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Author Topic: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE 🌟  (Read 3439 times)

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AGelbert

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Winner at the festival for the Golden Kitty 🐈 award was a two-minute film called “Henri 2: Paw de Deux.”

It is the “existential” tale about a black-and-white French feline. Meet the Humphrey bogart of felines.

Other winning videos were, “Snooky and the Metronome,” “Kittens Inspired by Kittens” and “Kittens Riding Vacuum.

http://www.care2.com/causes/internet-cat-video-film-festival-is-purr-fectly-successful.html

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Quote

Untangling the Quantum Entanglement Behind Photosynthesis

The future of clean green solar power may well hinge on scientists being able to unravel the mysteries of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into electrochemical energy. To this end, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC), Berkeley have recorded the first observation and characterization of a critical physical phenomenon behind photosynthesis known as quantum entanglement.

Previous experiments led by Graham Fleming, a physical chemist holding joint appointments with Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, pointed to quantum mechanical effects as the key to the ability of green plants, through photosynthesis, to almost instantaneously transfer solar energy from molecules in light harvesting complexes to molecules in electrochemical reaction centers. Now a new collaborative team that includes Fleming have identified entanglement as a natural feature of these quantum effects. When two quantum-sized particles, for example a pair of electrons, are "entangled," any change to one will be instantly reflected in the other, no matter how far apart they might be. Though physically separated, the two particles act as a single entity.
 
"This is the first study to show that entanglement, perhaps the most distinctive property of quantum mechanical systems, is present across an entire light harvesting complex," says Mohan Sarovar, a post-doctoral researcher under UC Berkeley chemistry professor Birgitta Whaley at the Berkeley Center for Quantum Information and Computation. "While there have been prior investigations of entanglement in toy systems that were motivated by biology, this is the first instance in which entanglement has been examined and quantified in a real biological system."
 
The results of this study hold implications not only for the development of artificial photosynthesis systems as a renewable non-polluting source of electrical energy, but also for the future development of quantum-based technologies in areas such as computing -- a quantum computer could perform certain operations thousands of times faster than any conventional computer.
 
"The lessons we're learning about the quantum aspects of light harvesting in natural systems can be applied to the design of artificial photosynthetic systems that are even better," Sarovar says. "The organic structures in light harvesting complexes and their synthetic mimics could also serve as useful components of quantum computers or other quantum-enhanced devices, such as wires for the transfer of information."
 
What may prove to be this study's most significant revelation is that contrary to the popular scientific notion that entanglement is a fragile and exotic property, difficult to engineer and maintain, the Berkeley researchers have demonstrated that entanglement can exist and persist in the chaotic chemical complexity of a biological system.
 
"We present strong evidence for quantum entanglement in noisy non-equilibrium systems at high temperatures by determining the timescales and temperatures for which entanglement is observable in a protein structure that is central to photosynthesis in certain bacteria," Sarovar says.
 
Sarovar is a co-author with Fleming and Whaley of a paper describing this research that appears on-line in the journal Nature Physics titled "Quantum entanglement in photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes." Also co-authoring this paper was Akihito Ishizaki in Fleming's research group.
 
Green plants and certain bacteria are able to transfer the energy harvested from sunlight through a network of light harvesting pigment-protein complexes and into reaction centers with nearly 100-percent efficiency. Speed is the key -- the transfer of the solar energy takes place so fast that little energy is wasted as heat. In 2007, Fleming and his research group reported the first direct evidence that this essentially instantaneous energy transfer was made possible by a remarkably long-lived, wavelike electronic quantum coherence.
 
Using electronic spectroscopy measurements made on a femtosecond (millionths of a billionth of a second) time-scale, Fleming and his group discovered the existence of "quantum beating" signals, coherent electronic oscillations in both donor and acceptor molecules. These oscillations are generated by the excitation energy from captured solar photons, like the waves formed when stones are tossed into a pond. The wavelike quality of the oscillations enables them to simultaneously sample all the potential energy transfer pathways in the photosynthetic system and choose the most efficient. Subsequent studies by Fleming and his group identified a closely packed pigment-protein complex in the light harvesting portion of the photosynthetic system as the source of coherent oscillations.
 
"Our results suggested that correlated protein environments surrounding pigment molecules (such as chlorophyll) preserve quantum coherence in photosynthetic complexes, allowing the excitation energy to move coherently in space, which in turn enables highly efficient energy harvesting and trapping in photosynthesis," Fleming says.
 
In this new study, a reliable model of light harvesting dynamics developed by Ishizaki and Fleming was combined with the quantum information research of Whaley and Sarovar to show that quantum entanglement emerges as the quantum coherence in photosynthesis systems evolves. The focus of their study was the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) photosynthetic light-harvesting protein, a molecular complex found in green sulfur bacteria that is considered a model system for studying photosynthetic energy transfer because it consists of only seven pigment molecules whose chemistry has been well characterized.
 
"We found numerical evidence for the existence of entanglement in the FMO complex that persisted over picosecond timescales, essentially until the excitation energy was trapped by the reaction center," Sarovar says.
 
"This is remarkable in a biological or disordered system at physiological temperatures, and illustrates that non-equilibrium multipartite entanglement can exist for relatively long times, even in highly decoherent environments."
 
The research team also found that entanglement persisted across distances of about 30 angstroms (one angstrom is the diameter of a hydrogen atom), but this length-scale was viewed as a product of the relatively small size of the FMO complex, rather than a limitation of the effect itself.
 
"We expect that long-lived, non-equilibrium entanglement will also be present in larger light harvesting antenna complexes, such as LH1 and LH2, and that in such larger light harvesting complexes it may also be possible to create and support multiple excitations in order to access a richer variety of entangled states," says Sarovar.
 

The research team was surprised to see that significant entanglement persisted between molecules in the light harvesting complex that were not strongly coupled (connected) through their electronic and vibrational states. They were also surprised to see how little impact temperature had on the degree of entanglement.
 
"In the field of quantum information, temperature is usually considered very deleterious to quantum properties such as entanglement," Sarovar says. "But in systems such as light harvesting complexes, we see that entanglement can be relatively immune to the effects of increased temperature."
 
This research was supported in part by U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, and in part by a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

This is a two year old article but I bring to your attention as an example of a real world biochemical process in plant life that DOES NOT obey the laws of thermodynamics. Action at a distance without energy transfer is the hallmark of quantum entanglement.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100510151356.htm
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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MarK_BC,

The gist of my argument is that 2 - 2 = 0 in thermodynamics. The petroleum industry would never have gotten off the ground if the "externalities" had been accounted for responsibly. They weren't.They still aren't and it is quite literally killing us.The solution to pollution is not dillution unless we live in an infinitely pollutable biosphere.

As to population carrying capacity, I think that "problem" is solving itself by the amount of toxins that have been introduced into the biosphere over the last 150 years or so. I also believe that we do not need the level of energy use that the media claims is essential.

We can do with much less. We need to reduce our use and make THAT use totally renewable energy products. Of course it won't happen and there will be a huge die off but that's not because there are no options. For example, you see the biofuel paradigm as a "food or fuel" binary. That's a bill of goods the petroleum industry has sold us. The ethanol from corn idiocy was a set up. Lemna minor (Duckweed) grows about 8 times faster and does not require petroleum pesticides or fertilizers. It grows in stagnant water on unusable land (we've got a LOT of that and is fertilized with animal feces). The corn ethanol boondoggle is just one example of the "We have to have oil" bullshit we are fed.

Duckweed post

To show how massively unnecessary our oil setup is in the USA, Here are some facts from a scholarly book that has been peer reviewed:

Dilworth (2010-03-12). Too Smart for our Own Good (pp. 399-400). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
"As suggested earlier, war, for example, which represents a cost for society, is a source of profit to capitalists. In this way we can partly understand e.g. the American military expenditures in the Persian Gulf area. Already before the first Gulf War, i.e. in 1985, the United States spent $47 billion projecting power into the region. If seen as being spent to obtain Gulf oil, It AMOUNTED TO $468 PER BARREL, or 18 TIMES the $27 or so that at that time was paid for the oil itself.

In fact, if Americans had spent as much to make buildings heat-tight as they spent in ONE YEAR at the end of the 1980s on the military forces meant to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields, THEY COULD HAVE ELIMINATED THE NEED TO IMPORT OIL from the Middle East. So why have they not done so? Because, while the $468 per barrel may be seen as being a cost the American taxpayers had to bear, and a negative social effect those living in the Gulf area had to bear, it meant only profits for American capitalists. "

As for the scientists I rail about, corporations have basically taken over "science" with all research geared towards profit. That's par for the course you might say but the level of bought and paid for mendacity in the service of fossil and nuclear fuels is breathtaking.

Here are some examples.

Gas fracking corruption posts
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/blasts-form-the-2012-to-2013-past-when-there-was-more-hope/msg10257/#msg10257

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/blasts-form-the-2012-to-2013-past-when-there-was-more-hope/msg10258/#msg10258

I've got to hit the hay now but I will continue this discussion tomorrow. I agree that, in a sane society, we would agree to reduce our energy use 90% NOW and also target about a tenth of the present human population as the ideal and work towards that goal together.

It probably won't happen but it doesn't mean we shouldn't holler from the rooftops how this crap got started with Rockefeller so that when, or if, humanity recovers from the coming environmental and civilizational collapse, the survivors will not let the greedy idiots play their stupid polluting power games again. Talk to you tomorrow. 😎
« Last Edit: July 08, 2018, 05:37:25 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Mark_BC,

Carrying capacity is a function of carbon footprint in humans (unlike other non tool making species). The issue of resource depletion is not relative to our physical biomass.

This is an excerpt from the following linked article I wrote that addresses the population issue.

Mankind got into trouble with the biosphere when he got carried away with his tool making. We've discussed this here at length. To a degree, we appear to be an evolutionary dead end because we quite literally cannot stop (industrially, not physically speaking) "shitting" where we "eat". The biomass of humans is smaller than that of all the ant species on the Earth yet they don't have a carbon footprint problem. We have a serious carbon footprint problem coupled with a lot of biosphere poisoning. The media love to remind us of this. But here is where the "S H I T where you eat" metaphor breaks down. Carbon footprint is about poison, not feces.

Seven billion humans could quite conceivably make excellent use of their humanure to eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers and much of the wasted water used in sewage treatment. It 's a very convenient dodge to claim the solution to our problem is to reduce the population. The false claim is made that then all those cars and trucks wouldn't ruin the planet and the biosphere could have a chance. That is a "solution" that only solves about 20% of the pollution problem and leaves the real heavyweights (about 80% of the pollution), industry and military operated of, by and for the 1% elite, out.

