Comments Applied Ecotechnics has made

Thanks Jon

Okay, that is much more sensible and I agree.

Meanwhile, there are some very nice hybrid tractors coming along and those are of course and excellent path toward fully electrical tractors.

I also agree that smaller scale farming and local energy production with microgrids is an important part of the energy infrastructure, and will be more reliable, cost effective and efficient.

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

On a further practical note

Consider also that farm equipment lasts decades and that the average farmer won't be buying a new tractor, harvester or whatever for a very long time.

Right now we can greatly reduce the use of dino-diesel by using the residue left over from methane disgestion applied on old strip mine land and have a workable alternative without taking away any farm or forest land.

There are also the benefits to the watershed that will occur from these lands being properly managed and their erosion and saturated runoff being reduced.

So that said, I would appreciate it if people, such as you Drx, would stop lumping all biofuels and all biofuel farming approaches together, because it is simply not valid to make such gross over generalizations.

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

That is only one perspective.

Many people, including native Americans, believe that it is not abusive to kill an animal for food.

Many of your statements revolve around rhetoric which is purely based on personal belief which is more of a religious nature than a scientific one.

Obviously anything "industrial" is by definition not "natural".

In fact most things done by mankind are by definition not natural, even if they are brought about by the all too natural needs dictated by the human body.

It is also an important fact that the reason eating of humans is considered immoral and unethical is that it is extremely risky behavior from a disease and health perspective.

I won't waste time debating with you about the issues of the healthiness, pro or con, of a vegetarian diet, except to say there are many people with far less of an agenda and well proven scientific and medical credentials who find serious health concerns stemming from vegetarian diets.

Your definition of abuse is also as selective and personally biased and not one which is commonly held or necessarily any more morally or logically valid than those held by others.

So in short, the entire personal bias of the belief system you are promoting is just that, personal, and to try to push it onto the rest of the people of the world is a violation of the basic rights and freedoms which you claim all living creatures should have.

Any claims to any moral high ground based on such beliefs are by definition nothing but spurious rhetoric.

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

Okay Jon, Why are you ignoring critical options?

I know you have to have seen the postings I made in the "What about 90% Mr. Gore" thread.

All I see you mentioning are Wind, Solar and later, Geothermal.

You completely ignore biofuels even after I made it clear that there are good workable and ready to build non-food based biofuel systems available that already do everything you claim could happen with other renewable sources.

You also ignore the importance of increases in the efficiency of the use of energy and curbing demand such as I address in my comments about increasing the number of energy efficient homes that are built, especially in cooperation with infrastructure improvements you (rightly) recommend in your responses later.

Please tell me this is just an oversight on your part due to shortage of time or other constraints.

Here is a copy of what I am referring to:

How about roughly 69% in two years?

Seriously, not trolling, not kidding.

Two key technologies combined can do it that quickly.

1. Non-food based biofuel production using an integrated system of biodiesel, integrated methane digestion and composting fed to high efficiency fuel cells or cogeneration equipment, while returning the organics to the earth as clean safe fertilizer. Benefit, roughly 33% of the energy needed, all while being profitable and cost effective and quick to build.

(Fertilizer use ends up cutting still more out of the fossil fuel dependency problem but I don't have a firm percentage at the moment so that is not in the 69% mentioned.)

2. High energy efficiency housing. There are several alternative housing technologies around now which cut 90% or more of the energy used in an average home. With roughly 40% of the energy use in America going to home use that translates to roughly 36% energy savings.

With the housing market down and so many people losing their homes, good cost effective housing can and should be a huge focus. Quite a few of these homes could be built and ready for use in as little as six months.

Combine these two and you get 69% energy reduction, using very thumbnail calculations admittedly but the point is that the technology to do a big part of it is already here and reliable, cheap and profitable.

We just need either government or investors with the backbone to step up and it could start happening very quickly.

I know this because it is what I have been working on since 1982, long before such things were fashionable.

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.
by Applied Ecotechnics at 7:39 AM on 22 Jul 2008

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

Shouldn't that be...

Office of Misdirection and Coverups?

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

PETA should try some real MEAT.

I have been a lifelong supporter of fair and decent treatment of animals, worked in a big zoo that lead the way on better conditions and special breeding programs for endangered species, long before it was talked about publicly, and have supported all sorts of animal care and decency programs such as World Wildlife Federation.

