Is the end of the world thinking/view destructive ???

[FFH]

I wasn't addressing biofuels made from waste. If we can make that work, it beats tossing the stuff in landfills. I was only addressing growing crops to produce ethanol.

They aren't growing crops to produce ethanol, they are using the waste materials from these crops, like citrus (www.XEthanol.com), wheat, corn (www.PacificEthanol.com) or whatever (www.ConvergenceEthanol.com)

I miss my bike. But bike riding in Atlanta is like having a death wish, and my doc says I am in no condition to ride one now anyway. Dizzy spells and bike riding do NOT mix.

I've been to Atlanta and know exactly what you mean. Here in Utah I can get away with it because I live outside Salt Lake away from all the major traffic, but still I was hit once and spent a year recovering...

My dream is to retire to a small town near where I grew up, where you can walk anywhere. Or possibly to some other country where they don't worship cars quite like we do or have to cope with the distances we have.

Yeah well I only drive 7 miles to work and have ridden my bycicle, taken the bus and even walked the 7 miles a few times
..

You're dead wrong about this, FFH. For people who have food allergies, consuming ethyl alcohol made from the substance that the person is allergic to will trigger an allergic response.

Show me the proof of this. Ethyl alcohol is crystal clear. It looks like water and has almost no smell and burns clean...

I would be surprised to hear that any have any reaction to being around it.

Show me the proof of this.

Buy some ethanol and smell it and look at it it's safe unlike gas...

I've poured it on the pavement as a cleaner and it almost immediately evaporates with no residue or traces of it ever being on the pavement...

There is no way that you could have an allergic reaction to this stuff..It's pure alcohol and I know you drink so you are obviously not allergic to alcohol, which ethanol basically is. Just a fruit, grain and biomass alcohol distilled from the sugars naturally occuring in these biodegradeable materials.

If you're not allergic to sugar then you are not allergic to alcohol or ethanol, which is what ethanol is derived from.

It is for this reason I have to make ALL of my condiments -- ketchup, mustard, mayo, using apple cider or wine vinegar. If I buy anything off the shelf, it's made with distilled white vinegar, which is usually made from corn, and I will be sick as a dog afterwards.

Vinegar is not pure alcohol or ethyl alcohol. You drink don't you ???

And you are not going to be drinking the stuff anyway or even breathing it, it burns clean, just the 15 percent gas in E85 (85 percent ethanol 15 percent gas) puts out harmful emissions.

Or you could watch my business partner with her gluten allergy consume ethyl alcohol made from gluten-based grains. It's kind of hard to miss her reaction, as you have to duck and cover to avoid having her projectile vomit all over you. :cover:

Drinking alcohol produces vomiting so what else is new. Are you saying that just being around ethyl alcohol is going to make someone vomit. No one is going to fill up with this stuff and then take a swig at the pump and again it burns clean...

There is absolutely no way anyone will get sick just from filling up with ethanol. This is just ignorance on the consumers part...

If you check out some of the food allergy websites, you'll see what I'm saying is true. It does matter where the ethyl alcohol comes from.

Okay fine, but no one is going to be ingesting ethanol at the pump.

So just breathing the fumes of ethanol is going to make you, and all others allergic to ethyl alcohol, sick ????

As long as you don't have a fool allergy related to the source of the ethanol, in which case the stuff is highly toxic to you.

But if it's not ingested I don't see a problem. It's crystal clear and has been purified to no end. I highly doubt ethanol has any traces of the origianl plant in it..just a distilled sugar based chemical..

Allergies to what? It makes a huge difference. It makes my business partner ill to step into a bakery, but I have no problem with it. It makes me ill to step into a movie theatre, but she has no problem with it.

Okay fine but you are smelling a whole grain, not a sugar based distilled/processed alcohol..

If you're talking about airborne allergies like pollen and mold, you're talking apples and oranges here.

There is no may that smelling ethanol will bring about an allergic reaction.

Show me the cases, I'ld like to see proof of any such case... If there are any it would be extremely rare, I would think..

And I'm not saying gas is such a wonderful alternative overall -- people have problems with that too.

It's way safer than gas and evaporates cleanly if spilled and almost immediately with no residue.. Very very very safe...

But if we go hogwild with ethanol made from wheat, corn and soybean materials, there are going to be a lot of people feeling sicker and wondering why. And there will be some of us who know why and will be forced to move to preserve our health.

