With a Bang

[Col. Quisp]

Re: meat. I live in a section of town where they slaughter pigs and make hot dogs, and bacon, and lunch meat out of them. yes, this goes on in a major US city, right near the downtown area. I never noticed until recently, when Mr. Quisp pointed it out to me, that on a still night, you can hear the pigs wailing as they are being killed. It is horrible. Like a human scream. The slaughterhouse is within a few blocks of my apartment. Not sure why I am talking about this. I love the taste of swine - it's my favorite flesh. But how can I keep eating it after hearing those screams? What is wrong with me that I'm so callous?

[justdrew]

Biofuel created by explosive technology
Peter Fimrite | Updated 11:22 pm, Sunday, January 13, 2013

Chemical engineers at UC Berkeley have created a new, cleaner fuel out of an old concoction that was once used to make explosives.

The fuel, which uses a century-old fermentation process to transform plant material into a propellant, could eventually replace gasoline and drastically cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, according to the team of Berkeley scientists.

"It's a much more efficient way of (creating renewable fuel) than many of the other products being considered," said Harvey Blanch, a professor of chemical engineering at Berkeley. "This product is one that may be closest to commercialization."

The discovery, published in the journal Nature, means corn, sugar cane, grasses and other fast-growing plants or trees, like eucalyptus, could be used to make the propellant, replacing oil.

The process uses a fermentation system discovered around 1914 by Chaim Weizmann, a chemist who later became the first president of Israel. Weizmann used a bacterium called Clostridium acetobutylicum to ferment sugars and turn them into acetone, butanol and ethanol. The process, dubbed ABE, allowed the British to manufacture cordite and make explosives used during World War I.

The process was later used to manufacture synthetic rubber, but that was unnecessary after petroleum became widely available. The last U.S. factory using the process to produce acetone and butanol closed in 1965.

The research into creating a diesel substitute is part of a 10-year development program by the Energy Biosciences Institute, a collaboration among UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The research, paid for using $50 million a year from the British oil company BP, has been going on for five years.

Blanch and Douglas Clark, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, extracted the acetone and butanol from the fermentation mixture, according to their paper. Their co-author, chemistry Professor Dean Toste, then created a catalyst that converted the brew into a mix of hydrocarbons similar to those in diesel fuel.

The resulting substance burns as well as petroleum-based fuel and contains more energy per gallon than ethanol, according to the study. It can be produced using a variety of renewable starches and sugars that can be grown in crops.

"You can take a wide variety of sugar sources - from corn, sugar cane, molasses to woody biomass or plant biomass - and turn it into a diesel product using this fermentation process," said Blanch, adding that about 90 percent of the raw material remains in the finished product, reducing the loss of carbon. "Grasses are also a possible source. Eucalyptus could also be used. Anything that's fast-growing."

The blend could be adjusted for summer or winter driving, according to the researchers, who predicted it will be five to 10 years before the fuel is ready to be mass-marketed.

Blanch said it will probably take five years for the fuel to be perfected and become ready to be sold to the public. It could take another five years, he said, to develop a system that would produce the product on a scale large enough to meet the demand of the motoring public at a low enough cost to compete with oil-based products.

The expectation in California is that it will be used initially for niche markets, like the military, and eventually in trucks, trains and other vehicles that need more oomph than hybrid or battery power can provide.

So yeah, we could have been using carbon-neutral (ish) bio-fuels for the last CENTURY.

[bardobailey]

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/anima ... 2cpmr.html

Here is even more proof that our fate is just. Too bad about all the other critters.

[wintler2]

Re: meat. I live in a section of town where they slaughter pigs and make hot dogs, and bacon, and lunch meat out of them. yes, this goes on in a major US city, right near the downtown area. I never noticed until recently, when Mr. Quisp pointed it out to me, that on a still night, you can hear the pigs wailing as they are being killed. It is horrible. Like a human scream. The slaughterhouse is within a few blocks of my apartment. Not sure why I am talking about this. I love the taste of swine - it's my favorite flesh. But how can I keep eating it after hearing those screams? What is wrong with me that I'm so callous?

Thanks for the open question, mind if i go on pop psych ramble?

Nothing and everything is wrong with you & me. Disassociating the anguished screams from tasty pork chops is constructive alienation, basic 'skill' for the culture we live in. It enables us to function and behave as others doing same do, to fit into the hierarchy, and learning to copy authority figures use of same is 'growing up'.

At the same time, we know that misuse of alienation, too much turning blind eyes, not seeing the evil around us, is both part of how we got into this civilisation-scale mess, and deadening and dehumanising of us personally.