At one point PETA did some good. Then it got weirder and weirder, about the time Tipi Hedron came along.

For me the final straw was when they picketed a research lab in the facility I was working at claiming it was abusive to animals. However they neglected to check their facts, as they often have, or they would have found out that the lab in question dealt only with behavioral studies of fruit flies and they were not harmed, killed or maimed in any way.

On the topic of MEAT. It stands for Meat-eaters for Ethical Animal Treatment and as your would expect the goal is to stop the many abusive practices perpetuated on livestock and research animals and others around the world.

There has been some discussion of it but so far it hasn't gone very far to the best of my knowledge but the point is that if you want to serve the cause of animal rights issues and abuse you shouldn't be trying to confuse the issue with your own personal agenda about food choices.

Animal abuse can be stopped without trying to force everyone on the planet to become a vegetarian and the two issues can and should be considered entirely independently of each other.

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

Your taking the small predator thing too far

>I also love cheese enchiladas with mole and ice cream.

You eat moles? That's certainly sustainable but taking the the predator thing a bit too far. :-)

>But I eat these things very occasionally and don't lie to myself that they're healthy.

Then you have to check out better ways to make pizza because you can make it far better still than you acknowledge here.

I grow my own organic tomatoes, buy free range beef and defat it before I use it, and use home grown organic vegetables and spices.

You already mentioned whole wheat crust, and I also add flax seed to it some times when I have some extra.

Good organic low fat cheese rounds it out and keeps the fat low and the taste high.

Check out great recipes from people like Gram Kerr and the Frugal Gourmet.

>They're just fun foods that won't hurt you if you eat them sparingly and not regularly.

This applies to many things and with a little effort most such foods can be made a lot healthier, as can much of our current energy and consumerism picture which is causing so much trouble.

Anyway, if you ever travel out this way you will have to stop by for good, organic low fat pizza that tastes like it came from a big city Italian Pizzaria. (It runs in the family.)

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

Sticking to waste.....

Yes, glad to see you see the point but it goes further than that still as well. Add in returning the organic material to the soil near where it came from in the first place, truly closing the loop on the organic resources for the first time in modern history.

Consider the use of the output fertilizer for growing biodiesel crops and you have further benefit, especially if you do so on the usually poorly reclaimed former strip mines which we have many thousands of acres of here in the US.

The deeper you look the better it gets.

All this being true, we are still having a bear of a time getting investors to commit to building full sized ones even with conservative profit margins of 30% annually.

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

No need to cut down plants or trees for biomass.

Why waste the time and energy AKA expense and eco damage to harvest new material when there is a massive amount of readily available organic material being thrown away every single day in every nation in the world.

Organic wastes from trash, sewage and other sources can produce an immense amount of energy in way that is clean, safe, efficient, profitable and truly renewable.

Consider this: How many millions of tons of sewage are disposed of every year and how many cubic yards of methane (~"natural gas") can be produced per ton?

As long as there are living things there will be organic waste.

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.

Pizza, Food, Gas, Fuel, Environment, Economy.

It all runs together and goes round and round doesn't it?

Good pizza is not junk food. It is in fact one of the most well balanced single foods you can eat, especially if you load it up with good organic vegetable toppings and mushrooms on top of a home made whole wheat shell you coat with garlic and olive oil before you bake it.

As long as you keep the ingredients good and the fat managable relative to your exercise levels it is one of the top foods there is. It also happens to be the food that fuels more late night studies and work sessions than any other.

Oddly enough another great well balanced food, for which the same advice applies, is ice cream.

Anyway, the whole energy issue is one huge smoke and mirrors circus of the under informed being mislead by the unethical.

I've spent years trying to get people to pay attention to real workable answers that could be put into place immediately and are cost effective and the media, government and investors turn a dead ear to it because it isn't flashy enough.

Van Jones is right and is saying the same things I have been saying for years. (see the itinerary for the UN NGO conference in Seoul a few years back)

There are workable solutions available now, ready to be built, that are productive, put people to work, produce true renewable clean energy and are safe and reliable.

Such a program as the Green New Deal would yield many of the same benefits as the space program did. New jobs, new technologies, a huge leap forward in many areas while being productive both economically and intellectually in addition to the environmental (and thereby health and productivity also) benefits.

Visit our website or email us for more information as we are actively looking for people to work with to help improve the future of our civilization.