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Cow Manure --> Electricity
jmtpi writes "ABCNews has a story about a dairy farm in Minnesota that uses its cow manure to generate enough electricity to power the farm plus 80 homes and create fertilizer. There's also a more detailed story."
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Is a crock of shit. :)
Yes, I am a Muslim. No, I am not a Terrorist.
Ahhh the sweet smell of efficency. *takes a deep breath*
*faints*
... the power of bullshit.
Miko O'Sullivan
That's a nice generator...
FOR ME TO POOP ON!
I thought the future was going to get bigger, brighter, better, and flying (cars). Now as I get older, and understand more about population issues, it seems we are going to have to come up with more and more clever ways of re-using waste products. I suppose this is better in the long run (?) but hopefully I will still be able to drive a flying, shit-powered car before I die. Hopefully I can get the OUTATIME vanity plate someone else in my state does.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
How is this news? Oh, yes, now I see, the USA soon will be as developped as China where it's been done on a large scale for years.
...literally
Anyonw here qualified to know if this could be applied to human waste?
I would imagine we get a lot less methane out of ours, but these guys seem to be making a fair bit.
Also does anyone know what kind of pollution levels these things create? It seems like it would be fairly clean but I'm not an expert on burning shit.
-Nex
This sig has been deprecated.
They Earth will be fine. What you should be worrying about is animal and plant life. Namely, human life. Unless you are the type who doesn't care about the survival of his or her own species.
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Flying cows replace power transmission lines.
If you read the article, you'll see that they're not burning the manure, they're simply expiditing the anaerobic processes of bacteria that consume it. In fact, the farmer touts "odor reduction" as a benefit of the process.
Yeah...this really brings the meaning of the term, "Dirty Power" to a whole new level!
I'm sure burning this stuff will be creating lots of pollution
ok, lets just keep burning coal...forget cleaner burning methane...
RTFA, please.
The manure is not burned, rather it is "cooked" at 100 degrees (C or F, dunno), and the methane is collected. Yes, methane. Natural gas, in other words. Not the cleanest stuff ever, but it's definitely better than coal.
Because coal needs to be mined. A dangerous and environmentally unfriendly activity. The shit is already on hand, why not just use it?
With a proper plant with proper filters, I can't imagine that burning shit is going to be problem. Can't be anyworse than having lie on the ground.
RTFA-
it gets heated up, not burned; no byproduct, and the power from the manure goes to keep it hot. So as long as they can grow food, they have power.
The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life- the terror of art. -Franz Kafka
> I'm sure burning this stuff will be creating
> lots of pollution, oh well earth has to end
> some day
No, this is BURNING the pollution. Methane is the pollution produced from rotting cow manure. Burning it reduces it to heat, water and carbon dioxide. Much less harmful to the environment.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
...you can see Mel Gibson and Tina Turner.
The methane is being generated no matter how you look at it. So the question is do we just let it escape into the atmosphere or do we burn it, producing energy + H2O + CO2.
I think this is a great way for these farmers to make some extra cash.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
22000 gal manure per day/ 760 cows = 30 gal/cow per day
Doesn't that seem a little hi?
Ever drive by a HUMAN sewage plant? See that orange flame at the top of a tall pipe? That is the same "bio-gas" which is surplus being wasted. See the large spheres nearby? Those are "bio-gas" storage tanks. Many facilities use it to heat the digester tanks to promote microbe growth.
Imagine if human waste treatment were to start generating electricity. Your local water and sewage board could start PAYING you for the privilege of of disposing of your sewage.
The cows are primarily being used to produce milk. Generating power is just a benefit of recycling their shit. Either way, the same amount of wast is produced, but one way we are doing something useful with it.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
If this is such a good idea, and so cost effective, why isn't it being done more places?
"In the USA we don't just waste our natural resources, we waste our waste, too!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Other than the fact that burning manure has nothing to do with the article, coal doesn't come out of cow ass.
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This also works for human manure?
My energy bills are much high lately.
Not to mention Heifer Project International has been teaching folks in the Third World(tm) how to do this for years on a small scale, mostly for cooking and heating fuel. Some livestock manure, a metal barrel with a lid, some water, and a rubber hose to siphon off the gas. Cheap, and efficient!
Cole's Axiom: The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing
How is nuclear energy renewable? I haven't noticed any uranium popping up in my yard...
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
"Not the cleanest stuff ever"
What's cleaner? Hydrogen. Solar/geothermal/wind/hydropower. That's it. It's probaby one of the cleanest energy sources out there.
We've never been told explicitly how they get the bioelectic energy out of us, efferectivly transforming us into this this [duracell.com]
I'm talking about longer term solution. This isn't one. The farmer is calling this the "way of the future".
I don't think cows enter into the "way of the future" in any fashion.
Even producing enough electricity to power their own farm and a few more homes doesn't make up for how inneficient it is compared to other solutions, namely ones that don't include drink milk.
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I hope no one really thinks this is a good idea.
We'd be better off using the land wasted on the cows, to produce biodiesel.
You like beef? How about milk? Butter? Cream with your coffee? Cheese?
Guess what, all of these things come from cows! We need cows on hand to make them and we might as well get even more from them while we're at it. You can only use so much fertilizer, so what are we going to do with the rest of the manure? Throwing it out is the pinacle of idiocy. We went to all the trouble to feed the cows the food so let's use what the cows didn't.
Biodiesel is great and all, but I can't eat it. I can eat cheese and beef. With cows we get food AND some electricity to boot.
China and India have been at the forefront of biogas power production for decades.
In 1979, China had an estimated 7.2 million biogas plants, fueled primarily by pig manure.
In the same year, India had 80,000 of its own biogas plants fueled by the defecation of the sacred cow. (Holy Shit!)
They've even been doing this in the US for quite some time. Here is another article that provides an excellent explanation of the process, costs, and capabilities of such a system.
So this might not be the most technologically amazing invention, and it's clearly not going to solve the world's energy problems. But it is an inspiring example of how a few individuals can actually do something less destructive for the environment without being mandated to do so by government regulations.
At the risk of sounding trite, consider what you can do to have a less destructive impact on our planet, even if it doesn't involve thousands of gallons of shit a day.
Nope. Think of it this way:
1. Cow eats grass.
2. Cow produces waste.
3. Bacteria degrades waste to methane.
4. Digester burns methane, produces CO2.
5. Grass absorbs CO2.
6. Go to 1.
Ideally, no more CO2 is produced than was in the grass anyway, so this process adds no more CO2 to the atmosphere. Furthermore, methane is very clean-burning, producing very little in the way of noxious by-products. In fact, since the grass produces energy from sunlight, you could think of this as a type of solar power!
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Imagine what one of these could do in the Nation's Capitol. We'd have enough power to do the whole planet a couple of times over ;-)
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
This really isn't anything new. The pioneers in the late 1800's burned cow-patties when they were crossing the praries. In fact, cow-patties will emit methane for a fairly long amount of time. One of the California universities (sorry, can't remember which) uses methane off-gased from a landfill.
If the combustion processes is controlled correctly, there is little pollution generated. The biggest problem with either of these dirty fuels is "What impurities are in both of these that are not present in cleaner fuels that cannot be removed?"
I wonder how many homes could be powered if everyone ate vegan, and we used all the energy it takes to raise all those cows for electricity.
The idea is that you use every resource available to it's fullest potential...and that shit is just laying there asking to be composted into a viable fuel. I don't see that is an inefficient process.
People can't eat or drink biodiesel.
Unless you decide to legislate a vegetarian diet, people are going to continue to eat meat, drink milk, and wear wool.
Why not just burn coal?
Because farms don't produce coal. Farms produce manure (as waste), and the manure produces methane, wich is a smelly pollutant.
What these farmers can do is turn that smelly waste into a profitable ressource.
coal?
It's just as bad for the environment
No, its much much worse for the environment to dig out buried carbon and release it into the atmosphere than to prevent the release of methane in the atmosphere.
I don't really want to smell the fumes of burning shit, thank you!
Yes, you should thank them, since they are saving you from having to smell those fumes by transforming the manure in a closed system and then burning the methane quite thoroughly. Methane then ends up as water vapor, CO2 and energy.
