Genetically Modified Crops in China

China faces unique challenges in regulating genetically modified (GM) crops for commercial agriculture. China has world-class biotechnology research and development capacity and has made several important advancements in the field. At the same time, China faces mounting challenges in the implementation and enforcement of biosafety regulations. Market economy pressures, administrative fragmentation, and lack of transparency in policymaking contribute to China’s difficulties. Recent changes in China’s biotechnology policies⁴ will broaden the commercial use of GM food crops, but will likely cause little improvement in China’s biotechnology governance capacity.

Several key biotechnology achievements have been made by Chinese researchers, but China lags behind the world in large-scale commercial distribution of GM food crops². Cotton engineered with the natural insecticide gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringensis (Bt) has been widely distributed in China since its approval in 1998¹, along with limited use of five other GM crops². However, GM corn and rice were only approved in 2009³, despite development of these strains in state institutions, extensive field trials, and pressure from key proponents in the 863 and 973 committees that fund and regulate GM research¹.

China has closed networks of people responsible for the funding, research, promotion, and regulation of GM crops in government-organized groups which James Kelley calls the biotechnology discourse coalition¹. This network is notorious for its lack of transparency and certainly has the appearance of a conflict of interest in the decision making process¹. Nonetheless, decisions coming out of this network show disparate results depending on the GM crop. Factors in China’s caution toward Bt rice include economic worries about global trade bans and labeling requirements, scientific uncertainty towards potential genetic drift into diverse traditional rice strains, increased public interest in potential changes to their staple food, as well as regulatory concern for illegal planting of GM seeds.

China’s National People’s Congress is ready to install a new set of rules governing the “production, development, and research of GM grains”⁴. But despite tough biosafety rules requiring field testing for at least three growing seasons before certification⁵, doubt remains about the enforceability of GM crop regulations in China. Administrative fragmentation continues to tangle China’s governance of biosafety issues as numerous Ministries vie for influence.

The fact that China has dealt with commercialization of GM food crops more cautiously than many western countries emphasizes the delicate balance China is trying to strike in its approach to regulating GM crops. Despite China’s attempts to further regulate the growing biotechnology industry, it is now opening up GM food crops to widespread cultivation and will be unlikely to effectively assert regulatory control over them.

~Mark Bremer, Green Explored Contributor

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[1] Keeley, James (2006) 'Balancing technological innovation and environmental regulation: an analysis of Chinese agricultural biotechnology governance', Environmental Politics, 15: 2, 293 — 309

[2] GMO Compass 3/29/10 “Genetically modified plants: Global cultivation on 134 million hectares”

[3] Reuters 11/27/09 “China gives safety approval to GMO rice”

[4] Reuters 12/27/10 “China mulls GMO food law, grain law ready in 2011”

[5] Robert F. Durant, Daniel J Fiorino, and Rosemary O’Leary (eds.) Environmental governance reconsidered: challenges, choices, and opportunities. 2004. MIT Press. (pg.121)

Who is the most gullible venture capitalist in the world?

The prize for the most gullible private venture capitalist maybe goes to Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures. Old Vinod whose name in Hindi means Joy or Happy is also the slang name for a clown in certain Indian traditions. This guy who has no basic knowledge of thermodynamics has been the spokes person for alternate biofuels for the venture capital industry. Perhaps even more than Alfalfa Gore another thermodynamic want to be, Vinod has led the US and California governments astray with promises of unlimited bio fuels from all sorts of cellulosic sources with unrealistic expected costs.

On August 27 the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125133578177462487.html reported on the fallacy of the biofuel industry and that it is running on empty The Wall Street Journal article focused on a company called Cello Energy of Alabama. Quoting the Wall Street Journal “The sector suffered a major setback this summer after a federal jury ruled that Cello Energy of Alabama, a plant-fiber-based biofuel producer, had defrauded investors. Backed by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, Cello was expected to supply 70% of the 100.7 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels that the Environmental Protection Agency planned to blend into the U.S. fuel supply next year. The alleged fraud will almost certainly prevent the EPA from meeting its targets next year, energy analysts say. “

I guess old Vinod was taken by Cello. The story gets even more interesting and again quoting the Wall Street Journal article “This year, Khosla representatives took samples of diesel produced at the new Cello plant and sent them off for testing. The results showed no evidence of plant-based fuel: Carbon in the diesel was at least 50,000 years old, marking it as traditional fossil fuel.

The EPA wasn't told about the test, and continued to rely on Mr. Boykin's original claims when it asserted in the Federal Register in May that Cello could produce 70% of the cellulosic fuel targets set by Congress that are due to take effect next year.”

The question then should be asked is why did Vinod not reveal to the EPA the results of his test of Cello biodiesel that was carbon dated to long before when Fred Flintstone drove his foot mobile? Maybe Vinod had egg on his face or maybe he was trying to recover the millions of dollars he invested in Cello? My conclusion is that the US government is the most gullible venture capitalist in the world and the EPA stands for Easily Prayed Animals. The sad truth is for years I have been saying biofuel is biofool and Mother Nature never intended photosynthesis to provide liquid fuel for a billion internal combustion engines. Perhaps Vinod and Alfalfa will write a book tilted the “Convenient Untruth” when they reflect upon the nonsense they sold the EPA, CARB, and the US public on biofools.

This comment came from a Reader Phil Borland

Subject: Vinod Koshla retortDear Lindsay,I’m unsuccessful in trying to add the following to your article on our “friend” Vinod Koshla, can you help, please? Many, many thanks. As a point of personal reference, we met several times years ago at Marin Professions. I still remember you holding up you pressure vessel for filling up celebratory balloons! Hope that you made a killing on it!"There have been many more than Vinod Khosla who have been sucker-punched/duped by the expectations of bushels of money flowing into their pockets by supposedly cashing in on “helping” the environment. There are very few people, now, who actually believe that ethanol derived from corn is a sensible business or environmental solution – save those who are still trying to fund their failing and ever-subsidized ethanol ventures before the jig is up! Why do we insist on using food crops for fuel when there are other options? For your reference, please review the following article on Mr. Vinod Koshla:http://cleantech.com/news/928/cellulosic-ethanol-to-be-cost-competitiAnother field, Koshla is investing in – cellulosic ethanol – is most probably also doomed. The large scale of the conversion plants and the massive amounts of biomass required to constantly feed them are standing in contradiction to the low energy contents of biomass. The logistics just do not pencil out. A Japanese scientist has recently presented at a symposium on biomass-derived fuels that the threshold for transporting biomass is at 30km or about 18 miles. Another point is that the ethanol pocess can only convert the cellulose, but not the lignin, which is a large share of the biomass. This is burned in boilers to provide the process heat. This again show the bad energy balance this process has. So even if it ever can become cost competitive, it is environmental nonsense – too little energy from too much feedstock transported and converted in an inefficient way. We have calculated that with the process explained now, it is possible to yield more than two times the energy from the same feedstock, which reduces the transport distance by 50%.There is a scientist in Germany who spent over 30 years working for the giant company, Siemens, pioneering in the development of a waste-to-fuel technology that mimics what took Mother Nature 300 million years to develop but is now done in a continuous three minute closed-loop cycle. This tried and proven technology, called the KDV is an acronym which means low pressure and low temperature catalytic depolymerization – that’s a mouthful, better use the letters, KDV! Dr. Christian Koch has, in effect, dedicated his life’s work in finding a way to convert almost all organic waste into a fuel that can be used worldwide. In case of biomass as feedstock, the fuel is an ultra low sulfur diesel fuel oil, a synthetic oil because it’s not derived from fossil fuel like other petroleum products. Dr. Koch has managed to convert all matter of hydrocarbon wastes: waste oil, bunker oil, cardboard, construction waste, plastics, and crop wastes (corn, sugar cane, African palm, pineapple, banana, etc., etc.) into this high grade diesel fuel oil which has both an extremely high lubricity and clean burn rate – a far cry from conventional diesel fuel AND no additives are needed or being blended like bio-diesel or ethanol is; it can be used straight from the tap, as is!Here’s my gripe: for obvious reasons, oil companies detest this technology, and members of our esteemed U.S. “bureaucracy” prefer to spend $385 million for a questionable technology, while they will not heed the call to convert organic “waste” into a very useable, in many cases carbon-neutral fuel that is less expensive than “regular” diesel, has obvious environmental benefits, is socially responsible, and can create more U.S. jobs. Interestingly, our foreign neighbors to the north, east, south and west are more strategic, they immediately see the value of diverting their waste stream into diesel fuel instead of going to the ever over-filling garbage dump. Moreover and here’s the worldwide clincher: the KDV technology can process, convert the hydrocarbon content in pre-sorted MSW, municipal solid waste, too. Yes, it’s more complicated and more costly (a longer ROI, Return On Investment) than a fast-track bean counter would like to see BUT the global benefits are what we’ve all been waiting for, praying to see for many years AND this alternative energy development couldn’t be more timely.If you are interested in learning more, please visit www.energy-visions.com and you will see that the future is here, now.Phil Boland"Phil BolandPresident & CEOEnergy Visions, Inc.55 Rodeo Ave, Suite 25Sausalito, CA 94965 +1 415.298.3582 Direct p.boland@energy-visions.com +1 415.499.8242 Office www.energy-visions.com philipboland Skype www.EnergyOutOfWaste.com

