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2008-07-28 Science & Technology

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Posted by mhw 2008-07-28 11:58|| || Front Page|| [11130 views ] Top

#1 Just another cog in the wheel, I wish we'd take this multi-pronged approach to alternative fuels. Not just corn, but switchgrass, jatropha, et al.
The hippies are pushing hard for a base load built exclusively on solar and wind power. The dumbasses don't realize we'd have to plate the entire western plains with solar panels to do it.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2008-07-28 12:48|| 2008-07-28 12:48|| Front Page Top

#2 If these numbers are correct this amounts to 3 acres of trees per barrel. (1300 hectares for that commercial plantating)

When do I stop laughing?

Posted by AlanC 2008-07-28 13:23|| 2008-07-28 13:23|| Front Page Top

#3 The dumbasses don't realize we'd have to plate the entire western plains with solar panels to do it.

That could play havoc with the breeding of the Great Western Jackalope, and that wouldn't be right at all.

Posted by Grenter, Protector of the Geats 2008-07-28 13:44|| 2008-07-28 13:44|| Front Page Top

#4 Stratospheric fuel prices will cause the third world to strip mine and to bulldoze rainforest. Environmentalists, by supporting high fuel prices, encourage this behavior. It's a funny world.

Posted by Bin thinking again 2008-07-28 13:51|| 2008-07-28 13:51|| Front Page Top

#5 AlanC

well for corn you get about 400 bushels of corn for 3 acres and 3 gallons per bushel (and 1 barrel per 42 gallons) so those 3 acres get you 30 barrels.

however, that also requires fertilizer and you lose food

also, the corn we have now is many generations of productivity better than the corn grown even a century ago... the Jatropha could presumably be bred to be much more productive

Posted by mhw">mhw 2008-07-28 14:12|| http://hypocrisy-incorporated.blogspot.com/]">[http://hypocrisy-incorporated.blogspot.com/] 2008-07-28 14:12|| Front Page Top

#6 You don't have to plow and plant, fertilize, and rotate jatropha once it gets going either. It could turn vast tracks of barren land into productive acreage, or it could replace fragile prairies, savannas and old growth forests in the rush to make a buck or a yuan. I've got a good idea which way the chicoms will go with it.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2008-07-28 14:21|| 2008-07-28 14:21|| Front Page Top

#7 The former Indian President Abdul Kalam is a strong advocate of jatropa cultivation. He says that there are 300,000 square kilometers of wasteland in India that is suitable for Jatropa cultivation.

India's Big Plans for Biodiesel

Posted by john frum 2008-07-28 14:48|| 2008-07-28 14:48|| Front Page Top

#8 300,000 sq Km huh? and what are the environmental effects of a monoculture of that size (not to mention the collection and processing and refining needed)?

This goes along with the idea that we can pave the Sahra with solar cells to power europe. I think that one went about 110 sq miles per GW. BUT, that was at theoretical top efficiency with no loss to transmission degredation. I'm not sure but I think they also factored in 24hr/day use.

I'm all for energy diversity where it is effective and economically viable. Until I see a massive pro-nuclear movement I ain't buying the watermelon ideas.

Posted by AlanC 2008-07-28 14:56|| 2008-07-28 14:56|| Front Page Top

#9 Biodiesel entrepreneur Louis Strydom, in trying to establish a jatropha biodiesel plantation and refinery on a massive scale in Kenya finds that while subsistence biofuel production and refining as a supplemental crop by small farmers around the world is a viable economic model, large commercial scale production is quite a different matter [8]. For one thing, the yields and multiple annual harvests of Jatropha have been exaggerated; they can only be achieved under optimum conditions of rainfall, soil quality, and applications of insecticides and fertilizers.

Posted by john frum 2008-07-28 15:15|| 2008-07-28 15:15|| Front Page Top

#10 #3 Grenter - it's nice to see you're a Protector of the Jackalopes, too. ;-p

Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut 2008-07-28 15:19|| http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/]">[http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/] 2008-07-28 15:19|| Front Page Top

#11

Posted by 3dc 2008-07-28 16:48|| 2008-07-28 16:48|| Front Page Top

#12 John,

One of the few things I remember from biology was the idea that "under optimum conditions" a single bacterium would generate a colony the size of the earth in a week.

Of course the lesson was that optimum conditions never exist and all extrapolations aren't straight line.

This whole goofball warmering movement seems never to have learned those lessons.

Posted by AlanC 2008-07-28 16:58|| 2008-07-28 16:58|| Front Page Top

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