Wich is much better smelling than raw manure.
Now, had you read the article before trolling about coal, you'd have known all that.
You can't take the sky from me...
farmers are by far the MOST efficient people, and also some of the most environmentally minded people. (and btw, there aren't cow farmers... farming is plants, ranching is animals... This is a cow rancher!!!)
Or the cow ate the average american diet, which includes dairy.
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This will not provide a sollution since we need too many cows to produce significant amounts of energy, therefore this will not be a sollution to an energy crisis. But this improoves a litlle the eficiency of the farming and the most important the methane does not escape into the athmosphere. Instead it is burned and CO2 is released. I know that CO2 is greenhouse efect gas but the methane increases MUCH more the geenhouse than C02. This one is good since improoves farming eficiency, gets rid of nasty cow manure smell in farming areas, it is environmental friendly reducing the greenhouse efect and generates electricity. So you better use it! Especialy in Holand when the smell is nasty! :)
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
It was too exepensive to run power lines to villages in China, so they used methane power for a long time.
Here's a nice potential benefit. Methane is a greenhouse gas. I've read that the cattle industry generates a significant fraction of the US greenhouse gas output. Of course burning methane produces CO2, which is also a greenhouse gas, but I think the net reduction in greenhouse effect of capturing the methane still outweighs the CO2 produced. So you could view this style of energy generation as producing negative pollution. Cool!
Another potential optimization: use the methane to run a fuel cell generator. Get rid of the combustion generator and do it with greater efficiency and less waste heat.
Speaking of heat, I don't understand why they have to heat the tank. When my family composted manure (rural upbringing), the bacteria produced a LOT of heat. You actually have to be careful with compost heaps, as they can set themselves on fire if they get too hot.
think of the money in it for them!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Just a note: there's a lot more cow manure being produced nowadays than coal. The concept of "renewable" is a big deal to anyone who thinks there will be a world in the next 100 years.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
If you're extremely patriotic, collect all the cow shit you can and store it in your back yard. You too can help reduce America's dependency on foreign oil.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
The third world wackos are the ones funding terrorism...cut off their funding and lots of terrorists will have much fewer resources to use.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
It is a really shitty source of power....
You'll have that sometimes...
least that's what we call them in nc.
In Soviet Russia... ... water and sewage board pays you!
Or is that Communist China?
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
I don't drink or eat cows. Yet I still eat... amazing eh?
~long term~
You're right. We won't stop till there's not enough land for cows. Just like we won't stop using oil until there's not enough oil left.
Of course there won't be enough land to produce vegetables either at some point, and we will have to use snythetic soil means, but cows will either be long gone before that, or the torture of them will increase.
Regardless... The sooner you become more efficient, and cleaner, the better for everyone.
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Nuclear energy isn't renewable, but it provides a large amount of power in a small amount of space.
Nuclear reactions occur with the fission of uranium-235, which is an extremely rare kind of uranium. However, reactors that are known as "fast-breeder reactors" take in the much more common version of uranium, uranium-238, and "breed" plutonium-239, which can also be fissioned.
There are a few problems with wind and solar power. Sure, they're cheap and they're clean, but a person has to keep in mind that the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow. So to deal with this, you now need large batteries to store massive amounts of electricity to be used when solar and wind are unable to generate electricity.
Another inherent problem with solar and wind is the amount of space vs. the amount of energy produced. Both solar and wind energy need large amounts of space to create anywhere near the amount of energy that nuclear produces.
What about nuclear waste?
Spent nuclear fuel rods are solids, not liquids or gasses, so they don't "leak". In the past 35 years, there have been over 3,000 transports of nuclear waste across the country totalling 1.7 million miles. There have been 8 "accidents", but none of them ever resulted in any fatalities, environmental damage, etc. The containers that store nuclear waste are DESIGNED to be put through some serious abuse. They're made to sit through jet fuel at temperatures of over 1,200F for long periods of time. They make these things to withstand freefalls from 70 ft up, which is something like the equivalent of a 120mph head on crash.
Nuclear power rocks.
...That's some good shit!
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
there aren't cow farmers... farming is plants, ranching is animals... This is a cow rancher!
I'm assuming you're from the U.S., and from the western half at that.
In the Eastern US, someone who grows cows for milk or for slaughter is usually called a "farmer". A "rancher" is primarily a mid-west or western term.
Indeed, look at chapter one of *any* high school biology text.
/. post as the aforementioned text can.
You'll find something there called "The Carbon Cycle."
I could go into it here and show why this process, or cows themselves, don't really "pollute," but I can't do it as well in a
I think it fairly reasonable that geeks should be at least chapter one literate in biology, and so repeat my recommendation to read the book.
The essential problem with fossil fuels is that they *break* the carbon cycle.
A person on a bicycle resides within it.
KFG
Haven't people been doing this for decades? Back in the 80's, I'd seen more than one PBS show on it.
The article talks about collecting all of the manure with machines--so I don't think there's any "ranch" here, unless you mean the mechanical barn with cow after cow stuck in a stall with a chute from the cow's rear to the methane oven.
In Minnesota, they cook them.
"The heat produced by the engine keeps the manure cooking, and the excess warms the barn's concrete floors."
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
The manure is not burned, rather it is "cooked" at 100 degrees (C or F, dunno), and the methane is collected. Yes, methane. Natural gas, in other words. Not the cleanest stuff ever, but it's definitely better than coal.
:-)
Also bear in mind that most of that methane would end up in the atmophere if it wasn't burned and would be a whole lot worse, envirnmentally speaking. Generating electicity *and* helping to prevent polution. It is good to see something like this
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I'm sorry, but a story like this is just too good to pass up.....
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
..couldn't that be useful for plants in greenhouses? I can imagine the distorted ecosystem of a greenhouse, where there are hardly any animals to exhale CO2, adding the CO2 left by the combustion of CH4 could have the plants create clean O2 that can be let out into the atmosphere with no further risks thus eliminating all pollution.
But of course I don't know shit about chemistry.. so I could easily be wrong.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
I still think that converting the Fresh Kills landfill to a facility that captures methane emissions, generates hydrogen from garbage compost, and burns the rest in a euro-style plasma furnace could really help SI, as well as NYC (and probably the country at large)..
;); NYC would get more tax revenue from the sale of power, hydrogen and methane to power generators and municipal vehicles/facilities and taxes from jobs and industry, as well as additional independence from out-of-city power generation and some relief from peak periods of use. NYC would also reduce its payments for handling trash, thus reducing its budget problems. Talk about a win-win-win-win-win!
;)
SI would get cleaner air and jobs in a good local high-tech industry (we'd be HAPPY to import garbage
Just keep Tony Soprano's hands off it
We *did* do this 20 years ago. It *is* old news.
Sheesh. Doesn't anybody read Mother Earth News anymore? Are we so focused on what might be coming out tomorrow that we've completely forgoten what we did yesterday?
Farmers have been doing this for over 100 years. Henry Ford promoted it as the ideal way to provide for our energy needs before WW1.
During WWII you could buy units on trailers to pull around behind your car, pile the shit in,a nd get a few miles of driving out of the resultant outgassing.
The only "conspiracy" here is that people no longer want to acknowledge that shit even exists and would rather go to war and die over a bit of oil than shovel a bit of their own shit.
Napoleon considered the most valuable men in his army the people who cleaned the latrines. They didn't *bury* the shit, they collected it for use.
Napleon's army made much of its own gunpowder while, ummmmmmmmmmm, "on the run," as it were.
Cows aren't the only biological device which can serve as a very efficient refinery of raw materials.
KFG
Today's lesson was to not assume anyone replying to you will read the article, or have any clue about the OBVIOUS.
I'm not implying that we should NOT use what manure cows are producing now. I'm saying that we should NOT increase the number of cows in usage. That is why I started it off with how inefficient it is as a long term solution (ill go out and feed my 10 cows). I did NOT mean that this is a waste of time, nor that this is a process we should totally forget about. Sure I think using what cows are currently in consumption to produce power is great. But this farmer is talking about making strides for the future, and that cows should be an integral part of that (including population growth).
I really don't see how anyone misunderstood me so extremely.
oh well..
