Pellet stove

[Doug Miller]

Nonsense -- they don't even come *close* to adding up. What part of "rare .. fewer than 100 known" do you have a hard time understanding?

[JoeSixPack]

No, I haven't. Show us some evidence for that.

Greenhouses use CO2 generators to elevate the level much higher than atmospheric levels, and there is some benefit. The difference between 1860 levels and 2005 is about 100 ppm. That is a rise of 1 in 10,000. If you got a yield increase of about 1- 10,000th, or (1% of 1%,) that would make sense.

[JoeSixPack]

What's the basis of your expectation? Science or bias?

[Brock Ulfsen]

Well, Vet science was done at second tier places for a long time, University of Queensland had vet science and a cat and dog hospital. Ag engineering was pretty much all imported from the UK, milling and grain was certificate level stuff run out of the TAFE/Ag College layer.

I seem to recall that most Vets had a certificate (like a trade qualification) until well within my lifetime.

Universities have acquired big Ag Science areas at remote campuses in the last 10 years or so of forced amalgamations.

DPI handled stuff "in house" until it was gutted about 10 years ago.

The Wheat Board was a "single desk" export co-op. The US-Australia FTA has pretty much gutted it.

Ah, we've been growing things like Durum wheat here. Queenlands wheatbelt is in warm temperate and subtropical climates.

Our combines have been evolving pretty fast.

The modern varieties put biomass into leaf formation and grain, little stalk, suspect they are two to three times the mass per plant of the earlier varities. Then there are forage crops, which are almost all leaf.

....Brock.

[Brock Ulfsen]

What percentage of the rocks that hit in the Age of Planetesimals were Carbonaceous Chondrites? What is the percentage mass of such rocks that is organics? What is the mass of the Earth?

The numbers do add up, if you care to look.

....Brock.

[Brock Ulfsen]

All I suggested was we use the land currently used to feed cattle.

Burgers become more expensive, more people eat less meat.

....Brock.

[Brock Ulfsen]

You have proof of this?

....Brock.

[kryppy]

How many blocks of dry ice do we need to eject into space to fix all this?

[sno]

More practical...grow bamboo...turn into charcoal....bury in mine shafts...

thank you for listening to my thoughts....sno

[sno]

LOL....my idea gets rid of more carbon with less energy then making dry ice and shooting it into space..I think..more practical........

Hydrogen is not a replacement for oil ..it is a storage medium...like a battery...you need to separate from whatever it is chemically bound to...in order to get...and when you use it you get less energy back.. if the separation is done by electricity that is not produced by oil, it ends up not being a losing game..

Electricity works if not generated by oil...using hydro or wind or nuclear you can produce more out then you have to put in, the first two put in the energy from the sun which is basically free, nuclear puts in the binding energy of the atom which is a lot more energy then it takes to refine the fuel....bio fuels are iffy...it is not clear yet whether it takes more energy to produce...energy to run farm machines, energy for fertilizer, etc...

have fun.....sno

[Goedjn]

Electricity and hydrgogen fuel cells are not energy sources in the macro context. they are energy transfer, just like springs. They do not solve the problem you seem to think they solve.

(They do solve a DIFFERENT problem, which is why they're a good idea, anyway.)

--Goedjn

[JoeSixPack]

Do a little mental math. How any tons of carbon would you need to handle to make a significant difference to the atmosphere?

We are putting 7 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere annually, so to just to hold the levels static, you would have to handle about 2500 lbs of bamboo for every man, woman and child on earth. How practical is that scheme?

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to reduce our consumption of carbon-based fuels?

Do we really need to burn up 75 kilowatts of hydrocarbon fuel energy just to visit a friend in the next city? Electricity or hydrogen fuel seem to make more sense.

You sound like someone who finds the hardest possible way to do a task.

[Duane Bozarth]

....

Funny how one's point of view depends on locale...that's the exact thing I hear here, almost to the identical words.... :) ....

You misunderstood...that's pretty much the same here as well. No producer will commit an entire planting to any single hybrid nor would anyone change from their previous experience all at once...

[JoeSixPack]

Electricity is the cleanest currency for which to transfer energy from the source to the end use. We won't always believe that burning hydrocarbons are the answer to everything. Alternate energy potential is truly vast but expensive to utilize compared to fossil fuels, which are bound to be a short-term party. Once we grow up and realize the future is in renewable sources, electricity and hydrogen won't look like such bad energy carriers.

[JoeSixPack]

Explain how you can look under the crust. An ancient meteorite crater that pierced the crust has oil and gas coming out. That's more than enough to justify a reasonable measure of skepticism on the whole theory of biotic origin.

[Brock Ulfsen]

That's bit's of loose space-rock sitting on the surface of the earth. We are fairly sure some of the asteroids are Carbonaceous Chondrites. Carbonaceous Chonrites are rich in volatlies and thus much more likely to pop on entry to atmosphere.

And, last I looked, there was less oil than crust, and there isn't a lot of crust on the earth... you might even say it was "rare" in relation to the rest of the planet...

....Brock.

[Brock Ulfsen]

Kind of like doing a nursing course at a hospital (Australia moved to University bases nursing training only in the last 10 or 15 years) as opposed to getting a degree in medicine.

Department of Primary Industries, each State has one.

Possibly in the far south of Western Australia. The US doesn't export, it dumps, when it has surplusses, it undercuts us, then often can't deliver in later years at any price. We can't do the same, the US complains to the WTO. Also the US sunsidises farmers, we don't. And they subsidise exports, we don't do that either.

The main chasis come from the US. Europe, China, but working gear is usually added here. Very small market, for medium to large machines mostly.

We trial in the ares we grow, our farmers don't trust glossy books without seeing a few hectares growin in their district. Good source of income for those with highway frontage, grow sample crops with bigs signs up...

....Brock.

[Doug Miller]

Hogwash, in so many, many ways. Just for starters... name *one*, just *one*, meteorite crater anywhere on the planet that "pierced the crust".

Another: oil drilling, and all known oil deposits, are *in* the crust. Not "under" it.

Further: hypothetical oil and gas seeps around your hypothetical meteorite crater implies *nothing* about the origin of said oil and gas, but rather demonstrates only that the meteorite fractured the crust above an existing oil and gas deposit.

[Arnold Walker]

Electricity has alot more effeciency than hydrogen which is about 12%.

149kw of energy for 21kw delivered by the hydrogen. Hydrogen has the potental of jumping carbon fuel use by 3 to6 times present level.

[JoeSixPack]