Category: Biofuels

Coal ash Annuity battle–enviro groups want to play

Sure they do, and you might ask–why do enviro groups get to play and some citizen who wants to play can’t?
Continue reading Coal ash Annuity battle–enviro groups want to play

Another Stupid Biofuel

You can’t make this stuff up. Renewables projects are the playground of air heads. Here’s another stupid idea, jatropha–a bush now promoted as an alternative fuel source. Sorta like cane and corn to ethanol and canola oil for diesel additive. I am breathless with anticipation on the breakthrough that is jatropha.
Another waste of land and good resources to produce an inferior energy source that benefits from green projects and renewable fanaticism. Almost as maddening as taking away some remaining tiger and orangutan habitat, taking down forest for an inefficient plant that requires a carbon using process to be converted to fuel.
Any physicist can splain to you, if you believe in plants, that plants be made of compounds that are not energy dense–they must be converted by a process that takes energy to make something that has concentrated energy. Compression makes coal and petrol dense–they are cooked down in high pressure earth mantel.
Here’s the interesting thing.
We used to burn wood,because it had more electron bonds and energy than burning weeds and manure and trash, then we moved up to coal and oil because, by golly the physics favored our choice–high energy concentrations, now we are going back down the energy ladder? Help me out here, is that progress? Look at the waste of land and resources, even carbon imprint required because of the renewable religion of coalophobia and petrolophobia.
I know nuclear would be better, but that’s another lesson.,
Often wrong but never in doubt, the geniuses of the green community. Repeat after me–for miles driven ethanol produces more carbon dioxide because it is less energy dense. Moreover ethanol burns hotter and is hydrophilic so it is hard on engine parts. Ethanol adds increase the cost of fuel, it has a big land, carbon and water use footprint, and it only survives because of the politics of the ethanol mandate and a little thing called the Iowa caucuses along with our friends at Archer Daniels Midlands and the farmers who are getting rich on high priced corn while mexicans can’t afford tortillas.
Damn shame.
Read about jatropha below–it’s probably more stupid than ethanol if that is possible. After that, class dismissed.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/367178/print