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- The storage of nuclear waste is something that *cannot* be thought through and planned completely, because of the ultra-long storage times involved (e.g. many tens of thousends of years). The oldest structures the human race built are, what?, 4 thousand years old, and look at their condition.
- Fast-breeders sound attractive, but with people like GWB still running the show I would not want to produce more Plutonium, it can be too easily used in nuclear bombs.
- Maybe it is time people should consider doing something about the other half of the equation: energy-consumption. I've replaced all my lightbulbs with compact fluorescent lights, bought an energy-efficient fridge and washing machine (got me a rebate from the power-company, too). I also switch off all equipment with small power adapters when not in use, they consume a small load 24/7 which adds up. I *halved* my electricity bill, and that is without *any* change in my lifestyle or level of comfort.
Another idiotic thing is cooking and heating homes electrically. Electricity is the highest form of power, and it is wasted on heating. Cooking on natural gas saves money and is much more efficient.
I am *not* a tree-hugger, I just want to see my kids being able to light and heat their homes when their grown-up, too.
This results in anerobic decomposition, which produces methane. In additon to being a very effictive (bad) greenhouse gas, methane is smelly. Also, the resulting composte can have weeds and pathogens in it.
This results in carbon dioxide and high-quality compost. CO2 is a much less effective greenhouse gas than methane, so this is a pretty good choice. There was a recent
This is the most complicated method, but it's pretty rockin'. You end up wth the CO2 and high quality maure, but also with a bunch of electricity. Basically, it's a short-cycle renewable loop. Grass takes energy from the sun, CO2 from the air, and nutrients from the soil, and makes more grass. Cows eat the grass and make more cow, milk, and cow poop. You sell the milk, and turn the poop into CO2, soil nutrients, and electricity. Lather, rinse, repeat. The only significant input is sunlight, the only significants outputs are milk and electricity.
The sooner you become more efficient, and cleaner, the better for everyone
Exactly, which is why this is so great. Cowshit was just wasted, and now it's used for fuel. That's pretty damn efficient. This way, I get to have my steak and eat it too.
People who are using the land to feed and power their family may be efficient, but this guy isn't just feeding and powering his family. He is producing dairy products that go into circulation. That is the inefficient and unhealthy part. He's also making a few people on top who have strangled the business from top to bottom, very rich, destroying the sharing of wealth.
The land usage isn't even that efficient. At some point this will be an issue, but currently I guess it isnt.
And did you even read the articles? Even the FARMERS are calling it a farm...
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Wow. You're a great person. You're a vegan. Big fucking deal.
I doubt that the farmer envisioned billions of cows kept alive for the sole purpose of shitting. That would be stupid. I'm sure that he meant that lots of cattle owners could do this same thing.
But seriously folks, I'm all for alternet engery sources. Just not at the expense of reason.
How is this at the expense of reason? There is a HUGE amount of potential energy available in manure. As bacteria break it down, they will release the same methane anyway. Methane is a nastier greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so you really might as well capture it and burn it to make use of the energy.
Throwing it into a pile to rot is wasting a huge resource, and making use of it doesn't particularly harm the environment if you burn it smartly.
Not using is is the unreasonable activity. It's wasteful! Why use more Uranium than you have to? The "lifetime cycle management system" you suggest is NOT an easy thing to create. Many smart people have been working on it for fifty years with no completely satisfactory solution in sight.
Anybody with a backhoe and a few sacks of cement can make a methane reclamation system.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
There is certainly a great deal of untaped potential in the US. Only 4% of landfill sites use their methane to generate electrcity. The U.S. EPA estimates that as many as 500 additional landfills could cost-effectively turn their methane into an energy resource, producing enough electricity to power over 3 million homes across the U.S.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Why heat the tank? #1 reason: It's Minnesota. I'm from there... it's damn cold in the winter.. Nothing quite like a frozen lake of crap in the middle of winter with no way to thaw it out! Besides, heat is also a by-product of the power generator... why simply vent it when it can do something useful?
-Phyre
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." -Thom
There are 2 things I don't see in this article:
1. The setup and maintenance costs of the digester
2. Comparisons to the amount of energy that could be generated if you used the land to farm crops that could be used for biodiesel.
You can't really tell anything about the overall efficiency of the scheme apart from a marginal increase of an unknown amount has been achieved, in a process that's not been comprehensively studied.
What you really need to do is work out, starting from the energy in sunlight and the energy in the cows' feed, to how much energy and money they get back from the electricity.
Efficiency increase = E / (S + F)
where E is the amount of usable electricity delivered, S is the energy from sunlight hitting the ground and F is the amount of energy contained in the cows' feed.
As an exercise to the reader, find out the energy value of solar radiation over the farmland and the energy in the cows' feed. These values dwarf the amount of energy generated as electricity. If this even results in a 0.1% increase in overall system efficiency I'd be totally gobsmacked.
Of course, the other way of looking at it is that this farmer saved (and made) a whole bunch of cash with even this teeny-weeny increase in overall efficiency, how much money could be made with carefully thinking about efficiency in agricultural systems design. Maybe its time for the craftsman/farmer to move on and see what engineers can do.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
Of course he isn't envisioning that. I can't believe you even imagined that anyone would say something that ignorant after the entire point was: not to keep cows alive for a single purpose.
retard.
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Flame your farts for a healthier future (well actually, cows **belch* about 4x as much methane as goes out the dirty end).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What if we used human waste. No wait, what about the heat humans generate in addtion to their waste. What if we could harness the heat from people. We could power a lot of computers and use the computers to keep the people busy while they create heat. I'm going to start working on this right away.
...you followed that question up with telling me that those are dairy products
No, he said they come from cows. He said nothing about dairy products. Last time I checked, beef is not a dairy product.
The farmer was talking about implementing this as a solution for the future, basically increasing the amount of cows in usage.
Are YU a total fucking moron? Don't paraphrase unless you can get it right. The farmer said nothing about increaing the number of cows, just doing something productive with the cow's waste, which was being created anyways.
I never said that we shouldn't use what cows we have, but I AM saying that we should get rid of the cows we have.
Now you're just proving you have the intelligence of a 14 year old by contradicting yourself. Not in separate paragraphs, but in following senenct fragments.
At least the shit the cows make is useful... yours, however, I'm not sure anyone will ever find a use for.
The cow-body generates more bioelectricity than a 120-volt battery. And over 25,000 BTUs of body heat. Combined with a form of combustion...the humans had found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, Neo, endless fields...where cow-beings are no longer born. We are grown. For the longest time I wouldn't believe it. And then I saw the fields with my own eyes...watched them liquify the dead...so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure, horrifying precision...I came to realize the the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world...built to keep us under control...in order to change a cow-being...into this. (a battery)
I'm talking about longer term solution. This isn't one. The farmer is calling this the "way of the future".
It is! There are a great many dairy farms and ranches in this country, and only a few currently generating electricity from manure. It certainly isn't practical for each household to raise 10 head of cattle, but capturing the current output is very worthwhile. It will not consume any resources that aren't already being used.
Add to that, capture from landfill and we have a considerable net gain in available energy in any part of the country.
From a business standpoint, anything that can nearly double profitability can't be a bad thing. It may be just the thing to save a number of family farms.
As a general principle, I'd say capturing potentially valueable resources that are now wasted is certainly the way of the future.
Bah, we Indians have been using cow manure for a variety of things for hundreds if not thousands of years. I'm not surprised that there is even more useful things we could do it. It's been a replacement for Lysol and fuel. This method is also used in India called Gorba gas. :P
:-) [trans. long life to cows]
They laughed at us when we told them that cows were holy. Guess, whose laughing now?!
Cow Zindabad, Cow Zindabad!
sri
Thanks for being really nitpicky on the diary thing. That really helped everyone.
but you are a retard for saying that this sentence isn't correct: "I never said that we shouldn't use what cows we have, but I AM saying that we should get rid of the cows we have."
Do you not realize that the first part of the sentence is something I never said, but the last part is something I DID say? That sentence doesn't mean "use the cows we have and get rid of the cows we have". It means "do what we can now, but cows have to go". I didn't realize that every fucking thing I say has to be 100% obvious or morons like you. I guess that sentence included a basic logic that apparently is too complex for you.