That is where the major carbon footprint is. For those who are shaking their heads, go look at those U.N. stats on how many people out there are living on 2 dollars a day and tell me THEY are the problem. They aren't, no matter what Bill Gates says. The combined feces of all the ants and every other life form out there, far, far exceeds how much we defecate. As RE, myself and many others here have correctly pointed out, the people at the top refuse to accept responsibility for their horrendous attack on the biosphere and are trying to shift the blame on the rest of us.

Those of us little piggies in the USA and Europe are the favorite whipping BOYS of those who say we 55k or less (median income in the USA at present) share almost as much as the 1% in the pollution blame. They hasten to add that depopulation, especially in the piggy countries like ours, is rational. I would support it if it was rational but it is irrational because it fails to deal with, and make an example of, the worst offenders FIRST.

People will not give up their pickup trucks until Warren Buffett gives up his jets and multiple houses. The fact that a few of us have reduced our carbon footprint voluntarily as an act of conscience does not mean that most aren't still Bernays brainwashed.
 
What we need is a detailed map like this one of UK for the USA:


Quote
Experian have found a direct link between wealth and willingness to embrace a green agenda; those most concerned about climate change tend to live in the wealthiest parts of the country.

Poorer and greener
But here's the rub. The company has also found that the richest constituencies... are also the most polluting.2
And that's just the homes. Try adding the carbon footprint piggery these rich have added to their homes with stock portfolios, ownership of retail space, factories, ships, office buildings, jets, etc.The 55K or less crowd have none of these things. At any rate wages don't even begin to tell the real carbon footprint piggery story; the real story is in who owns what. More on this later.
Here's a breakdown of carbon footprint by income decile in Sweden, a country with far less extremes in wealth dstribution than the USA. Notice that the top decile have nearly 6 times the carbon footprint of the lower decile. 3
[smg id=423]
Quote
The figure illustrates three types of emissions presented by adult equivalents. The direct emissions come from the household’s consumption (the private consumption) of fuel and heating. The indirect emissions come from the production of goods and services in the Swedish private consumption. International indirect emissions come from the production of goods and services consumed in Swedish households, before being imported. All three types of emissions above sum up to the total emissions from private consumption in Sweden.3
 
In the USA, the per capita CO2 emissions of about 21 metric tonnes is VERY misleading. (This data is about 5 years ol and. as of 2012, is much lower) This paper studies the differences in emissions from state to state without addressing income levels.
Quote
If U.S. per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were equal to those of its most populous state, California, global CO2 emissions would fall by 8 percent. If, instead, U.S. per capita emissions equaled those of Texas, the state with the second-largest population, global emissions would increase by 7 percent.
What makes Californians’ emissions so different from those of Texans, and from U.S. average emissions? And are the factors that explain these differences amenable to replication as policy solutions?4
If you live in any one of the following states (or D.C), your per capita CO2 emissions are less than 10 metric tonnes:
NY, DC, OR, CA, RI, WA, VT, NH, AZ, CT. In Vermont, direct residential of about 3 tons is an average. Just one mansion here can equal 4 or five 2,000 sq. ft. houses and the small homes like mine with less than 1,000 sq. ft. are much lower. People like myself, and there are lots of them here, are probably not running a carbon footprint above 3 metric tons due, in addition to having less house to heat, to driving less than 2,000 miles a year. But what is published is the national 21 metric tons. NY's per capita footprint appears the lowest in the nation at around 7. That's obviously not taking into account the Wall Street Banks and investors in NY that own stock in retail space and just about every other high carbon footprint venture in the USA including weapons contractors. I'll wager NY's would be double AK's 34, the  state with maximum per capita footprint,  if the real estate throughout the country that the banks owned (Bernie Sanders said it was 60% of the country's wealth) was figured in.
Since the study just looks at homes and not the money the rich spend to "green up" their homes with geothermal (remember Bush's ranch?) or PV while they own stock in and support weapons contractors and dirty industries elsewhere, it is expected that the study would come up with this gem:
Quote
The lack of correlation between income per capita and transportation and electricity emission per capita demonstrates that, at least among states of the U.S., there is no rigid relationship between affluence and emissions.10
Similar incomes can be associated with very different levels of emissions. It is possible — as evidenced by the contrast between California and Texas — to enjoy the typical American lifestyle with per capita emissions that are widely divergent from the U.S. mean.4

The above statement is an excellent example of scientific blinders in the service of raw wealth. The hypermobility alone of these rich would skew their footprint up (lots of vehicles of all sizes) if those engaged in this study had bothered to count boats, cars, airplanes, etc. They do, however, provide a sensible explanation of why states like Vermont keep their carbon footprint relatively low:
Quote
Information about policies that have succeeded in reducing emissions in some states should be circulated to the rest of the country. How have some states managed to reduce their emissions well below the national average? In broad strokes, states with low per capita emissions:
" Drive less per person and have, on average, better fuel economy;
" Use less electricity per person in their homes;
" Have higher gasoline and electricity prices;
" Rely more on public transportation; and
" Use less oil for heating and less coal for electricity generation.
What does our analysis say about the difference between per capita emissions in California and Texas? Transportation emissions are almost one and a half times as great in Texas as in California.4

 
WHY don't these carbon footprint researchers look at this kind of data:
Quote
FAA statistics show the number of U.S. business jet flights grew 11 percent in 2010, after plunging 20 percent in 2009. And providers of private jet services are expanding: In March 2011, NetJets (owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway) placed a $2.8 billion order for 50 new Global business jets from Bombardier, with options for 70 more; last fall, it ordered up to 125 Phenom 300s from Embraer—and it bought Marquis Jet, a marketer of private jet cards. Also in March, CitationAir by Cessna added six 604-mph Citation Xs—which it calls the fastest business jet in the sky—to its fleet of 81 jets, targeting “busy executives and business travelers who often need to be in multiple cities within a compressed timeframe,” a spokesman says. XOJET has added to its fleet as well and has hired 45 new pilots.5

Does anybody want to take a stab at what umpteen executive jets used EXCLUSIVELY by the 1% do to the USA carbon footprint? I know a little something about airplanes. I never flew a jet for hire but I flew Piper Navajos for a year or so. Each engine used 18 gallons per HOUR. Now when people start talking about all those J6P pickup trucks out there while ignoring executive jets, I sigh. The carbon footprint of those jets is massive.   
Quote
How much greater are the emissions from executive jets? I am indebted to HalogenGuides Jets, "the insider's guide to private aviation", for doing the stats.
They reviewed 10 popular private jets using emissions stats provided by TerraPass, the offset company used by Chief Executive Air. The planes ranged from the Gulfstream 400, which burns up 32l of fuel a minute and can carry up to 19 passengers, to the Learjet 40XR, which burns more than 13l a minute to carry a maximum of five passengers.
HeliumReport converts this fuel burn into carbon dioxide emissions per hour. If we assume the plane is fully loaded with passengers, they mostly come in at between 200-300kg of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere per passenger per hour. But of course, the purpose of having your own jet is that you are not stuck with silly cost-cutting exercises like filling every seat on the plane.
I know of no analysis of how full private jets normally fly, but let's assume they are mostly half full. That gives emissions per passenger-hour of 400-600kg of carbon dioxide. That's about half a tonne.
How does that compare with a regular commercial flight? For one from London to Paris, which is roughly an hour, TerraPass reckons 59kg per passenger per hour, or little more more than a 10th as much as flying your own, half full, Learjet.
If you are interested in carbon emissions, these numbers are scary. An hour's flight on a private jet will emit more carbon dioxide than most African do in a whole year.6

The  African CO2 footprint referred to is about one metric ton but let's compare it with our "rich" Americans making anywhere from 55k a year on down that only see executive jets in movies.  In 20 hours of of flying, an afterthought for the jet set 1% of the USA, they use up one yearly quota of J6P's  "greedy irresponsible pig" footprint. Now count the executive jets and count the total hours they fly each year and you will absolutely gasp at the carbon footprint the 1% is happily spewing into our biosphere. There are over 10,000 private jets in the USA as of 2008.
Quote
How private jet travel is straining the system, warming the planet, and costing you money.7
And this is JUST THE EXECUTIVE JETS part of their piggery!
And Buffett thinks it's A-F*CKING-OKAY to add more.

China's per capita carbon footprint, in the meantime, has become greater than that of several U.S. states, including Vermont.
Quote
The latest report shows that in 2011 China's per capita emissions increased 9%, rising to 7.2 metric tons per person. 8

I am certain, as is the case in the USA, that the Chinese 1%'s carbon footprint is orders of magnitude above the Chinese version of  our "J6P".  Those who love to point at J6P piggery in the USA should drop that broad brush and start looking at per capita carbon footprint and, when available, decile breakdown of that per capita carbon footprint. Please observe that the per capita carbon footprint in the USA has been going steadily down over the last decade (as of 2012, it is down to 17.3 metric tons 9) and that there are 11 countries with a higher per capita carbon footprint than the USA.9 USA highlighted in yellow.

Click here for a table closeup:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

J6P makes a real convenient whipping boy but that does not reflect the facts on the ground even before you account for 1% piggery. What matters is not data points like how much retail space there is in the USA (a huge amount is now empty anyway since 2008) but who OWNS that retail space and all the other large carbon footprint piggery. The wealth breakdown in the USA (as of 2007 - it's even more concentrated at the top now according to senator Bernie Sanders) shows that 1% own 42.7%, the next 19% own 53.7% and the BOTTOM 80% own 7%.10 I am using the financial wealth stats rather than the "net" worth stats because that reflects the sad reality that the 15% attributed to the bottom 80% is now about 7% and the "net" worth of the top 20% matches 2007 financial wealth percentages (The top 20%, but mostly the top 0.5%, have exponentially increased their ownership of everything in the USA since the Greater Depression began in 2007).

The last time I checked, when you OWN something, you are responsible for it's carbon footprint. The fact that the predatory capitalist "drug pushers" are out there pushing the consumerist "drug" does not justify blaming the addicts. The addicts must be treated but the priority is to get the pushers off the street. Every addict can go cold turkey and the pushers will adjust by giving the "drug" away really cheap until they hook a new set of addicts.

Focusing on the addicts while giving lip service to the evils of the 1% to the point that the addicts are given a 40/60% (99% carbon footprint vs 1% carbon footprint) responsibility ratio in biosphere degradation when it is more like a  20/80% ratio is  just plain wrong and doomed to failure. Of course the 1% love this kind of "blame the victim" illogic.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2018, 04:38:34 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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ALL ABOUT DUCKWEED


Snippet 1:
Quote
Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that a tiny aquatic plant can be used to clean up animal waste at industrial hog farms and potentially be part of the answer for the global energy crisis. Their research shows that growing duckweed on hog wastewater can produce five to six times more starch per acre than corn, according to researcher Dr. Jay Cheng. This means that ethanol production using duckweed could be "faster and cheaper than from corn," ]says fellow researcher Dr. Anne-Marie Stomp.

