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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bart13 who wrote (94290)	5/15/2008 2:10:17 PM
From: GST	Respond to of 110194

Please, lets just keep the facts out of it :) I mention it from time to time, but I get the feeling it has not sunk in yet that a country with near zero population growth like China actually has a rate of urban population growth in the 5 to 7% range per year -- in other words, the population of urban, meat eating, car driving "middle class" Chinese urbanites is growing at an explosive rate. The story of global growth is largely the story of urbanization.

To: bart13 who wrote (94290)	5/15/2008 6:19:01 PM
From: Merlinson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

That article was excellent and made some crucial points about the role of speculation versus fundamental supply and demand which is what I have been trying to understand. I have been searching for more info on the effect of energy costs on food prices, since especially in the US, agriculture is the process of turning petroleum into nutrition. As I was investigating fertilizer costs, I stumbled upon this conference on recent developments in ammonia applications. The links are mostly to pdfs of presentations and some files are quite large. energy.iastate.edu Some link highlights for me are: 1. “Solid-State” Ammonia Synthesis from Renewable Energy The article describes a clean method that only uses air, water, and an energy source. It looks like this method combined with intermittent wind power (at a few cents per kW-hr) could supply ammonia at near $200/ton, which appears to be around 1/3 the cost of conventional ammonia fertilizer ($700/ton?). No batteries required for storage, and usable on demand for either power generation or fertilizer with no associated CO2 generation, unlike ammonia from natural gas. 2. BioAmmonia—A Comparison with Other Biofuels A basic comparison with fossil fuels as well, that says $200/ton ammonia is equivalent to $1.20/gallon gasoline. It also says that ammonia fulfills all the requirements for the government's freedom car requirements today and talks about it's safety. Now, I know, I must be crazy to suggest ammonia use in a vehicle that can crash, but look at the next link. 3. HydrAmmine: The Ammonia-based Counterpart to Metal Hydrides Describes a solid storage technology from a Danish company that is more compact than liquid form, usable in a vehicle, and 4000 times less volatile. 4. Ammonia from Wind, An Update A University of Minnesota project to replace some of the imported natural gas ammonia with wind generated ammonia in the center of the farm belt. It uses the more expensive method of Haber-Bosch and electrolyzing water via wind electricity to get the hydrogen feedstock instead of methane. "Pie-in-the-sky" Merlinson, signing off.