They are different universes to inhabit, rationalising callousness & empathising, and of course its more continuum than binary. to stay only in the first is to be utterly selfish, sticking only in the latter can get you burnt out, committed or otherwise martyred. best to maintain both operating systems and switch as appropriate, i tells myself.

[wintler2]

Biofuel created by explosive technology
Peter Fimrite | Updated 11:22 pm, Sunday, January 13, 2013

..So yeah, we could have been using carbon-neutral (ish) bio-fuels for the last CENTURY.

Only in press releases is it carbon neutral, and you better hope that the poor people that starve so we can drive don't walk your way (island continent wins again!).

[Hammer of Los]

...

Re: meat. I live in a section of town where they slaughter pigs and make hot dogs, and bacon, and lunch meat out of them. yes, this goes on in a major US city, right near the downtown area. I never noticed until recently, when Mr. Quisp pointed it out to me, that on a still night, you can hear the pigs wailing as they are being killed. It is horrible. Like a human scream. The slaughterhouse is within a few blocks of my apartment. Not sure why I am talking about this. I love the taste of swine - it's my favorite flesh. But how can I keep eating it after hearing those screams? What is wrong with me that I'm so callous?

Thanks for the open question, mind if i go on pop psych ramble?

Nothing and everything is wrong with you & me. Disassociating the anguished screams from tasty pork chops is constructive alienation, basic 'skill' for the culture we live in. It enables us to function and behave as others doing same do, to fit into the hierarchy, and learning to copy authority figures use of same is 'growing up'.

At the same time, we know that misuse of alienation, too much turning blind eyes, not seeing the evil around us, is both part of how we got into this civilisation-scale mess, and deadening and dehumanising of us personally.

They are different universes to inhabit, rationalising callousness & empathising, and of course its more continuum than binary. to stay only in the first is to be utterly selfish, sticking only in the latter can get you burnt out, committed or otherwise martyred. best to maintain both operating systems and switch as appropriate, i tells myself.

Wintler is a wise bird.

I still ain't eatin' meat though.

But I just about had enuff of the martyr schtick.

...

[NeonLX]

Y'know, it still bugs me to pull a gasping, hooked fish up out of its environment and watch it gasp and thrash in "our" atmosphere. I've done it many times down through the decades and I still feel pangs of remorse that haunt me, every time...and even when I think about it, like now.

I mean, I loves me some fish, especially salmon, but damn, when you actually have to be the one pulling the plug on that being's life...

On edit: a coworker's daughter aged six-ish, got all upset one day when we were talking about fishing. She said, "oh no, that fishy could be somebody's mommy or daddy!". That kind of brings it all home, don't it?

[wintler2]

Y'know, it still bugs me to pull a gasping, hooked fish up out of its environment and watch it gasp and thrash in "our" atmosphere. I've done it many times down through the decades and I still feel pangs of remorse that haunt me, every time...and even when I think about it, like now.

I mean, I loves me some fish, especially salmon, but damn, when you actually have to be the one pulling the plug on that being's life...

On edit: a coworker's daughter aged six-ish, got all upset one day when we were talking about fishing. She said, "oh no, that fishy could be somebody's mommy or daddy!". That kind of brings it all home, don't it?

Damn kids for truth! So go with the tug of empathy and honour the fish - kill it clean, thank it, cook it well, enjoy it with friends. To really do favours for that fishes kin, take some river rubbish home, reveg banks (take a seedling every time go fishing), fence out stock. Its not taking is the problem, its taking without giving, and without sensitive observance of balance & limits (i know you know but we gotta keep saying it, advertising works).

Where i live theres alot of wildlife (wombats wallabies rabbits foxes echidnas koalas deer possums, then theres all the birds..) and constant roadkill risk, which hurts; so i drive slower, am always ready and have rehearsed how much i can brake and swerve without losing control.. but i still drive. If i didn't drive, i couldn't work, and so to hold tightly to that empathetic tug alone would be catastrophic for me financially. But without losing balance completely, i've got to do something with the sentiment, cos that way lies my liberation.

[Hammer of Los]

...

I ate of the salmon of wisdom.

I became the salmon of wisdom.

I thrashed around in my watery world, leaping, recalling the fishes' struggle upwards towards the light.

I was fish once.

I no longer eat them.

Never liked fish much anyway.

Cod in batter was nice.

The piece of cod etc.

Hehehe.

...

[Col. Quisp]

This is a great thread. Lots of wisdom here! Keep it bumped up for future generations...