Are synthetic corks better than natural cork for wine?

While my blog is often the grapes of wrath about some dumb company, politician or technology, today’s blog is about the fruit of the vine. Grapes are an amazing fruit and have been around as part of civilization from the beginning of recorded history. I live not too far from Napa and Sonoma two excellent wine making regions. My Mom and Sister were born in Stellenbosch an equally excellent place for wine making in South Africa.

The conversion of sugars and starches to ethyl alcohol via fermentation has been known to man and woman for at least five thousand years. What essentially has changed is the vessels in which the brew is fermented, the vessels in which the drinks are stored, and the stoppers that keep the alcohol from further oxidation and ruination. In the early days of wine making about 3,000 BC clay vessels held the wine and the stoppers were made of wood. Winemakers realized that wood was not an optimal stopper material and the bark of an oak tree in Spain and Portugal was found to be more pliable and an improved stopper. This is the origin of cork. During the medieval period folks kind of forgot their chemistry and forgot to use corks for closures and just drank their wine and beer as fast as they could manufacture the drinks. But a clever monk in France named Dom Perignon rediscovered the virtues of cork as a closure for his new discovered bubbly called Champagne. Dom was not Dumb even though the Afrikaans word for dumb is dom.

Cork and wine making have been synonymous for most of modern time since old Dom. Higher quality wines still use natural cork although other methods of preventing oxidation of the drink of Bacchus have now come to market. Old Bacchus was really Greek and not called Bacchus but Dionysus. As old Willy said “what is in a name” So why do folks fork out untold amounts for named vintage wines in old bottles that still have an intact cork? It must be that the cork did its job of preventing the egress of air into the bottle and therefore the breakdown of ethanol into less tasty and more toxic chemicals. Just last night I had some wine from Italy that came corked with a plastic cork from Supremecorq LLC I checked the company’s web site at and they claim the cork is made from a thermoplastic elastomer. I worked on thermoplastic elastomers for shoe soles back in 1980. Old Bacchus would have to resole his sandals if he found out that this is now going on. In truth the thermoplastic may perform just as well if not better as a closure for wine bottles. The cork tree may be a bit greener as the cork comes from the bark. By not felling the tree to produce the cork the tree remains alive and cork is therefore most probably greener than a block copolymer of styrene and butadiene, that I am guessing Supremecorq uses as their starting material. Cork is also less dense than the thermoplastic substitute so a case of wine will be a few grams lighter if corked with cork and not corq.

The beauty of a thermoplastic as apposed to a thermoset material is that it can be remelted and extruded over and over. Perhaps we can get bars to recycle the corqs, and Nike can make running shoes for high jumpers.

Garbonzo beans, nitrogen, and King Corn

Garbanzo beans also known as chick peas might just save the planet. The bean has been cultivated for eight thousand years as a source of nutrition. The garbanzo is a legume that can fix atmospheric nitrogen. Corn is not capable of fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere and therefore requires copious amounts of nitrogen fertilizer to grow. Much of the nitrogen fertilizer in the Midwest winds up travelling down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico where a massive dead zone now exists due to the excess nitrogen. If farmers rotate garbanzos and corn as alternate crops the garbanzos can replenish nitrogen into the soil. Legumes that fix nitrogen from the atmosphere are a source of high protein food. Proteins are amino acids that are chemical chains containing nitrogen. Carbohydrates do not have any nitrogen atoms. This is why corn ha significantly less protein than garbanzos or soy beans that are both legumes. Corn has approximately 6% protein, garbanzos 25% and soy a whopping 50%. All thanks to the legumes getting their nitrogen fix from the atmosphere.

All this talk of nitrogen has me thinking about Shell Oil who now claim in their advertising promotions that their gasoline is enriched with nitrogen. Shell has patented a detergent for gasoline that contains a large fraction of nitrogen. This detergent is able to withstand high temperatures in an engine and perform the task of removing gunk that could otherwise accumulate on engine parts such as valves and pistons. As nitrogen is a key ingredient in the gasoline additive Shell stations now have large banners extolling the virtues of nitrogen.

Ammonia also contains nitrogen and folks have used ammonia solutions for almost a hundred years as a detergent. Many household detergents use ammonia a key ingredient. Other types of detergents use surfactants, enzymes, oxidants, and abrasives. Ammonia is a pretty simple water soluble molecule. It is composed of one nitrogen atom and three hydrogen atoms. Amino acids in proteins are named after ammonia. In forming an amino acid, the ammonia molecule attaches to carbon backboned chemical and in the process loses one hydrogen atom as it bonds with a carbon atom. Ammonia synthesis using high pressure nitrogen and hydrogen was first accomplished in 1909 in Germany and this chemical became the backbone for the global fertilizer as well as explosives industry. Several nitrogen containing compounds are used as explosives, the scariest of which is TNT or trinitrotoluene. TNT has also been used as the acronym for record albums and comic book heroes. A Belgium airline also named itself TNT but I doubt that too many folks fly these unfriendly skies.

I spent the first twelve years of my working experience in the air separation business working for two companies. The first company was Air Products and the second Liquid Air. I managed to make a living by manufacturing oxygen, nitrogen and argon out of thin air. The industrial uses of nitrogen are widespread and just about any manufactured item ranging from Pringles Potato Chips to Intel Pentium Chip require nitrogen in their manufacturing process. The garbanzo bean should be inducted into the air separation hall of fame, I will likely be inducted into the air separation wall of shame for spending twelve years pretending to work.

