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To: el_gaviero who wrote (64083)	5/22/2005 9:40:45 PM
From: Seeker of Truth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi el-g, As you know production of carbohydrate by green plants requires sunlight and warmth. We can't grow green plants in Antarctica even in the bright sunlight of their midsummer. In the tropics,e.g. Brazil, warmth is more abundant hence cheaper in energy terms than in the US. Similarly with the tropical sunlight. So there is energy profit in growing plants for ultimate partial conversion to ethanol, in Brazil, as witness the popularity at the present of unsubsidized ethanol there. It requires special engines. Heat and light are less abundant in,e.g. North America, so ethanol production doesn't pay here in energy terms. Of course Brazil cannot supply the world with enough ethanol, so I myself am still anticipating rising world oil prices, which is the point of the discussion, I presume. MB

To: el_gaviero who wrote (64083)	5/22/2005 10:11:33 PM
From: Slagle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

el gaviero, I'm pretty much in agreement with your position here and I have read many of your posts on the other boards I am mostly onboard there too, especially with regard to Israel. Your idea that many people here are full of foreboding and are "getting ready" for great changes is correct too, especially out in the "red" states. I think that biofuels will have a future but in an America where biofuels are a necessity rather than just a form of farm state pork will be a very different country. Not long ago in this country we farmed almost totally with draft animals and we could do it again. Our biggest problem then was overproduction so surely we could feed ourself and have left over capacity for some amount of biofuel. Manure crops can be plowed under for fertilizer, ect. I grew up on such a farm and when I was a kid we still had some mules. But this was modern scientific farming with an elaborate set of implements and when tractors replaced the mules the advantage was marginal. Slagle

To: el_gaviero who wrote (64083)	5/23/2005 5:35:36 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

ElG, twenty years ago I was involved with alternative fuels and even things like tallow from sheep, made into tallow ester by conversion with methanol was economic. A Rotorua research group were making ethanol from wood waste, of which there's a lot. Ethanol was also made from milk byproducts but was too valuable to use as fuel. In my garden, plants grow crazily and I give them NO fertilizer or encouragement. If I grew them in giant paddocks and mowed them and fed them into an ethanol digester system, I think the net energy out would be a lot higher than the energy in. Corn and sugar cane might not be economic in the USA as ethanol sources, but that doesn't mean other plants in other countries wouldn't be economic. I'm sure Brazil isn't running itself into the poorhouse by producing ethanol with crude oil around $50 a barrel. There are vast quantities of BTUs arriving from the sun every day. Chlorophyll just loves turning CO2 into cellulose and stuff using that sunlight. It's free energy. There is no shortage of CO2, no shortage of sun and no shortage of land. There is a shortage of water in some places and nitrogen and other nutrients need some management. But the big inputs are free. Sun, chlorophyll DNA and CO2. Water is free in many places. At $50 a barrel of oil, chlorophyll is competitive. At $10 a barrel, it isn't. Mqurice