Ethanol based from wood and paper mill waste is the next step towards converting ethanol from municipal (toilet) waste, which is processed every day and the water sent back out to us to drink. That waste could be used to fuel our cars and it will, it has been prophesied this will happen..

All landfill biodegradeable and municipal wastes will be converted to ethanol by harnessing the E-coli bacteria which converts these materials into sugars which are converted into ethanol...

Yes, I know. Brazil is another place I could consider moving to.

South America is on the cutting edge of ethanol production and possibly the highest in ethanol consumption. They are way ahead of us in ethanol production.. Brazil, I'm sure is one of the top producing countries in the world as far as ethanol goes..

I know. I grew up around paper mills.

and this wood/paper pulp waste will soon be converted into ethanol...

I'm wondering though why companies are telling me how wonderful their paperless billing is, as if them saving money by not having to mail me something somehow benefits *me*, who still at this point has to print out the bill and file it just to keep the IRS happy. If they want me to do paperless billing, they can take some money off my bill -- they're paying less and I'm spending more of my time.

I don't have any bills mailed to me. It's all handled electronically and automatically and don't write off anything, just take the standard deduction.

I compost a great deal of what I do use. My part of Georgia had what little topsoil there is destroyed by bad agricultural methods during the cotton growing period. I have 4 nice inches of nifty black topsoil, though, and that's only after a few years. I swipe all my neighbors leaves too.

I mulch the leaves into the grass in the fall with the mower and it makes for a super super green lawn the next year.

Actually, I'm hoping that worst case scenario I can just move to somewhere remote enough and with enough air circulation to alleviate the problem. Northern Michigan would do. Heck, maybe I should move to Grayling and visit the Latvian Intelligence Officers there.

I think we will see more of a move towards fully electric or hybrids with ethanol burning combustion engines as the norm, but people love their internal combustion engines and ethanol will be the fuel of choice, especially when they see Formula 1 and Nascar vehicles running on them and the increased speed and mileage they get from running on ethanol verses gas. Ethanol will take off, but I would rather have a fully electric vehicle, they are much faster and produce more horse power with less noise...

 

[FFH]

http://www.edbegley.com/environment/

 

[Popeyesays]

Ethyl alcohol that you drink is never 100% grain alcohol. At most it is 50% (100 Proof). The rest of the contents of the whisky are water and residues of whatever the alcohol was made from. Bourbon, for instance gets it's amber color from the corn. Scotch gets its particular aroma, color and taste from the peat for the fire.

If you are allergic to barley--don't drink beer or Irish whiskey. If you're allergic to grapes, don't drink wine. If you're allergic to corn you'd best stay away from bourbon.

And by the way not all fuel ethanol is made from husks and silk and cornstalks, it's also made from the corn which is much richer in the sugars required to make ethanol. By using the corn you can make MORE ethanol in higher percentages.

The reason it costs more to feed cattle or buy corn products these days is because more and more corn is used for ethanol.

Methanol is made using everything from straw to wood shavings. The mash is very low in sugar so methanol produces even LESS energy per gallon than ethanol does.

The US Army made careful studies of how to burn alternate fuels and figures it takes four times as much ethanol to travel as far using gasoline--it require about six-and-half times as much methanol as gasoline.

Fact of life.

Heck buying gasoline in the heat of summer means the gasoline occupies more volume so there is less energy in a gallon of gasoline at 90 degrees fahrenheit than in a gallon of gasoline at 50 degrees fahrenheit.

A gallon is a measure of volume, not ergs or joules.

Regards,
Scott

 

[FFH]

The US Army made careful studies of how to burn alternate fuels and figures it takes four times as much ethanol to travel as far using gasoline--it require about six-and-half times as much methanol as gasoline.

I fill up at the same pump that the local U.S. military fills up at and I get better mileage when I fill up with 50/50 E85/gas mix and my engine does not stall at low speeds and runs much much smoother...

 

[Popeyesays]

David Pimental, a leading Cornell University agricultural expert, has calculated that powering the average U.S. automobile for one year on ethanol (blended with gasoline) derived from corn would require 11 acres of farmland, the same space needed to grow a year's supply of food for seven people. Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion into ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make one gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTUS. Thus, 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in it. Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs.
Mr. Pimentel concluded that "abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuels amounts to unsustainable subsidized food burning".
http://healthandenergy.com/ethanol.htm

Regards,
Scott

 

[Booko]

:biglaugh:

I :hearts: your avatar, Booko.

