skinnyflyer

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bur_Yj20oo "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

some of the dz's around montreal offer aff courses in feb or march in florida but i'd rather not wait that long. what if i did my aff in the us with american training will it then be recognized when i return to montreal?? "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

I would like to do my AFF in november, december or january now that I have some cash to spare. However as far as I know all the DZs around montreal are closed for the winter. I am prepared to take a few weeks off and travel to the states or possibly south america. Does anyone have information on how and where I can do this without spending a lot of money on hotels and what not. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

Actually I think the main oil produced in the Middle East is Light Sweet crude. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

this is a good article; "U.S. Economic Energy Intensity: Why $80 oil hasn't impacted our economy, but why $162 oil will" http://www.financialsense.com/Market/cpuplava/2007/1003.html here are some great websites for articles and discussions about energy and peak oil; http://www.theoildrum.com/ http://peakoil.com/ "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1184514351?bctid=1184493037 for a second i thought they must be talking about globalization but after re-watching it it's obvious they're not. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

slow, really. i have a slow computer but it only took me a couple of minutes to do it. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

http://sustainability.publicradio.org/consumerconsequences/ cool little game calculates how many planets we would need if everyone lived like you. I scored 2.5 i certainly don't make mucy of an effort although i would probably have scored much higher if they hadn't taken away my drivers licence. everything was 1 or 0 except for 2 on housing, which is bs because i live in ~80unit apt building in a ~300sq ft. unit, and 7 on food. i don't eat that much, and just because my food gets shipped 10x around the world doesn't mean it has to. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

[reply >>and let's not make any assumptions about a technology that does't commercially exist yet. So by your logic it does not yet pay to even bother to explore the alternatives.But isn't it curious that OIL companies such as BP, and Chevron are investing in alternative energy technologies, Are they doing it for PR?, I don't think so, they are doing it because they are expert in the fact that petroleum is a finite resource and they they know it will be prohibitively expensive to continue to produce in the near future. by my logic we absolutely should be experimenting with new technologies like cellulosic ethanol. let's just not plan our futur on things that are still highly experimental. it's like saying that in the year 2030 60% of our energy will come from cold fusion. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

actually i didn't say anything about mass transit. but if gas is $1000 people will drive much less and use much less energy. exactly, we should be spending more money on rail and public transportations instead of wasting it on ethanol dillusions. i never said those are not worth funding. that's ridiculous. the negatives outweigh the positives. switching some of your surplus grain production into ethanol makes sense. but agressively pursuing it with subsidies and touting it as a solution to displace large portions of oil importation is going to cause much more harm than good. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

right but for every successful technology i'm sure there are many promissing one's that never lived up to there expectations. lets not count our chickens until they hatch. no. to make that happen fuels need to be more expensive. subsidised corn ethonal keeps the price of fuels lower by taxing everyone, poor and non-drivers included. exactly what doesn't make sense. not to mention negative environmental effects and increased food costs. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

