I will believe the Saudis don't see any upcoming problems with Ghawar when they cancel one of their projects due to low oil prices. If they continue to be full steam ahead with increasing their capacity then I think they are aware that Ghawar may not be as robust in 5 years time as they would like us to believe.
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 1:07 am Post subject: Re: David Blume and http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/
Found this comment on the net:
Quote:
Blume is a farmer, permaculturist, alcohol fuel specialist... and all around genius.
Permaculture has been proven to improve soil as well as deliver higher-than-normal yields from crops. He fed over 400 people as a CSA farmer with just a tiny amount of acreage.
"Brilliant! This book should be on the reading list of every American!!"
- Thom Hartmann, New York Times best-selling author, and nationally syndicated host of The Thom Hartmann Program on Air America.
Quote:
"Humanity has used up roughly half of the world's oil and topsoil. Just in time, David Blume has given us Alcohol Can Be A Gas! It's a practical road map for supplying all of our energy needs without drilling, strip-mining, and/or depleting the soil. In fact, following Blume's model, soil fertility would actually increase worldwide; energy production would be not only sustainable, but democratic- and highly profitable on the small scale. This is a brilliant visionary work. And, with Mr. Blume's witty personality, reading it is certainly a gas."
- Larry Korn, Soil Scientist, Translator, and Editor of The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming.
Quote:
"Dave Blume has written the definitive opus on alcohol as a fuel. From the 30,000-foot view to the most minute technical detail, Alcohol Can be a Gas! makes a strong case for the practical, ecological, political, and economic sense in converting to ethanol. It's heartening to see the world's original "alcohol pioneer" stay abreast of the times with a book that has the promise to knock some sense into our insidious fossil-fueled economy. This book is much needed in this era of Peak Oil and fast-accelerating climate change."
- John Schaeffer, President and Founder of Real Goods, and Executive Director of the Institute for Solar Living.
Quote:
As intersections of the food-energy-climate matrix form in Iowa cornfields, Amazonian rain forests and Canadian gene splicing labs, and end-game battles for their control pit theocratic flat-worlders against biologists, climatologists, and tree-huggers over the very survival of life on Earth, David Blume emerges like a wizard on a misty pinnacle, back-lit by the full moon, revealing a gemstone in his extended palm.
Albert Bates, author, The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times
Quote:
The over-arching importance of this delightful book is that it demonstrates how beside the point is the current pseudo-debate about the net energy from corn ethanol. As Blume demonstrates, fuel alcohol must be an important component of our solar-based future. It can be made from a huge variety of feedstocks, including sugar beets and cane, nuts, mesquite, Jerusalem artichokes, algae, even coffee-bean pulp; there is no real scarcity of land to grow fuel. There is a scarcity of independent, original thinking--and Blume's book provides plenty of it, along with ample doses of amazing, startling, and sometimes scary information--ecological, technological, and political-economic. This is a vast, detailed compendium drawn from decades of experience by an alert, smart, and skeptical hands-on thinker. Blume has given us his biofuels bible, and we can learn from him and survive quite nicely, or follow what he calls MegaOilron into oblivion.
- Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecotopia, Ecotopia Emerging, and Ecology:A Pocket Guide
Quote:
What a tour-de-force! This is the most comprehensive and authoritative guide through all the controversy about ethanol as transportation fuel, showing it as a clear winner in the quest for solutions to our environmental and geopolitical problems. Engagingly written, full of important and amazing information and resources, this book meets every challenge to the vision for a clean, democratic path to a prosperous future for all.
-Joe Jordan, Atmospheric Researcher, NASA/Ames Research Center
Quote:
Finally, an alcohol book for the layman and backyard enthusiast. In our culture's collective, industrialized love affair with mega-everything, Blume cuts across the government-subsidized factories with ecologically practical models. Here is a viable energy system that can be embedded in a region, linking rural producers to urban users of energy and food. Self-reliance and resiliency follow community-based alcohol production, and we all owe a debt of gratitude to Blume for codifying his life's passion in what is a veritable compendium of information.
- Joel Salatin, Farmer, and Author of You Can Farm and Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal.
Quote:
Ethanol champion David Blume has completed his opus, Alcohol Can Be a Gas! It is a great read. The history of petroleum, history of alcohol, technical coverage of production process, vehicle development (conversion), and feedstocks: It's all in the text, complete with charts and pictures. David's wit, wisdom, and hardcore experience illuminate this biofuels potential. We have eagerly awaited this publication and will use it in our Sustainable Transportation and Biofuels courses.
- Dr. Jack Martin, Appropriate Technology Program, Appalachian State University; Vice-Chair of Renewable Fuels and Transportation Division, American Solar Energy Society
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 9:53 am Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
I love the groovy cover art baby! They got hippies and SUVs and clouds. How about the coffee cup and the book? Kind of like Borders Bookstore. Or Starbucks.
