For a minute there I thought I had to get off my couch, when all the while the fact is we don't have to do anything much but keep things afloat for just a few decades more! In fact, we'd best shut up about PO, because if our offspring finds out we knew about it all along, they'll turn and wring our necks come 2036!
Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2006 10:35 pm Post subject: Re: All plankton fuel posts
Quote:
making biodiesel from algae is still in its infancy there is only one group that is claiming to have made biodiesel from algae in the whole world (and that claim is not substantiated). and they have spent a gazillion dollars to do it.
I disagree. In many ways, the world depicted in "Soylent Green" is well on the way to turning into reality. An amazingly on-target film. I watched it again recently, after many years, and was struck by this.
Yeah I'm sure we can fit in the factory farming food chain somewhere. Lets see, we feed the chicken crap to the cattle and we can also feed them dead sheep offcuts, why not dead processed humans?
It isn't just the "it's people" angle of the "Soylent Green" movie. It's the whole look and touch of it. The characters and what they say and do and how they feel about their world. And the things that are going on in that world, like the dying of the oceans. A classic, a bit dated in some ways (the computers look clunky, for example), but in other ways still ahead of its time (and ours!). And I like the way it combines humor with tragedy.
I've got to agree with you Heineken. I watched the movie a couple years ago and was so struck by how it reflects a post-peak society, even though they never mention the peak, that I wrote about it here:
The funny thing is right around that time, Matt Savinar put a link at LATOC to this interesting article of a village in Laos where they access the internet by pedal powered electricity very reminiscent of the stationary bike Edward G. Robinson pedaled in Soylent Green to keep the lights on.
The world is not to far away from fulfilling that vision of the future.
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:09 am Post subject: Re: All plankton fuel posts
you don't need to harvest the ocean. The southwest US, the Gobi, all of north Africa, all of northern Australia...more than enough area and sunshine for the production of a genetically enhanced salt water based phytoplankton or fresh water algae that is pushed genetically preferentially to produce oil type compounds. It is not a matter of if, only when.
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:23 am Post subject: Re: All plankton fuel posts
rojorooster wrote:
you don't need to harvest the ocean. The southwest US, the Gobi, all of north Africa, all of northern Australia...more than enough area and sunshine for the production of a genetically enhanced salt water based phytoplankton or fresh water algae that is pushed genetically preferentially to produce oil type compounds. It is not a matter of if, only when.
You would need to first genetically breed and then harvest the scientists to make this work because it is thermodynamic hoodoo. However, these mutant scientists would then run amok destroying those plans. _________________ ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 1:12 am Post subject: Re: All plankton fuel posts
pstarr, your location and photo give your political proclivities away(oh so Obama, but you're really conflicted and guilt ridden your not voting for the woman...tell me I am wrong), so I can discount your scientific knowledge in the area, though your ad hominem expertise is more than apparent. Maybe you can back up your argument with some facts, you know, the stuff that has equations and numbers and all the stuff most of the left coast intelligentsia(used in the laughing(at) pejorative sense) don't understand, but do fear.
Last edited by rojorooster on Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:32 am; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:14 am Post subject: Re: All plankton fuel posts
just to come up to speed, from what I have gleaned in this forum, you need an area of 52K sq km of industrially farmed algal production to replace what we currently are using for fossil oil. That considers no increases in efficiency or decreases in usage from gains in user efficiency, or the fact fossil fuel costs are likely to be 5-10X what they are today. Even using the most pessimistic Hubble prediction, we still have 30 to 50 years of substantial oil reserves(discounting Saudi lying). Not that we want to go on using fossil fuels at this rate. We don't need to replace all the fossil fuel in one fell swoop. Even taking into account production inefficiencies of multiples of 2 or 3, you still have more than enough land and ocean area to very easily replace current fossil oil use from algal farming. It is doable, given a rolling replacement, and 30 years of lead time, with most of the replacement coming online in the last 10 years of the time frame. Replacing coal usage for power production, is the real outlier. The dollar investment amount would be staggering, but considering what we spend on defense to protect our oil supply in the Arab countries, it is an amount easily shifted from current expenditures, and an investment, at that. Current corn based ethanol production is a thermodynamic fiction of our politicians, both right and left, and even switching to land based switch grass production is not the panacea that the major media believes. As for hydrogen, let me give the 'ol Hal9000 a quick query on that one....significant problems in production, storage, transportation, and fuel cell costs. Oh, right, even Ah'nuld can't terminate those problems, but his friends in LaLa land do feel so good driving those hybrids to the award ceremonies. I am so shamed. not. The end result is that, as a society we are not turning back, no matter how much the bearded, Carhart wearing, wild eye behind the Lenin glasses, left coasties want us to(I'll just shout louder). Humans never have turned back. We are not starting now either.
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ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap 