I can't claim credit for it...Chimpy sent it to me a while ago. (Thanks!)

How is the henhouse? Are you jamming up in the henhouse?

Yup, me and Mr. Rooster, though he was on trombone tonight. I don't have a dining room -- I have a music room. Priorities!

 

[Smoke]

Ethyl alcohol that you drink is never 100% grain alcohol. At most it is 50% (100 Proof).

Everclear is available in 190 proof (95% alcohol). Only your really hardcore alcoholics drink it straight, though. In South Carolina it's a popular ingredient in a strong, sweet fruit punch that in my youth was called PJ (short for Purple Jesus) -- but that name seems to have gone out of fashion.

 

[Booko]

Mr. Pimentel concluded that "abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuels amounts to unsustainable subsidized food burning".
http://healthandenergy.com/ethanol.htm

Thank you. One of my profs who did some great research at Love Canal and attended many Congressional hearings on Superfund sites, did some research into ethanol and depletion of topsoil back in the 70s before anyone much cared about the subject.

Mr. Pimentel is quite right, but various concerns in this country will not be involved in spreading the word that ethanol, and esp. corn ethanol, is energy-inefficient and will indeed deplete our topsoil over time.

If the material is not tilled back in, then nutrients and amendments have to come from somewhere.

They come from chemical fertilizers, which require quite a bit of fuel to produce.

The energy equation is so rarely restricted to just one element.

And somehow, we've turned a thread on the end of the world into a green fuels thread! :slap:

 

[Popeyesays]

Everclear is available in 190 proof (95% alcohol). Only your really hardcore alcoholics drink it straight, though. In South Carolina it's a popular ingredient in a strong, sweet fruit punch that in my youth was called PJ (short for Purple Jesus) -- but that name seems to have gone out of fashion.

When my father was in the Phillipines during the ending year of the Second World War it was customary on Friday nights for the inventory clerk to lose a couple gallons of medicinal alcohol (190 proof ethanol). It was mixed with kool-aid type punch and called "Torpedo Juice"--the other primary source of pure grain alcohol was as fuel for steam powered torpedos. So the navy tradition of this harsh punch was earlier than the US Army's medical version.

Regards,

Scott

 

[Booko]

Everclear is available in 190 proof (95% alcohol).

Yup, that's the strongest stuff. I don't recall what it's made from, though.

It's the other 5% that would knock me over, if it were the wrong thing.

I've had to make my own vanilla extract, using vanilla beans and potato vodka. There's not really anything I can use that I can trust to be unpolluted by corn.

However, the homemade stuff is a LOT better, and anyone can make it.

 

[Smoke]

Yup, that's the strongest stuff. I don't recall what it's made from, though.

It's the other 5% that would knock me over, if it were the wrong thing.

I've had to make my own vanilla extract, using vanilla beans and potato vodka. There's not really anything I can use that I can trust to be unpolluted by corn.

However, the homemade stuff is a LOT better, and anyone can make it.

Everclear has an ear of corn on the label, so I don't think that's for you. I have used it to make homemade extracts. I've never used vodka myself, and wouldn't have thought it would be strong enough unless I'd heard of it actually being done.

 

[Booko]

Everclear has an ear of corn on the label, so I don't think that's for you. I have used it to make homemade extracts.

I can't say I've noticed. Well, I haven't drank in probably a quarter century.

You make extracts? Hm...care to chat about that over in food? I'd love to learn more about making them.

I've never used vodka myself, and wouldn't have thought it would be strong enough unless I'd heard of it actually being done.

Yes, I got the info off a corn allergy forum, and it's worked like a charm.

I have a jar of the stuff now, and it's likely to last me for years. I will probably give some to my friend with the gluten allergy, as it's safe for her too. She can use the glycerin-based extracts, but since I don't know where that glycerin came from, that's not an option for me.

Besides, the "real deal" is much better than anything in the stores -- even better than the gourmet kinds I've used.

 

[painted wolf]

We will go exitinct, the Earth will hardly notice.

The only distructive aspect is when people seek to hurry that extinction allong.
We do seem to be happily marching to our collective doom, but hey every species/culture falls just after it peaks.

wa:do

 

[painted wolf]

Corn allergy!!
say it aint so!!

poor selu...
This is what happins when you eat too much outside your "natural"/"adapted" diet.

wa:do

 

[Smoke]

You make extracts? Hm...care to chat about that over in food? I'd love to learn more about making them.

Well, it's been a long time. Back before we got the Internet.