How much energy do we use cooking thanksgiving turkey?

Yeah Thanksgiving is here and it is certainly my favorite holiday as it is All American and full of turkey. Folks get to eat well and then sleep well after eating a huge amount of calories. Legend has it that it is this certain protein called tryptophan in the turkey that causes the sleepiness. Tryptophan is a standard and essential amino acid in the diet. It is not true that turkey has more tryptophan than other foods, in fact on a per unit mass basis dried egg whites have four times as much tryptophan than turkey if you eat the same mass of the two foods. Parmesan and cheddar cheese are also richer in tryptophan. My advice is if you really want to sleep well after your Thanksgiving meal sprinkle your turkey with parmesan and have meringues for dessert rather than pumpkin pie. Actually all who eat over 1,000 calories will sleep well no matter what is on the menu.

The Japanese company Showa Denko attempted to produce synthetic tryptophan as a food supplement in 1989. Unfortunately their quality control was terrible and they produced the dimer (two molecules connected) of tryptophan, a poisonous chemical that caused thirty seven deaths and permanent disability to over 1,500 people. Their manufacturing motto must have been kill two birds with one stone.

There are approximately 100 million households in the USA and some 30 million turkeys will be cooked for Thanksgiving dinners. The average mass of a turkey is about 16 pounds. Therefore some 500 million pounds of turkey will be cooked. The amount of gas and electricity needed to roast these birds is not that enormous. If one assumes that the birds take four hours to roast and that the oven uses about .4 kilowatt hours for each hour of cooking, the sum total of energy used in roasting turkeys is 48 million kilowatt hours. The Hoover Dam can produce 48 million kilowatt hours each day so we use one day’s of electric generation of the Hoover Dam to make the majority of citizens in the country very content once a year.

All this talk of fowl makes me sad. We recently had to put our dog Jason down. Jason was thirteen and a half years old and had a wonderful life. He was allergic to many foods and the vets at Alto Tiburon gave us the recommendation of a special diet when Jason was a small pup. His diet consisted of roasted chicken, rice, and fat free cottage cheese. Jason consumed one and a half chickens a week or about seventy five chickens a year. Therefore Jason accounted for the demise of some one thousand chickens during the course of his remarkable life. Only Colonel Saunders did in more of these fine feathered fowl. Jason loved all and was perhaps the easiest going dog on the peninsular. This thanksgiving we are going to miss Jason as he was always happy to substitute turkey for chicken and Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday except for perhaps the Jewish New year when he was given a special treat of chopped chicken liver. Our friend Faye who is Iranian coined the name “shikamoo” for Jason. This Persian word can roughly be translated as glutton. Jason was no glutton for punishment. He was a wonderful dog that my daughter Alexis chose for the family many years ago. We should all give thanks for the Jason’s of this world.

How much energy is used for a 140 degree latte?

We are not talking about the Rio Grande but the mid-size coffee serving at Starbucks. Yes Starbucks has Short, Tall, Grande and Venti sizes for their coffee and lattes. The Grande is a 16 fluid ounce size. I was recently in the Strawberry Starbucks when I overheard the patron in front of me ask for a 140 degree latte. Being a thermodynamics and green expert I of course had to ask the Barista what this meant. The Barista replied that the milk in the 140 degree is warmed less than the normal 160 degrees. Of course my mind started doing mental arithmetic as to how much energy Starbucks could save if all patrons became green and asked for the 140 degree Grande non fat latte with one Splenda and no foam single cupped.

Yes there are over 15,000 Starbucks stores and Starbucks has yearly revenues of nearly ten billion dollars. Soon there will be fewer stores as Strabucks has hit hard times with the terrible global economic downturn. I estimate they must sell something like 3 billion Grande equivalent drinks a year. Twenty degrees difference on a drink that weighs a pound and using a specific heat of 1.0 means 60 billion BTUs could be saved each year by Starbucks moving to the 140 degree latte. Each of the Starbuck espresso machines is powered by electricity. There are 3412 BTUs in a kilowatt hour. The added warmth of the drinks therefore equals 19.096 million kilowatt hours. The average heat rate of a coal fired power plant, the most common form of power plant in the world is about 10,000 BTU per kilowatt hour. This means about 1.25 pounds of coal needs to be burned to generate a kilowatt hour, therefore the 19 million kilowatt hours required 23.870 million pounds of coal. Coal is composed of approximately 50% carbon, the remainder is ash and moisture with a little hydrogen. Therefore 11,935,000 pounds of carbon are emitted each year to increase the temperature of the Grande cups of Starbucks from 140 degrees to 160 degrees. This is almost 6,000 tons of carbon. Expressed as carbon dioxide we have to multiply the amount of carbon by 3.67. Now that I have bored you all with tedious math, we have that Starbucks is emitting and additional 21,881 tons a year of carbon dioxide simple because the average patron did not request their 140 degree Grande non fat latte with one Splenda and no foam in a single cupped option. This is about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 4,000 cars emit in a year. Of course just driving to Starbucks to get the 140 degree Grande non fat latte with one Splenda and no foam single cupped drink causes an untold amount of carbon emissions.

Starbucks will be able to claim a lesser environmental foot print now that their business is stalled and they are closing stores. As for me I have to say I like my non foam Venti soy latte at 150 degrees. The cost of this drink is about half the price of Starbucks stock that now trades at $9.29 a share. Maybe soon Starbucks will give out warrants for their shares instead of coupons and they will change their name to Star with not so many Bucks.

Should I BBQ with propane or charcoal?

As summer draws to an end I am using today's article to deal with the subject of BBQs and whether propane grills are greener than charcoal grills. Unfortunately there is no conclusive evidence that either method is greener than the other. Propane is a fossil fuel and adds to the concentration of greenhouse gases but burns without soot. Soot is a large contributor to global warming. The Sierra Club has voted at different times in favor of either method. They use the argument that charcoal from wood waste is carbon neutral however charcoal form living trees exacerbates global warming.

The Green Machine prefers propane for environmental, convenience, and food safety reasons. Even if the charcoal is made from waste wood that in turn came from trees that sequestered carbon, my point is it is better to leave the trees standing or rotting returning nutrients to the earth rather than convert them into charcoal In addition to soot there are dozens of chemicals in charcoal smoke that are carcinogenic. Propane is a simple hydrocarbon with the chemical formula C3H8. Combusting propane yields only carbon dioxide and water. Fat that drips onto the ceramic or steel burner plate in a propane fired BBQ also forms carcinogens. However if one uses burners that are aside of where the meat is cooking and indirect heat is used then the source of carcinogens is avoided. It is much more difficult to push the coals from side to side in the BBQ grill on avoid these carcinogens infiltrating your meal.

This discussion on charcoal has made me remember some research I did in 2003 for a book I published in Japanese on Sustainability. I discovered then that much of the forest in Somalia was being cut down to produce charcoal for export. I thought that these exports of charcoal would be to Europe or other neighboring African States. Sadly the export of the Somali charcoal was to Saudi Arabia where charcoal is called Black Gold and sells for more than $10 a bag. From a sustainability view point this is crazy. Saudi Arabia has more fossil fuel than anywhere else in the world and the Saudis should use their propane for BBQs and camp fires rather than charcoal.

