Life After Oil

Alcohol, Methanol, Ethanol, Propanol, Butanol
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Frank
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Life After Oil

Post by Frank »

I was going through some old magazines and came across this article in the August 2006 issue of Discover Magazine:

Life After Oil

"Everyone from GM to President Bush is suddenly infatuated with ethanol. Here's how Big Corn could really replace Big Oil."

Steptoe
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Post by Steptoe »

NZ looked and even built an ethanol plant in the 70s..
At that time ethanol was cheap, even back then I was privatitly using a 10 to 15% blend.

Estentually the whole issue of Energy comes down to how it is approached and thought thru long term..And currently the mentality used will not sort out issues on the long term
Basically summed up in the articule
"as energy economist Philip Verleger points out: "We don't keep our balances in BTUs; we keep them in dollars and cents. So if I can find an energy source that's cheap and easy to use, then it may make sense to use a lot more of that to produce a gallon of gasoline."
Then there are other issues, ok grow crops for ethanol, what was that land used for before? and will that cause shortages of other products?
Yes, already in the States there is a shortage of hops supply for beer...beers goes up
What next? breakfast corn flakes become unafordsable, feed for pork etc does the same??

Then their is the long term consideration of the land..
General city folks think one just plants a crop or grazes a few cows on a peice of land and it will produce...That is a concept on the same lines as a perpetual motion machine.
Crops grow sucking nuterants out of the soil, eaten by a cow, then shipped off to the city. These ntriants need to be replaced...if not the soil becomes useless for anything and also looses its abilty to hold water with even further implications...basically we end up with desert sand and the US will be in te same situation as Africa...
It is an egotistical mistake to believe that the modern 'Rome' is impervious to the same issues that has destoried major civilisations for 1000s of yrs
The inabilty for the surrounding land to be able to sustain the populations needs.

As long as ""We don't keep our balances in BTUs; we keep them in dollars and cents...." and the powers to be think in short term profits there will not be any long term (over 10 to 15 yrs) soln to any issue that catters to a sustainable civilisation.
Sounds like a real doom and gloom extemist thoghts for our children and grandchildren..BUT history shows repeatatly excatly what is happening now and the cause for the exactly same reasons...
Think about it...Think it thru for a few days...
My Spelling is Not Incorrect...It's 'Creative'

Frank
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Post by Frank »

The Chair of the Round Table on Sustainable Development at the OECD seems to agree with you:

BIOFUELS: IS THE CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE?

CBC ran a related story about agricultural prices in July of 2007:

Agricultural prices expected to rise over next decade

Ethanol looks to me that it isn't the panacea to global warming that many people believe it might be.

Steptoe
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Post by Steptoe »

The Chair of the Round Table on Sustainable Development at the OECD seems to agree with you:

Now that is scarry!!!! Who the hell told them what I thought!!
This is a concept I have had for nearly 30yrs...and only shared when chewing the fat over a few beers lol.
Big Brother watchng us is worst than I thought! lol
I wonder If I could sue for copyrights lol

Bottom line,
the market driven ecomomy is based by law on the directors to produce the best returns for the shareholders each yr.
The biggest Force, ecomony , influence on this earth has a leader who by definition and oath must up hold the welfare of the ppl of that ecomony at all costs...there is no provision for the wider welfare outside those borders, and with the nature of gobalistion in the the last 50yrs this concept is now obsolete....in the longer term interests of within those borders
There is no incentive for concepts of bussines and politics reaching beyond 5 or 6 yrs except for within the Bristih royal family, and tree huggers. NASA and microsoft.
The middle age concept of the european woodsman planting /marking oak tress that will in generations be puned by their desenants in such a manner to be suitable for a given use...is saddly missing.
My Spelling is Not Incorrect...It's 'Creative'

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