and collection and transportation of feedstock. i still don't believ the numbers you mentioned earlier. they are all still in the experimental stage and require massive subsidies. i believe there are still some very significant technological barriers to overcome. it sounds great but don't forget there were plenty of flashy hydrogen prototypes that worked too. no. without the massive subsidies even if gasoline were much more expensive corn ethanol would probably still be uneconomic. we choose as a society which alternatives to pursue and how much land to allocate to said alternatives. chosing to keep the unsustainable fantasyland of evermore motoring going for just a short while longer doesn't help at all in the longterm. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/5158162.html Ethanol runs out of gas when you tote up true cost By MARK J. PERRY Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle In the politically motivated rush to replace gasoline with corn ethanol, we may be doing ourselves real economic harm. The government-supported push for ethanol will not only increase taxes and damage the environment, but will add to Americans' burden of high fuel and food costs and especially hurt people on fixed incomes. And it will do almost nothing to reduce dependence on foreign oil — all of the ethanol production this year will replace less than 5 percent of the gasoline sold. Clearly, there is a limit to how much of the U.S. corn crop can be gobbled up for ethanol without pushing food prices higher and higher. Increased production of corn-based ethanol during just the past 12 months has raised food prices by $47 per person, according to a study by Iowa State University. Before the summer is over, the price of milk is expected to jump 40 cents a gallon, and up to 60 cents more for a pound of cheese. Nevertheless, a Senate energy bill is coming up for final approval next month that would require a sevenfold increase in ethanol from 5 billion gallons this year to 36 billion gallons by 2022. The measure also provides loan guarantees, biofuels research and development grants, and grants for ethanol plant construction for the politically powerful ethanol industry. As if that's not enough, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, are co-sponsoring a bill that would raise the ethanol mandate to 60 billion gallons by 2030. Ethanol cannot be justified on a scientific or economic basis, and the only reason the industry has survived and profited is that the government gives corn farmers and ethanol producers very generous subsidies. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out, ethanol is produced by mixing corn with our tax dollars, currently $5.5 billion annually in more than 200 ethanol tax breaks and subsidies. If extended through 2022, as the Senate energy bill provides, the ethanol subsidies will cost taxpayers an estimated $131 billion, according to the Tax Foundation. Subsidies under the Lugar-Harkin measure would cost as much as $205 billion over the next 15 years. The scientific problem with corn ethanol is that it contains one-third less energy than gasoline. So a motorist has to purchase one-third more fuel to go the same distance. If you total up all of the fossil fuel that goes into making and transporting ethanol — nitrogen-based fertilizer and herbicides, fuel to run farm machinery and delivery trucks, natural gas for the distilling process at ethanol plants — it takes more energy to produce ethanol than the fuel provides. Furthermore, the rush to produce ethanol is adversely impacting the environment. In many parts of the corn belt, water tables are dropping, in some places 10 feet or more in the past decade, because it takes so much water to grow corn and produce ethanol. For that matter, if the government keeps mandating unreasonably high levels of ethanol production, a prolonged drought that devastates the corn crop could cause fuel shortages in the future. In addition, heavy corn production exacerbates soil erosion, pollutes groundwater supplies from chemical runoff, and increases the level of greenhouse gas emissions from the conversion of grassland to corn production. The United States has an estimated 131 billion barrels of oil and 1,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas available domestically, but currently off-limits, in and around the United States. If Congress wants to moderate fuel prices and help consumers and the economy, it ought to open up these potentially oil-rich areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and in Alaska, to oil and natural gas production. But there is a real danger that Congress will remain oblivious to the economic and scientific realities of ethanol and take us down the wrong path by mandating a huge increase in ethanol production. Washington might have a love affair with ethanol for political reasons, but increasing ethanol production will only lead to higher taxes, higher prices for both food and fuel, and damage to the environment, making us all worse off in the process. Congress needs to say no to the ethanol hustlers and end their political addiction to corn. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

where'd you get that number from? it still takes energy to make cellulosic ethanol. and let's not make any assumptions about a technology that does't commercially exist yet. you sound like those people who were saying that we'd all be driving hydrogen cars by now. if you consider rising gasoline demand part of the solution then ok it's helping us to afford driving more miles each year. i agree with the ev and phev. but the money invested in ethanol is wasted just to keep us in denial a little longer and will make facing the reality worse. . once again the numbers are: in the last 7 years annual ethanol production grew by 3 billion gallons, while annual gasoline demand grew by 14 billion gallons. what would happen if we didn't have access to the 3 billion gallons of gas? maybe the price would be higher and we'd drive less. i think they said the land used to keep 1 person motoring for a year would feed 7-8 people "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2615 " We are currently using 20% of the corn produced in the United States to produce ethanol. Under the most optimistic scenarios, this amount could be tripled, to the equivalent of 60% of our 2006 corn production. At this production level, corn-based ethanol would replace about 10% of the volume (or about 7.2% of the energy content) of the US gasoline supply. This is still not very much, and there are serious questions whether this optimistic production level can in fact be reached." of course this isn't factoring in the demand growth of gasoline. if we factor in demand growth those percentages befome impossible. so in a fantasy dreamworld we'll be able to replace 7.2% of us gasoline supply. so i'll stick with my original statement that biofuels will never even come close to being a substantiall replacement for fossil fuels. eventually transportation fuels will become so expensive that we'll have to actually change our behaviour; buying smaller more efficient cars, using them less, living closer to work, buying food more locally, switching to real alternatives like solar etc. of course some of these things are already beginning but apparantly not enough to stop demand growth. by pushing highly subsidized biofuels like ethanol and pretending that they are solutions instead of just new tricks to make the rich richer we delay the inevitable withdrawl from our addiction. "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." A. Sachs