When you mention bio fuel, you always think wood. We have more agri bio mass than this country needs, and close at hand to transmission lines. This is why AIRE Agricultural, Industrial, Renewable Energy is building "renewable" biomass plants to create hot water and steam.... for industry... not for electricity which is controlled by the large producers. ----- Original Message ----- From: Appal Energy To: biofuels-biz@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 7:25 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Re: [biofuels-biz] Connecting the Wildfire Issue and the Biofuel Issue
> First, I think the conflagrations, however terrible, should be viewed > not only as a threat to property and lives, but also as evidence, to > those who might not recognize it, of the huge amount of energy > incident up on the earth. In this case it's converted to biofuels. Hey!!! Solar power is awesumb, ain't it? Just too bad that the"grid(s)" transmission towers don't grow everywhere that trees do. Which seems to be one of several major drawbacks relative to forested biomass. The vastly overwhelming majority of lands being considered for fuels reduction programs aren't anywhere near existing transmission lines. In all too many of these instances the amount of fuel consumed is greater than what can be obtained, after logging, of course. (This includes not only transportation but road building as well.) What all these advocates of fuels reduction don't seem to latch onto is that the infrastructure doesn't exist yet to utilize the supply. Well, at least not the supply of biomass for anything but logging purposes. But then the logging and timber interests aren't exactly in the energy business, are they? And the only way they're going to concern themselves with the business of energy is if they are forced to - legislated to work cohesively with energy interests in the practice of supplying feedstock while at the same time pursuing their own industrial endeavors. And the only way the energy interests are going to produce micro- or "transient" power plants is if the legislation is effected that makes their manufacture and employment attractive, which would mean the guarantee of at least a 30 year program to cover the lead time needed to produce enough plants and permit the full utility of their mechanical lifecycles. [In case no one's noticed, guarantees for any alternative fuels programs are as rare as dodos, much less lifecycle guarantees.] Even if all this were in the legislative works, who or what arm of government is going to guarantee that the capital interests of energy and timber are held subserviant to the interest of a healthy environmental - flora, fauna, watersheds and atmosphere? Or are these private interests going to be permitted to police themselves? It's painfully obvious what the present US administration thinks of federal land, much less the people employed to responsibly manage them. [Oh damn. I forgot. "Responsibly" is a subjective term.] > As to the folks who build in the wilderness and need their homes > protected, I don't exactly have a "tough shit" attitude, but I don't > advocate spending every effort to protect every inch of human > structures. While you many not have a "tough potatos" attitude towards those who take such risks, I certainly do. If they don't want their life's joy to be boiled down to a bed of embers, perhaps they should consider straw bale and steel roof, as well as living simply, rather than 2,000+ square foot stick builts in the midst of a forested watershed. > What I had in mind, as to specific suggestions, was more of the > modest-sized efforts I'd heard about in Oroville, CA (a local > wood-material incinerator) and in Flagstaff, AZ (where their efforts > caught my eye in part because they've partly succeeded in some > remediation, they claim, and because their answers didn't seem > simplistic but seemed to say that a combination and variety of > remediation methods seemed to work best for them so far.) You know. There is one other wee little aspect some might care to consider. The demand for lumber and wood products is far exceeded by the Earth's production of forest biomass. Plain pure and simple, the Earth has always had forest fires and there will always be forest fires. The biggest problem being faced now is not that there are fires, but that the history of suppression of what would historically have been "healthy" fires for a forest has in turn created the devastating pattern the North American continent now faces every spring, summer and fall. Todd Swearingen > So, if we identify more localities where they're going to attempt some > remediation anyway, then I think they could be encouraged to install > some modestly-priced modest-sized wood-to-electricity facilities, even > if only as a semi-temporary measure until they get their local forests > back into a healthy balance. So, I think I"m suggesting to some > extent the opposite of the overly ambitious giganto-sized project > covering virtually everything that you took me to be suggesting. > > Once the idea of wood-to-electricity is in place and somewhat more > widespread, I"d think that folks would want to sometimes expand it, > such as if-when they find their electricity costs are out of control > from other sources. At that point, you could evaluate if and to what > extent you'd want to get into more exploitive use of forests. I admit > this was part of my original idea... no reason not to cut down a few > trees and use them, but I don't think I had in mind cutting down > virtually all the forests of the world everywhere, just to encourage a > bit more use of them, starting with localized remdiation that is going > to have to happen anyway, with or without wood-to-electricity. > > One of the things I forgot to mention about Oroville is that much of > the wood is of a type that isn't much good for building, and perhaps > it was said it's not ideal for firewood. > > > MM > > > > > > > Biofuels at Journey to Forever > http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html > Biofuel at WebConX > http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm > List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: > http://archive.nnytech.net/ > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > > Yahoo! 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