Several US chemical companies plan to produce hydrogen, methanol, and ammonia by gasifying petroleum coke. I have the suggestion for these big chemical companies to package the coke in bags and sell this packaged coke to the Saudis. We could give the Somalis a portion of the revenues from the sale of the petroleum coke and save their acacia forests. This would be a win-win proposition for all and finally the US could export something back to the Saudis. I need to go back to the BBQ to tend to my meal because I know that independent of whether we BBQ with briquettes or with Propane the entire US population's total Carbon Dioxide emissions from our BBQs is less than 0.15 million tons a year or about 0.002% of our collective 6.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions in the USA last year. Remembering that chicken is greener than beef, I will put another chicken breast on the grill. If I was Australian I may put another shrimp on the BarB.

Which came first the chicken or the egg in being green?

Thank Gluttony It’s Wednesday

Yes today’s G word is one of the seven deadly sins. Gluttony can be loosely defined as eating or drinking more than you need to the point of waste. The word is derived from Latin from the word to swallow or gulp. We in the USA certainly know how to gulp and if I remember right Seven Eleven even named their drink size the Gulp. I don’t want you all to stop eating steak or hamburgers as I love these menu items and can think of nothing better than sitting on Sam’s deck eating one of their burgers and gulping a diet coke. However the consumption of meat protein over the past thirty years has quadrupled on the planet and this is a major contributor to global warming.

The habit of eating meat has moved from the Occident (west) to the Orient (East). The collective mass of all livestock on our planet is now almost twice as much as the collective mass of all humans living on earth. For most of history the collective mass of humans exceeded the collective mass of our livestock. Most of our grains and soy beans are fed to livestock. Cattle in particular are large generators of greenhouse gases in the form of methane. Before all of you giggle because of bathroom talk, you have the wrong end of the cow. The predominant quantity of greenhouse gas emanates from the mouth of a cow. You need to remember that pound for pound methane is twenty one times worse as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Why do cows emit methane from their mouths? The reason is that cows belong to the group that are called ruminants or those that chew their cud. The polite word for the act of belching is eructation. Approximately 8% of the fodder fed to a cow winds up as methane that is eructated. This volume of methane is approximately one hundred gallons of gas a day. Before you all rush out to capture gas from the mouth of a cow remember this is not liquid volume but gaseous volume. The amount of energy contained in each cow’s daily eructation is about equal to the energy in a pint of pure ethanol.

Now that we know cows emit a massive amount of greenhouse gas, we need to answer the question whether cows are more efficient at converting feed to meat than other livestock? Sorry cows are not the most efficient at this task, broiler chicken are the most efficient. Chickens require 3.4 pounds of feed for one pound or ready to cook meat, cows require 6.2 pounds of feed. Before we blame cattle for all of our ills, pigs require 8.4 pounds, eggs 3.8 pounds and cheese requires 7.9 pounds. Therefore if you want to lower your greenhouse gas footprint, next time you are on the deck at Sam’s eating lunch order a chicken breast with cheese sandwich instead of a bacon burger. Actually ordering a veggie burger made of soy would save the world all of the conversion losses of growing, transporting, butchering, and refrigerating the food we eat. In fact the United Nations is suggesting that humans adopt an increasing amount of soy in our diets as a method to mitigate global warming. While science is certainly on the side of the UN’s argument, I believe a nice juicy burger is still one of life’s pleasures and I will do my part to save the planet by carpooling. Based on the conversion of feed we also know that the chicken came before the egg.

What is the average vehicle mass in grams?

Today we will discuss mass. Grams are a metric unit of measure of mass. The US EPA reported that the fuel efficiency of the average vehicle sold in 2007 was the same as the average of a vehicle sold in 2006 at 20.2 miles per gallon almost ten percent lower than the average for the year 1987. This means we have been going backwards since 1987 in our fleet efficiency thanks to the size and mass of the average vehicle sold in 2007. Therefore we can thank grams for our current energy problems. The interesting data on fleet fuel efficiency can be found at http://www.epa.gov/otaq/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s07001.pdf

It is interesting that the average mass of vehicles sold in the USA has increased significantly since 1987 from 3,221 pounds to 4,144 pounds or 1,873,088 grams. The average horsepower of a vehicle has almost doubled since 1987 from 118 to 223 horsepower. The heaviest horse in history had a mass of 3,360 pounds or about the mass of the average vehicle sold in the USA in 1987. This horse named Sampson lived in England in 1846, and had he not been gelded he would have weighed even more. The acceleration of the average vehicle measured in the time taken to get from zero to sixty MPH has decreased from 13.1 seconds to 9.6 seconds in the past twenty years. The fuel economy of the average vehicle has decreased from 22.0 mpg to 20.2 mpg because of the change in mass, horsepower and the proliferation of trucks (SUVs included) from only 28% of vehicles sold in 1987 to 49% of the vehicles to be sold in 2007.

If we all remember a previous Green Machine episode explaining the Newton’s laws of motion we all know that the force that is needed to be applied to an object to yield a set acceleration is directly proportional to the mass ( F=MA ). In accelerating cars from zero to sixty there are some other forces (resistance) to be overcome such as wind resistance and rolling resistance but for the moment will simply deal with old Isaac’s second law. The mass of the vehicles has increased in the past twenty years by 29%. Acceleration increased by 36% so accounting for increased mass and increased acceleration one would have expected the required force from the engine to have increased by 75% which is in line with the added horsepower in the 2007 models. With all this increased mass, faster acceleration and more powerful engines how did we still achieve only an 8% reduction in fuel efficiency? This can be answered by the improved efficiency of the later model engines. Primarily as a result of fuel injection, multi valve engines, and variable valve timing that were not available back in the old days. These improvements all relate to how the fuel is burned in the engineIn the future we will have higher compression engines, direct fuel injection, and of course smaller and lighter vehicles. We can thank the Governator for the proliferation of SUVs as his movie Kindergarten Cop started the Hummer rage. My prediction is that within a decade the average mass of a vehicle will drop to value we had in 1987 and the average fuel efficiency will be close to 30 mpg. Also within a decade we will have long forgotten Arnie.

Thank Garbage

TGIW – Thank Garbage It’s Wednesday

Today we thank the trash we throw out for its energy content and value. The USA is the world’s greatest waster of materials. Over 251 million tons a year of municipal solid waste was generated in these United States in 2006. We consume and discard vast amounts of paper, food, plastic, cans, bottles, and other consumer goods. I had this thought what if we could turn this waste into energy or other useful material. Well I have to admit others have beaten me in the race to recycle.

The cities of San Francisco and Oakland are now recycling food scraps from restaurants and making composted material for fertilizing the vineyards in Napa and Sonoma. Yes some 300 tons a day of organic material that can be composted is hauled to a Vacaville where a facility run by Jepson Prairie Organics turns this waste into useful fertilizer. Composting is an aerobic process, meaning air is added to the pile of waste to help decompose the material. http://www.jepsonprairieorganics.com/ What is not reported is that the gas emitted from a compost heap is carbon dioxide. However had the waste been placed in a landfill it would be more likely that an anaerobic (without air) breakdown of the trash would emit methane gas. Pound for pound methane gas has over twenty times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide.

