Radical Noesis - Thinking outside the box

Willie Nelson has a bio-diesel touring bus and his wife's car runs on bio-diesel. Kentucky alone has vast, enormous reserves of natural gas, landfills can trap and utilize methane gas, Native Americans up in S. Dak are starting a wind-electro project that can supply power for 23K homes - look at the solar potential of the Southwest and wind potential for the upper midwest - look at all the totally renewable bio-fuels that can be obtained from corn and soybeans - and how much more .efficiency can be obtained from vehicles that would use bio-diesel?
It's all there if only people will get off their butts. Maybe if gas stays at 5-6$ a gallon people will take control of their destiny and the destiny of their children.

Biodiesel: no sulphur dioxide emissions it adds no CO2 to the atmosphere it can be used in any diesel engine it is an excellant lubricant for engine durability, i.e. a German truck won an entry in the Guiness World Bood of records for having an engine that went 780,000 with its original engine using biodiesel it has a high cetane rating fuel economy is the same as any conventional diesel fuel it burns much, much cleaner it takes .31 units of fossil energy to make 1 full unit of biodiesel fuel, compared to 1.2 units of fossil energy to produce 1 unit of petroleum diesel

Take Rapeseed(canola) for instance: it can on average produce 1 ton per acre = 100 gallons of vegetable oil for biodiesel fuel and 1200 lbs of seedcake with very high protein content for cattle or organic fertlizer. So, one midwest farmer on a secion of land (640 acres) would produce 64,000 gallons of biodisel AND 484 tons of very high protetin vegetable fodder(seedcake) for cattle - that is really the big ticket item here given American consumption of red meat because that tonnage from just one acre frees up lot of other green resources to be used for biodiesel instead of cattle. It is exponential, very much so. Ten such farmers = 640,000 gallons of fuel and 4840 tons of top quality cattle feed. I would imagine corn would produce much, much more biodiesel per acr.

Oil palms produce 500 gallons per acre.

So what is to prevent say a couple hundred or so upper midwest farmers from forming a rapeseed cooperative and making their own biodiesel fuel at a very, very cheap price and selling the seed cake by the ton to other farmers/cattle feeders? So, if I've done my math right, 100 farmers each using 300 acres of their land (farms are quite large up there) for rapeseed at 100 gallons per acre = 3,000,000 gallons of very efficient, cheap biodiesel fuel for truckers and car owners and farm tractors?? That is a swatch of land approx. 4x11 miles. I didn't bother to calculate the immense tonnage of high-protein seedcake available for cattle, hogs, chickens and fish farms, all of which could be produced/utilized at a much, much lower ecological cost then fossil fuel raised corn, oats and millet. Hmmm - Exxon and BP won't like that one bit, nor will the Gulf Arabs.

I suppose said farmers could even get radical and go the organic route and balance things out with cheaper production costs for lower yields but maybe not all that much lower if the seedcake were in turn put back into the earth as fertilzer.

I haven't done any real research yet, but I would imagine rapeseed could be cold pressed and filtered, much like the organic flaxseed oil I use to maintain excellant blood pressure with is. Some heating might be required for the filtration process I'm sure (couldn't they burn dried seedcake for this?) A centrifuge would most likely be used for the filtration process. Anyone for using steam, heated with dried organic seed cake and recycled water all which would require no electricity? In the extreme, the lads and lasses shoveling the seedcake into the boilers on the night shift could do so by lanterns burning biodiesel. And talk about a cheap, eco-friendly auxillary heating source in that northern climate in the winter, eh?? Maybe even the primary heating source for some folks.

all it takes is a few dreamers.....

How about using magnets for generating electricity? The attraction/repulsion forces of large magnets strategically placed in a cylinder would rotate a shaft of a turbin. One magnet draws the flywheel of the shaft and at the apex of attraction, the second reverse magnet repels the flywheel towards the next attracting magnet, followed by a repulsing magnet, pushing the flywheel around and around which turns the shaft of the turbin to create electricity at a constant rate. If we can make massive buildings, we sure can make massive turbins that require nothing but natural magnetism to generate electricity. If we can make a battery the size of a matchhead, we can make one the size of Wal-Mart to retain such produced electricity to insure a steady flow of power into the grid and provide backup for when any maintanence is needed to be done on the turbin.

Now is the time for alternatives - anyone seen the most recent satellite pictures of the receding icecaps???

Goesh, you've made some really excellent observations above--pointing out specific technologies that do not require expensive retrofits or copious research and development budgets. Although nearly every alternative has a tipping point of environmental impact, I am surprised to find that many unpleasant bi-products of burning organic fuels can be captured and filtered out.

Interesting that I could disagree so vehemently with many of your perspectives during the last election, but be so impressed by your environmental viewpoints! :)

My husband has always maintained that until Americans pay through the nose for their fuel, they won't pay attention to the non-renewability factor, or the environmental impact.

P.S. I actually met Willie Nelson once, right in front of that tour bus ...

It will take at least 6.00$ gasoline for We the People to force the conversion. A swatch of upper midwest farmland 10 miles X 10 miles wide could produce 6.4 million gallons of biodiesel. That would fuel 8000 cars averaging 30,000 miles a year driven at 40 mpg, with untold tonnage of seedcake for animal and even human consumption and fertilizer. Nature is exponential, because it forces other changes. A conversion would not only be to biodiesel but electric cars for city driving, hybrids using electric and biodiesel which would yield phenominal mileage. Can't you hear the arabs and exxon gnashing their teeth? I can.