Sunday's Brain Is Full of Malice

[elfs]

"Would you rather have the Maliki government in control, or the Iranian-backed special groups in control, or Al Qaeda in control?"

Oh, good grief. The quote is from Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser. The possibility of al-Qaeda ever attaining "control of Iraq" is so vanishingly small that for a "senior foreign policy adviser" to even suggest it shows that he's much more interested in frightening the American people into voting for his candidate than he ever was at telling the truth. But more importantly, let's make this clear: the Maliki goverment is an Iranian-backed special group. They also happen to be our group, too, but their military is still receiving arms and training from Iran. This is why we are currently providing air support for the SCIRI Militia in Basra. You know, SCIRI, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, founded in 1982 to seek the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and based out of Tehran?

Why didn't the Times reporter point this out?

Time Admits Biofuels are "a scam."

The growing backlash against biofuels is a product of the law of unintended consequences. It may seem obvious now that when biofuels increase demand for crops, prices will rise and farms will expand into nature.

"It may seem obvious?" Grief, dudes, it was obvious five years ago! Burning crops means less crops for the rest of us, and the law of supply and demand requires that you either pay more or create new resources, and the only way to create new sources of farm products is to create new farmland. The Earth ain't getting bigger. New farmland requires more resources like fuel and fertilizer and time. We all knew this was going to happen. Why the Hell does Time's Michael Grunwald think we're all so frakking stupid?

Say it with me now, everyone: Why oh why can't we have a better press corp?

The Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Economic Evil

Ilana Mercer's article on World Net is a demonstration of the true and petty banality of small, evil minds. They don't call one of the presidential candidates "Barack," or "Obama," or even "Barack Hussein Obama," they call him "Hussein," period. They assume their audience knows who that is. They want the audience to fear him, to believe he's a muslim, and they'll push that fnord over and over until the label's worn off the button. Worldnut. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany: we must point and giggle.

Comments

[solarbird]

Burning crops means less crops for the rest of us, and the law of supply and demand requires that you either pay more or create new resources, and the only way to create new sources of farm products is to create new farmland.
And you need to examine yield-per-acreage over time, because this isn't true. There's going to be some practical effect of this, yes; we're seeing that. But GM crops (for example) should help maintain or even increase Green Revolution oil-products-fueled advances in yield per acre as oil supply decreases over time.

This shouldn't distract from the fact that using the best biofuels technology available the US could convert 100% of arable land (not just current farmland; arable land) into biofuels crops and still not be able to maintain the current automobile-based transport system. (It'd hit about 85%, iirc, but, of course, have to import all food, and so on and so forth).

Hence why I go on - not enough lately, I should post about it again, get people thinking about it more again - about the need to build a proper rail system, and all that.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I tend to think biofuels are "a scam" because underneath it all "biofuel" is another word for "a poorly-managed, unbelievably lossy solar power scheme with which we happen to be familiar."

[solarbird]

Mmm. Okay. It's certainly quite lossy. But I don't really see how we get completely away from reasonably-high-density liquid fuels in the 10-year timeframe, and "biodiesel" works now and has a positive EROI. (About 2:1) I don't like this, but that's irrelevant.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Well, no, we don't get completely away from the HD liquid fuels in ten years. We can do **some** substitution with EVs, even with current (inefficient) battery technology). Of course, mass rail is the ultimate EV system, at least where properly built-out (as note the Northeast Corridor, with which I am most familiar) -- it still staggers the heck out of me that the trans-Cascade rails are no longer electrified.

On the brighter side, hydrogenation of the solid black stuff [[ that goes politely unnamed here ^_^ ]] -- **that** does yield liquid fuels, has done so since the 1930s (note test results published in Minister of Mines Annual Report) and the overall efficiency of the process does spike up nicely if we combine that activity with cogeneration of electricity from 'spent' process steam. I'm too wrapped up in this industry to be willing to hint at attainable numbers, except to say that the R&D there is ongoing, and it is driven by a desire to maximize the NPV of solid fuel deposits -- coz' just shovelling it into railcars or barges for burning somewhere else is seldom the highest and best use in terms of dollars per tonne realisation of ROM product [1].