The point was that everyone was jumping on me for thinking that I meant this idea was inefficient to implement Right Now. I didn't mean that. I meant that long term it is inefficient to increase the number of cows. You need to get that straight before attempting to insult me through your ignorance.
But on the useful side of your post, which was mostly flame, you're right, I read the article wrong. He didn't say that cows are a good means of resource for the future. Mostly what he said was that industry should be more self sufficient, but he included the idea of keeping things the way they are. We can't keep things the way they are, or we will just run out of fuels.
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Which was? I was saying that increasing the amount of cows was inefficient. Where is the strawman in that? The only argument anyone had against me was argument against something I wasn't saying.
This is my sig. The post is over.
I doubt that the farmer envisioned billions of cows kept alive for the sole purpose of shitting. That would be stupid. I'm sure that he meant that lots of cattle owners could do this same thing.
Actually, they could just close the energy loop from the plant matter to the methane a little tighter. Envision billions of vegans kept alive for the sole purpose of shitting....
The first part of your sentece is something you said:
I never said that we shouldn't use what cows we have
In other words, we should use what cows we have. So, we should use what cows we have, but we should get rid of what cows we have? how is that not contradictory?
Think about what you want to say before you type, and especially before you reiterate, albeit incorrectly, by denying the validity of my resonse
It is actually very common to burn these waste products to create electricity. I've been involved in several of these projects myself.
One project involved modified diesel engines that burned landfill gas to make electricity. The other involved piping landfill gas to an existing power plant to burn in the boiler.
In both cases these projects would not have been economically viable except for govt incentives, tax credits, and environmental regulations.
While it may sound appealling to use this free energy source, it is actually pretty expensive to make it all work. The electricity produced ends up costing more in the long run than regular old power from coal or natural gas.
The landfill gas is usually pretty nasty and it is difficult to keep things running. Everything corrodes quickly. These facilities also produce very little power, on the order of 10's of MW whereas a large coal unit is usually 500MW or more. Diverting your maintenance people to the little installation to keep it running is very inefficient. It is much better to keep them working on the large units.
Do you think we could do this at wastemanagement plants in the US? I think that would be a great idea. Humans produce so much shit all the time, and if we did this we could at least turn it into fertilizer and energy?
ideas should be free
Comparisons to the amount of energy that could be generated if you used the land to farm crops that could be used for biodiesel.
You and a lot of other people on here are missing something important here: the farmer's prime goal is NOT to produce electricity. It is to produce milk. And to grow some crops on his 1000 acres. The electricity is just a convenient by-product of the cows, and of the process used to reduce the manure odor so that he doesn't bother his neighbors. I'm sure he has no interest in converting his whole farm to biodiesel production.
Maybe its time for the craftsman/farmer to move on and see what engineers can do.
Speaking as an engineer, we would have a bunch of cross-site meetings with various stakeholders, we would write up thousands of pages of feasibility documents, create innumerable Powerpoint presentations, hire a bunch of contractors and consultants since we don't have the required expertise, then the company would fire the whole lot of us and contract someone from India to do the job because it costs less. They would do roughly the same thing, and in the end the company would give up on the whole project and write it off as a business loss, and nothing substantive would have actually been done.
No, what you are a LOT of people are missing is that neithre he or I are discussing whether or not current farmers should try to use their by products as efficiently as possible. Using every resource in your disposal should be an obvious goal.
He is talking straight efficiency. I was talking about it being a bad idea to increase the number of cows, and he is showing why.
The reason I said my original post is because I thought the farmer was saying that we should increase the number of cows. After reading the article again though, I realize that the farmer only said that we industry should be more self sufficient.
This is my sig. The post is over.
this only works with cows that are penned up
most of the cows in the midwest are spread out on open ranges...you'll spend a lot more for the trucks of people w/ shovels collecting cow patties then you will save
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
second attempt:
We should use what cows we currently have in circulation as efficiently as possible.
We should not increase the number of cows.
And we should EVENTUALLY, get rid of cows.
This is my sig. The post is over.
Of course we could, but the social taboos against it at the moment are enormous, and probably insurmountable.
You often hear about water shortages. We have toilets that can't flush an ant, mandated by law now in America, in order to "save water."
What they don't tell you is that the shortage is of *drinking* water. We're the only culture that has ever used its drinking water to dispose of shit, then has to retreat it to be fit for drinking, and then use it to flush away shit *again.*
It really doesn't make a lot of sense.
KFG
The question is not the shit grass that they're eating (and we're not), but rather what that acre of land *could* be growing.
...you put in cheap worthless grass and get out good milk, very good leather and very rich food.
Agreed...if you wanted to grow, say, soy beans, then the land has the potential to be "destroyed" just as much as cows.
And if you inject them w/hormones, you get even BETTER food!
As any fan of In N Out will tell you...
coming from a long line of dairymen...
if you have a dairy, it is not called a dairy ranch, it is called a dairy farm. BTW, the "dairy" itself is only the building where the cows are actually milked, not the whole farm.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
...I tried and tried and tried, but I couldn't seem to get any energy out of your shit. Needs to be rated +5 Troll first.
1 tequila 2 tequila 3 tequila floor
Get your vassectomy today.
Vi vs emacs is bad enough. Leave the what you're eating religion on some vegetable site.
Who needs karma anyways.
Every few days, he shovels out another big load, ready for the digester.
Put your ego away for a minute and read the article again.
--collecting methane at sewer plants and from city dumps is being done on a large scale at over 200 US municiplaities. It works quite well.
World wide there are literally hundreds of thousands of them (methane digesters using anareobic digestion), most of them being single family sized units where the collected gas is burned in small cookers and for lighting.
I built a digester in the mid 70's, was EXTEREMELY easy to make. I worked on a large dairy then, despite running the digester for all summer and collecting gas, just a small display size prootype unit, I could NOT get the farmer to drive over one mile to my cabin to look at it. His stock question was "why aren't THEY doing it if it is so good?" The gas collected was great, basically burned like propane. I tried other farmers over the years,I have yet to get one to take the plunge and actually do anything different, alwatys the same, it ain't in their propaganda magazines for their particular niche for farming. You can NOT get those guys to do anything practical until they get "permission" from the agribiz cartels, and right now, the agribiz cartels want the farmers to buy expensive petroleum and chemical products from them or their country club buddies. and the farmers WONDER why they keep going broke....and they TEACH going broke in the ag colleges, which is AMAZING to me they can suck young guys into doing that.
grumble....
At least this one dairy farmer in the article gets it, it's probably only one in a thousand or less that can actually think for themselves. Work hard, 7 days a week, YEP! They do, been there done that meself. think outside the box? Hardly ever happens, so petrified of their buddies at the co-op and the feed store thinking they are "enviros" or something near as I can tell.
Flash forward almost 30 years now, I get the same thing today, I work part time on a large poultry farm, besides methane digestion I have also asked why they don't use sprouted grains instead of the dismal dried up crap they call "feed" that barely keeps the cluckers clucking. SAME ANSWER, because "they" don't do it, this "they" guy who tells them what to do, it's not in the trade mags so "it doesn't work, it's hippie pie in the sky stuff enviro whackos".
I LAUGH every time I hear of a farmer going broke, because if they only thought just a smidgen outside the box and stepped back from being brainwashed by archerdanielsdowmonsantoexxon, they could make money, and easily. But no, they'll defend practices that they follow that produce for them a lower profit return than their grand daddys got in world war two. Sure, they can grow huger volumes of much crappier food off an acre, deal is, it IS crappier food and they hand over their cash to the big companies, then the bank takes their property eventually. Lead around by the nose don't even begin to describe it.
And I get the same thing from urban internet engineering "experts" who have constantly told me over the years my solar panels don't work, they "aren't practical". Funny, my electric bill is PAID OFF, I don't get a "monthly" bill with no idea what it will be if there's any political or middleman trading shenanigans. but, "solar isn't practical".
Phooie
The 21st century will belong to those who can think out of the box and stop making money for BIGCO, who work FOR THEMSELVES, and stop supporting those brane dead politicians and political parties who are in BIGCO's pockets.
im not pushing just "what you eat religion". I'm pushing ultimate efficiency in the long run.