"We can kill two birds – biofuel production and wastewater treatment – with one stone – duckweed," Cheng says. Starch from duckweed can be readily converted into ethanol using the same facilities currently used for corn, Cheng adds.



A LOT of hogs are raised in the USA and many other countries as well. Do the math on the win-win situation of vastly increased ethanol production from duckweed while simultaneously stopping nitrogenous and fecal coliform waste which contaminates water and contributes to ocean dead zones. And remember that duckweed isn't particular; it can use ANY animal feces as fertilizer.

High nutrient removal rate from swine wastes and protein biomass production by full-scale duckweed ponds

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960852412003343]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960852412003343

NOTE: Don't be confused by the above term "nutrient" in the Sciencedirect article; they are talking about algae "nutrients" from animal waste that cause algal bloom and ocean dead zones from de-oxygenation. Feces causes algae to grow a LOT. In this case it is a bad thing and duckweed prevents it.

Duckweed is the smallest flowering plant known to man. Being aquatic, it uses most of the solar energy gained from photosynthesis to grow its buoyant fleshy leaves, avoiding the energy intensive requirements of slow growing woody root systems. This ultra-efficient use of energy is the main reason it grows so fast.

Note: Unlike GM plants tinkered with to grow fast or forced to do so with chemical fertilzers, Lemna minor (duckweed) sacrifices nothing in it's nutrient value for animals (it is edible and nutritious for humans too - In a world environmental collapse this humble angiosperm may be the key to preserving life, health and energy for millions of humans).


Quote
Global pork production in 2012 is revised upward 924000 tons from the last forecast to. 104.4 million tons.
http://www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/circulars/livestock_poultry.pdf

Snippet 2:
Quote
The duckweed system consists of shallow ponds that can be built on land unsuitable for conventional crops, and is so efficient it generates water clean enough for re-use. The technology can utilize any nutrient-rich wastewater, from livestock production to municipal wastewater.

Snippet 3:
Quote
Cheng says, "Duckweed could be an environmentally friendly, economically viable feedstock for ethanol."

"There's a bias in agriculture that all the crops that could be discovered have been discovered," Stomp says, "but duckweed could be the first of the new, 21st century crops.

In the spirit of George Washington Carver, who turned peanuts into a major crop, Jay and I are on a mission to turn duckweed into a new industrial crop, providing an innovative approach to alternative fuel production."

Source: http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/yournews/38605

Duckweed for electricity at 3 CENTS per kwh:

Snippet 1:
Quote
It's a little, water-born plant that doubles in mass every 24 hours. The ducks really like it," Behrens said. Two pounds of duckweed seed in a 32-foot tank in Philadelphia grew to a depth of 2 inches in 10 days, he said.

"It's very easy to harvest," Behrens said. "That was the undoing of a lot of algae concepts. You can't spend too much energy removing fuel from water, otherwise on your balance sheet you haven't made any energy."
Duckweed is smaller than a grain of rice, but a million times bigger than an algae cell, he said. The duckweed is harvested with a nylon mesh, similar to screen doors, then dried.

In many ways, it's similar to wood-products waste, another type of biomass, which is used to generate electricity in White City and other places around the country.

"Trees don't grow fast enough, so we found something that grows faster," Behrens said. "The key is growing fuel on site, because shipping it in is too costly. We just had to find a fast-growing plant -- and there are plenty of those -- and then create an artificial environment that optimizes plant growth."

The artificial environment -- BioEnergy Domes -- is where Pacific Domes comes in. There are four sizes of BioEnergy Domes, ranging from a backyard-sized, 5,000-kilowatt version that can supply energy for one home to a commercial-size, 60-foot-diameter unit, such as the initial unit in a Philadelphia industrial park. The generating unit sits outside the dome and runs silently.

Behrens said it costs about $750,000 to $800,000 to install the largest BioEnergy Domes, and the payback time is only two years.

"You are able to generate electricity at the cost of 3 cents per kilowatt hour, the same as coal or nuclear plants," Behrens said. "It's completely controllable, unlike wind or solar power, and generates on demand like a fossil-fuel plant."

http://www.kgw.com/news/Ore-company-uses-duckweed-to-generate-electricity-117942849.html

While I laugh at the idea that the actual cost of coal or nuclear power is just 3 cents per kwh because the EROI numbers on those two poisonous energy products exclude massive subsidies and environmental costs, I see no reason to doubt that the 3 cents per kwh is bonafide with duckweed. Nuclear fuel EROI of 10.0 and coal  EROI of 80.0 are corporate pseudo-scientific Procrustean Bed lies ( See this article).

Even if ethanol produced from duckweed is only in the wind EROI range of 18, it is still a far better alternative than any fossil fuel planetary poison. Furthermore, transportation costs would be next to nothing as well because duckweed infrastructure would be decentralized and local. Renewable energy produced this way also provides jobs for the community.

In addition, duckweed can be pelletized and used as food for tilapia fish farming or fuel in furnaces (after a low tech drying process).


sources:
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/22406406/1260766168/name/duckweed++final.pdf

http://www.permies.com/t/13500/stoves/you-burn-duckweed-rocket-heater

Duckweed has great potential!

Drying duckweed on a screen

Duckweed is easy to grow. Just add water and poop.

What about those that claim that renewables like duckweed, wind, photovoltaic, etc. are just niche energy markets and will never actually replace fossil fuels as number one?

Snippet 1:
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4. Clean energy investment has surpassed investments in fossil fuels
Last year was the first time global investments in renewable energy surpassed investments in fossil fuels.

The global market for clean energy was worth a whopping $250 billion.

The United States is currently leading in corporate R&D and venture capital investments in clean energy globally, and last year retook the top spot in overall investment with a 33 percent increase to $55.9 billion.

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6. Fossil fuels have gotten 75 times more subsidies than clean energy
To date, the oil-and-gas industry received $446.96 billion (adjusted for inflation) in cumulative energy subsidies from 1994 to 2009, whereas renewable energy sources received just $5.93 billion (adjusted for inflation).

Renewable energy investments should be put in proper historical perspective. According to the Energy Information Agency, “focusing on a single year’s data does not capture the imbedded effects of subsidies that may have occurred over many years across all energy fuels and technologies.”

The U.S. government is showing a smaller commitment to renewables than it showed in the early years of the oil-and-gas industries. A study showed that “during the early years of what would become the U.S. oil and gas industries, federal subsidies for producers averaged half a percent of the federal budget. By contrast, the current support for renewables is barely a fifth that size, just one-tenth of 1 percent of federal spending.”

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Here are the top six things you really need to know:

1)  Clean energy is competitive with other types of energy

2) Clean energy creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels

3) Clean energy improves grid reliability

4) Clean energy investment has surpassed investments in fossil fuels

5) Investments in clean energy are cost effective

6) Fossil fuels have gotten 75 times more subsidies than clean energy

Source:
http://idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53750]http://idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53750

Given all these real world facts about the main energy investment trends and the promise of EROI increases from renewables such as wind, photovoltaic and duckweed free of the environmental hazards of fossil and nuclear fuels and the prospect of much reduced government energy subsidies that we-the-people will benefit from,  isn't it folly to cling to the concept that centralized power systems will remain dominant in the energy markets?

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/blasts-form-the-2012-to-2013-past-when-there-was-more-hope/msg10213/#msg10213
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Fun with mendacity for money through the fossil fuel corruption of scientists for the purpose of producing gamed (e.g. The Oil Drum published EROI studies) "scientific" studies that make fossil fuel extraction techniques look cost effective and environmentally benign.   >:(

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Smelling a leak: Is the natural gas industry buying academics?

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Last week, the University of Texas provost announced he would reexamine a report by a UT professor that said fracking was safe for groundwater after the revelation that the professor pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Texas natural gas developer. It’s the latest fusillade in the ongoing battle over the basic facts of fracking in America.

http://grist.org/natural-gas/smelling-a-leak-is-the-natural-gas-industry-buying-academics/

One comment from a wide awake Texan:

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Kim Triolo Feil

Regardless of the academia studies.....I'm not a rocket scientist and speak from experience.
I live in Arlington TX - home to 55 urban drilling padsites in a 99 sq mile area...these are my concerns besides the water waste, disposal issues, and the related seismic events. 

The industry has a failure of emission control technologies and accident prevention layered protocols to prevent ....

1) drilling hazards like drilling mud that "dries and flys into the air", Bentonite's MSDS says it is toxic to the lungs

2) fracking silicia dust blowing off the sites (silicosis is a permanant disease)

3) flowback emissions they try to call "steam" but has hydrocarbons than can and HAS killed a worker last January-even Green Completion equipment is late to be deployed and exposes us to "top flowback" water vapors

4) diesel emissions in neighborhoods during all phases of the life cycle of the wells (diesel has benzene in it and is a carcinogen).

5) accidents that should be a zero tolerance in urban areas and the acknowledgement that the build out being so big that aggregate emission events and spills are not an "acceptable risk"

6) methane leaks that speed up climate change

7) piping that is not earthquake & leak proof over the test of time


Gas fracking is an obscenity:


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Golden Oxen,
Yes they were (ARE) great at brainwashing. The same outfit (Hill & Knowlton) is doing the same kind of brainwashing for fracking. They learned how to push all the amygdala reptile brain buttons real well from Freud's nephew, Bernays.

I used to watch the Ed Sullivan show when I was a kid. I was about 11 when I saw Elvis sing Hound Dog and Blue Suede Shoes. My old man got really bent out of shape when Elvis was doing his thing with his knees. ;D

Anyway, the commercials were mostly Tide (boring) and Newport cigarette commercials. I can still see the star trek type symbol they had (long before star trek) and the dancers. All that talk about menthol and fresh air stuck with me so well that when I began to smoke at age 19, that's the brand of cancer stick (yeah, we called them that) I chose. I hope that the public gets it about fracking sooner than we did about smokes.

As the video from the gasland producer says, those wells have to stop biogenic (as opposed to the thermogenic gas they actually drill for) from migrating up a the concrete pipe casings FOREVER. Like the lying bastards from tobacco companies had the hard data and studies showing smokes cause cancer, the gas fracking pigs have the hard data and scientific studies that the concrete pipe casings outside the steel pipe ALWAYS crack and allow biogenic gas migration. That's why I got so p i s s e d at Stoneleigh (Nicole Foss) for blithely ignoring this horror.

