OT (possibly) - Food or fuel for thought...

Sucks, doesn't it?

On another note, have you ever considered the energy re-conversion involved in burning fossil fuels needed to produce the electricity to charge the batteries in a hybrid?

Yeah, all the greenies that were behind the use of Bio-Fuels are now against it.

So what? Corn is something we can grow. Oil is something we can't. What we should do is get cars that run on either or both (Ford and GM already have models that will do this) and use Ethanol when the growing season is good, and oil when it's not. That way, we're NOT paying farmers to NOT grow corn (because a glut of corn on the market causes prices to fall and the farmers don't make enough to make it worth growing corn...) and saving oil for future use. Like when the Ice Age begins and we NEED all the fuel we can get.

There's a good way to stop the destruction of forests in other countries: stop paying farmers NOT to grow corn, and flood the market...

The point was, *where* it is grown - what growth was cleared to make room for the corn/other fuel crops.

Cathy

Oil is something we can't.

Extreme dishonesty or total ignorance of very, very basic science.

But we can solve all the world's problems if we just wear enough wristbands.

Do you understand the engineering logic behind hybrid cars? I don't mean plug-ins but ordinary hybrids with battery packs good for only a mile of electric-only driving.

Why don't you enlighten us? Don't forget energy conversion and the loss during each one.

Translation: "No."

The batteries are used only to recover kinetic energy dissipated when the car slows, so it doesn't matter if an extra energy conversion is used, provided both conversions aren't too much less efficient than a single conversion (and they're not, as demonstrated by higher fuel economy for hybrid versions of any given model).

Two questions, then: To the best of your knowledge, does this kinetic system affect the rolling resistance during normal driving? How much weight is added to the vehicle, and what does this weight do to normal-driving fuel consumption?

There's plenty of land NOT being used to grow corn already.

This is an opportunity for the US to lead the field in something again.

Read the part about Brazil....

Cathy

Sorry. Can't control what people in other parts of the world want to do with their land.

What would you think if some foreign country came here and started telling us what we could and couldn't do?

BTW, interesting note: Corn farmers in the US are going to plant 8% less acres of corn this year than they did last year. GET THEM DOLLARS!!!

Interesting. Corn is at an all time high, and farmers are planting less...

What they're doing ultimately affects us...

Cathy

I think you know me well enough by now to know I don't really believe that. Forest fires have much more of an effect than that, and the Earth overcomes it.

Beisdes, if they are cutting down one type of vegetation to replace it with another type, then there's no net loss.

If they were clear cutting the forests and not replacing it with anything there would be much more of an effect.

The trouble it, once the gasses are in the atmosphere, trees can't convert them.

Cutting down a tropical rain forest to grow fuel crops results in no net loss?????

Cathy

We should abandon all efforts to grow plants for fuel and instead concentrate on conservation because we can easily save more energy than we can grow, and it wouldn't be difficult for the average household to consume only 2-3 times as much energy as my homes do. Furthermore energy consumption won't raise food prices and increase starvation.

If you were cutting it down and not replacing it with anything but a parking lot, then there would be an impact.

If you're cutting it down and replacing it with acres and acres of corn, then the effect may be better for the environment, since you're replacing a few oxygen producing plant with many, many more oxygen producing plants in the form of corn stalks.

Let's say one tree is replaced by 50 corn stalks. I don't know how much oxygen a singe tree throws off compared to 50 corn stalks, but I bet there isn't much of a difference...

I wouldn't be willing to place a lot on that bet. Plus, not quite as simple as which plants store how much carbon & give off how much oxygen...

And then there's the matter of native tropical plants & animals (many of which are useful to people - never mind their own intrinsic worth, & and we don't even know how many species are still unknown) being displaced... Cathy

Wow - that means Al Gore's house uses over *60* times the energy that yours does.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

You need to get an email about this off to Al Gore right away. I smell another Nobel Prize!! He might let you ride in his jet to go retrieve it.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')