This is my sig. The post is over.
This is done in India for hundreds of thousands of years. I have seen and played around one as a tiny kid couple of decades back. I am surprized that such a matured technology has taken Sooo LOOOONG to come to the US (in the 21st century). WOW !!!!!!
** Faints With Surprize **
Vishal.
Certainly much less harmful, especially considering what most powerplants use for fuel these days.
Still I wonder how much better this process could become if something could be done with the CO2 gas...since it's only water vapor and CO2, perhaps it could be condensed and form another cheap source of laboratory carbon dioxide gas?
so... when the boilers burst
the shit hits the fan, eh?
and ecologically friendly PP SUVs would really be transporting a shitload of stuff...
(PP=poop propelled)
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
Actually, we don't even need to burn the methane - we can use it as feedstock for production of methanol, or we can thermally decompose it into CO2 and H2 in order to extract the hydrogen.
--would it be possible to get the name of this city so I can do some research on it? I would like to present a proposal to my county commissioners on this. Most of the other sites doing biogas and cogen I found were much larger cities and a population of 10,000 is in the ball park enough for comparison purposes. Thanks in advance if this is possible.
You can learn more about it here: BioGas in India
that would probably be degrees fahrenheit, as at 100 Celcius the bacteria that help create the methane would simply die, while 100 F is near the the body temperature of a warm blooded animal (like a cow)
I am not sure if using farm byproducts to produce electricity is new, since I have heard of similar ones before (in documentaries).
Please pardon my ignorance, if I have said something stupid above.
Thank you.
GrimReality
2003-03-09 23:55:59 UTC (2003-03-09 18:55:59 EST)
since when does wool come from cows? And in most areas where wool is harvested, it is non-fatal to the animals involved. (Sheep are simply shaved to harvest the wool, if you were wondering). Perhaps you are thinking of Leather?
1. Cow Manure
2. ?
3. Energy!
Well it's not all the clear. There are species of bacteria that survive in pools of water quite a bit hotter than 100C.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
They're going to burn the underwear!...Underwear can contain traces of methane!
No, I think you have misinterpreted the article, skewed by your (possibly misguided) personal beliefs on veganism and the dairy/meat industry. You aren't saying anything that isn't completely obvious to anyone with even a basic grasp of the problems the environment faces. The reality is, people want dairy products, and if we are going to have cows around for that, it is much better for the environment if we can do ANYTHING to lower their impact on the planet. It IS a strawman argument, because if we got rid of cows as you suggest, history shows that the price of dairy products would rise dramatically, and the gap in the market would be filled by product from the third world and by farms that would NOT be making these sort of efforts to help the planet, putting the entire industry and our world in a worse situation than it is currently in. Sometimes I wish people (read: hippies) would actually have a clue to how this world works before suggesting childish, badly planned solutions. Getting rid of cows is just not feasible currently while their products hold so much value for the human race.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
Nitpick:
I believe that methane isn't the smelly part - it's the sulphur. I don't think that methane has any noticable smell at all. That's why they have to add scents to natural gas lines. If they didn't no one would notice a gas leak.
Last post!
Check your facts. All this methane is currently going into the atmosphere from natural decay. With this process the majority would be burned. The only signicant by product is used as fertiler. Methane leaves far less carbon dioxide than oil or gasoline. If we converted most of the farm waste to methane we could provide 25% to 50% of our power, do the math. Agriculture made use strong. If we use our agricultural waste for fuel we could tell the Middle East to go to hell. Gee, I wonder how many power plants could be built with the 50+ billion we are going to blow on protecting our oil interests?
Let the Mad Mad: Beyond Thunderdome jokes begin!
Maybe infernal combustion engines aren't the way to do this. I wonder if using it for direct heat or running a steam turbine wouldn't be better. Of course, the turbine approach only works for a large scale operation. Then too, there are the economy of scale problem. A diesel that's been primarily engineered to burn diesel isn't going to be all that good for burning anything else. A "modified diesel" is probably a good example. A diesel that's been engineered (materially and otherwise) to burn biogas would probably work better. The problem here is that there has to be enough incentive to make a lot of them. Building one or two such engines wouldn't pay off what it cost to design them.
Anyhow, I don't think burning biogas is a bad idea. It will have to be properly engineered and applied to worth a squat though.
Actually, the smell comes from all the other gasses that come off with the methane. It's burning all the other stuff along with the methane that reduces the odor. Which means that the exhaust from the motor/generator is more than pure CO2 and water. In fact, it's likely that the engine used to power the generator is more polluting than your recent model Chevrolet since there are no pollution standards for the "converted" internal combustion engine that was used. CO, NOx and all that.
I vaguely recall a story about this on 3-2-1 Contact way back in the day. It was a weird combination of wow and gross. I also remember getting into trouble with one teacher the next day because I mentioned it. Apparently, she thought manure was a bad word for a 3rd grader to know.
I wonder how my grandparents would have reacted to that one, they owned a farm.
Methane cometh from pig shit Madmax thunderdome.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Th farm down the road from me (Bore Place, Kent, UK) has been doing this since 1984. Big deal.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
I bet NASA is (should be) looking into this for the International Space Station. With this idea being pretty efficient and with little waste, it makes sense. Of course, there is the tricky part of launching a herd of cows in space and floating around in 0 Gs. Although it is highly amusing to think about.
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." -George Bernard Shaw
During WWII you could buy units on trailers to pull around behind your car, pile the shit in,a nd get a few miles of driving out of the resultant outgassing.
That brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "piece of shit car", doesn't it?
Great post. I'll add a couple things:
1) Buy a composting toilet (SunMar is the best IMO); check your local regulations first; but composting toilets produce wonderful fertilizer if they're used properly; and fertilizer == $$
2) There are ways to modify septic tanks to produce methane much the same way that this farmer does. Not for the faint of heart
The whole thing about energy nowadays...is who can get rich over it >> politics/lobbying >> regulations up the wazoo. There are many of us fighting the good fight....and yes
Thanks!! Friend!
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
The farmer is calling this the "way of the future".
Its not the way of the future for you moron, its the way of the future for the farmer. The farmer knows how much electricity he outputs...and knows full well this will not be the way to produce electricity for cities, etc. But it can become quite an efficient and usefull method for small rural communities. And it cuts down on air pollution significantly.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Do you drive a car?
Do you use a computer?
Do you, shock, grow your own food? Or buy it from the supermarket?
There's much more you can do for the environment and general well-being of the planet than worrying about the cruelty and inefficincy of animal products.
(I tried to resist, I did...
</troll>
Sorry, but I don't see exactly where he is showing how to more efficiently harvest milk. He mentions a few things about comparable power production from biodiesel, but that is neither here nor there because the discussion is about MILK PRODUCTION primarily, with the new added bonus of some elctrical production. Remember, the first and foremost product here is DAIRY FOODS. Everything else is just a bonus.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
Underground pipes carry the manure to a heated cement pit. For 21 days, it cooks gently at about 100 degrees, making it a perfect environment for hungry bacteria.
Nothing like waking up to the wonderful smell of slow cooked cow manure!
SIGFAULT
Agreed, except for a few problems.
1) Plants produce much less protein than is necessary for normal human growth and survival. The only way to ensure that enough proteins are ingested is to eat lots more plants than most people can eat in one day, where even cheese added will greatly reduce this amount (however, some vegetarians avoid cheese altogether). Lacking these crucial proteins as many vegans do, their growth is known to be somewhat stunted as a result and other problems result. (well published studies)
2) Humans cannot extract as much energy from plant polysaccharides as they can from fatty meats. Only about 10% as much energy can be absorbed from plants as from meat. As a result, people need to eat more plants to make up for the lack of proteins and our inability to process polysaccharides efficiently as Evolution/ God
So, maybe after extensive genetic engineering that turns humans into partial ruminants will people be able to thouroughly process plants, but not today.
In conclusion: Concept noble, implementation impossible.