Anyone who has a voice in the fossil fuel community and is not using it to try to stop this evil is complicit in grievously harming the biosphere and many humans as well. Once the aquifer gets poisoned, some bottled water corporation gets an instant boost in profits. These predatory capitalist morons don't get the fact that the entire flora and fauna is at risk in these places the aquifers get poisoned.

I really, really suspect these **** are doing a backdoor "blue water" scarcity push. Yeah, I think they are DELIBERATELY trying to poison aquifers. That is the reason they are so adamant about trying to buy scientists and their studies. They deserve to be strung up from those God Damned fracking drill towers.

I finally quit smoking when I had the pacemaker implanted in 2007. Nothing like a little heart trouble to clear the mind...

Maybe when some friend of Nicole that lives near a fracking well gets breast cancer, her mind will clear as well.


Quote Agelbet  "All that talk about menthol and fresh air stuck with me so well that when I began to smoke at age 19, that's the brand of cancer stick (yeah, we called them that) I chose."

I was one of the smart guys that was too smart to get cancer. I smoked Kents with the micronite filter. Micronite being a fancy name for asbestos. Those friggin pig men are really something aren't they.  I guess we are lucky to still be alive Agelbert after that foolish behavior.   
     
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Geothermal heat pumps are an example of passive geothermal power.

Just look at the fuel oil and natural gas alone that we would NOT USE if we had geothermal heat pumps in all US homes. Then remember that many homes are cooled by electricity as well as some heated by it and you have a MASSIVE (at least 50%) energy reduction just from switching to geothermal heat pumps. Remember that just a short distance below the frost line all over the US the temperature is about 54o year round.

[/size]


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Agelbert NOTE: TAE (The Automatic Earth web site is the home of fracked gas cheerleader "energy expert" Nicole Foss 🦖)
 
Waste Based Society: Solutions and Alternatives

Published June 12, 2012

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Are there viable solutions and alternatives to the Energy intensive Waste Based Society we currently live in, which do not entail a return to Paleolithic levels of technology?  Diner and TAE Commentariat member A. G. Gelbert outlines a myriad of technologies which might be employed to maintain a higher technological base for society.

RE

Solutions and Alternatives to the Waste Based Society

by A. G. Gelbert

We are cursed with a rather effective propaganda machine that defends the status quo and works mightily to provide allegedly iron clad arguments exposing our desperate dependence on fossil fuels and the enormous debt we owe to them for our ‘wonderful civilization’. The media has cleverly weaved fact and fiction to present plausible arguments against the practicality of going cold turkey on fossil fuels and 100% on renewables.

Not one word about the fact that fossil fuels are easy to meter and conveniently provide a constant revenue stream for the rich along with governmental control of a populace that simply cannot move or function without daily use of fossil fuels ever seems to be mentioned. Not one word about how renewables cannot be metered or taxed easily and how that feature gives everyone a large degree of independence aand flexibility in disaster situations to help themselves or a less fortunate neighbor is mentioned.

On the other hand, the continuous and vociferous denial of the link between fossil fuels and environmental problems, regardless of scientific concensus on this very real link, never seems to go away either. The actual history of the industrial revolution involving some very brutal measures to coerce humans to abandon horses, as only one of many coercive measures, for tranportation and farming are always ignored and replaced with a stream of pejorative comments about horse dung in big cities. People did not want to get rid of their horses!

I am not simply talking about city ordinances and fines targeting horses. Right around 1865 a big push began to sell farm machinery. Amazingly, a huge horse plague hit the U.S. that year that killed a massive amount of horses. No explanation beyond “Civil War stress” blarney was ever given. These horses were not just city horses in population centers but out in the country as well.

The move to horseless carriages began on the farm with steam power and hydrocarbon lubricants. The automobile came later along with the bone cancer. Bone cancer from the original automoblie fuel, benzene, is seldom mentioned by the media and apparently is considered no big deal in comparison to horseshit odor. Moving on to the early 20th century, Rockefeller has a waste product in his refinery cracking towers (after separating all those great heavy and light lubricants) called gasolene and he talks Henry Ford into modifying the carburators to run on it.


Of course the ‘minor’ problem with benzene fuel may have helped make the switch. There were electric cars on the road at the time. Cleveland had wind generators creating electricity at that time! You’ll never guess what happened to them and the electric trolleys all over many towns in the USA. So, enough of that. Everyone here knows how predatory capitalism attempts to game the system to achieve price control and a monopoly. Once much more efficient and sustainable technologies are shoved aside by hook or by crook, the distorted and mendacious meme that our current technology is the result of friendly capitalist competition in the ‘free market’ is pushed.

Predation occurs followed by propaganda versions of history. That is the real history of the industrial revolution in regard to our choices of energy production. Renewables got squeezed out, not because they couldn’t compete favorably, but because the pollution and health costs of fossil fuels got ‘externalized’. Along the way, the independence of the mostly agrarian American in energy production and use was crushed.

A love afffair with the car was fostered to the point that in the late 1920’s more Americans had cars than flush toilets. Of course they were better off, ecologically speaking, without flush toilets, but the point is the job of selling Americans on fossil fuels was a done deal by that time.

So please remember that nobody was doing us any favors, like the media wants to claim; they were selling us something in order to concentrate wealth and power in a few hands. They were using us as a cash cow to the point of introducing planned obsolecence, rampant consumerism to keep the factories going and simultaneously thwarting moves to sustainability like Henry Ford’s plan to make cars out of hemp plastic in the early1940s.

We like new stuff and are always looking for the latest model year of the car or whatever because we have been manipulated by experts to do so. It has absolutely nothing to do with our health, well being or happiness. Bernays really messed us up. Fast forward to the present where the witches brew of ecological harm brought about by industrialization has caught up with us. And NOW, all of a sudden, we just can’t live without all this ‘wonderful’ energy packed fossil fuel economy.

Methinks somebody wants to slap a guilt trip on the chumps so they agree to clean up the mess even though the media keeps claiming there isn’t really that much of a mess. We, the masses, are accused of being wasteful pigs that bred like rats thanks to fossil fuels.

Where to begin? How about the fact that family size has been decreasing, not increasing, througout the industrial revolution? That’s right. The numbers were baked in by 1800 and the wars slowed them down a bit. Louis Pasteur and Lister did a hell of a lot more to create our present population ‘problem’ than fossil fuels. Most of the key scientific advancements in medicine were not exactly high tech and fossil fuel dependent. A human makes it past 5 years of age and he has a huge chance of living out his 3 score and ten. It was the enormous reduction in infant mortality brought about by antiseptic procedures that caused the population explosion, not fossil fuels. It’s a stretch to say that fossil fuels alowed people to obtain clean water to wash their hands before delivering a baby, but I’m sure the media verbal contortionists would toss it out there to further muddy the waters of historical truth.

The much touted plumbing advancements that require machinery and factories powered by fossil fuels, while they did reduce disease in population centers and prolonged life, were setting us up for more fossil fuel use through improper humanure handling. I maintain that the main cause of our population explosion is knowledge of disease microbes, their propagation methods and our changes in hygiene as a result.

Edward Bernays

What about all this waste we now produce that we have been folded, spindled and mentally mutilated through Freud’s nephew Wall Street amygdala reptilian brain control propaganda? They set us up and now WE are the bad guys? They want us to shop till we drop and WE are the problem? And how much ‘waste’ do WE actually produce on a carbon footprint basis compared to the global 1%?

Well, Senator Bernie Sanders stated recently that less than 1% of the U.S. owns about 40% of the assets (I’m not talking about income increases although they have gotten the lion’s share over the last ten years as well). Yes, I know he talks about banks too but he mentions those 400 or so elite families every now and then. Now figure the carbon footprint of those people and compare it with the rest of us. All those endless films about diapers, milk gallons and so on used in our middle class lifetimes with the obligatory landfill mountains thrown in are nothing compared with the horrendous and gigantic amount of crap these families generate. Isn’t it amazing that when it comes to pollution and wasteful habits, we are ‘all in this together’? No attempt is made to segregate out the worst offenders. On the contrary, the poor and middle class are constantly demonized as being irresponsible useless eaters. It’s all quite Orwellian on the part of the media.

But yeah, we do waste, and we have a waste problem that is real, so let’s talk about it.

Waste can certainly destroy a society, species or most of the ecosphere if, as many point out, we continue with the ridiculous paradigm that we can industrially do multi-generational damage to the life support systems humans depend on and not define this as suicide. It’s almost like our nuclear nuts and oil fetish **** have morphed us into a mass version of the heaven’s gate cult. Those people thought they could hitch a ride on a comet by commiting suicide. Every single step in industrializaton has, for anyone willing to do the TOTAL math, NOT been ecospherically cost effective. The fact that a small group of humans has temporarily benefited at the expense of the overwhelming majority of humans and all other earthlings right now, not to mention the obvious acceleration in environmental degradation promising a super bleak future, seems to go right over the heads of way to many otherwise intelligent people.

Heaven's Gate Cult Leader that convinced many to commit suicide

Just like the heaven’s gate cult, people are addicted to a dream that never was, PERIOD. All talk about this and that from our youth and how much fun we all had and how nostalgic we are for those nicer times is the exact same phenomenum of a drug addict longing for his first high. LISTEN UP! We are a function of the ecosphere. We DO NOT, despite all the best propaganda efforts of our scientific community, understand the mechanism of the ecosphere sufficently to tinker with it, let alone wantonly pollute it with “externalisms”. EXTERNALISMS!? That’s just some economist bullshit! There are NO externalisms inside the life bubble called the ecosphere; it just takes a while to catch up with you when you mine, bomb and toxify with chemicals NIMBY areas for a few centuries. We are there and yet our scientific community and our financial community and our political wheeler and dealer con-artists with their new techno death toys and ‘miracle’ GMO crops and drug after drug to replace patent expirations, new ripoff scams, more war profiteering and emotional button pushing divide and conquer racist crap just DO NOT GET IT (or maybe they do get it and are insanely trying to make hay out of it).

The people in charge of our dysfunctional clusterfuck are akin to that psycho Whiteapple that led the heaven’s gate cult. They will not change to a sustainable paradigm because THAT requires subordination to the reality that we are a product of the ecosphere and the humble acceptance that we do not understand it yet so, until we do, we must henceforth emulate natural processes of cradle to grave recycling in all industrial technology and outlaw destructive activities like war or perish. No, they prefer to insanely reduce the world population by environmental collapse in the ridiculous la-la land elite hope that then the ecosphere will cure itself and they can continue their merry resource extraction paradigm as if nothing happened. It won’t work because these reductionist morons in power with their scientific priesthood of techno nut balls are so full of pride from all their tremendous ‘contributions’ over the last two centuries that they cannot see the monstrous downside of the technology explosion and that, yes, technology can be developed and used in an environmentally friendly manner. They don’t want to do the work. They are supremely irresponsible and supremely greedy and incredibly stupid.

