JollyJane
09-03-2006, 10:59 PM
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: good ethanol, bad ethanol
From: "Frank Michael"
Below is an opinion submitted to MyPeakOil.com
Hemp cellulose is by far more efficient in producing ethanol than corn.
But the dried (or wet) distiller solids must be returned to the soil to
recycle the nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and trace minerals that
came in the feedstock plant.
Otherwise we face continued dependence on petroleum-based fertilizers
and herbicides in the quest for a brave new ethanol fuel
infrastructure.
Corn is just about the most inefficient feedstock used to produce
ethanol. Sugar beets, sugar cane and over a dozen other crops
appropriate to many seasons and climates greatly outproduce corn in
gallons of ethanol per acre.
Furthermore, corn is a heavy soil-feeder that requires a lot of
petroleum-based fertilizer and herbicide. Both of these products are
far more profitable to the oil industry than gasoline. And the oil
industry needs large sales of high-profitability products to both
justify their investments in extracting oil from high energy-cost
sources like the Alberta oil shales and sands, and to pay for the
environmental disaster lawsuits they may eventually generate. Petroleum
interests, which include the current US administration, don't mind
ethanol as long it is kept in its place, since they stand to gain a
huge windfall from the mindless stampede to corn ethanol.
So - there is no disputing that corn ethanol would be a major disaster
for the earth, both in terms of acreage needed to power our fuel needs,
and because of the resulting devastation to agricultural soils.
But there are hidden synergies to using crops other than corn for
biofuel. Corn is still within the 4st Century technology of fermenting
sugar and starch into alcohol. A much more efficient way is the use of
cellulose-breakdown enzymes (cellulases) to break down cellulose (which
is the bulk of all plant biomass, made of starch / sugar polymers), and
then ferment the product into ethanol. Dare I mention which crop has
the highest production of cellulose per acre? Industrial hemp.
Ethanol is the renewable answer to all our fuel needs, but only if we
use cheap cellulase enzymes to break down cellulose, as the Canadian
company Iogen has been doing for years. And most important, IF WE PUT
THE DISTILLER WASTES, WHICH CONTAIN ALL THE NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS,
POTASSIUM AND ALL TRACE ELEMENTS THAT CAME FROM THE EARTH, BACK INTO THE SOIL. And leave behind enough of the plant organic material to
build up the soil. Otherwise we will just continue killing the natural
life of the earth with industrial fertilizers and herbicides, and
within a few years wind up with vast deserts of dead industrial soil.
Oil interests and other folks who haven=92t done their homework claim
that the amount of energy needed to ferment ethanol is about equal to,
or more than, the energy embodied by the ethanol itself. This is true
when using some version of the prehistoric moonshiner still. But liquor
energy costs are trivial compared to the fact that whiskey or rum sells
for $20+ a gallon. With modern designs, reflux column stills produce
ethanol at a fraction of the energy, and not just 100-proof liquor, but
engine-ready 180-proof ethanol, in one pass.
There is a deluge of disinformation generated by the oil interests
since the 1920's. Prohibition was not primarily a temperance movement,
but a behind-the-scenes successful ploy to kill the ethanol fuel
industry, around which Henry Ford had designed his first cars.
Corn ethanol will starve the world=94 sounds suspiciously like the
latest self-serving of partial information. The list of oil lobby fibs
is a long one. For a fun and in-depth rebuttal to all of them, go to
www.permaculture.com and buy David Blume's DVD "Alcohol can be a Gas".
His comprehensive book is coming out soon.
Why do most Greens grind on about a phony problem without even
hinting at the obvious solutions? Lester Brown, James Lovelock, and
other environmental luminaries apparently haven't done their homework
in quite a while. By ignoring cellulose-based ethanol and continuing to
beat the straw man of corn ethanol, they are unwittingly or wittingly
herding people toward the moldy old nuclear industry, newly resplendent
in its coat of green paint, and carrying the proud banner Hydrogen
economy.
Safer reactors, even if they were true, ignores the rest of the
nuclear fuel cycle: the spills, chills and thrills of disposing of
radioactive mine tailings and groundwater pollution; the accident-prone
transportation of yellowcake on public roads cross country and
through
metropolitan areas; the decommissioning, disposal, and containment of
the deadliest materials in the universe over a good fraction of a
million years; the routine and non-routine emissions from your
friendly neighborhood nuclear plant, etc.