P.S. I like the way meat tastes frankly. (genuine opinion)
Mandatory Disclaimer: These comments are not intended to offend anyone (i.e. PETA, et al.), but are my genuine position to which I am entitled. I am merely stating facts with which I have been presented in my experiences. Thusly, I cast this li'l comment off into the digital nexus.
The poster was refering to the general inefficiency of all animals, not just cows.
To all those saying "this is not new"... here's a "me too" (of sorts).
I live in Vermont and we're rather famous for our cows. Anyhow, a farm just down the road from me has been doing this for years. They generate surplus electricity and sell it back to the electric company. It's rather cool. Glad to see it getting more attention.
- The manure is not burned, rather it is "cooked" at 100 degrees
I'm pretty sure McDonald's has prior art for this.
It's funny because its true.
#!/
Lets see. I run my home on 3000 kWHr/year. For lights, electric stove, fridge, this computer, dehumidifier and central air in summer, for the furnace blower of a gas-fired furnace in winter, for everything. That is 347 watts 24/7. Divide 347 into the 150 kilowatts 24/7 gives over 400 homes. That is 2 cows per home.
I call bullshit!
(Sorry, sorry... +1, Lame?)
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
What can we learn from this?
- One: If only someone would tell me that you can buy a REAL toilet on the black market--that is, a non-water-saving toilet that actually uses more than two teaspoons of water and has the power to get the job done--then I wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
- Two: That if I was smart, I'd invent a toilet that flushes every time AND turns your shit into electricity, all at the same time.
This post is a bunch of shit, by the way... None of it is true.I wonder how much energy return they would get if they used a fuel cell instead of a heat engine. Would the efficeincy offset the extra cost of the fuel cell?
Also a smaller version of this would be nice for yard waste. I could just think of my yard as a solar energy collector. No need to waste money on fertilizer.
I already stated in several other posts that I misinterpreted the article. It wasn't skewed because of my personal beliefs. I just misinterpreted it.
You need to back off the "obvious" theory. That was sufficiently blown to all hell by the content of the posts I got in response.
We won't always have cows producing dairy products. We may even continue on into the taste of "dairy" products made synthetically after that becomes a viable option. I never said that we should exterminate every cow that is out there tomorrow. That is an assumption about my post that YOU are making. We would have to phase them out. Of coures that isn't going to happen because people don't give a rats ass about cows, people don't realize what happens to cows, people don't care how unhealthy dairy is, and people don't know how unhealthy dairy is. Cows go away when it isn't possible anymore.
The barrier to getting rid of cows isn't because they are an incredible source of value (efficient). It's the desire for public consumption and all the industry that depends on them. You couldn't go out and exterminate them because a lot of industries would collapse, and we aren't prepared to supply people with either the lost resources or lose work that would result. Any decrease in cows being as resources would have to be done in stages, or gradually. I figured that would be obvious too. Of course you, like most everyone else jumping on my case, attached anything that my post could have possibly implied.
Anyhow, as long as people want leather, dairy, steaks, etc, and as long as it is marketed to them so strongly, cows are going to be hard to get away from. And those are the only reasons. Not because they are the horn of plenty as you suggest.
This is my sig. The post is over.
Pig eats everything. So people raise pig tried to get leftover from restaurant or even garbage dump. The animal seem to enjoy while the stomach is not too empty. Pig is also susceptible to viral disease which occasionally wipe out hundreds of pigs in days.
Actually, keeping in mind that you are posting in a thread that started from a post I made which gives me a bit of insight on what the focus was, the primary focus of the discussion was NOT producing dairy. The focus was NOT increasing the number of cows, because I feel that cows are an inefficient resource.
I think that any body with at least 100 IQ could realize that if cows are making dairy, it would be logical to make use of them as fully as possible. Why would I argue against that? If you are saying "you don't know," it's bceause you are having the wrong discussion like most everyone else in this thread was.
This is my sig. The post is over.
Breaking news now says that Windows is no longer "worth shit". This story proves that Windows is now worth considerably less than shit. (Retail price does not reflect worth)
RTFA the last link in the article, it reads 'Fahrenheit'.
Is there a leftover of the manure or does it completely become methane?
My "education" was changing my diet to raw organic whole foods, and no longer getting sick, where I used to get a cold about once a month, or needing to see doctors for any reason, and all of the other people whose diets I influenced having the same effects.
I don't give a fuck what is written because I've seen the difference of replacing all the fast food you eat with healthy food. I also understand the strangling the fast food industry places on the economy.
So since you just blabber on and don't have a clue, just stfu.
This is my sig. The post is over.
What beautiful symmetry: This dairy farmer takes cow shit and turns it into electricty, wheareas Slashdot readers take electricity and turn it in to cowshit!
I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.
Farm sales of electricity average $900 a week, Haubenschild says. When milk prices fell to all-time lows last year, his net returns from energy approached those from milk.
It's nice that he has a heated barn and is able to use all the electricity he want, but gee it's not a money maker. Even getting paid 7 cents a kilowatt hour, three times what a comercial generator gets, it does not match the worst year ever for milk! Getting rid of that dairy cow smell must make it worth the effort.
Now, there might really be fresh air in Green Acres.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Don't worry, someone will transgene a pig for you to fly all the way home.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I'm not going to get into a discussion about your assertions that "people don't care how unhealthy dairy is, and people don't know how unhealthy dairy is" as there is no REAL evidence to support those claims, either for or against. Almost all the research in this area is clouded by various interests, whether those interests be PETA, the American Dairy Industry, whatever.
Lastly, when I used the term value, I used it in the same way Webster does, ie:
The property or aggregate properties of a thing by which it is rendered useful or desirable, or the degree of such property or sum of properties; worth; excellence; utility; importance.
Which means, whether real or imagined, people attach a value to the products of this particular crop animal that outweigh the possibility of NOT harvesting them. Nothing about a Horn of Plenty, nothing about me even suggesting they are superior in any way to other products we may consume. Efficiency doesn't even enter the conversation until you brought it up.
As I said earlier, which you have been kind enough to prove correct over and over again in this thread, you certainly need to spend some time working on your comprehension skills and learning to correctly interpret the information you are presented with before you make comments. Even moreso if you are so keen to act so superior by speaking rudely to others due to the heavy influence your lifestyle choices have on the comments you make.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
This is why the space aliens have been mutilating cows! For those ships that could not or did not have their own cow abductee, they needed to extract the manure to power their spacecraft!
It is all clear now!
(I seriously hope I'm joking...)
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
A nice side effect:
Methane results in a much stronger greenhouse effect than the burned methane (co2).
That's pretty damn efficient. This way, I get to have my steak and eat it too.
How about cook it too?
Sorry could not resist
you'll find out the answer in your own kitchen. To make bread, you mix flour, water and yeast. If after hours, the volume of the dough remain unchange, it is most likely the temperature of your kitchen is too low. Put your dough in somewhere 100 degree fahrenheit and humid. The dough will double in size in an hour. Action of the bacteria.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
this process is reversible. ;)
Using smelly (in a general sense) stuff for something useful always gets attention. Lets just hope that this fact will not get in the way for efficient, innovative uses of cheap if not free resources. Some years ago, IIRC in Sweden, the media found out that heat from the local crematory was used for district heating. The result was a scandal that forced the authorities to quit it. Now only the crows benefit from the heat :-(.
It should be, "Light a man a fire and he will be warm for a while. Light a man afire and he will be warm for the rest of his life."
Hasn't anyone seen Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome?
;)
It's not bullshit, it's pigshit that's the answer!
Fuzzy Knights: New RPG Strips Tuesday and Friday!:
http://www.fuzzyknights.com
your now shit.
Check your facts. All this methane is currently going into the atmosphere from natural decay.
Well, you should re-read my post-- that was my point.
Although I suspect that probably more methane is generated this way (anaerobic vs aerobic decay and all), this processing I believe is *far* cleaner than just composting the manure.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
we haven't had the obligatory 'hey, this would be a really cool power source for my laptop' comment.
India has one of largest populations of both people and cattle in the world. So it is not a surprise that bio-gas is being extensively used as a fuel for cooking, lighting and electricity. This technology has a tremendous potential for the third world and India has been exporting its know-how to others.
resurrect my
Now, you can build a self-powering cowsie dungsie clock. What will they think of next?