Another way to reuse the food scraps is what the Mount nelson Hotel in Capetown South Africa is doing. This stately hotel with five acres of gardens is feeding food scraps to its worm farms. These worms breakdown the food scraps into a liquid fertilizer as well as a nutrient rich mulch. Also the worms grow at a prolific rate and are a source of protein for birds and poultry. http://biophile.co.za/recycling/worms-at-the-mount-nelson

It is amazing to me that we here in the USA have a recycle rate for aluminum cans that is less than half. If you consider that the amount of energy needed to fabricate an aluminum can will power a 32” LCD TV for three hours, this is perhaps the most wasteful item in our trash. The good news on the recycling front is that we recycle over 99.0% of the lead acid batteries we have for our vehicles and data centers. The following recycle rates have been reported by the US EPA for various materials for the year 2006: Steel Cans 62.9%; Yard Trimmings 62%; Paper and Cardboard 51.6%; Aluminum Cans 45.1%; 34.9%; Plastic Milk Bottles 31.0%; Plastic Water Bottle 30.9% and Glass Containers 25.3%. http://www.epa.gov/garbage/facts.htm

One may ask why do recycle more steel cans than aluminum cans even though aluminum is more valuable pound for pound? My educated answer is that steel is magnetic and it is much easier to extract steel from a pile or garbage by simply running the garbage over a magnetic separator. The recycle rates for aluminum cans and plastic bottles are higher in states that have enforced a deposit law and hence placed a greater value of the container. Many states do not have deposit laws or cash redemption values for beverage containers. The California Refund Value (CRV) is 5 cents for containers less than 24 ounces and 10 cents for containers greater than 24 ounces. The Golden State has a combined recycle rate for all aluminum, plastic, glass, and steel beverage containers of over 70% (14.7 billion out of 21.9 billion in 2007). This proves one man’s trash is another’s treasure.
http://www.conservation.ca.gov/DOR/Pages/Index.aspx

TGIW - Thank Glucose It's Wednesday About a year ago there was news in the electronics press that Sony had developed a sugar powered battery using bio-cells and enzymes that digest sugar. The Sony sugar battery develops 50 milliwatts of power. This is a very small amount of power so don't get too excited that this will be the green technology of the future. By comparison your house uses about one and a half kilowatts of electricity. This means that if you get hooked on the sweet taste of the Sony sugar battery so you will need 30,000 of these batteries to power your home. The battery kind of looks like a fuzzy dice I had hanging on my rearview mirror back when disco was king, GM was solvent, and gasoline cost less than a buck a gallon. http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200708/07-074E/index.html


All this sweet talk got me thinking about sugar and how much energy this wonderful chemical contains. First one has to understand that sugar is a carbohydrate and that means it has carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in its chemical structure (carbo for carbon and hydrate for hydrogen and oxygen). Gasoline is simply a hydrocarbon meaning it only has carbon and hydrogen atoms. Sugar has the chemical formula of C12H22O11. Remembering our chemistry this means sugar has 12 carbon atoms, 22 hydrogen atoms and 11 oxygen atoms. Gasoline by comparison is typically composed of 8 carbon atoms and 16 hydrogen atoms. As the sugar molecule is already partially oxidized by having 11 oxygen atoms, thermodynamics tells us that sugar will have a lower heating (fuel) value per pound than a non-oxidized molecule like gasoline. The insurance industry considers sugar as a combustible material because it is only partially oxidized and can therefore fuel a fire. Combusting a pound of sugar yields 7,100 BTUs or enough energy to heat your seventeen gallons of bathwater to a cozy 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Combusting a pound of gasoline would yield about 18,000 BTUs. Therefore, hypothetically speaking, if you could use sugar to fuel your vehicle you would have to carry two and a half times the mass of fuel to travel the same distance.

Next time you do some baking make sure to add six ounces of gasoline as a substitute for a pound of sugar. Only joking you will blow up half of the world if you do this! Don’t ask me how much Splenda is the equivalent BTUs of sugar as I only bake with sugar. I had always thought that sugar cane contained a greater amount of sugarthan do sugar beets. This is not so. Oregon State University reports that beets have 16% sugar versus 14% for cane. Cane sugar is grown in tropical climates allowing the plant to grow faster than beets that grow in colder climates. This is the reason that most of the sugar we eat is primarily produced from cane and not beets. This is like getting "beaten by a cane" which is standard punishment in Singapore for chewing gum even if the gum is sugarless. http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/css/330/seven/index.htm

There is a sugar association in the USA, who claims that sugar is a brain food, that it stops mold from growing, and that it heals wounds. Now we know how Neosporin is made, it is simply a mixture of sugarand petroleum jelly. Given that both of these ingredients are combustible, Neosporin should likewise be a combustible material, however I have not tried that experiment yet. This experiment was in part attempted in Adam Sandler’s latest movie Don’t Mess With Zohan. The results of the experiment in the movie at least indicate Neosporin will not self detonate, so don’t be afraid to use it on a minor cut or burn. http://www.sugar.org/

Thank Grains It's Thursday

Green Thursday - Thank Grains It's Thursday

This week's column is brought to you courtesy on corn kernels. Those normally wonderful and tasty sweet kernels of corn that we chew off of the cobb are now being used by some supposed green folks as a heating fuel. Some enterprising folks in the Midwest and Northeast are selling stoves that burn dried corn kernels. These stoves are fitted with hoppers in which the kernels are stored and then fed into the stove via an auger. The flow characteristics of the dried kernels allow this "pellet like" fuel to easily stoke the fire in the stove. The dried corn kernels have a heating value in excess of 7,000 BTUs per pound, a value that is similar to hardwood. http://www.cornstoves.info/amaiz_hm.html

Corn kernels have the following composition: 8% protein, 3% oil, 62% starch and 27% water. You have all see the "Nutrition Facts" on food labels. Using the chemical composition of corn listed above, a bushel of corn that weighs 56 pounds has some 80,000 food Calories. If we assume for the moment we could get all of our 2,000 Calories a day from just eating corn, a bushel of corn would feed an adult for forty days. http://www.ansc.purdue.edu/swine/swineday/sday96/psd16-96.htm


Heating a house with corn instead of wood, natural gas, or propane is a crime against humanity and animals. These folks who think they are green are robbing some starving person of protein, lipids and carbohydrates. If they want to heat their homes with biomass they should burn wood in their stoves. Wood has cellulose and lignin that are not digestible by humans, but also have a heat of combustion of approximately 7,000 BTUs per pound. The folks who use corn kernels in their stoves enjoy the ease of filling the hopper with corn rather than splitting logs. As punishment for their crimes against humanity, their sentence should be to split logs all day long.

Moving from the starving to the obese, most of us could shed ten pounds of fat. The reason why shedding fat is good for your health is that your heart has to pump your blood through an extra mile of blood vessels for each pound of fat cells in your body. Losing ten pounds of weight implies your heart has to pump through ten miles less of blood vessels. Ten pounds of fat is approximately one and a half gallons of fat, therefore reducing your weight by ten pounds equals an decreased heart consumption of seven miles per gallon (ten miles divided by one and a half gallons). The ten pounds of fat if liposuctioned from your body if converted into biodiesel would propel a 2008 Jetta Turbodiesel almost sixty miles. My suggestion is we should all loose ten pound weight by undergoing liposuction and help the truly green Jetta TDI owners travel sixty miles without the use of fossil fuel and relieve our hearts from the added effort of pumping our blood an extra ten miles.