Instead of doing a rethink, they are just flooring the accelerator and increasing their propaganda blitz.

I am not against technology. Since about 1970 we have had the knowledge to use technology to produce an environmentally friendly and sustainable society free of poisons in food and industry in the scientific literature. It has been deliberately supressed time and time again. Imagine what it cost to cover the country with roads and power lines. Well, decentralized power, food and transportation would cost a hell of a lot less. It’s total bullshit that we can’t do this or that we are ‘hooked’ on oil or nuclear or natural gas. We could have switched away decades ago. In the 70s NASA used solar panels to bring electricity to a Navajo community which was not served by the local electric utilities in a southwestern state. It worked great and the utilities went ballistic. They wrote to NASA requesting the solar panel project be stopped because, even though those areas targeted by NASA were not adequately served by the utilities, the fossil fuel free energy would ‘force’ the utilities to lower their rates. NASA stopped the project.

The planet earth DOES NOT have an energy crisis. For you engineering types out there, just do the math on the energy required daily to lift trillions of tons of water vapor out of the rivers, lakes and oceans and deposit this at higher elevations in the form of rain and then try to tell me about how much it COSTS (ZERO!) and how we are running out of energy. What the planet earth has, is a HUMAN GREED AND STUPIDITY crisis among the 1%. But suppose we could dispense with all the agenda laced perjorative propaganda about renewables, agree to clean up the planet and eliminate fossil fuel, nuclear and any other kind of poisonous technology because we have no other choice?

Can it be done? Yes. Will it be done? Probably not. I just heard today (June 11, 2012) on the Thom Hartmann show that phytoplankton replacement in a bay in Maine has dropped 500% over a period of a decade or so. The phenomenum has now been confirmed as occurring globally. Phytoplankton produce approximately 50% of the oxygen on this planet through photosynthesis. They are not regenerating adequately because increased ppm of CO2 (now 400 ppm) is acidifying the oceans and killing them. Can the elite be so insane that they plan to meter our oxygen? I hope not. At any rate, we must accept that the fossil fuel economy is not an exercise in fun conveniences or a requirement to maintain ‘civilization’; it’s killing our oxygen supply now as well. We must switch to renewables.

In regard to available energy to maintain some level of ‘civilization’ with renewables, when I mentioned the world evaporation energy example,  I wasn’t alluding to energy collection through hydroelectric power (although dams certainly help as long as salmon runs aren’t thwarted), but using this vast amount of energy available free to shed light on the scientifically bankrupt view of quantifying energy by using bomb calorimeters like we did in college and energy mass per mole in rapid oxidation. Nature has never done it that way. Everything in our culture always wants to scale up a process or else judge it as wanting. That is assbackwards from a sustainable biological process point of view. In our bodies, the reason we have enzymes lowering the energy of activation in myriad chemical reactions occurring per second is to keep us from overheating and/or rapid ph changes that would kill us but the fact is that the enzymes accomplish a task with less energy than a straight forward math computation of the chemical reaction energy requires.

Capillary processes in us are unconcerned with “stream head'” like scientists or engineers are when they want to build a dam yet they work just fine manipulating Bernoulli forces to use the absolute minimum energy needed to move that blood so the heart pump doesn’t have to work as hard against vessel friction and pressure changes. In our techno-love affair, everything we do is geared to centralized and maximum power. For example we really do not need a lot of stream head to power a house because we can gradually pump water up to a reservoir in our house to give us electricity on demand. But the techno math says you need X amount of head for Y amount of kilowatts. That’s only true if you need all of that all the time. Sure, not everyone lives by a river or a stream but that is simply a small example. A giant Sequoia pumps over one hundred gallons of water hundreds of feet up every day through transpiration. The tracheal elements can stretch water molecules 27 atmospheres as long as the vacuum holds. The technology to make artificial tree water pumps has been around for decades but our society is STUCK on the energy density per mole fixation like a teenager that wants a hot car to ride to school instead of a small electric rechargable scooter.

Have you heard about the roaring forties?


That’s an area of latitude in the oceans of the southern hemisphere that is always turbulent. They alone could power the world’s energy demands after a ten year installation of wave and undersea current power collection systems that are already being deployed off of England and Scotland. In regard to corrosion issues with sea water and maintenance of deep water (massive pressures to deal with), I only ask that you consider technology equivalence hurdles that have long since been surmounted in nuclear power plants (the ultimate in corrosion challenges including hydrogen embrittlement that is not present with sea water) and oil undersea pipelines (pump sea water to a land reservoir and start the power cables from there as a cost effective low maintenance option).

At present, ocean oil rigs (which are mostly metal) have sacrificial anodes placed on them so electrolysis in most areas is thwarted. The anodes are replaced as they are used up.  And remember all we have learned through space exploration about metallurgy, high temperature insulation during re-entry and don’t forget microwave power transmission technology. We can do all this stuff. It’s really not as hard as putting a robot vehicle on Mars or building a space station in orbit.

It’s telling that Einstein described the photoelectric effect at the very beginning of the 20th century but the US government has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to develop solar panels (we only did it when we needed them in space) but it spent a fortune on the development of the bomb in the 30s while a large part of our populace was going hungry.

Have you ever wondered why the oil lobby never attacks nuclear power but spares no expense to demonize renewables with disingenuous propaganda and mendacity? Think about that a while. If you come to the conclusion that the nuclear power plants were put out there to make bomb material and get you to pay for it and were never, ever considered a viable alternative to fossil fuels for the production of electricity or a serious source of oil lobby competition, you win the prize.

There is also no excuse whatsoever for not using solar and electric power to run every single ship in the ocean. It would be child’s play to switch all automobiles and trucks to full electric as long we had geothermal, wind, tide and ocean current derived power 24/7, not to mention solar panels.

Do you know what oil tankers do after they offload the oil? They fill huge portions of the holds with sea water (for ballast) and then dump it when they get back to reload with oil. This massive pollution goes on day in and day out. We have a guaranteed continuous oil spill as long as we have a fossil fuel ocean tanker economy.

As for fertilizers and food production machinery requiring a massive amount of fossil fuels to feed 7 billlion humans, the fact is that using decentralized permaculture with humanure (after appropriate and low tech local processing to avoid disease pathogens) along with greenhouse technology for nordic climates can replace the fossil fuel required to run tractors, make fertilizer and insecticides and herbicides.


I mention farm machinery because there is increasing evidence that plowing needs to be replaced by non-plowing with perennial crops in order to stop the massive top soil loss and lowered nutrition of crop yield (they look the same but don’t have the same nutritional content). Other posters here are up on humanure and they are right. I recommend anyone repulsed by this to think again. Feces are an inseparable part of being human and it’s high time we stopped with this Victorian idiocy of seeing it as bad stuff; it’s part of our salvation as a species. An added plus with humanure through the avoidance of chemical fertilizers is no more ocean dead zones and massive top soil degradation. Also the energy and water savings in not pumping human waste to be treated with chemicals (made with fossil fuels) in a sewage treatment plant would save billons of dollars.

Examples of how renewables can switch us off of fossil fuels  quickly: www.euronews.com/2012/05/27/germany-breaks-solar-energy-record
www.euronews.com/2012/06/06/solar-plane-completes-maiden-intercontinental-flight www.euronews.com/2012/03/05/sea-solution-to-future-energy-needs www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/renewableenergy/3535012/Ocean-currents-can-power-the-world-say-scientists.html

Pelamis wave power device that looks like a giant snake: www.weirdlyodd.com/10-renewable-energy-sources/

Zero energy balance hotel: www.euronews.com/2012/05/16/go-green-get-growing

I think this can be done in TEN years, not forty: www.euronews.com/2012/05/18/in-40-years-every-home-every-building-will-be-a-power-plant-says-jeremy-rifki

Growing food and the fossil fuel ‘requirement’ is a dependency created by the fossil fuel industry but we CAN shake that dependency without mass starvation and depopulation: www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/85/1/Fuel-and-food.html

“The strategic goal of biofuel is to supplement or even replace fossil fuels, the amount of which is constantly and rapidly diminishing.” haitireconstruction.ning.com/page/biofuel-1

I’ve already mentioned my views on the population explosion and its causes but I wish to point out how the oil lobby has tried to make fossil fuel brownie points out of it.

Remember the green revolution of the 60s, 70s and 80s that supposedly caused the population explosion? The numbers are in. The yields are not statistically different with all the fossil fuel fertilizer, herbicides and insecticides than without them. The green revolution is a lie fostered by, you guessed it, the fossil fuel lobby.

Their only valid claim is the fuel for machinery which now turns out to lower crop nutrition from top soil plowing degradation. This degradation is caused by a combination of chemical fertilizers and plowing (bare soil tends to blow away when dry or erode when wet) which leaches the soil of trace minerals needed to produce nutritious and tasty as opposed to bland crops. The way things stand right now, agricultural guidelines in the U.S. state that it’s okay to lose 4 tons of top soil per acre per year from ‘modern’ farming techniques. The government claims it is the price we pay for high ‘yields’. Are you comfortable with that? I’m not. Considering top soil regeneration takes over 100 years, I cannot believe we are doing anything but losing massive amounts every year.

And last but not least, the militaries of the world are the most voracious users of fossil fuel. We sure as hell do not need them to keep 7 billion fed and clothed. The U.S. Navy, in particular, has the top spot as fossil fuel user AND polluter.


We need gradual, decentralized trickle charge or slow pumping energy storage systems for sustainable humanity. Anything else is not viable for the planet. If we want to zip around at high speed and be able to have instant this and that, yes we have an energy crisis. If we want to emulate biological processes and eschew the love affair with higher energy density per mole of fossil and or nuclear poisons killing the planet, we don’t have an energy crisis.

Nature paces everything; so should we.

All that said, there is the 1% with their hubris and arrogance and there is the rest of humanity. The agenda of the 1% is a tad different from the rest of us. I agree the knockdown is coming. The people controlling the levers of innovation and adaptation in our governments and the elite parasites that own them want this knockdown so it will come. I maintain that the false notion of a causal relationship between a large population and a polluted, unsustainable, fossil fuel dependent human society is the driving force behind this elite desire for a knockdown. The elites are the only truly unsustainable population on this earth because of their mega-carbon footprints.

