ring around the rosie?
I was reminded again today that Australia is, per capita, the biggest producer of greenhouse gases.
Our BIG ANSWER to Peak Oil, is Ethanol. Ethanol will save our sorry arse, John Howard reckons. I think he may have shares in Manildra P/L (a major ethanol producer). Now they tell me that to produce ethanol from sugar cane, carbon dioxide is a by-product. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major greenhouse gas.
I wanna know how much CO2 is produced for each litre of Ethanol. Any readers have any clues on this?
Our BIG ANSWER to Peak Oil, is Ethanol. Ethanol will save our sorry arse, John Howard reckons. I think he may have shares in Manildra P/L (a major ethanol producer). Now they tell me that to produce ethanol from sugar cane, carbon dioxide is a by-product. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major greenhouse gas.
I wanna know how much CO2 is produced for each litre of Ethanol. Any readers have any clues on this?
posted by The Editor at
9:42 PM
8 Comments:
I've just finished an article in New Scientist, 23 September 2006, pg 36 on biofuels but it's mainly concerned with how much land will be used to grow the source of these fuels and it doesn't say a word about your question.
Ron, "we need a more honest and questioning evaluation of all the 'alternative' fuels"...
Yes indeed. But in reality, we'll strip the panet bare to meet our lifestyle needs, we lifestyle junkies. Too bad about greenhouse effects or global warming. With the magic of FREE
TRADE, DEMOCRACY, and FREEDOM, it will all somehow sort itself out. And if it doesn't, if it all turns to shit, then God will save the faithful and the rest be damned... (Richard Merrell eat your heart out.)
JahTeh, yes, yes, yes. My question came out of watching Catalyst. Here's the link to the trascript. The CO2 thing can be found in the first comment made by David Heck in the transcript.
The xylose thing is interesting too Its formula is C5-H10-O5. Now, I'm no chemist, but when you convert that to ethanol with that new hybrid yeast, you might get some CO2 off it as well.
And anyway, what happens wehn you burn ethanol? What's given off?
As Ron said, maybe we need to ask more questions. Getting some bastard to tell the truth might be a bit difficult though...
Exactly ... but the real problem, we are gonig for the wrong gas !
I am working here in Delhi for a few weeks ... all the buses, taxis and mobikes are running on CNG ... this is not LPG ... guess what the emerging nations are going to ? CNG. Guess where they are buying it from ? Australia. Guess what Australia is doing ? Paying subsidies to convert to LPG and ethanol. Whooops.
Methane and CNG - dead easy fer the "commonsense" ppl. Mebbe we should insist on some gummint money to put a big plastic tent over Parliament house Canberra, and syphon off some of the methane.
Boondoggler, interesting. Very interesting. Motorbikes too? How is this done? I wouldn't mind converting my 255cc Super Sherpa to CNG. How do I compress NG, and where do I get a conversion kit for my bike? Questions, questions...
Davo, the shit emanating from Canberra is not methane. Methane is useful. Sadly, all Canberra can manage is hot air. And you can't run much on hot air, least of all a country. No, Dava, one solitary cow/bull produces more useful output than the whole of our lower and upper houses of parliament combined.
Time for revolution? You betcha!!!
But after the Eureka Stockade debacle, I doubt this country's gene pool has what it take to mount a successful revolution.
The world would be a better place if the pols just drank up the ethanol, spent the duration sleeping it off and let us all go do something less wasteful and more personally satisfying in our own back yards and neighborhoods.
G-8 be damned, how few people realize they don't need to fetch food and electronics and cars from half way round the world to live contented lives.
GS has hit on a good point: too much global moving of things that can be found right at home. This year I felt great satisfaction in eating many foods grown locally...much of it from my garden and my neighbors' gardens. I put local molecules right back into my body. It's a good feeling.
Energy production: I was wondering last week how many megawatts would be produced if the 35,999 to 28,000 soldiers on the Korean border had been pedaling stationary bicycles hooked up to generators for the past 40 years instead of whatever it is they do. I bet they would be in better health.
GS, and KR, couldn't agree with you more.
But that's not how US-style "free enterprise" works.
It was always going to be an ever-expanding thing, always needing new markets, always needing cheap and exploitable labour and other resources.
Wars of expansion (for "our" side) or contra-expansion against the "other" side became essential to the process. Hence the "other" side always had to be demonised and vilified through the use of lies, propaganda, misinformation and disinformation. Any nation or culture in the way of this expansion had to be either "liberated" or have its economy destroyed by whatever means were at hand. The subornment of the UN, sanctions and blockades for instance.
Consumerism, planned obselescence, and the "aspirational lifestyle" were also cute little invetions of this "free enterprise" thingie. "Progress" gave way to sanity and wisdom.
And of course, now, The Beast, in order to prevent its own demise, must go fully global. This means that any nation or culture resisting the global prowl of capitalists and their sucker-fishlike shareholders, must be "liberated" or smashed.
This military interventionist foreign policy of "liberation" or destruction was kicked into top gear by none other than your very own Woodrow Wilson way back around 1910 or so. And this policiy has been given bigger and bigger teeth since then.
In this climate of global domination by Das Kapital, your dreams of local self-sufficiency are not only frowned upon, they are deemed anathema by The Global Money Machine.
And as I've said several times before in this blog, when the expansion is complete, the machine must feed upon itself, and a return to a degenerate, corrupt ruling class serviced via slavery will be the inevitable outcome. Remember, you will be utterly ruled by the rulers of the global economy by then.
And a few of us will remember that the biggest, most brutal, and most sustained campaign, killing tens of millions along the way to establish and further this global capitalist agenda was the United States of America, "saving" the world so that it can exploit it utterly.
We will draw no real sense of satisfaction from the observation that now that the beast devouring us has escaped the confines of the US, it has begun to devour its erstwhile "best friends", the US and Europe. Such is the nature of Das Kapital once it has the whole globe in its grip.
I believe Marx and Engels had a few words to say about this vewry subject way back when this awful outcome was becoming discernable, and when The Beast could still have been contained.
Alas, we have listened to too many lies for too long, and now The Beast is unstoppable. It will gorge itself until it implodes, and then we'll see the Mother Of All Depressions on a planet whose climate and environments have been utterly trashed in the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar..
"We're on the road to nowhere..." Talking Heads.
Prozac, anyone???
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