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

[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.