zaneselvans’s Recent Comments

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  Irrigation

  If you were surprised to hear that most vegetables in the US depend on irrigation, you should definitely consider reading the book "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner.  It's a little out of date by now (last revised in 1993 I think), but it lays out the history of water in the West, up to that point, from Powell on the Colorado, to LA's usurping of the Owens Valley, the Dust Bowl, the massive water projects of the New Deal, and the irrigation of all of California.On The 'hell' before the 'high water' in the U.S. posted 1 year, 9 months ago 64 Responses

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  Perpetual Progress

  Ethanol from sugar cane is economically viable - more than 30% of Brazil's liquid fuel requirements are satisfied this way, and they export it to Sweden and Japan, among others.  The only reason the US doesn't import massive amounts of the stuff is we have a tariff to protect corn ethanol subsidy beneficiaries (who are, by the way, not the corn farmers - the subsidy is a "blender's credit" that goes to the oil company that mixes the gasoline with the ethanol...).

  Khosla may be wildly optimistic about the near future of cellulosic biofuels, but it's not an ever-receeding mirage.  BP just invested half a billion dollars to build an "Energy Biosciences Institute" at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (see this Google Tech Talk by (Nobel prize winner) Steve Chu, the director of LBL).  And watch this talk by Frances Arnold at Caltech (real media stream), talking (more realistically than Khosla) about cellulosic biofuels, and the problems that stand in their way.  Each talk is an  hour long.On Billionaire Branson regrets mindless biofuel support posted 1 year, 9 months ago 22 Responses