Each week I now write a blog titled the "Gangrene Award" at www.gangreneaward.blogspot.com that is kind of like the "Green Darwin Award" for the dumbest green technology. This week the corn kernel stove is the hands down winner of the award. We are indeed fortunate that Tiburon is not surrounded by cornfields so we are not tempted to mimic these folks who think CORN stands for "Citizens Organizing Reduced Nutrition".

Thank Groceries

TGIT - Thank Groceries It's ThursdayYes today's blog is brought to you by extra amount you are paying for your grocery bill. You can thank your local government, the US Government, the EU, just about every politician, Archer Daniel Midland, and the extremely incompetent group at UC Berkeley that work in the so called Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab. http://rael.berkeley.edu/ Yes the Wasteful and Inappropriate Lab at Berkeley was perhaps the loudest proponent over the past five years for bioethanol. When I confronted their director and staff five years ago to stop "selling" the bad science of "food for fuel" they turned a deaf ear and a blind eye. I kind of remember before the Iraq war the UN had this "oil for food" program with old Saddam. At least some of the oil Saddam sold bought food. Our incompetent leaders, our greedy commodity traders, and even the faculty of what was once the premier public university in the land sold out. Yes UC Berkeley has sold out to BP for $500 million and RAEL certainly was an active participant in this transaction. http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/02/01_ebi.shtml This food for oil is a crock pot of sewage and will yield more waste of land, higher food prices, and more global misery. Your groceries now cost a lot more but at least in Marin County we can eat a single sourdough baguette for the ridiculous cost of $3.29. Talking about our dough going sour, the magician of the year award goes to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson for the trick of turning the dollar into a third world currency in no time at all. The sad point to all of this is that the poor people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America work for less per day than what a baguette now costs in Golden State.

On a more positive note my blog was mentioned in the April report of a website downunder called www.emergentfutures.com The monthly newsletter is free and more importantly informative. The local newspaper that reports on the Tiburon Peninsular is now carrying my articles which will appear weekly are titled "Lindsay Leveen The Green Machine" http://www.thearknewspaper.com/ I will use these articles which are limited to 500 words to teach laypeople about the hope and hype of energy alternates.

It is very interesting to see in the news today that the Rockefeller Family is at odds with the management of Exxon Mobil about Exxon's avoidance of renewable energy as part of its portfolio http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080430/bs_nm/exxon_dc Yes old John D may be turning in his grave now that his descendants have a preference for the color green in something other than the color of money.

Some good news on the conservation front. Gasoline usage in the USA dropped in February and is likely to continue to drop this year compared with last. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080407/us_nm/usa_eia_gasoline_dc Conservation is the only real and appropriate alternate to overcome the high price of energy and the resulting massive emissions of carbon. A real dent will be made by individuals driving less, eating less, heating less, and making fewer latte runs to Starbucks. I had previously blogged about the 140 Degree Latte, Looks like old Starbucks should merge with Stone Cold Ice Cream as Starbuck's profit has dropped by 27% and they are going to be stone cold even with their new drink called Rigor Mortis http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/fewer-latte-runs-sends-starbucks-2q/n20080430203109990008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigor_mortis

Mid-size coffee serving at Starbucks

Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Grande It’s Thursday


We are not talking about the Rio Grande but the mid-size coffee serving at Starbucks. Yes Starbucks has Short, Tall, Grande and Venti sizes for their coffee and lattes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbucks

The Grande is a 16 oz size http://www.quicksilverweb.net/sbucks/sbcharts.htm

The quicksilver link helps you speak Starbuck Jargon. I was recently in the local Starbuck when I overheard the patron in front of me ask for a 140 degree latte. Being a thermo expert I of course had to ask the Barista what this meant. The barista replied that the milk in the 140 degree is warmed less than the normal 160 degrees. Of course my mind started doing mental arithmetic as to how much energy Starbucks could save if all patrons became green and asked for the 140 degree grande non fat latte with one splendla and no foam single cupped. Yes there are over 15,000 Starbucks stores and Starbucks has yearly revenues of nearly ten billion dollars. They must sell something like 3 billion grande equivalent drinks a year. Twenty degrees difference on a drink that weighs a pound using a specific heat of 1.0 means 60 billion BTUs could be saved. Each of the Starbuck espresso machines is power by electricity. There are 3412 BTUs in a kilowatt hour. The added warmth of the drinks therefore equals 19.096 million kilowatt hours. The average heat rate of a coal fired power plant, the most common form of power plant in the world is about 10,000 BTU per kilowatt hour. This means about 1.25 pounds of coal needs to be burned to generate a kilowatt hour, so the 19 million kilowatt hours required 23.870 million pounds of coal. Coal is about 50% carbon the rest is ash and moisture with a little hydrogen. Therefore 11,935,000 pounds of carbon are emitted each year to increase the temperature of the grande cups of Strabucks from 140 degrees to 160 degrees. This is almost 6,000 tons of carbon. Expressed as carbon dioxide we have to multiply the amount of carbon by 3.67 and we have that Strabucks is emitting and additional 21,881 tons a year of carbon dioxide simple because the average patron did not request the 140 degree grande non fat latte with one splendla and no foam single cupped option. This is about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 4,000 cars emit in a year. Of course just driving to starbucks to get the 140 degree grande non fat latte with one splendla and no foam single cupped drink causes an untold amount of carbon emissions

There is much debate about whether electricity can be generated from coal without the CO2 emissions. It is beginning to feel like Christmas and if you believe in Santa you will believe this nonsense of coal gasification and CO2 sequestration http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/19/future.coal.plant/index.html

Now that Vietnam is embracing a market economy and people have more money there to spend on Starbucks they are also buying lots of motorcycles and having lots of crashes. It was reported this week that Vietnam has instituted a Helmet Law for motorcyclists http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071215/lf_nm/vietnam_helmets_dc Amazingly the number of motorcycles in Vietnam has increased form 500,000 in 1990 to over 22 million currently. With this type of statistic perhaps we can all understand how the earth is headed toward a very warm perhaps 140 degree future in places like Death Valley.

Good news from Washington is that president Bush will sign into law the new higher efficiency standards http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071218/congress_energy.html To celebrate this momentous event the eggnog will only be heated to 140 degrees.

This is the last TT for this year as I will be on vacation through January 7 sipping my morning soy latte from Starbucks which I must confess will be only heated to 140 degrees because soy milk actually “burns” if it is heated any higher. Wishing you all seasons greeting and a happy, healthy, and energy efficient 2008

The word of the day is tocsin or ringing the bell for the purpose of alarm. Well I have been a pretty ardent bell ringer that we are simply adding toxins to the environment. With this let’s all sing Jingle Bells and do better next year

Word of the DayThursday December 20, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Help
tocsin \TOCK-sin\, noun:1. An alarm bell, or the ringing of a bell for the purpose of alarm.2. A warning.
Some of the allegations put round are so frenzied, however, that some caution should be exercised before the tocsin is rung too loudly.-- "New President of the NUS", Times (London), April 10, 1969
The first atomic bomb fell and its radioactive cloud became a tocsin for mankind.-- Herbert Mitgang, "The Bomb as Horror and Warning", New York Times, August 1, 1990
But Mr. Beckett is wise in choosing the form of the myth in which to sound his tocsin on the condition of human society.-- Brooks Atkinson, "Beckett's 'Endgame'", New York Times, January 29, 1958
Tocsin derives from Medieval French touquesain, from Old Provençal tocasenh, from tocar, "to touch, to strike, to ring a bell" + senh, "church bell," ultimately from Latin signum, "sign, signal."