Click here if you just like to click on shit.
this helps me finish my money making scheme, which until now went like this:
1. collect cowshit
2. ????
3. profit!
I have been doing a lot of step 1, but until now I hadn't figured out step 2. Now I know!!!!
In the uk (a place called Holsworthy, Devon) this sort of power is being used on a much larger scale, as detailed in this story
It takes the manure from local farms and generates about 2100 kWatts of power (enough for 300 homes) and the hot water it generates is used for heating in the towns civic builds.
Oh yeah and it was started up in July 2002.
You get better efficiency out of solar/thermal panels, they generate heat and can generate electricity as well if you happen to have a stirling generator.
Thing is, they're much much easier and cheaper to make than photovoltaics. I know one guy who made solar/thermal panels out of some old central heating radiators which were being thrown away, painted them black, put them in a double glazed glass cabinet made out of an old greenhouse.
They're physically quite large compared to the commercially available panels but he gets about 2kW of heat out of them. The hot water they produce is far too hot to touch on a hot day and merely painfully hot on cloudy days (in the UK no less). He reckons they cost £45 all in for the paint, solder, copper piping and pump.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Use it as a Methane Fuel cell so we do not .
.
.
have to burn it and release the hydrocarbons
Be a great way to power a large portion of
the planet, the sewer systems just leak the
gas now or burn it off in open flames
Be a big project, but it could be well worth it
Peace...
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
From the article:
"The happier the cows are," Haubenschild said, "the better they take care of us."
Or as the saying goes, "I'm so happy, I could just shit."
That's right...oil from something other than Jurassic Park leftovers.
Sorry I think this is one thing the creationists are right about, oil doesn't come from rotten dinosaurs, coal probably from forrests, chemical make up is complex enough to be plant origin but not petrolium.
additionaly the energy/pressure requirements to turn methane into more complex organics like hexane are pretty steep, turning hexane into methane is do-able at a cost but going the other way is way to expensive methane != oil
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
-1 Flamebait ...
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Unfortunately the only ppl that modded you were either Muslims or Liberals
The liberals are sure that peace will eventually win out over war
Be nice, but with a religion based on hate it is not very realistic
The crusades, the inquisition, and some other indescretions by the christians left them little better than the muslims in the past
It is like U2 lyrics..."What more in the name of Love"
The middle east is a powder keg, we need to go take care of this, but unless we do it surgically we may set off the whole damn region
The Turks are just waiting for an excuse to massacre every Kurd separatist in existence
Syria wants to attack Israel so bad it is practically foaming at the mouth
I think Israel's nukes is all the keeps them at bay really .
Jordan to some extent seems to try to be joining the 21st century, may allah bless them .
Saudia Arabia, hehe, well...Let's just say that is where MOST of the captured Al-qaeda came from , and Whabism is HUGE there
Whahism is the strict, inflexible interpretation of islam, and also has a side order of hate . It is larger to blame for what we have experienced .
2 major sects of islam splintered when Mohammed died, this was one of them, but believe it or not it is the one thought Mohammed would least likely support . Go figure ???
Like I said earlier, the christians have their past track record of Crusades and Inquisitions, it just took the Muslims longer to build up to this and thus they have arrived at the same ugly place
Indeed, what more in the name of Love.....
Ignoring this situation is only going to make it worse to deal with down the road .
If you as a liberal feel the jews in israel should be left to be annihilated come right out and say, you believe in free speech right, free thy tongue !!!
If you as a Muslim believe in this great jihad, then you think you cannot lose, speak loudly and recruit more to your cause
It will make it easier to identify the idiots
In the midwest we are buying ammo, and stocking water and food .
There are 30,000 middle eastern men with expired Visas in the US from all the scab labor visa programs from the DOT BOMB blow out .
The state department and INS is offering zero effort to deport these ppl . In california they were so lazy they asked them to come to the police station and report themselves , and were then summarily arrested
How pathetic .
Those that show up dutifully are punished, those that don't are not even sought out .
The ones that are most likely your REAL issue .
If the government does not pull hard on its neck til it hears a loud pop, we are all gonna die from ass-phyxiation .
Well enough of my rant, it will matter not with what is about to happen in the world, I wish peace to all, but oh so rarely do we ever get it .
Peace...Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
OK, so this method may not be able to compete with the commercial power generation industry, and IANAChEng, but how hard would it be to crack the methane into hydrogen for use in the fuel cells that (we've been promised) are just around the corner?
If feasible, this would also solve, at least partially, one of the primary obstacles to a hydrogen-based economy: the distribution network. When every [cow | pig | chicken] farmer or landfill can set up a methane-driven hydrogen station for around $300K, plus or minus the differential cost of using a H2 cracker instead of a big generator, the need for a massive pipeline network, fleet of H2 tankers, etc., would be greatly diminished.
Brandishing Dangerous Logic
Wasn't this the basis of energy production in Max Max Beyond Thunderdome (except with pigs)?
exactly, but i doubt they are part of the normal digestion system of a cow :-)
The point others are making, and which you have missed, is that the time investment sunk into such a venture is a poor return on capital. He would have been much better off, as would his down-wind neighbors, having taking the years he has been experimenting with this and putting it into developing a much more efficient technology.
You are too quick to correct plalaonde - get out yer glasses and read it again' grampa
the guy says that manure is cooked at 100 degrees. but what? centigrade or fahrenheit? very incompetitive reporting, if you ask me.
As bacteria break the manure down, they give off gas -- mostly methane, which collects under the tank cover.
What happens when they smoke out by the ez-bake shit oven? I can see the headlines now...
Snooze and you lose your sushi.
I was mearly pointing out that the parent logic was flawed. Even humans can survive in heat close to 100C.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
Step 1: Cow Shits ....
Step 2:
Step 3: Power!
Check out TrailRegistry.com, my hiking site, Maps, altitude pr
So in theory, I could build a car that runs on crap? Just pump crap into the tank, Heat it, And run the engine off the methane. And when the crap's all used up, dump it on my yard and watch it turn a lush green and watch my flowers bloom! What would they charge per gallon for cow poop at the gas pump?
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
Actually, in Ithaca, NY our sewage plant is entirely energy self-sufficient. All the pumps and generators are run by natural gas (methane) fired engines, and all the heating and AC are also natural gas powered. They have digester tanks to rot the sewage and generate the methane.
They have one of those flames, however, because every once in a while they generate more methane than they have the capacity to turn into energy or store.
I don't know if they put any power back on the grid, but they help keep our sewer taxes down by not having to buy the gas.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
Err, scientists have known that oil comes from mainly unicellular life for years. There is nothing for creationists to be right about.
What they could do with the bullshit that gets spewed on /.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
Uhm, no. Humans don't survive well for very long much above 140F, which is about 60C.
Program Intellivision!
Yes, and this is also why manure pits and other sorts of fermentation chambers where methane is present are deadly -- you suffocate before you realize that there isn't much oxygen. You don't notice the methane.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
You're forgetting that he's turned a net cost into a net profit. That is, what probably used to cost him $700 a week now makes him $900 a week. That's pretty impressive. That's equivalent to selling $1600 in milk.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
This technology is being used in Europe, and if you want good information on the process you should check out AD-NETT . On a side note a fiend of mine is working on a project for a village in Freshford Co. Kilkenny, Ireland where they intend to treat the sewage of the town with a digester and use the methane in CHP (combined heat and power plant)http://www.chpa.co.uk/ to produce electricity for the national grid and use the heat for a swimming pool and
Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. G.B Shaw
By my simple calculations, to replace the San Onofre Nuclear power plant near where I live, which generates over 1 gigawatt of power, would require 13.7 million cows.
There are *tons* of cows in the US. According to this report , there were 96 million cows in the US in 1992, of which about 22.6% are dairy cows.
So this could be a pretty big deal (particularly if all cows could be used and not just dairy cows) but it would involve a big fraction of the industry getting involved.
When I toured San Onofre, they mentioned that (1) in California, the power companies must buy power from independent producers at the highest rate they are paying for any power, and (2) pig farmers were selling power to them at that time, and making some pretty good money off of it. That was around 1998-99.
