"We find that ethanol can, if it is made correctly, contribute significantly to both energy and environmental goals. However, the current way of producing ethanol with corn probably only meets energy goals," said Alexander Farrell at the University of California Berkeley.

Farrell and colleagues looked at six studies used to argue for and against the development of ethanol as an energy source.

"One of the main purposes is to explain why the studies found in the literature have such divergent results," Farrell said in a telephone interview.

"Some of the studies use what appear to be obsolete data or data whose quality cannot be verified," Farrell added.

Currently, ethanol is not a significant source of fuel, but is blended into gasoline in some states. Environmentalists hope it could be developed as a cleaner source of fuel than oil or gas.

"The 3.4 billion gallons (15.5 billion liters) of ethanol blended into gasoline in 2004 amounted to about 2 percent of all gasoline sold by volume and 1.3 percent of its energy content," the researchers wrote.

Farrell said it was possible to put ethanol in a car and run it, but making ethanol using current technology is expensive and contributes to pollution and greenhouse gases.

"(The environmental cost) comes entirely from making fertilizer, running the tractors over the farm and operating the biorefinery," Farrell said.

Better methods now being investigated would use the woody parts of plants, using what is known as cellulosic technology to break down the tough fibers.

"Ethanol can be, if it's made the right way with cellulosic technology, a really good fuel for the United States," said Farrell, an assistant professor of energy and resources.

"At the moment, cellulosic technology is just too expensive. If that changes -- and the technology is developing rapidly -- then we might see cellulosic technology enter the commercial market within five years."

Writing in the same journal, scientists from Imperial College London, Georgia Tech and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee said they had teamed up to find ways to make a facility to do that.

Their facility would make a range of fuels, foods, chemicals, animal feeds, materials, heat and power using what is known as biomass -- a collection of renewable plant matter and biological material such as trees, grasses and agricultural crops.

"We're looking at a future for biomass where we use the entire plant and produce a range of different materials from it," Charlotte Williams of Imperial's Department of Chemistry said in a statement.

"Before we freeze in the dark, we must prepare to make the transition from nonrenewable carbon resources to renewable bioresources," her team wrote.

An oil industry expert said it was possible.

"Credible studies show that with plausible technology developments, biofuels could supply some 30 percent of global demand in an environmentally responsible manner without affecting food production," Steven Koonin, chief scientist for BP in London, wrote in a commentary.

"To realize that goal, so-called advanced biofuels must be developed from dedicated energy crops, separately and distinctly from food."

[nanouk]

...i wonder what these crops would also do to bio-diversity, so many species would be without habitat and feed...in fact, i worry about what it would do to the micro-cosm.
~N~

[ January 27, 2006, 08:15 AM: Message edited by: nanouk ]

[willoweyes]

Craazyman, I'm sure you only posted this article to bring to our attention what the evil archons are contemplating for "biomass"--or what I might call "growing things which are trying to share the earth with us humans". However, its effect upon me was a sour stomach and the taste of bile rising in my throat.

Almost every word in the article could be parsed to reveal the black hand of the energy industry. Here's the last paragraph, as I saw it:

"CREDIBLE studies show that with PLAUSIBLE technology developments, biofuels COULD supply some 30 percent of global demand in an environmentally RESPONSIBLE manner WITHOUT affecting FOOD production." says Steve Koonin, chief scientist for British PETROLEUM.

There's a lot of wiggle room here, and the source must be viewed as biased. This appears to me to be a clever attempt to claim a chunk of our dwindling resources for the energy industry's consumption.

"Before we freeze in the dark, we must prepare to make the transition from nonrenewable carbon resources to renewable bioresources," says another quoted report. Well, if she's talking about installing a woodburning stove in a small communal dwelling, then I agree. If she's talking about growing crops on shrinking agricultural land (or clear cutting more hills and streambanks) hauling that "biomass" to a refinery, chemically processing it in a process akin to making liquor, and then mixing the result with gasoline so that we can blithly flit about in our autos while the rest of living creation goes to HELL, then I'm opposed to her scare tactics.

Fantasies that we can continue our wasteful ways are "fueled" by such projects as these. They represent a dream for the Greens, (you CAN and SHOULD have it ALL!) while they abuse the environment through their manufacture and use. It's a bad joke--a waste of our time and resources--when both are so crucial right now.

[craazyman]

Willoweyes, I love woodburning stoves too. I'm thinking of a cold clear winter evening, a sky full of stars, a wood fire and a decanted bottle of ruby red Rioja to help calm you down. We could relax and talk through this whole thing. The answer may be that there are a few billion too many people in the world. We'll either need to stop procreating so much or build some huge space ships and terraform Mars. Or maybe find some new dimensions to slip into. It may be every man for himself when the shale finally hits the fan. That will be a real test of character.

[sidecross]

“Petroleum is the transmuted remain of marine algae and other organic debris, which must first be buried in a manner that prevents oxidation…Later, as an accident of sedimentation and tectonics, the organic remains must be held in a certain narrow range of temperature (not much above and not much below the temperature of boiling water) for at least a million years…The oldest oil that has been recovered in commercial quantity is Ordovician in age (about four hundred and fifty million years).”

The above quote is from John McPhee and the book Rising From the Plains. In more than a century humans have consumed most of what nature took a long time to produce.

It is hubris to think that the human can match nature with their biocomputer brain and then come up with a solution to equal what has been provided by nature.

If anything we should be humbled by the above quote and be searching not for a substitute for petroleum, but rather searching for a way to live as member of nature and not its Commander in Chief.

[sidecross]

“…there are a few billion too many people in the world.”

This is the problem!

We now have 6.5 billion people on Earth and it took until the 19th century to reach the first billion.

Our growth is like a cancer.

[willoweyes]

I suggest to my friends that they keep matches, a pocketknife, and their muse in a pocket wherever they go.

[willoweyes]

And Crazyman, if you knew me better, you would know that wine does not sedate me--it adds fuel to the fire.