alt.energy.renewable

On Mar 12, 5:42=A0am, Dan Bloomquist wrote:
> Fran wrote:
> > On Mar 11, 5:13 pm, bill wrote:
>
> >> We do not have the luxury of "wanting" to do things in a "friendly"
> >> manner, we're gonna die if we don't fix this, starting right now and
> >> on a truly massive scale
>
> > We can be friendly, but firm...
>
> Who is this 'we' Fran?
>

The same 'we' introduced by Bill, adopted for the sake of simplicity
of argument, and perhaps to prompt him to say something that would
elucidate whom it encompassed.

> > They aren't contradictions. Hardly
> > anyone opposes this stuff, the noise from the global polluters club to
> > the contrary.
>
> You really should quit blaming the boogy man. The habits of Americans
> have lead to our using 5 times the energy per capita than the rest of
> the world. And that does not count the East Asian labor and energy
> consumption that we exploit.
>

Passing over the figure -- I'm not sure it's correct but it's not that
important because Americans (and Australians) emit a lot more GHGs per
person that East Asians, or ewen South and West Asians -- the real
point here is that US and Australian society is tructured very much
around profligate consumption of hitherto relatively cheap energy,
which is largely so cheap because the downstream costs are counted as
intangibles and fall relatively randomly on people who aren't that
wealthy or in a position to complain. The main beneficiaries are the
people holding the equity in energy assets -- i.e. the global
polluters' club.

> And if some guy comes along and points out that we may damage the
> world's food supply by burning it in gas tanks, maybe he should not be
> called names and discounted out of hand.
>

Well if he's essentially lying or misrepresenting the problem to the
advantage of the global polluters' club -- and that is the most
obvious consequence of his position -- then I think that should be
pointed out. His "thesis" if one may so dignify his ranting, is utter
bunkum. Nobody is proposing to burn the world's food supply in gas
tanks. Some (*not I*) propose to use monocrops like corn or soybeans
to make biofuels. But if they did that, the quantum of land used would
be constrained by the increasing profits to be made using land to
raise food. As I've noted a number of times, right now, the principal
barriers to the food trade are institutional -- tariffs and so forth.
That couldn't happen if food were on the verge of becoming scarce. A
secondary and longer term threat arises from climate change, as now
arable lands become less climatically suited, or as inundation of
coastal lands makes them unfit, or as various plant diseases are moved
about the world by moving people and small fauna or other crops, or as
civil conflict breaks out or ... well you get my drift.

As I've also noted, much of the land under tillage is not used to feed
humans at all, but to raise food for livestock, or to agist it, or to
produce non-staples like alcohol and convenience foods, or cosmetic
feedstock. But "calderhome" is not at all interested in these far more
significant impositions or on the threat to existing arable land
consequenct upon climate change -- no no. Instead, he prattles on
about something he calls 'the nuclear hydrogen economy' knowing full
well that this is simply a figleaf for the business-as-usual case. He
won't listen to reason. He just keeps spamming the same tired old GPC
red herrings.

So IMO, his opinions should be seen in this light and dismissed.

Fran