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I have a two pronged solution to food shortages here in America.
First, we stop burning food to run our cars. The best the greenies can show for adding ethanol to our gas is that it might have a small positive effect... maybe... on emissions from the tail pipe of the car running that fuel.
BUT not total emissions because the mileage craters. It's even worse when you consider all the diesel used to grow and harvest the corn then the energy expended to make it into ethanol.
Prolly not a net win for carbon emissions, and the greenies studiously avoid and inhibit a real study being made on this topic.
Renewable = GOOD, shut up they explain. I've noticed a distinct lack of engineering degrees in the people who advocate loudest for green shit.
The second prong, which helps two-fold, just start shooting greenies. First it lets us start eating the food instead of burning it. Second, one fewer mouth to feed, letting the same amount of food go longer.
Bonus benefit of shooting greenies is how much cheaper so many things get, especially electricity.
Without greenies we get lots of hydroelectric capacity back and nuclear power becomes viable again.
Without greenies, we might even get to explore subdivision sized plants.
Bonus fact: Did you know you can make a nuclear reactor that doesn't make much, if any, of the high-order nuclear waste the greenies have you worried about? Look it up!
But... "The science is settled" and thus no need to discuss further, heretic. Seriously though, you should look a bit more into the companies who DO benefit from burning corn as fuel like ADM and the like. Coming from central IL, saw a bit of that and when even the farmers are questioning this you should look at political contributions before directives come down... Silly, and as someone who burns a bit of fuel in motorcycles, I try hard to avoid the "supplemented" fuel since even the ancient Hondas do not like it...
ReplyDeleteIf people are going to start shooting (greenies) I suggest that they at least eat them to. It would be a shame to let all that meat go to waste. Stick to muscle cuts and all should be well, no organ meat.
ReplyDeleteP.S. start with the Vegans, seeing as they as grass fed.
Eric. :P
Not even all that. Just get FedGov to sponsor or provide minimum price level protection for grains and other food crops and then go.
ReplyDeleteThere are credible reports out there that farmers and seed providers are all ready to go full "Grow ON!" but storage and brokers aren't willing to buy what's been grown unless there are price assurances, due to nobody trusting FedGov to actually tell the truth about anything anymore (referring to Daddy Alzheimer's announcement of food shortages.)
Seriously, even with the loss of farm land to urban sprawl, we can be twice or thrice or more productively than we were in and after WWII, when we basically fed the whole world. We (the US) can be the world's bread/soy/bean/rice/rye/barley/corn/potato/meat supplier given half a chance.
And screw the delta smalt or whatever small worthless creatures are out there. Provide water to farms. Allow petrochemical companies to make fertilizer domestically (which they have the ability to, but can't or won't because EPA and other stupid FedGov regulations.) Allow processing of potash domestically for farm use.
We can do it. We can feed the world big-time.
Firstly:
ReplyDeleteWhat is high-order nuclear waste?
The most usual definition is that it exhibits high radioactivity.
(see https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/21404640216.pdf)
Since radioactivity is proportional to the rate of radioactive decay, and half-life is INVERSELY proportional to the rate of radioactive decay, by definition elements with high radioactivity have short half-lives.
As an aside:
The really high-order radioactive elements created in nuclear reactors have half-lives measured in hours to days at most. Almost all of them decay to vanishingly low concentrations in the reactor shortly after you shut it down. They don't last long enough to make it into "waste". Of course the decay products may in their turn be radioactive, but again high-order radioactive elements have short half-lives.
Secondly:
The greenies aren't actually worried about the real high-order waste from nuclear power.
Just listen to their rhetoric, and you'll see what I mean: "OMG!! The waste from a nuclear plant lasts 10,000 years!", they say.
Almost by definition that is LOW-order waste. When the half-life of a material is so long, it has LOW radioactivity ie it is putting out little radiation per hour/day/week.
I am NOT saying that I would want to carry it around in my pocket, but the long-lived stuff isn't all that dangerous. Sure there is the "magic BB" theory that it only takes one ionising radiation particle to damage your DNA is just the right spot to cause a cancer that will kill you in 40 years, but lots of houses have basements where the level of radon is so high that nuclear submarine reactor techs have to leave their dosimeters on base when they go on leave for fear of false exposure readings.
Thirdly: Ridiculous as it is, I remember hearing a nuclear physicist assigning a half-life to GRANITE of 3.4 million years. Does that HIGH half-life make it MORE dangerous as the greenies claim? Only if it falls on your head.