So, in true Wall Street Orwellian fashion, they blame the bulk of the 7 billion humans for THEIR piggery and slavish dependency on fossil fuels. The 1% that owns our governments loves the predatory resource extraction paradigm despite the fact that some of them probably suspect that it will cause a population knockdown, not from lack of fossil fuels, but from environmental collapse. Billions of humans dying is considered a good thing by the 1%. They think it will solve the world’s environmental problems and provide a more manageable population of slaves. The 1% probably grumble about minimum gene pool diversity species population required in order to perpetuate homo sapiens. The 1% think robots will take care of all the ‘important’ work while medical technology available to the 1% will provide them with 150 year plus lifetimes. They are wrong and they are the cancer that is destroying humanity.

There’s a way to clean up this world and live sustainably. Killing off several billion is a straw man. It’s typical elite bullshit adding two an two and getting whatever answer keeps them in the catbird seat. The media will continue to block the truth from the people 24/7.

I apologize if I tried to cover too much ground here but this situation we are in has matured for well over a century and we need to see how we got here to understand, if we survive, how to prevent a new set of snakes from selling us snake oil in the future.

Feel free to pass all or any part of this rant with or without attribution.

Everything I wrote can be researched free on the internet if you want to post links about horse plagues, NASA correspondence with utilities, Henry Ford and hemp plastic, Rockefeller chicanery, U.S. solar panel development reasons, Americans starving while the bomb was being developed, Bernays propaganda tools, etc.

A.G. Gelbert

Posted in Energy, Home | Tagged Automobiles, Energy, Fetilizer, Horses, Oil, Permaculture, Propaganda, Sustainability, Waste


« Last Edit: July 09, 2018, 01:17:29 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Carrying capacity is a function of carbon footprint in humans (unlike other non tool making species). The issue of resource depletion is not relative to our physical biomass.

//People will not give up their pickup trucks until Warren Buffett gives up his jets and multiple houses. The fact that a few of us have reduced our carbon footprint voluntarily as an act of conscience does not mean that most aren't still Bernays brainwashed.   
//The above statement is an excellent example of scientific blinders in the service of raw wealth. The hypermobility alone of these rich would skew their footprint up (lots of vehicles of all sizes) if those engaged in this study had bothered to count boats, cars, airplanes, etc.
// Every addict can go cold turkey and the pushers will adjust by giving the "drug" away really cheap until they hook a new set of addicts. Focusing on the addicts while giving lip service to the evils of the 1% to the point that the addicts are given a 40/60% (99% carbon footprint vs 1% carbon footprint) responsibility ratio in biosphere degradation when it is more like a  20/80% ratio is  just plain wrong and doomed to failure. Of course the 1% love this kind of "blame the victim" illogic.


AG,
I don't often comment on your energy analysis posts because I really don't have much to add. Just wanted to post this to tell you how much I appreciate them. You have a wealth of information and some keen analysis at the ready, as well as a good nose for bullshit, as the above post demonstrates. This great stuff, Glad you are here among us, licking the windows at the back of the Diner...

Why not turn the above into a blog article. Meanwhile, I'm posting this on the FB page.

As Willem Dafoe said to William Peterson in "To Live and Die in LA," "I like your work."


Quote
The fact that these oil energy loving F U C K S that call themselves scientists can believe it’s wrong to run your car in a garage but a mark of “advanced civilization” to do it outside is proof that they are SERIOUSLY math challenged idiots. The killer combination for mankind is a love of science and a lack of consideration about its place in the world. Have a nice day.

AMEN! :exp-angel:

Surly1,
Thank you. Since the post was a subset of the article, it is technically part of the main article already published but I now realize from your comment that the issue of biopshere human population carrying capacity and carbon footprint is such a bone of contention that I will have to taylor an article that focuses exclusively on those areas. 👍

WHD,
Thanks. I posted a less fleshed out version of that article at The Oil Drum and they were not happy campers about it, to put it mildly.

Here's the response thread there. It just makes me tired to read how unwilling these people are to look their bias in the eye.


 
Quote

Richard Eis on September 4, 2012 - 9:51am 

Too long. Didn't read.
It seems the twitter curse governs even issues of life and death for the biosphere (see Chomsky on how concision truncates clear thinking and favors propaganda).
 
Quote
jokuhl on September 4, 2012 - 10:48am 

You seem to have useful ideas, but like Richard, I would ask you not to put in a whole chapter or a book. It's considered hogging the thread.
 
The use of "BS" in the first sentence also quickly made you seem fairly rude and ranting.. making it hard to take anything afterward very seriously.. though as I said, I think some of the ideas in there probably will be great to have discussions on.. just not great speeches or treatises, if you please.
 
As Leanan says sometimes.. 'get your own blog if you want to share that much stuff'. This is appropriately called a discussion.
 
Best,
 Bob
This type of response masks a pedantic and dictatorial mindset. His apparent appreciaition for my ideas is a device to appear objective; his next comment (farther down towards the end)  makes that clear.
Quote
 

TOD Community Moderator on September 4, 2012 - 11:13am

Yes, please keep your posts a moderate length - we'll tolerate longish ones if they're nicely formatted - i.e. use your return to make clear paragraphs.

Commenters are able to edit posts until someone replies to them. If you'd like to start over and post a clearer and more concise comment, I'd be happy to hide the old one.
 
Best to all,

Kate

[edit - I returned to disguise profanity - we may have school age kids reading - also added para returns]
She's right. RE is always on my ass about my paragraphing problems. I just slammed that in there in an attempt to gain some readers here as per a request from RE. But again, this sort of pedantry, no matter how polite, is dancing around the meat and potatoes issues on energy that I addressed. Why didn't this moderator go read my linked articles to see where I was coming from? Pro-Oil bias. It's easier to attack the grammar than the ideas. We have all dealt with people that, to avoid discussion, correct your pronunciation (in the English language, many words have two valid pronunciations, e.g. pralines, but people use that to either locate where you grew up or correct you to win argument brownie points and avoid issue discussion). School age kids cuss more than adults do. Is she kidding? No, just being pedantic. Leanan has already made clear to RE that she won't post our articles there so I had to give it the old college try to see if a few with two neurons still rubbing together successfully would come over here.
 
agelbert on September 6, 2012 - 9:23pm
Very well. Let me discuss some facts in a profanity free manner. The above article was admittedly long and not fully fleshed out. I did so at the Doomstead Diner that posted the article today.
 
This is a very brief summary of the problems we face and I feel are, at best, insufficiently addressed or ,at worst, ridiculed in sites like this that display a bias towards petroleum products:
 
CH4 + 2O2 ---> 2H2O + CO2
 Burning hydrocarbons is trouble for planet Earth's biosphere.

The absorption of terrestrial radiation is dominated by triatomic molecules – O3 in the UV, H2O, CO2 and others in the IR because it so happens that triatomic molecules have rotational and vibrational modes that can easily be excited by radiation with wavelengths in the IR.The Earth radiates energy away at the same rate as it is received from the Sun. The Earth's emission temperature is 255K; that of the Sun, 6000K. The outgoing terrestrial radiation peaks in the infrared; the incoming solar radiation peaks at shorter wavelengths, in the visible.

The emission of terrestrial radiation is a function of the Earth's radiative temperature. Earth radiates in the IR band. Therefore even a tiny addition of triatomic molecules such as CO2 and H2O will result in a powerful positive feedback mechanism. Burning hydrocarbons destabilizes Earth's radiative equilibrium profile. It is irresponsible for the petroleum industry to pretend otherwise.
 
Published EROI studies at The Oil Drum such (Hall) pretend the application of science and mathematics to determine energy return on energy invested. However, in thermodynamics, applying the law of conservation of energy to determine enthalpy is only half the picture. You must also compute entropic effects as well. That is, you must take the energy density per mole and determine how much WORK it can accomplish in the real world. Hall and associates fail to do that. If they had done this for ethanol vs gasoline, they would find that the higher octane ethanol is a better fuel for the ICE (internal combustion engine) than than gasoline. All you need to do to get equivalent mileage per gallon or litre is to burn the ethanol in a high compression engine. This was proven as far back as 1906 in Edison Labs research funded by the US Navy (Google it!).

Furthermore, ethanol does not require a catalytic converter so the entropy is decreased and overall energy output in the form of mechanical WORK is increased. The rabbit hole on ethanol is deep and goes back to Rockefeller gifting religious fundamentalist organizations with millions of dollars to get Prohibition passed. I don't believe it is any coincidence that less than a year after Prohibition destroyed ethanol (it became illegal, not just to drink, but to produce and use as fuel) as a competitor to gasoline, the Tetra Ethyl Lead poison additive to gasoline increased its octane rating to a level comparable with ethanol. You know how tetra ethyl lead ended up being banned for the horrible effects on humans and other life forms.
 
Petroleum energy's ultimate source is the sun, not an oil drum or a well. Why then, is your site named "The Oil Drum" instead of "The Sustainable Sun"? Why the "Drumbeat" campy title for an energy discussion forum instead of the "PhotonBeat"? Because you suffer from endowment bias. This is unscientific in a site that claims they back up everything they say with science. Politicized EROI formulas neglecting real world application efficiencies and entropy in order to make petroleum products look favorable is flawed science.

We address this issue in detail at the Doomstead Diner web site. Our motto is "Save as many as you can". There is no censorship. People that don't properly reference their ideas with scientifically proven facts are not banned but are identified as pushing opinions as facts. Anyone that questions facts, as those I have just stated above, by claiming they are opinion with pejorative remarks like "this is speculative and not real world" must show some facts to back up their assertions besides unethical debating tactics (e.g. my resume is bigger than yours).

Learn what a proper formulation of the EROI formula should be composed of free from propaganda, politics and the petroleum profit motive.

Renewables, why they work and fossil and nuclear fuels never did

 
Carbon Footprint and how the 1% skew the per capita numbers in the USA (Joe 6 pack uses much less energy than is claimed) is discussed, among other subjects of interest to Oil Drum readers, here:

Sexual Dimorphism, PowerStructures and Environmental Consequences of Human Behaviors

Unlike most sites, the comments on these articles do not get shelved or disappeared into dusty archives. The thread is preserved and you can read through the whole thing. You can tear the articles to pieces and use profanity if you wish to accentuate your prose. As long as you don't conflate opinion with facts and vice versa, you will be listened to. Come one, come all and show us your debating skills.



Quote
Richard Eis on September 7, 2012 - 5:07am

Petroleum energy's ultimate source is the sun, not an oil drum or a well. Why then, is your site named "The Oil Drum" instead of "The Sustainable Sun"?