What's hurting badly right now? 90-day financial thinking, only worrying about the next quarterly targets and what can be released to the Street. That, plus the general drying-up of venture capital except for the tried-and-true incremental projects. Wish like hell I had a pile of vencap of my own, I'd be using it.

I do agree with you about the positive EROI on biodiesel; and also accept that there is no fricking way we can expect biodiesel or even wood-based alcohols to meet all of the currently-projected demand for vehicle fuels.

[1] note also that 'highest and best use' is in the eye of the beholder, as ever.

[solarbird]

I have no idea where 10 came from there. I know much better than that.

Clearly my BRAIN has another BRAIN BEE infestation.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Okay, fair enough to chalk it up to crud-induced nangitude.

The underlying issue, though, of a fuel crunch in the mid-term and (I think, more acutely) an electricity crunch sensu Eskom in the near-term (like, this summer, perhaps) -- that still worries me deeply.

And am doing my part, once more, though cannot much talk about it. Multiple approaches to problem-solving, at least one of them had BETTER work.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

And almost all the biofuel out there is coming from stuff that could go to feeding humans. Ethanol is fermented sugars. Bio-diesel is edible vegetable oil, with some rather unfriendly processing. As long as you don't need low-temperature diesel, there's nothing to stop you buying a few litres of cheap veggie oil at the local supermarket and adding it to your car's diesel tank.

(OK, the taxman can get a bit snotty, and at US tax rates there maybe isn't much advantage)

There's no reason why you can't get biofuel out of plant waste--straw from wheat, for instance. There's a cost in replacing the nutrients removed from the land, but you're already doing that with the grain. The processing might be a bit more complicated, and I expect you'd get methanol rather than ethanol.

But Brazil has had a pretty huge ethanol industry for a long time. Likewise fir biodiesel in Europe (it's good for use on inland waterways). What we're seeing looks like investment in the easy, well-known, technology.

[solarbird]

As long as you don't need low-temperature diesel, there's nothing to stop you buying a few litres of cheap veggie oil at the local supermarket and adding it to your car's diesel tank.
...you'd better process it first. However, that is a home-manageable process.

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how these systems effect the lifespan of the engine however.

Well, so long as you have a couple of filters between the fry oil tank and the engine, it actually extends the life of the engine from what I've been told by folks that use it that way? Something about the engine running smoother or softer.

I'd ask before trying it with the new Honda diesels, though. Those things are sweet, but they might be picky.

[solarbird]

Huh. Okay. I thought you had to have some preprocessing with... arg, what was it? Lye? Something common like that. I've read up on how to make this stuff for normal cars, I had no idea you could run the veggie oil straight with that small number of modifications in the vehicle.

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

You know, about five years ago, I was at the Cobleskill Sunshine Fair in August. There was a dealer there, selling various outdoor, whole-home-heating stoves. Wood, coal, pellets; you name it.

But the one that drew the most interest and most contempt was the corn burning stove.

That's right, it burns food. Here, have a look at just ONE of the many sites selling these things. clicky for corn-burning goodness! (http://www.cornflame.net/)

I knew then that this was only going to come to incredible grief. A nation that considers itself so "wealthy" that it can burn FOOD to warm their houses is going to fall, and it's going to fall HARD.

[blaisepascal]

My first thought was "You misunderstood. It burns cob, the inedible part. I've seen cob-stoves myself. They are a neat idea for using a waste-product of the corn industry."

Then I checked your link. WTF?

Doing some searching with Google makes me begin to doubt I had seen cob-powered stoves.

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

They might have been corn kernel stoves burning corn cobs that had been shredded. Regular stoves can burn cobs as fuel, treating them like sticks of wood. The only problem is that they generate a LOT of residue and creosote.

Hussein....

[blaisepascal]

HUssein... wasn't he the King of Jordan a few years back, and a strong ally of ours in the Middle East?

[gromm.livejournal.com]

it shows that he's much more interested in frightening the American people into voting for his candidate than he ever was at telling the truth.

You should know better. You know a politician is lying when his lips are moving. And anyone ambitious enough and good enough at politics to run for President knows that fear is an excellent way to manipulate people. Thus the natural corollary to this is that any politician worth his salt will lie, cheat, and steal candy from babies to get what he wants. The difference between politicians in jail and out is knowing whose closets have skeletons.