[justdrew]

Biofuel created by explosive technology
Peter Fimrite | Updated 11:22 pm, Sunday, January 13, 2013

..So yeah, we could have been using carbon-neutral (ish) bio-fuels for the last CENTURY.

Only in press releases is it carbon neutral, and you better hope that the poor people that starve so we can drive don't walk your way (island continent wins again!).

The freshwater alga Chlorella, a highly productive source of starch, might substitute for starch-rich terrestrial plants

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_acetobutylicum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABE_process

ABE fermentation, however, is not profitable when compared to the production of these solvents from petroleum. As such there are no currently operating ABE plants. During the 1950s and 1960s, ABE fermentation was replaced by petroleum chemical plants. Due to different raw materials costs, ABE fermentation was viable in South Africa until the early 1980s, with the last plant closing in 1983.

---

If we'd gone at it from the 1920s on, there would have been no need for competition between food and fuel crops. Hopefully it's not too late to get on the right track.

[crikkett]

to Nordic: I have conceded?

Yes, if you've consciously made the decision not to have children.

I hate to bring up mass media in such a conversation but the movie "The Children of Men" was about precisely this. Metaphorically speaking.

Not everyone is a good parent. The choice not to have children is not concession.

[bardobailey]

I've been off trying to find more about this topic (Near Term Extinction) that expands beyond just the collation of bad news. The following article link is by Paul Kingsnorth. He has a website: http://dark-mountain.net/.

http://paulkingsnorth.net/journalism/dark-ecology/

His personal site and the Dark Mountain Project site offer another way to assimilate and communicate about NTE. I also mentioned earlier that the comment section of Guy McPherson's posts at Nature Bat's Last are worth ferreting through for meaningful and helpful incite into this topic.

[wintler2]

From

.. http://a-m-e-g.blogspot.com/2012/12/ame ... -plan.html

The retreat of sea ice is causing a non-linear rise in Arctic temperature, so that it is now rising at about 1 degree per decade, which is about 6x faster than global warming, reckoned to be rising at between 0.16 and 0.17 degree per decade. The temperature gradient between the tropics and the Arctic has reduced significantly over the past decade, as a result of this so-called ‘Arctic amplification of global warming’.

It now appears that the polar jet stream behaviour is critically dependent on this gradient. As the gradient diminishes, the jet stream meanders more, with greater amplitude of the Rossby waves and therefore with peaks further north and troughs further south. This effect alone produces weather extremes - hot weather further north than normal and cold weather further south than normal.

But as well as meandering more, the jet stream is also tending to get stuck in so-called 'blocking patterns', where, instead of moving gradually eastwards, the jet stream wave peak or wave trough stays in much the same place for months. This blocking may be due to stationary highs over land mass and lows over ocean, with the jet stream weaving round them. Here we may be a witnessing of a dynamic interaction between the effects of Arctic amplification and global warming.

Note that there was a similar dynamic interaction in the case of Sandy. Ocean surface warmed by global warming lent strength to the hurricane and provided a northerly storm track up the coast; and then a sharp left turn over New York was prompted by meeting a jet stream blocking pattern.

As a climate scientist, one might have expected a reduced gradient between tropics and pole to have some effect on weather systems, because there is less energy to drive them. The normal pattern comprises 3 bands of weather systems around the planet for each hemisphere, with each band having 'cells' of circulating air. The air rises at the tropics, falls at the next boundary, rises at the next, and falls at the pole. There has to be an odd number of bands, so that there is air rising at the equator and falling at the poles. The jet streams are at the boundary between the bands.

As the temperature gradient between tropics and pole reduces, one would expect the weather systems to spread in a chaotic manner, meandering more wildly. This is exactly what has been observed. ..

Yep, i'd agree thats what seems to be happening at midlatitudes, not good news at all if new normal. Another ups for the southern hemisphere tho - its pole is a solid/antarctica is a continent, so will never be the heat pump that the melted north pole will.

I'm default anti the ongoing fossil fueled geoengineering and any more deliberate efforts, but theirs is an at least coherent and plausible case for its need. They've got buckleys chance of getting sufficient action and ultimately i'm glad- if there was the slightest chance we'd fuck it up (fake sulphates?), we would.

[wintler2]

Distressed and disoriented by NTE/ecopocalypse? consider becoming radicalised..
As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial. A Graphic Novel.
Derrick Jensen & Stephanie McMillan

Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet.
Derrick Jensen, Aric McBay, Lierre Keith
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7007665/ ... ave_Planet