Please dust off your copies of John Goffman, the Honicker vs. Hendrie
lawsuit brief, and Ernest Sternglass, and we'll have a pop quiz next
week. Test hints: Life in balance with normal mutation rates from
natural background radiation. Pollution, radiation, and denatured foods
acting synergistically on health. Slowly-accumulating recessive genes
expressing exponentially as sudden, explosive mutation rates. The
market prospects of destitute, disabled populations. The dwindling free
investment capital required to make infrastructural-scale changes. The
kind of world we want to leave for our children and grandchildren.
We have run out of time to play games and craft any more calculated
failures. This is the endgame of evolution. The Big One. And extinction
could come without trumpets, who knows? To our neocon brothers and
sisters I would say, profitability only counts if you have a world to
spend your money in. And also a prosperous middle class population to
buy your products.
If Plan Z kicks in, and we all get Raptured, selfish wealth may weigh
down the scales so much that one may get Left Behind. Tsk, tsk.
It's gonna be very rough with Petrocollapse anyway, but cell-ethanol
and CIGS look to me a hell of a lot better than Green Nukes, which
sounds a lot like "kill for peace" or "screw for virginity".
We have about 5 years until Peak Oil, according to Richard Heinberg. If
we want to prevent the Great Dieoff caused by the supply- and financial
collapse of industrial agriculture described in The Party Is Over, it
seems to me that the only way to make the jump into a sustainable world
in which industrial agriculture doesn't collapse, and the Chinese
don't
pull the debt rug out from under us, is to mobilize with all deliberate
speed into an integrated agri-biofuels permaculture. Concerning this
plan, the expert with dirt under his fingernails is David Blume,
www.permaculture.com.
To consider where the other (electric power) half of investment
gigabucks could flow into, google "CIGS South Africa" and "Nanosolar".
Anybody who wants to join the millionaires' club needs to remember that
they need a world to enjoy their money in.
Frank Michael
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Subject: good ethanol, bad ethanol
From: "Frank Michael"
Below is an opinion submitted to MyPeakOil.com
Hemp cellulose is by far more efficient in producing ethanol than corn.
But the dried (or wet) distiller solids must be returned to the soil to
recycle the nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and trace minerals that
came in the feedstock plant.
Otherwise we face continued dependence on petroleum-based fertilizers
and herbicides in the quest for a brave new ethanol fuel
infrastructure.
Corn is just about the most inefficient feedstock used to produce
ethanol. Sugar beets, sugar cane and over a dozen other crops
appropriate to many seasons and climates greatly outproduce corn in
gallons of ethanol per acre.
Furthermore, corn is a heavy soil-feeder that requires a lot of
petroleum-based fertilizer and herbicide. Both of these products are
far more profitable to the oil industry than gasoline. And the oil
industry needs large sales of high-profitability products to both
justify their investments in extracting oil from high energy-cost
sources like the Alberta oil shales and sands, and to pay for the
environmental disaster lawsuits they may eventually generate. Petroleum
interests, which include the current US administration, don't mind
ethanol as long it is kept in its place, since they stand to gain a
huge windfall from the mindless stampede to corn ethanol.
So - there is no disputing that corn ethanol would be a major disaster
for the earth, both in terms of acreage needed to power our fuel needs,
and because of the resulting devastation to agricultural soils.
But there are hidden synergies to using crops other than corn for
biofuel. Corn is still within the 4st Century technology of fermenting
sugar and starch into alcohol. A much more efficient way is the use of
cellulose-breakdown enzymes (cellulases) to break down cellulose (which
is the bulk of all plant biomass, made of starch / sugar polymers), and
then ferment the product into ethanol. Dare I mention which crop has
the highest production of cellulose per acre? Industrial hemp.