Like all you have to do is visualize ethanol man, and it will come to pass. _________________ ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 11:55 am Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
I'm listening to the interview from globalpublicmedia. It challenges the conventional wisdom regarding ethanol that we've all heard recently. Sounds like a good debate shaping up all over again.
But the interviewer didn't really press this super-optimist with any strong objections that he might have gotten from someone already familiar with the ethanol issue. For example , there has already been quite some dispute over the way the energy inputs to making ethanol are accounted for. Blume had a rather vague explanation that led to his conclusion that EROEI was 100:1! Come on!
Global Public Media should have him on again having to confront someone who actually knows the ethanol terrain. Ethanol was 2007's worst investment. She didn't even quiz him about that.
That said, I think this is someone who truly believes what he's saying. I'd like to see an interviewer moderate Blume and an alcohol-skeptic in a thorough hashing out of what potential alcohol really holds when both it's creation and use iare optimized for highest efficiency. _________________ "May you live in interesting times"
Joined: Apr 17, 2005 Posts: 2749 Location: Vancouver Island
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 12:30 pm Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
Carlhole wrote:
Ethanol was 2007's worst investment.
I'm assuming we're talking in a financial sense here. I'd agree that ethanol company stock was a horrible investment but I don't necessarily agree that ethanol was a bad investment. The stock sucked simply because there was a flood of new companies making stock available on the market and not very many buyers out there willing to get into the ethanol market.
I haven't seen enough numbers to know if those companies actually made good money or not to see if ethanol was a good investment.
Either way 100:1 EROI sounds like lip flapping to sell books. _________________ shame on us, doomed from the start
god have mercy on our dirty little hearts
Joined: Dec 08, 2004 Posts: 1633 Location: Nez Perce Nation
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 12:31 pm Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
I ordered this book a week ago. It should arrive within a week.
I'll give a book report on it after a first reading. _________________ "Modern Agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food."
-- Albert Bartlett
"It will be a dark time. But for those who survive, I suspect it will be rather exciting."
-- James Lovelock
Joined: Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 3614 Location: 3 miles NW of Champoeg, Republic of Cascadia
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 12:44 pm Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
Robert Rapier wrote:
Quote:
Oil companies make over $25,000 in profit from a single barrel of oil
Yep, sounds like the David Blume I am familiar with. Lots of baseless claims. His work has been discussed here before. My favorite claim of his was that gasoline had a hidden subsidy of as much as $15/gallon. I calculated that, and it turns out this is greater than the entire U.S. budget. I got a good laugh out of that one.
Put your trust in Blume, and don't be surprised when people who know something about this eat you alive.
Permalink _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
The Dude Is Not In: Leave A Message After The Beep.
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 2:13 pm Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
I enjoy Mr. Blume in that he has personally accomplished some stellar local food and community energy projects, and that he is inspired and knowledgeable, and is "contagious in concert" in the art of getting people to drop despair and roll up their sleeves and try something in the here and now. This is really vital and good for people, just as much as having concise and crisp science and realistic expectations based on such a foundation.
Mr. Pimental is probably more dialed in to the realistic chance of ethanol replacing petroleum as liquid fuel in a scale close to what we are used too or desire, but I see both types of folks as crucial.
I sometimes wonder if the accurate science of cold war nuclear destruction in part paralyzed us from addressing the resource
limits that paralyze us today.
Ignorance is bliss, and if the expanded knowledge and ability to predict the future, (no matter how accurate) leaves us stunned,
disillusioned, and unable to enjoy the moment or live with some semblance of hope or grace, then perhaps ignorance might be a superior state. (Assuming one is a participant in life rather than an analyst.)
Mr. Blume can be a gas and I will take that as a pretty good deal in and of itself. You can decide to dance until the music stops even if you do not name the tune or run the band.
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 4:39 pm Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
I re-listened to those podcasts (linked in top post) and the only holes I can find are:
What about the inputs needed to keep the soil fertile, without gas-based fertilizers? Some people argue that so little gas is used to make fertilizers that we will never run out, but I'm not convinced. At no stage did he mention that soil needs nutrients to keep producing plant matter.
I'd like to hear more about the 100:1 claim. He mentions that running the whole process on alcohol and methane generated from by-products of the process gives back a lot of energy and says that Archer Midland is already doing it ... I guess I'll have to buy the book!
the Tilapia fish vs Beef debate is fascinating, but how practical is it?