Turkey Meat and Gravlox

TGIT – Thank Gravlox It’s Thursday

Thanksgiving has come and gone and I have discovered that turkey meat is really not the largest source of triptophan. It has been shown that gram for gram cheddar cheese actually contains more triptophan than turkey meat. http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20071121/sc_livescience/thankgivingmythturkeymakesyousleepy This why after eating a double double animal style at In and Out Burger I go to sleep for a week. For those of you who do not have a local In and Out Burger a double double has two slices of processed cheddar cheese


Now what does Gravlox have to do with this?

Fish oil that is prevalent in salmon can be fed to cows to lower their emissions of methane. http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/export/03-2003_449.html
I know by now some of you are chuckling that cows emit methane from their behinds but once again you have the wrong side of the argument. Cows burp out methane. In fact burped methane from cows and other animals is a significant fraction of the methane emissions on planet earth. The EPA reported that Enteric Fermentation, polite way of saying Greps (the Yiddish word for burp) emits about the same quantity of methane as Landfills. For us all these cows burping and causing the planet to warm is The Greps of Wrath. Remember from a previous TT that one pound of methane has the same greenhouse effect as 21 pounds of carbon dioxide. http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html



On a positive note the Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Center in NYC will be lit by some 30,000 LED lights this year and this will save 2,213 kilowatthours every night the tree is lit. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/11/21/green.christmas.ap/index.html


The word of the day is hirsute to be hippylike. This makes sense to me it means you have a suit made or hair from the Latin hirsutis

hirsute \HUR-soot; HIR-soot; hur-SOOT; hir-SOOT\, adjective:Covered with hair; set with bristles; shaggy; hairy.
The Bear . . . makes the rounds of the clubs "disguised" in trench coat and broad-brimmed hat, hoping (successfully, it seems) to be mistaken for a rather hirsute human.-- Richard M. Sudhalter, "The Bear Comes Home': Composing the Words That Might Capture Jazz", New York Times, August 29, 1999
First of all, your nose is nearly covered with your bloody moustache and your beard, Mr Gogarty replied. Mr Allen apologised for his "hirsute" appearance.-- Paul Cullen, "No ambush sprung on returning Gogarty", Irish Times, March 23, 1999
He was incredibly hirsute: there was even a thick pelt of hair on the back of his hands.-- Tama Janowitz, By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee
Hirsute comes from Latin hirsutus, "covered with hair, rough, shaggy, prickly."

Mass and Grams

TGIT – Thank Grams It’s Thursday Today we will discuss mass and grams are a unit of measure of mass

First a thank you to Ajay for his blog on how Brother Gibb had an oldie disco hit song titled “How deep is your love of thermo”

The EPA has reported the mileage cars sold in 2007 can expect. http://www.epa.gov/otaq/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s07001.pdf

Interestingly the average mass of vehicles sold in the USA has increased significantly since 1987 from 3,221 pounds to 4,144 pounds or 1,873,088 grams. The average horsepower of a vehicle has almost doubled since 1987 from 118 to 223 horsepower. The heaviest horse in history had a mass of 3,360 pounds or about the mass of the average vehicle sold in the USA in 1987. http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/22809 The acceleration of the average vehicle measured in the time taken to get from zero to sixty MPH has decreased from 13.1 seconds to 9.6 seconds in the past twenty years. The fuel economy of the average vehicle has decreased from 22.0 mpg to 20.2 mpg because of the change in mass, horsepower and the proliferation of trucks (SUVs included) from only 28% of vehicles sold in 1987 to 49% of the vehicles to be sold in 2007.

Going back further than Brother Gibb to Brother Newton and his second law of motion http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/newton3laws.html we all know that the force that is needed to be applied to an object to yield a set acceleration is directly proportional to the mass ( F=MA ). In accelerating cars from zero to sixty there are some other forces (resistance) to be overcome such as wind resistance and rolling resistance but for the moment will simply deal with old Isaac’s second law. The mass of the vehicles has increased in the past twenty years by 29%. Acceleration increased by 36% so accounting for increased mass and increased acceleration one would have expected the required force from the engine to have increased by 75% which is in line with the added horsepower in the 2007 models. So how did we only get a 8% reduction in fuel efficiency? This can be answered by the improved efficiency of the later model engines. Primarily as a result of fuel injection, multi valve engines, and variable valve timing that were not available back in the old days. These improvements all relate to how the fuel is burned in the engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_injection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-valve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_valve_timing




Below is a cut out of a fuel injector

Below is a cut out of Honda’s variable valve timing engine




Going forward we will have higher compression engines, direct fuel injection and of course smaller and lighter vehicles. We can thank the Governator for the proliferation of SUVs as his movie Kindergarten Cop started the Hummer rage http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0422-02.htm My prediction is that within a decade the average mass of a vehicle will drop to value we had in 1987 and the average fuel efficiency will be close to 30 mpg. Also within a decade we will have long forgotten Arnie.



Here is some good news from Michigan and it is not about the heavy metal vehicles they produce there. The city of Ann Arbor will convert 1,400 street lights to LEDs http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Oct17/0,4670,TechBitCityapossBrightIdea,00.html Raleigh and Toronto have also begun to use LEDs. Maybe Hollywood will be next.

All this talk about weapons of mass combustion brings me to my final point of the week. Raytheon a defense contractor has developed a heat ray weapon http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=UASDYV2WZ3VAOQSNDLSCKHA?articleID=202400400

This is the ultimate terrible misuse of thermo! Imagine the government spent $40 million to develop a ray gun that heats the top 1/64” of your skin to 130 degrees F. This goes beyond tasers and will be marketed as the Blaser.

The word of the day is abscond. If a cop was pointing the heat ray gun at me I would certainly abscond

Word of the DayThursday October 18, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Help
abscond \ab-SKOND\, intransitive verb:To depart secretly; to steal away and hide oneself -- used especially of persons who withdraw to avoid arrest or prosecution.
The criminal is not concerned with influencing or affecting public opinion: he simply wants to abscond with his money or accomplish his mercenary task in the quickest and easiest way possible so that he may reap his reward and enjoy the fruits of his labours.-- Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism
Pearl, now an orphan (her father having absconded shortly after her conception), has been taken to live with her great-aunt Margaret in the north of England.-- Zoe Heller, Everything You Know
Abscond comes from Latin abscondere, "to conceal," from ab-, abs-, "away" + condere, "to put, to place."

About the universe

TGIT – Thank Galaxies It’s Thursday

I was watching a TV show about the universe on the history channel and how from the time of Newton we have used mathematics to model the physical world and in particular motion and gravity. Einstein developed the notion of space time surfaces that warp in the presence mass. Einstein did not ascribe to the notion of an expanding universe even though his math supported this. In order for the big bang theory to hold there is this initial state where all the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear forces, and weak nuclear forces) were all combined in a single force. When the big bang happened the gravitational force was the first to break away and soon afterwards the three other forces split. An observation that led to the unified force theory and the initial inflation after the big bang is that most of the outer universe is at the same temperature and this can only be explained in that the initial inflation (Guth’s theory) occurred at a speed faster than the speed of light http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/kenny/papers/inflation.html http://physics.about.com/od/physics101thebasics/f/fund_forces.htm

All this physics is fine but we still have the basic inflation problem on planet earth of high energy prices. Physicists and chemists are trying to invent nanosystems to store more electrical energy so we can use less gasoline. This company in Texas called EEstor http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:EEStor claims to have an ultracapcitor that can store enough electricity to travel 500 miles. All of this energy is placed into the ultra capacitor in five minutes. The rate at which electricity is transferred exceeds 1 MW so don’t rush to buy one of these gizmos as you will need 10,000 amp service in your home at 110 volts. The typical home has 100 to 200 amps of service. If the ultra capacitor short circuits we could reenact the Big Bang.

