Alcohol can be a gas!

Another book added to my to read list. The author, David Blume, was interviewed on npr and had some interesting thoughts on how to make ethanol actually carbon and environmentally friendly, such as the fact that ethanol competes with food for corn.

From his website:
"But 87% of the U.S. corn crop is fed to animals. In most years, the U.S. sends close to 20% of its corn to other countries. While it is assumed that these exports could feed most of the hungry in the world, the corn is actually sold to wealthy nations to fatten their livestock. Plus, virtually no impoverished nation will accept our corn, even when it is offered as charity, due to its being genetically modified and therefore unfit for human consumption."

Also, fermenting the corn to alcohol results in more meat than if you fed the corn directly to the cattle. We can actually increase the meat supply by first processing corn into alcohol, which only takes 28% of the starch, leaving all the protein and fat, creating a higher-quality animal feed than the original corn."

In theory it could even reduce the "methane emissions" i.e. farts and belches of the cattle by feeding them something that more closely resembles what they are adapted to eat..

Also, cattails are apparently a plant that would be very efficient for making ethanol, so he's proposing using cattail marshes to treat sewage waste and then harvesting them for ethanol, plus they reseed themselves so practically no maintenance, and helping solve coastal eutrophication problems at the same time.

It sounds pretty fantastic, though I'd need to read it to see how convincing it really is.

Yeah Long Trail

From NPR: "Long-Trail Brewing Co. in Vermont has signed up for something the dairy state has plenty of: cow power. A utility in Vermont is offering — for just a few cents more — power derived from the methane gas given off by the manure on dairy farms. The brewery, in turn, will contribute mash, a byproduct of brewing, to feed the cows."

Not that Owen reads this but I thought he might be interested since we stopped there when up to snowboard. Their Belgian White is delicious, by the way.

They must have heard the news about climate change hurting beer brewing!

"Bloody Enormous" Wind Turbines

England: "Our windmills are bloody enormous!
Oh, and I’m ever so sorry, but they’re upside down as well."