Ethanol is the renewable answer to all our fuel needs, but only if we
use cheap cellulase enzymes to break down cellulose, as the Canadian
company Iogen has been doing for years. And most important, IF WE PUT
THE DISTILLER WASTES, WHICH CONTAIN ALL THE NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS,
POTASSIUM AND ALL TRACE ELEMENTS THAT CAME FROM THE EARTH, BACK INTO THE SOIL. And leave behind enough of the plant organic material to
build up the soil. Otherwise we will just continue killing the natural
life of the earth with industrial fertilizers and herbicides, and
within a few years wind up with vast deserts of dead industrial soil.
Oil interests and other folks who haven=92t done their homework claim
that the amount of energy needed to ferment ethanol is about equal to,
or more than, the energy embodied by the ethanol itself. This is true
when using some version of the prehistoric moonshiner still. But liquor
energy costs are trivial compared to the fact that whiskey or rum sells
for $20+ a gallon. With modern designs, reflux column stills produce
ethanol at a fraction of the energy, and not just 100-proof liquor, but
engine-ready 180-proof ethanol, in one pass.
There is a deluge of disinformation generated by the oil interests
since the 1920's. Prohibition was not primarily a temperance movement,
but a behind-the-scenes successful ploy to kill the ethanol fuel
industry, around which Henry Ford had designed his first cars.
Corn ethanol will starve the world=94 sounds suspiciously like the
latest self-serving of partial information. The list of oil lobby fibs
is a long one. For a fun and in-depth rebuttal to all of them, go to
www.permaculture.com and buy David Blume's DVD "Alcohol can be a Gas".
His comprehensive book is coming out soon.
Why do most Greens grind on about a phony problem without even
hinting at the obvious solutions? Lester Brown, James Lovelock, and
other environmental luminaries apparently haven't done their homework
in quite a while. By ignoring cellulose-based ethanol and continuing to
beat the straw man of corn ethanol, they are unwittingly or wittingly
herding people toward the moldy old nuclear industry, newly resplendent
in its coat of green paint, and carrying the proud banner Hydrogen
economy.
Safer reactors, even if they were true, ignores the rest of the
nuclear fuel cycle: the spills, chills and thrills of disposing of
radioactive mine tailings and groundwater pollution; the accident-prone
transportation of yellowcake on public roads cross country and
through
metropolitan areas; the decommissioning, disposal, and containment of
the deadliest materials in the universe over a good fraction of a
million years; the routine and non-routine emissions from your
friendly neighborhood nuclear plant, etc.
Please dust off your copies of John Goffman, the Honicker vs. Hendrie
lawsuit brief, and Ernest Sternglass, and we'll have a pop quiz next
week. Test hints: Life in balance with normal mutation rates from
natural background radiation. Pollution, radiation, and denatured foods
acting synergistically on health. Slowly-accumulating recessive genes
expressing exponentially as sudden, explosive mutation rates. The
market prospects of destitute, disabled populations. The dwindling free
investment capital required to make infrastructural-scale changes. The
kind of world we want to leave for our children and grandchildren.
We have run out of time to play games and craft any more calculated
failures. This is the endgame of evolution. The Big One. And extinction
could come without trumpets, who knows? To our neocon brothers and
sisters I would say, profitability only counts if you have a world to
spend your money in. And also a prosperous middle class population to
buy your products.
If Plan Z kicks in, and we all get Raptured, selfish wealth may weigh
down the scales so much that one may get Left Behind. Tsk, tsk.
It's gonna be very rough with Petrocollapse anyway, but cell-ethanol
and CIGS look to me a hell of a lot better than Green Nukes, which
sounds a lot like "kill for peace" or "screw for virginity".
We have about 5 years until Peak Oil, according to Richard Heinberg. If
we want to prevent the Great Dieoff caused by the supply- and financial
collapse of industrial agriculture described in The Party Is Over, it
seems to me that the only way to make the jump into a sustainable world
in which industrial agriculture doesn't collapse, and the Chinese
don't
pull the debt rug out from under us, is to mobilize with all deliberate
speed into an integrated agri-biofuels permaculture. Concerning this
plan, the expert with dirt under his fingernails is David Blume,
www.permaculture.com.
To consider where the other (electric power) half of investment
gigabucks could flow into, google "CIGS South Africa" and "Nanosolar".
Anybody who wants to join the millionaires' club needs to remember that
they need a world to enjoy their money in.
Frank Michael
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%