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Monday, November 30, 2009

Seven Hundred Sixty One

That's the number of days without sunspots in the current solar minimum. It's starting to look like the start of the Maunder Minimum. I bet it's a combination of CFCs, evil fossil fuels, DDT and deforestation that are causing the sunspots to disappear! All would be well if the universe were rid of you dastardly humans!

Some things need no commentary


Liquid Motor Fuels

It may come as a revelation to some folks, but switchgrass will burn just like it is. It fuels wild prairie fires. So here's my question: Why would anyone want to turn it into a liquid motor fuel? If there were really any economic value to it as a fuel, a dried, baled and solid state would be orders of magnitude better than wasting resources turning it into a liquid fuel. I suspect that 5 or 10% of the coal at any coal-fired power plant could be replaced with switchgrass (or corn, wood, sagebrush, trash, etc.) without any retrofits or adjustments and without any increase in emissions. This could potentially reduce (slightly) the pressure on oil and natural gas fired power plants. But let simple, unfettered economics decide, not the diktat of some politician or bureaucrat.

I strongly believe that future generations will look back at our nonsensical, mystical, feel-good attempts at "saving the earth" as we do the human sacrifices of the Aztecs or the Incas. How could an intelligent people that built such a civilization like this be capable of such profoundly irrational thought and behaviour?