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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Ethanol's Dirty Little Secrets ---

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Mark Nagel <activism98201@verizon.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Ethanol's Dirty Little Secrets ---
  • Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 12:13:26 -0500 (CDT)

The extraction of oil from these sands requires LOTS of energy. Where does
this energy come from? Natural gas (NG).

To tie this to the "land"... NG has been identified as being responsible for
roughly 40% of the world's protein (Professor Smil, university of Ontario).
Use of more NG to produce usable oil means less NG for food production
(primarily fertlizers).

As stated in my op-ed piece, we're selling everyone on this notion that we (I
refer specifically to the US, but this same sales pitch may be happening
elsewhere) can become "energy independent." Independence from foreign oil
may result, but if you listen to all the talk about building LNG tankers and
ports you'd notice that our dependence on foreign natural gas is only going
to increase (as is the case with Brazil, the country that ethanol folks like
to hold up as the model example).

While we're running around chasing energy faeries our food system is
collapsing. It's up to us to concentrate on saving the land and saving the
knowledge for living off the land.


-Mark Nagel
Everett, WA


=====================
From: Uriel <uriel@nasalam.org>

One thing that seems to be being ignored in the discussions on peak oil
is the growing production of oil from the oil sands in Alberta, Canada.
If what is being reported is true there is more oil there than in Saudi
Arabia at its peak, making it the largest deposit in the world. That
could sustain the oil market for quite a while, though at fairly high
prices since it takes a lot of work and energy to produce that oil. I
personally wish the oil would just dry up and go away and force us to
change how we do things and go back to simpler ways, but I think it's
just going to get messier and messier and probably cause more wars.
Didn't we invade Canada once before?
Uriel / SW Missouri





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