John sent me a picture taken in South Africa of airmen who fly in formation and let their wheels skim the water to simulate water skiing please note the lead airman is a distant cousin “Numb Scully Levin”

Early morning anglers are treated to the spectacle of four T6 Harvards from the Flying Lions Aerobatic team water skiing across the Klipdrift Dam near Johannesburg, South Africa.Led by Scully Levin, with wingmen Arnie Meneghelli, Stewart Lithgow, and Ellis Levin - this renowned airshow display team rehearse a sequence for the newly launched "Aviation Action" television program on SuperSport TV. Arnie Meneghelli from Academy Brushware, owner of the aircraft, has this to say, "What we did today I believe is a world first".K This unusual act, approved by the South African Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and supported by Castrol Aviation, was meticulously planned and took place under the watchful eye of divers and paramedics that were on site.




Time magazine has published their Fifty Worst Autos in the history of travel you all may want to page through these and see just how many dumb ideas have been tried in the past for autos. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1657686,00.html?cnn=yes

I also found an interesting site on auto history http://www.mrtraffic.com/millennium.htm

My guess is the ultra capacitor will make it into the updates of these sites in ten years time.

The word of the day is impassible not to be confused with impossible which best describes my review of the ultra capacitor technology

Word of the DayWednesday September 12, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Help
impassible \im-PASS-uh-buhl\, adjective:1. Incapable of suffering; not subject to harm or pain.2. Unfeeling or not showing feeling.
Body is flux and frustration, a locus of pain and process. If it becomes impassible and incorruptible, how is it still body?-- Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Heaven
As he was a man of much dignity, with an impassible face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result, and was too manly to show it-- Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs
Impassible is from Late Latin impassibilis, from Latin in-, "not" + Late Latin passibilis, "passible; capable of feeling or suffering" from Latin passus, past participle of pati, "to suffer." It is related to passion, which originally meant "suffering" but came to apply to any strong feeling or emotion.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for impassible

Geometry can count

TGIT Thank Geometry it’s Thursday

Today I am sending Thermo Thursday a day early.

Yes geometry can count in saving BTUS. There is a coefficient of drag (CD) that is used in aerodynamics to calculate the amount of drag in fluid flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_coefficient Note this has nothing to do with the costume design at Beach Blanket Babylon. http://www.beachblanketbabylon.com/

The shape of a vehicle can improve the fuel efficiency if the coefficient of drag is reduced. The energy required to propel a vehicle through the air is proportional to the coefficient of drag. In a TT of about a year ago I wrote about the bio-car that is shaped like a box fish that only has a CD of 0.19. The Prius has a CD of 0.29 and the Hummer has one greater than 0.5.

Below are some photos of some new aerodynamic tractor trailers that will possibly be manufactured in the future




I have opined of the great harm being caused by biofuels. Steve sent me a link he found in which a very large UK bus operator will no longer use Biodiesel in their fleet because of these very same concerns http://www.masstransitmag.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=3&id=4273 This is good news and more of this type of news will be coming from Europe over the next several months.

The US DOE (Department of Entropy) and its head Gangrene Bodman continue to waste the planet’s resources and our money on the futile effort of Biofuels. Since the cost to society of biofuels is the tripling of the cost of tortillas I suggest the EPA change its “SmartWay Grow and Go” program to the “Help Global Starvation and Misery” program. Volvo who take pride in their engines running on seven renewable fuels should remember Josephs interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream of the seven lean years.

EPA Recognizes 48 Companies for Promoting Renewable Fuels in Trucks
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acknowledged 48 companies in late August that have joined its "SmartWay Grow & Go" program, which encourages the use of renewable fuels in tractor-trailer trucks. The EPA program, launched in October 2006, is an offshoot of the EPA SmartWay Transport Partnership, which encourages the development and use of efficient trucks. The new program aims to convince one-quarter of the EPA's SmartWay Transport partners to start using renewable fuels by 2012, raising that to one-half of the partners by 2020. EPA is currently working with about 600 SmartWay Transport partners, including major truck and rail carriers as well as shipping and logistics companies, so the agency still has a way to go before reaching its goal. But one partner, the National Biodiesel Board (NBB), is certainly doing its part, providing mapping software that helps truckers find biodiesel pumps. See the NBB press release.
The EPA recognized its partners at the Great American Trucking Show, where it also displayed the first SmartWay-certified tractors and trailers, a lineup of the cleanest, most fuel-efficient heavy-duty trucks available on the market. The six new models of SmartWay tractors and trailers are equipped with a series of advanced aerodynamic features, idle-reduction options, and low-rolling-resistance tires that together can serve as a model for improving the fuel efficiency of heavy-duty trucks by up to 20%. To date, SmartWay partners have saved more than 350 million gallons of diesel fuel and eliminated nearly 4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, primarily through the adoption of fuel-saving technologies and strategies, according to the EPA. See the EPA press release and the list of partners on the SmartWay Grow & Go Web site.
While most people would think of biodiesel when talking about renewable fuels in trucks, the Volvo Group recently demonstrated that its trucks can be modified to run on up to seven different renewable fuels. Volvo ran its trucks on biodiesel; biogas (methane); a mix of biodiesel and liquefied biogas; dimethyl ether, or DME, produced by gasifying biomass; a blend of ethanol and methanol; synthetic diesel produced from gasified biomass; and a mix of hydrogen and biogas. As the CEO of Volvo put it, "With these vehicles, we have shown that Volvo is ready, that we possess the technology and the resources for carbon-dioxide-free transport ... " See the Volvo press release.


The word of the day is antiquarian In the next century antiquarians will study Volvos

antiquarian \an-tuh-KWAIR-ee-uhn\, noun:1. One who collects, studies, or deals in objects or relics from the past.
adjective:1. Of or pertaining to antiquarians or objects or relics from the past.2. Dealing in or concerned with old or rare books.
From the depositions filed with the Loyalist Claims Commission after the Revolution, from a handful of letters gathered by an antiquarian at the beginning of the twentieth century, and from scattered court papers in scattered archives, it is possible to piece together some of the family's history.-- Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies
Except to antiquarians and preservationists, silent cinema has little presence on the cultural radar screen, its landmark films unrented on video, its iconic images spotted only as fodder for video collage on MTV.-- Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood
Indeed, the evident attention to detail and studied historicism bore the impress of Truefitt's years with the antiquarian Cottingham.-- Francis R. Kowsky, Country, Park & City
A friend of mine, the manager of an antiquarian bookshop in Leningrad in the 1960s, told me that he remembered well the twice-monthly visits of a matronly lady from the censorship bureau, who spent hours rifling through the thousands of books on his shelves, checking them against her latest copy of the Summary List (which was always being updated).-- David King, The Commissar Vanishes
Antiquarian is from Latin antiquarius, "pertaining to antiquity," from antiquus, "ancient."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for antiquarian