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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Biodiesel and Ethenol
  • Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 13:05:07 EDT

Lynda (comments not in original order):

>Plus, you reframed the discussion. Individuals can make a
>difference which is precisely what you do with your own little corner of the
>world. The advice was sound for the purpose proposed.

Not in this case. The advice (to use fryer oil as diesel fuel to make
farmstead produce delivery financially feasible) does serve to point out the
greater
problem. Does my food production using essentially no motor fuel make a
difference in the world food supply? No. In this the situation is exactly
like
the notion that a five gallon fryer full of peanut oil makes a difference in
the world fuel supply. But there is one very important difference in the two
(food vs fuel).

While our food production makes no difference in the world food supply, how
many people could, if they were minded, do what we are doing? I have said in
the past - everyone. But on another list someone challanged that with the
same
sort of numbers I use in reference to fuel and showed that the biomass,
carbon, phosphorus, etc. doesn't exist in the world for all six billion
people to
grow food in the manner we do. OK. But at least a billion and probably two
or
three billion.

On the other hand, how many people can supply themselves with motor fuel from
fryer oil? Or algae, yeast, cellulose, sugar cane? The potential for those
resources are so hugely limited by the physics of it that unlike food, which
could be produced sustainably at 25% to 75% of its currentl level, all our
combined efforts at producing motor fuel can never amount to more than a tiny
fraction of the current rate of fuel use.

It should be of interest that the suggestion that we get a diesel truck and
use fryer oil to continue the produce delivery gig won't work. All the fryer
oil here abouts is spoken for well in advance. And thus:

(Lynda)>Nor were we worrying about providing the whole world with fuel.

But we are. We can't help but talk about it. The world has all its fuel
hoses in a common tank to a much, much larger extent than is the case with
food.
As petro diesel gets more and more expensive, the demand placed on fryer oil
rose in response to it. It's gone. And for what? Here people are using it
to power pleasure boats just for the one-ups-manship of it. They don't care
if in the end getting it and fetching it and filtering it costs them $5 a
gallon.

The result has been that in this microcosm, availability of real sustainable
foodstuffs (that from my farmstead) is no longer available because of motor
fuel costs. Ironic, that, because there is not motor fuel involved in
producing
any of it, yet the cost of fuel has made it unavailable.

I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more press, but in six of the past seven
years, the world has eaten more food than it has produced. Refer to:

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33268

One the reasons is that in many areas of the world agribusiness just isn't as
profitable as it once was and investors get out of it. The main reason cited
now of days is fuel costs.


(Lynda)>And, we were talking diesel of which we use 6 billion gallons a year.

This is why it's so important to emphasize the math aspect of the discussion.
We use 60 billion gallons of diesel a year, not 6. 120 billion gallons of
gasoline and a total of 600 billion gallons of oil for all purposes
(fertilizer, plastic, lubricants, aviation fuel, heating oil, electric
generation, etc.)
[the source of this is the US Dept of Energy], 30 million gallons is so
insignificant in comparison that:

(Lynda)>ANY reduction is a good thing.

If you were on a large ship that was sinking because of a massive hole in the
hull, would you stay there bailing out the ship with a Dixie cup because "ANY
reduction is a good thing"?? That's precisely the situation. We are in
desperate need (individually and collectively) of grasping onto a lifestyle
that
does not depend for its existence on massive quantities of motor fuel. Oils
produced from yeast and the leavings of French fryers is a dangerous
distraction. It leads people to think they can go on status quo (like
delivering
vegetables by using fryer oil).

(Lynda) > Could you perhaps explain why others are so vigorously
dissauded by you from doing anything each time anything pro-active is brought
up on
the list.

What you call 'dissuade' is simply letting the math point out the level of
fantasy involved in so many such proposals. People who live in fantasies
don't
like math, it's like waking them rudely from a pleasant dream. People who
live the paradigm, rather than muse about it, breathe and sleep the math,
logistics, physics, and reality of it.

As I have pointed out before, most homestead enterprises as they are
discussed here depend just as much on the Oil Culture as does the rest of our
modern
experience. We see so many people equating the homestead experience with
"getting off the grid". Fine. But getting off the grid is insignificant
compared
with getting off the pump. As motor fuel gets more and more costly, so will
feed-stuffs, machinery, building materials, etc. But just with animal feed
alone, what will happen to most homesteads when the cost of motor fuel makes
feed and hay nearly impossible to be had? I hear very few homesteads being
described as being other than what I call the mini-agribusiness model,
dependent
on outside input of material (and therefore energy) to operate. That is,
what
good will having a diesel truck and two 55 gallon drums of salad oil be when
you drive that truck to the feed store and chicken feed is $45 as bag?



---------------------------------

> As to Brazil, the point wasn't comparing the size or use in Brazil, the
> point was they don't use virgin/first source anything.


I'm not sure I follow this. Are you saying Brazil doesn't use virgin/first
source anything? If so, that's not even close to true. Almost all ethanol
in
Brazil is from first pressing sugar cane with the partially spent cane being
used to fire the distillery boilers.


In this country

> alone we landfill enough wood and wood scrape from mills to create enough
> ethenol to fuel several fleets for a year. One more waste product that can
> be used.
>

In Stevenson's Treasure Island, when Long John berates the pirates for
squandering their ill gotten loot, he says: "'Tain't the getting of it, it's
the
saving of it..."

Getting a few more Dixie cups full of motor fuel is neither here nor there.
The real issue is how do we use less .... a lot less.


James




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