Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

Gene writes:




> My message here is that we can focus on the doom and gloomers or we can 
> find, become informed by and follow the examples and teachings of people 
> who are out front on energy and environmental issues.

I'm a bit confused by this.  If the doom and gloomers are wrong, then we 
don't need people out front on energy.  However if the doom and gloomers have 
a 
valid point, we indeed better focus on them.

What I mean is this:  Right now it seems as if everyone's set of acceptable 
outcomes for the energy problem is to finesse an alternate solution, 
alternate 
source of energy, to maintain our current lifestyle.  But what is more 
likely, 
says I, is that it is the alternate lifestyle that must be embraced more than 
an alternate energy.  If we do the former, the latter becomes almost moot.  
Many would say we are going to do the fromer at any rate.

The thing that comes to mind is the wok, an absolutely marvelous tool in the 
kitchen.  Confusian philosophy says that Chinese food is cut into small bites 
and eaten at the table with chopsticks because only a lout barbarian would 
bring a weapon (a knife) to the table with which to cut his food.  Maybe.  
But 
the more feasible explaination is that the stir-fry cuisine developed because 
of 
a severe shortage of cooking fuel.  I am reminded of Pearl Buck's description 
of Wang Lung cooking by carefully looking over his stash of bean haulms and 
knots of grass to make the fire just right for boiling water in the round 
bottom wok.  Short on cooking fuel they developed a system of cooking that 
requires 
what must be the absolutely least amount of heat to get the job done.  This 
required cutting the food up before it was cooked.  But even though we have 
abundant cooking fuel at our house, we still choose to use a wok sometimes 
because it is just such a good way to cook.

The Chinese did not come up with a replacement source of fuel, but rather 
developed a cuisine to fit the fuel the did have.  And the results are really 
good, better perhaps than if they had an infinite supply of fuel, eh?

> esterday I heard on Science Friday on NPR a talk with the top energy 
> scientist in Great Britain. A caller asked about homes having their 
> individual energy power plants. He said we're not quite there but it is a 
> real possibility. He referred to methane as the fuel;
> 

As with solar and hydraulic and wind and such, it'd be good to apply some 
math to the notion.  Let's suppose you have a cow and she is in some place 
where 
you can collect ALL her droppings - not ideal, confinement animal husbandry 
or 
else going all over the field with a shovel and basket.  If you put all her 
manure in your methane digester every day, how much gas would you get and 
what 
could you do with it?  You'd get about 8 cu ft of gas which has about 4800 
BTU 
and you could, for example, boil four tea kettles of water with it.  I've 
heard the notion many times about alternate or futuristic houses having their 
own 
methane digester and often the description leads one to view it as a typical 
suburban McMansion with a methane furnace and once a week or so you put 
something into the digester.  But as with the wok, methane generators have 
practical 
application where other fuel sources are too expensive, impractical or 
impossible.  With a hefty supply of manure you could generate enough gas with 
which 
to cook, but that would be about all.

There's a fried chicken place on the road from town out here.  We need to use 
vehicles very little now days and so if we were to pick up all their used oil 
and put a diesel engine in the truck, it would probably give us enough fuel 
(if, in my musings, there were a way to get the spent oil without having to 
drive to get it!).  That would work, so long as we were the only people doing 
it. 
 Once even two or three other families wanted to do the same, there wouldn't 
be enough oil for us.

The rub on all the available alternative energies is that to be successful, 
they require a change in lifestyle, much as fuel shortage induced wok did.  
And 
if you are willing to make that lifestyle change, there's plenty of fuel 
aleady.

So I guess I find myself not so much looking for the example of people in 
alternate energy as much as looking for the example of people in alternate 
lifestyles.

James