Oil has not been sunlight for millions of years and went through several different processes between then and now. Endowment bias? Really?
 
All you need to do to get equivalent mileage per gallon or litre is to burn the ethanol in a high compression engine.
 
Compressing a fuel doesn't change the fact that you still need more of it than gasoline to run your engine (nearly 40% more apparently). Considering that this fuel source is usually taken from our food stocks, this is never going to be a "good" solution regardless of how you play with the EROI.

The poster finds it unreasonable for me to claim the blog expresses pro-oil bias with its title because the sun produced oil carbon sequestering (he doesn't seem to know that petroleum deposit creation is a mechanism scientists have proven is a temperature regulation biosphere mechanism) occurred millions of years ago but appears quite comfortable with the totally irrational mindset that burning something that took millions of years to create in a space of 150 years or so is rational.  :BangHead:

Notice the incorrect statement about compressing fuel. This is false. Fuel economy is identical. Changing the compression RATIO of an ICE does not change the AMOUNT of fuel to achieve a given amount of mechanical work. This is disngenuous bullshit.  I advocate that HALL and associates are the ones playing with the EROI formula and the debater claims I am the one wanting to "play" with it. Again, if they would bother to go to the "behemoth" (see Ashvin and Ilargi) discussion of EROI in my renewables article they would see the US Government references that prove HALL is the one playing to keep oil looking better than ethanol.

The "taking energy products from foodstuffs" tradoff is big oil propaganda. I discuss that in a response to Mark_BC who brings up the same, invalid, point. Corn ethanol was set up to fail. It is one of the WORST biomass products that could have been chosen for biofuels because it requires soil tilling, chemical fertilizers and pesticides". It was wrongheaded from the start; set up to fail. The US oil oligarchy in action.
 
Quote
Nick on September 7, 2012 - 9:38am 

Compressing a fuel doesn't change the fact that you still need more of it than gasoline to run your engine (nearly 40% more apparently).

Actually, it does. Raising compression ratios increases efficiency. Audi has reduced the ethanol penalty to 12%.

At last. One person dealing with thermodynamic truth and objective scientific facts. I hope Nick makes it over. There is actually an energy "penalty" from burning gasoline (catalytic converters - poisonous exhaust fumes - global warming) but at least  Nick is thinking.

Quote
Richard Eis on September 7, 2012 - 2:24pm 

12% down from 40% is pretty good. What's the energy loss from compressing the fuel though? That probably won't be a huge factor but it would be a nice to know.
 

Nick on September 7, 2012 - 3:22pm 

What's the energy loss from compressing the fuel though?
 
Hard to tell - the compression happens during the engine combustion cycle, so the energy output is a net figure.

They need to read the linked articles but they are, apparantly, two twittered to be throrough. Hell, just doing some Google research on ethanol vs gasoline, enthalpy and mechanical work from both would give them their answer (along with some easily disprovable -no sources, just talk- pro-gasolene PR).

Now, good old BOB doesn't seem to like the direction the "energy" discussion is going with the ethanol heresy so here comes the petroleum calavary to the rescue of mendacity in the service of oil (i.e. it's time to attack the mesenger in order to discredit the argument!).
 

Quote
Richard Eis on September 7, 2012 - 5:16am

Petroleum energy's ultimate source is the sun, not an oil drum or a well. Why then, is your site named "The Oil Drum" instead of "The Sustainable Sun"?
 Oil has not been sunlight for millions of years and went through several different processes between then and now. Endowment bias? Really?
 All you need to do to get equivalent mileage per gallon or litre is to burn the ethanol in a high compression engine.
 Compressing a fuel doesn't change the fact that you still need more of it than gasoline to run your engine (nearly 40% more apparently). Considering that this fuel source is usually taken from our food stocks, this is never going to be a "good" solution regardless of how you play with the EROI.

 

jokuhl on September 7, 2012 - 11:32am 

Agelbert,
 Seeing that you're really here to push the Doomstead diner, is it really necessary to toss in snyde remarks about the site that is hosting this comment? You may have seen some recent threads where many posters here have expressed their gratitude for having a site which keeps high standards of both civility and supported arguments. It's far from perfect, but it's very good compared to anything else I've seen online.
 
I may peek in to DD at some point, but even without profanity, your tone upstages your points, and I see no reason amongst the ideas you've presented for expecting to have a fruitful discussion over there.

After the initial responses asking for less than a chapter, it might have been more useful to pick a single idea you want to take on, such as EROEI, and let that issue go forward conversationally. (unless it's really off-topic to the thread, which we've now pretty much become..) But it doesn't seem like that's what you're here for. It IS what I am here for.
 
Bob
I think I know what BOB is there for; it sure as hell is not an objective discussion of energy, thermodynamics or EROI. His deliberate respelling of EROI to EROEI (both acronyms are used by wikipeda and Hall to mean the same thing) is more evidence of pedantic pissantry. BOB LIKES the current EROI "formulation". That's what BOB is all about. If he had bothered to read the "Renewables, why they work and fossil and nuclear feils never did", he would understand that the ENTIRE THRUST OF THE ARTICLE was a detailed deconstruction of EROI formulation! You CANNOT do that "conversationally" in a forum thread. He just does not want to go there. 
 

Quote
BlueTwilight on September 7, 2012 - 8:47pm

Written by agelbert:
 CH4 + 2O2 ---> 2H2O + CO2
 Burning hydrocarbons is trouble for planet Earth's biosphere.
 
Burning large amounts of fossil hydrocarbons is trouble for Earth's biosphere. Reverse the reaction:
 
2H2O + CO2 + energy ---> CH4 + 2O2
 
The energy could come from sunlight. It is easier to store methane than hydrogen.
Another fellow with his thinking cap on. RE is right. There are a few over there that aren't lost to big oil. What BlueTwilight just did is define renewable energy from photosynthesis or some other CO2 + H2O chemical process. I hope he comes over.


Quote
Nick on September 7, 2012 - 9:48pm 

Are you thinking of utility-scale energy storage?
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_hydrogen_storage
Nick is thinking. I hope he comes over here to see that decentralized, rather than utility scale renewable is the only viable answer although utitlity scale does have a role in that picture.

I wish I could say I am geting more optimistic. Im not. It was all I could do to just get out of bed today. I just learned hose FUC KING Russians have been dumping radioactive waste in the arctic ocean for DECADES! Scientists at the cryosphere web site are scratching their heads wondering why the ocean bordering Siberia has such an unusually high temperature. Word is out that there is a nuclear sub the Russians scuttled in the 80s (with nuclear fuel in it) that may rupture now. Some say it is in danger of exploding. I don't know but does it really matter? Radionuclide contamination aside for a moment, this stuff puts out unending HEAT. Man, we are SO ****.

Quote
Evolution of sea surface temperatures in August
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East Siberian and Chukchi seas on August 5, 2012. SSTs were as much as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal along the coastal areas in those seas.

Quote
Old ice continues to decline

CFS has left the human society "building"http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Quote
jokuhl on September 4, 2012 - 10:48am 

You seem to have useful ideas, but like Richard, I would ask you not to put in a whole chapter or a book. It's considered hogging the thread.
 
The use of "BS" in the first sentence also quickly made you seem fairly rude and ranting.. making it hard to take anything afterward very seriously.. though as I said, I think some of the ideas in there probably will be great to have discussions on.. just not great speeches or treatises, if you please.
 
As Leanan says sometimes.. 'get your own blog if you want to share that much stuff'. This is appropriately called a discussion.
 

This is the kind of BS I simply cannot STAND, because it OBVIOUSLY turns the Blog into a One Way Street.

Leanan can go ahead and drop on 20 Copy/Pastes in her Drumbeat to total out 3000 words or more, but anybody who wants to COMMENT on what she just dropped down has to keep it to 500 Words or less or be accused of "Hogging" the thread, using too much "bandwidth" yadda yadda.

This is ridiculous because in reality nobody can "Hog" essentially Unlimited Space.  If people find your stuff too LONG, they can Scroll over it in a couple of seconds.  The bandwidth argument is equally absurd for Text, the Complete works of Shakespeare in text is only 5 megabytes, around the same as a 30 second video.  Even a 10,000 word article uses negligible bandwidth.

What you get from this is the Blog equivalent of TV Soundbites.  You can't have a real debate about anything if everybody is restricted to 3 or 4 paragraphs the MOST.  The whole purpose is to insure that what gets published on The Oil Drum is the propaganda that Leanan wants to spin out.

Finally that "Get Your Own Blog" argument is worthless, because with a Million Bloggers out there each writing their own Propaganda Blog, nobody actually talks to each other.  Will Leanan ever show up on the Diner to debate me on anything?  Of course not, Hell Freezes Over before that happens.  Similarly, it is highly unlikely even IF the Futilist enlists some "scientists" in a Critique of Mr. Wizard he would ever show up here to debate on a level Playing Field.  He might show up on TOD where he knows the Group Think is basically with him and he will be supported by the Mods as an "Expert", but he won't show up here where he is just considered another Debater in the game, and his "Credentials" as an Arch Druid and Ph.D. Historian don't garner the "respect" he thinks he should get.

It is this sort of Nonsense that underpins the REASON I started the Guerilla Internet Free Speech Project.  The only way to BREAK this is to have many Guerillas out there posting on these websites and making it impossible to Censor EVERYBODY.  Sadly though, the number of people who are like AB and myself and who will go out and CHALLENGE the Group Think on other Blogs and Boards is remarkably small.  Just about everybody claims they believe in Free Speech, but few people will go out and actually FIGHT for it.

Case in point, we have had a pretty large Influx of TOD members here already, but so far as I can see not a single one has confronted Leanan WRT these Policies on TOD.  "Not my FIGHT, and I don't wanna be BANNED also!"

It is NOT of course just Leanan here, though she is amongst the worst of the Censor/Bloggers on the Net.  Karl Denninger is FAMOUS for Capricious Bans, at one point he did a Mass Genocide of over 100 Commenters for the SIN of just MENTIONING 911 on Ticker Forum.  If you appeared to be a "Troofer" to Karl, you got sent to the Great Beyond JUST for that.  Ilargi on TAE is not much better, he Swings His Dick around TAE all the time, and we have at least 3 refugees from that here: Karpatok, Agelbert and of course El Gallinazo who got creamed because of his Alien Conspiracy articles and comments.

Anyhow, here on the Diner, Free Speech runs the show even more than RE does.  I have lost quite a few members because I won't Violate Free Speech principles.  I put this Principle up above even some of my closest Friendships in cyberspace.  SOMEBODY has to stand up for Free Speech and allow ALL perspectives to be heard, at whatever length the Author feels he needs to get his Points across.  See the Dirdy Birdy Chronicles to understand this better.