As someone else commented above, this guy gives a whole new slant to the entire peak oil conversation, and one we have not heard before. I've been reading this site since 2004 (current identity is a recent one) and I've never heard the points he raises. I think we should give him serious consideration and not just dismiss him with cheap, silly comments like "Like all you have to do is visualize ethanol man, and it will come to pass." Thanks. _________________
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 13064 Location: naive idiot fantasy world
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 5:53 pm Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
It would be much more energy-efficient for people to devote their spare time to growing food and cooking fuel than to mess around with growing fuel for vehicles. I generally don't promote anything I'm not personally interested in or capable of doing myself, and I'm certainly not capable of growing & processing vehicular fuel, so, I can't see this being a very good idea, personally. Others are welcome to devote themselves to feeding their machines, but, from my own point of view, food for humans makes much more sense.
Horses, donkeys, goats, and oxen are probably more efficient at turning plant materials into vehicular power than any biofuel scheme could be. _________________ "...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow." - jboogy
Joined: Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 3614 Location: 3 miles NW of Champoeg, Republic of Cascadia
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 7:19 pm Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
Be sure to read all the comments in the topic I linked to.
GreyZone wrote:
(snip)
So, if we turned ALL of the corn crop into ethanol it would cover less than 16% of our annual gasoline usage.
Ok so let's turn ALL the farmland into corn! Let's NOT EAT ANYTHING! What nonsense numbers do we get then? Well by Blume's own numbers we only use 72 million acres for corn and we have 407 million arable acres. This means we could increase ethanol production by a factor of 5.65, leading to total ethanol production of 134,472,800,000 - STILL LESS THAN TOTAL ANNUAL GASOLINE CONSUMPTION!!!!!!
Ethanol is a SCAM, young man. It is a HOAX. It is a LIE perpetrated by people who want to use the government's tax system to take tax money from you and stick it in their pockets as profits.
Anyone who posits that ethanol can make any significant contribution to our national fuel usage is a lying to you and may also be an outright fraud. Maybe they are trying to pump-and-dump certain ethanol stocks as some certain persons tried to do here a while back. Even as a fuel additive, ethanol is causing problems, never mind trying to make it a fuel for the nation.
I'm all for continued experiments in developing biotic fuel sources that use algae etc. But shunting over part of our food supply to fill up gas tanks on more than a limited scale is just insane.
I heard Blume on Thom Hartmann's show once and he really roped me in; one of the most convincing people I've heard on radio. _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
The Dude Is Not In: Leave A Message After The Beep.
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 13064 Location: naive idiot fantasy world
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 7:24 pm Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
I watched a little interview with him on YouTube (can't remember what program it was on), and Blume was just piling on the horsepucky. I didn't find him convincing at all. _________________ "...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow." - jboogy
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 7:42 pm Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
h20 wrote:
I think we should give him serious consideration and not just dismiss him with cheap, silly comments like "Like all you have to do is visualize ethanol man, and it will come to pass." Thanks.
Why should we give this person serious consideration? And what is cheap about my comment? I spent dozens of hours educating myself about the continuing agriculture boondoggle (of which biofuels are just the latest incarnation) that rips off public money, poisons the environment, and tricks consumers into eating crap food.
If you had done any homework here at peak oil you would discover dozens, no hundreds of threads over the last 3 years on the idiotic insanity of biofuels. Here for example:
From the USDA:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/LandUse/majorlandusechapter.htm
Cropland, 442 million acres (20 percent of the land area)
We plant all of the US cropland to corn. 100%
1 bushel of corn yields 2.5 gallons of ethanol. USDA
1 acre yields 160 bushels. (All-time record in 2004.)
1 acre yields 400 gallons of ethanol (2.5 x 160).
One gallon net takes 3 to produce EROEI 1.34 to 1
400/4 = 100
442 million acres x 100 = 44.2 billion gallons net return
Ethanol has less energy density 44.2/1.5 = 29.5 billion gallons net ethanol
We use 144 billion gallons of gasoline per year
29.5 is 19% of 157 billion demand.
So to summarize we could plant the entire US cropland in corn for ethanol. No more food for anyone and that would only account for 19% of our gasoline needs.
biofuels are a joke. period.
The scamster guzzied up a big lie with some eco-groovie imagery and I am not convinced one bit. It just makes the scamster that much sleazier. _________________ ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap
Joined: Mar 28, 2007 Posts: 358 Location: Cambs., UK
Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 7:44 pm Post subject: Re: David Blume and alcoholcanbeagas.com - impressive!
As pstarr pointed out, we need not refute this guy any more than we should a perpetual motion device dealer. The truth is self-evident now and only the hopelessly optimistic (read: idiots) will swallow this tripe and ask for seconds, shunning all rational discourse to the contrary. _________________ "Nothing survives. Not your parents. Not your children. Not even stars."
-Pinbacker, Sunshine
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