I am happy to provide this Free Speech Zone on the Internet for so long as I can, but it is not enough.  To truly get the MESSAGE out, we need MORE Guerillas willing to put it all on the line for Free Speech on other Blogs and Forums.  I can do nothing more though than Lobby for the importance of this and ecourage you to Stand Tall for the priniciple.

Meanwhile, until we have enough Guerillas who will fight this battle, The Castle that Peter Built is the HOME for Free Speech on the Internet.  Manned by Surly the PEACENIK who will do everything he can to bring CFS into an argument and keep the Diners together; and manned by RE the FIGHTER who won't EVER let any other Troll or Industry Shill screw up Diner Debates.  NOBODY messes with the Diners on my Watch, EVER.  Go Trolling with me, Pitch the Smoke here on the Diner, you will REGRET THE DAY YOU WERE EVER BORN.  Or at least the day you chose to be an Internet Troll or Shill anyhow.

Just a Sod Buster here with my Trusty Rifle.  ;D  "Pa!  He MEANS it!!!!"


SPEAK FREE ON THE DOOMSTEAD DINER!
RE
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

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HERBS IN THE KITCHEN

Letitia L. Star is a healthy living writer who has written more than 1,100 published articles, including many cover stories for The Herb Companion, Mother Earth News (the Women's Health issue), Natural Home & Garden, GRIT and other publications. She specializes in writing about healthy eating, recipe development, natural products, gardening, enviromental issues and green living for magazines and online marketing communications. She can be reached at lstarsave@gmail.com or (847) 869-3775


My favorite—and most popular—article that I have written for The Herb Companion  is "4 Recipes for Quick Pickles," published in the September 2009 issue, with a follow-up quick-pickling blog posted in May 2010.
 
I would like to offer one more original quick pickling recipe showcasing garlic. You can make these pickles with cucumbers or a plethora of other fresh vegetables plucked from your own garden or farmers' market, including summer squash, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, onions and more.
 
My original, quick method takes only 10 to 20 minutes to assemble. Unlike traditionally canning methods, no special equipment is needed. Just use clean glass jars with lids. (This is a great way to reuse old pickle, olive or salsa jars.) Refrigerate and consume in about a week.


Pickle Jars


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Quick Herb Taste: Garlic, Lemon, Peppercorns & Bay Pickles

If you love garlic, this quick pickle recipe is for you. I prefer the strong, pungent taste of German or Russian garlics to make these refreshingly tangy, peppery pickles. This recipe also is a wonderful way get the most out of fresh lemons. Scrape out any of the white pulp of used lemons and thinly slice the peel into vertical strips. While black peppercorns are excellent, also consider red or white peppercorns or multi-color peppercorn mixes.

• 1 (16-ounce) clean glass jar
• 1 to 2 cups of sliced cucumbers
• 2 to 4 fresh garlic cloves, crushed (more to taste)
• 1 to 2 bay leaves
• 3 to 4 sliced thinly-sliced lemon peels, preferably organic
• 1/2 tablespoon freshly **** peppercorns, or regular black pepper
• 1/2 tablespoon whole peppercorns
• 1 tablespoon coarse kosher or sea salt
• 1/3 cup cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
 
1. Peel and slice cucumbers into 1/4 inch round slices. In the clean jar, tightly pack cucumbers, garlic, lemon peels, **** peppercorns until 3/4 full.
 
2. Combine vinegar, salt, lemon juice, peppercorns and bay leaves in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer and gently stir until salt dissolves. Remove from heat.
 
3. Add 2/3 cup of cold water to this mixture and let cool. Carefully remove bay leaves and add to jar. Pour cooled liquid in jar to cover cucumbers, garlic, bay leaves and lemon peels. Add more cold water if needed. Leave room at the top. 
 
4. Refrigerate for about an hour until chilled. Your pickles are now ready to eat. Keep refrigerated and consume in about a week. (Don't store on shelves.)
 
My Favorite Herb Suppliers
 
I buy culinary herbs for recipes and more from these four prized companies.

+ Mountain Rose Herbs   
+ Frontier Natural Products Co-op 
+ Monterey Bay Spice Company 
+ San Francisco Herb & Natural Food Co. 


Read more: http://www.herbcompanion.com/herbs-in-the-kitchen/quick-pickling-garlic-peppercorn-bay-pickles.aspx#ixzz26EeuVIYh

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

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Rethinking Herbal Medicine

A phylogenetic study of traditional plant remedies could aid drug development.
 
By Beth Marie Mole | September 10, 2012
Quote
The medicinal New Zealand flax (Phormium sp.). Phormium species are used traditionally by Māori people to treat a wide range of conditions, including skin, respiratory and gastro-intestinal problems. University of Warwick, United Kingdom, Andrew Clarke

Quote
Many scientists raise a skeptical eyebrow to traditional herbal treatments, but a new phylogenetic study suggests that such remedies may hold promise—for both medicine and drug development.
 
In the study, researchers from the University of Reading in the United Kingdom found that many medicinal plants used by nearly 100 cultures on different continents are related. Because these distant groups of people likely identified their plant therapies independently, such herbal treatments may be legit, the researchers argue, and the plants likely contain bioactive compounds that scientist could exploit for new drug therapies.
 
“People think there’s nothing new to be found,” said John Beutler, a leading chemist at the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Research, who was not involved in the study. “But, that’s just not true. Wherever we look, we find new stuff.” But critics still doubt whether researchers will be able to sort effective traditional remedies from the bogus ones, and whether pharmaceutical endeavors will follow.
 
In previous studies that tried to use cultural comparisons to find useful remedies, scientists struggled to make meaningful taxonomic comparisons. “If [local] floras are different, obviously plants that are used in traditional medicine will be different,” said Royal Botanic Gardens Kew postdoc Haris Saslis-Lagoudakis, lead author of the study, which was published today (September 10) in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. But Haris and his colleagues’ phylogenetic comparisons allowed them to link seemingly unrelated plants.
 
A plant trader selling medicinal plants at the Mona Market, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark, Gary Stafford
 
They constructed genus-level phylogenetic trees of plants from 3 disparate locations—New Zealand, Nepal, and the Cape of South Africa. Once they assembled their trees, they overlaid ethnobotanical data regarding the therapeutic uses of various plants by cultures from each of the three locations (one culture from New Zealand, three cultures from The Cape of South Africa, and more than 80 cultures from Nepal).
 
In the flora phylogenies for each of the three continents, medicinal plants clustered into “hot nodes,” meaning they were more related to each other than the other plants in the analysis. Further, categorizing medicinal plants by what condition they treated, the researchers found that medicinal plants clustered into condition-specific nodes, even when the analyses from all three locations were combined—again suggesting a high degree of relatedness for plants used to treat similar conditions and lending some validity to these herbal treatments.
 
Biomedical researchers have occasionally drawn from ethnobotany and traditional treatments when looking for new drugs, but the use of this strategy has waned in recent decades. Though more than 80 percent of plant species have not been tested for therapeutic potential, the last major drug discovered from plants was the cancer drug Taxol in 1967.
 
This lack of interest stems, in part, from skepticism about the legitimacy of traditional plant therapies. Many cultures use medicinal plants for multiple ailments, for example. If a plant is good for your stomach, people may start taking it for problems with their nearby liver, then their lungs, then their heart and head, and so on, said Daniel Moerman, a professor emeritus of the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a leading expert on ethnobotany and cross-cultural studies. This makes it difficult to determine what condition a medicinal plant may effectively treat.
 
Haris, who recently completed his PhD at the University of Reading, sidestepped the issue by accounting for all the documented conditions each plant treated. “We scored everything—all of the uses that are defined—and let the results speak for themselves.”
 

Pseudowintera colorata, a plant species used medicinally in New Zealand. Pseudowintera species are used traditionally by Māori people to treat skin conditions, respiratory problems, and to help heal wounds. Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand, Steven Wagstaff

Another criticism facing the study is that cultures sometimes use symbolic visual cues to identify potentially disease-treating plants. For example, it may be common for traditional healers to treat menstrual symptoms with plants that have red flowers, explains evolutionary biologist and senior researcher on the study Julie Hawkins. Such appearance-based selection would suggest that relatedness of medicinal plants is due to looks, not bioactivity.
 
“But, we’re finding a lot of morphological variation amongst [related medicinal plants],” Hawkins said, which suggests that visual cues don’t explain their relatedness.
 
The researchers also looked at plants being developed or already in use as drug therapies around the globe and found a significant number fell in the nodes with the traditional medicinal plants, further supporting the validity of the method in identifying plants useful for drug discovery. The team noted several plant genera related to traditional medicinal plants that have not been tested for bioactivity, which could serve as low-hanging fruit in the search for new therapies.
 
Both Beutler and Moerman expressed skepticism, however, that pharmaceutical companies would jump at the new approach to guiding their drug discovery, as the industry has largely shifted toward robotic, high-throughput screens of chemical libraries. But new approaches are always welcome, Beutler said. “The perception is that we’re doing the same old grind and find, and it’s just not the case.”

http://the-scientist.com/2012/09/10/rethinking-herbal-medicine/

It's good to see scientists doing good science instead of rejecting ancient and hard won knowledge out of hand.  

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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GO,
I do observe that scramble for Gold by the Chinese and Russians. It reminds me of dinosaurs (Empires "doing what they do") fighting among themselves for the top predator spot while they ignore that meteor in the sky.

I think they know the meteor is there. They ignore it because of their deeper concern about today and tomorrow.

Your 9/11 posting was awesome Agelbert, while I had problems understanding some of the physics, the over all message came through loud and clear. To be absolutely honest, it scared the living s h i t out of me, because it had the smell, feel, and created and instinctive knowledge within me that is definitely true.

Going to bed with a lot of whys on my mind, and of lot of things not fully understood before are fast becoming very clear, such as the 400 million bullet order and the Patriot Act. Thank you Agelbert for educating me in this most important matter.       GO


GO,
You are always welcome. The more we know, the better prepared we are to face an uncertain future. That is why I hunt around for information that may aid earnest individuals like the gathering we have here at the Diner to to be as well informed as possible given the fact that none of us here are privy to the elite data base.

My ATC experience has helped you and anyone that reads it to get an honest appraisal of the events that day. I can say the same for many bits and pieces of info I have obtained here from virtually everybody that posts, Ashvin included  :icon_mrgreen:. This is the type of synergy that human society can prosper from in the area of the intellect. Times are hard. We are all doing what we can to inform each other soberly and to keep our spirits up as well. I appreciate your constant updates on economics and government intrusion danger as well. 👍

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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