You would think with power costs what they are now, every little farm would be looking into this. I hope they are.
I suspect they are not - or if they are they will find the risks too great.
It would be truely bizzare if we had to genetically breed cows to make them more "gas-y". I can just see it now: dairy cows, meat cows, gas cows...
The one image which keeps popping into my mind when such topics crop up is of starving people in other nations utterly bewindered that we could use all this fertile land...to generate electricity.
Of course the US alone already wastes enough food to save all the starving peoples of the world if we chose to do so - it is just a question of distribution.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
I never said for how long. IIRC, Scandinavians are said to bring their saunas upto 90C for short periods of time.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
At least be funny when you troll.
This is my sig. The post is over.
1) I was using "exterminate cows" as a mechanism to show how to get rid of them immediately. You appeared to be implying that my argument included getting rid of the immediately. I was showing that I didn't mean that at all. Why, in every reply, do you focus on the trivial details that don't even really apply to the argument?
2) There is evidence that shows dairy is unhealthy. There is no evidence showing that it *is* healthy. Find it. Marketing isn't evidence.
3) Value/Efficient. You just don't get it to do you? This entire thread started over ME talking about efficiency. And my point was whether increasing cows was an efficient long term solution. Value is completely wrapped up in efficiency when it comes down to what is best for society. If you think they are separate, my opinion is that you are wrong.
4) Get off my back about being rude. You started the being rude part between us. That entitles me to be rude back without being whined at about it by you.
5) "hold so much value for the human race." Again you are focusing on the details and trying to build a psychological profile or something, when I said "horn of plenty". Since you stamped cows as such a great resource for the human race, I stamped "horn of plenty" on it. Back off and stop trying to just judge me.
6) Why do you have to get personal in an argument? It's just annoying and reduces everything you say into an attack.
This is my sig. The post is over.
Hehehe... coal, flamebait... get it???
Bubumbum
Thankyou, I'm here all week.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
[i]he's your democratically elected president[/i]
I think you don't understand the meaning of "democratically elected" unless you're talking about a different George W. Bush than I am.
Mainly because you don't seem to be understanding what is being said. I was trying to clarify parts of the discussion that you seemed to have problems with.
There is evidence that shows dairy is unhealthy. There is no evidence showing that it *is* healthy. Find it. Marketing isn't evidence.
Well, there seems to be many people who have provided evidence, compared to the propaganda that the vegan/animal rights groups put forward. EXACTLY what I said in my original statement, that there is propaganda from both sides of the fence. It's funny how your beliefs influence what you consider marketing/propaganda, while the rest of us hear the marketspeak you use (remember, PETA has to get money from somebody too) and giggle at you parroting information provided by groups with a conflict of interest in the matters at hand.
Value is completely wrapped up in efficiency when it comes down to what is best for society.
What an empty statement! Of course lots of things apply when you want to get into hypothetical situations about what is best for society, but society rarely does the smartest thing. Maybe in fantasy-land decisions are based on environmental reasons alone, but here in the real world value, whether real or imagined, is dictated by market forces and the parties who purchase/manufacture the product. If value and efficiency where completely intertwined, nobody would buy diamonds, wood fuel would be banned, soy plots would be outlawed, etc.
Get off my back about being rude.
Why? You have a history of comments on this story alone where you are condescending and arrogant, which frustrates debate because most of your opinions are just that, with no proof. Let's look through some of your greatest hits for this thread:
you are the type who doesn't care about the survival of his or her own species
Compare the definition of redundant with the number of times this joke showed up, and you might be able to answer your own question
So since you just blabber on and don't have a clue, just stfu.
I don't drink or eat cows. Yet I still eat... amazing eh?
So here it is in what I hope is easier English for you to understand
I could go on and on where you have been rude and condescending. I never said it was to me, but by the time I wanted to reply to one of your misinformed posts I had heard enough of your attitude.
Again, your last two points go hand in hand. Firstly, your comprehension sucks. After your third attempt, you still don't realise what is being said, so i'm not going to waste any more time on dumbing it down for you. Secondly, it got personal when you've spent half the thread arguing like a prat (while completely missing the point of what people are saying) without any facts, just pushing your left-wing militant vegan propaganda bullshit onto anyone who may see things differently to your twisted world perspective. And even worse, when you COMPLETELY misunderstand where the arguments are going, people have tried to clarify this information for you while being considerate of your feelings and not trying to embarass you, yet you still miss the point and become argumentative and arrogant. I don't hold anything against you, and it is nothing personal, but if you read back through all of your comments on this thread and what people have replied it becomes quite clear that you run off half-cocked without actually reading the statements being made, you start pushing your personal preferences onto others and then have the audacity to insinuate that we are morons for not subscribing to your lifestyle choices. That is antisocial. Now, i've got some work to do, so I think this should be the end of the discussion, it's been lovely chatting.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
"Why do muslims all admire Osama Bin Ladem [sic]?"
I, for one, don't. He is a heretic. Quite similar to Jim Jones (cyanide kool-aid), for instance.
You're one of the few then. Muslims in mosques in NYC were heard praising Osama shortly after 9/11, saying "he's a good Muslim". You can read it in news stories from that time. So if he's a good Muslim, how can he be a heretic? And it's not just a few isolated Muslims saying this; prominent Muslim clerics have openly supported his terrorist acts. Witness the guy in Britain. People all over the middle east cheered and partied after 9/11; obviously they supported Osama. So where do you get off calling the guy a heretic? Obviously, his actions are well supported by millions of Muslims. If a large number of an organization of people supports something, I have to assume that the organization as a whole does, and then I can judge that organization. If you'd prefer not to be associated with such people, then you shouldn't be part of that organization.
Islam isn't something you're forced into by birth, like race or gender. You're free to choose to follow any religion you wish, or (better yet) none at all. The world over, religious people have shown themselves to be senseless fools, and evil murderous people in many cases (Osama, Milosevic, etc.). No good whatsoever has been shown to come from religion. Why would any sane person continue to be part of such a group?
awesome.
#Mainly because you don't seem to be understanding what is being said. I was trying to clarify parts of the discussion that you seemed to have problems with.
No you're trying to clarify YOUR parts of the discussion that were mixed in with saying that I didn't understand the discussion (in a thread I started).
#well, there [anchor.co.nz]
is this link a joke, or were you really unable to find anything? I won't accuse you of not reading this link because it has about 100 words on it.
#seems [montana.edu]
"Detective Moo and Assistants" have really put me to shame here. You had to be joking this time. But, did you even read this link?
#to be many [nationaldairycouncil.org]
Only thing I saw in here is that dairy is nutritious and organizations say it works out in a diets, etc. I was talking about evidence, like studies, proof, etc. Not claims. You could pour spirulina into chocolate cake, and suddenly it's extremely nutritious. It doesn't mean it's great for you though.
#people [go.com] who have provided evidence.
First this says that 72% of *fat* people who eat dairy are protected from insulin resistance. Most of this is based on what people eat on the average. For the average diet, replacing thigns such as, steak, with dairy is a good idea. Sure, I can agree with that. I don't eat something as unhealthy as steak though. There's a reason that things such as beef have health recommendations attached that say "limit yourself to this amount" where as fruits and vegetables don't. Then the article says consuming too much of the fat in dairy is bad for you, so consume low-fat versions. Something definitely unhealthy there, but you're fine as long as you don't eat too much... that's just not an issue with vegetables; you'd just have to eat so much that you suspend digestion from overload... to take that to the extreme case (even though it's not extreme to me) how much poison do you limit yourself to eating?
#compared to the propaganda that the vegan/animal rights groups put forward.
I don't keep up with animal rights groups. I know people who work on farms and factories though. Animals are generally pretty tortured. Oh I've seen a few videos that people like PETA have put out as well. You don't seem to care about animals being tortured though... Which is understandable, in an inhumane way. You were taelking about the "propaganda" about dairy and meat being unhealthy though weren't you? My beliefs there are based on my own experience (which includes the people around me, not just me) and barely influenced from anything people like PETA says. For one I strictly eat raw fruits and vegetables. I don't think that is even a diet that PETA pushes, which is part why I don't care to much about the diet they push.
#EXACTLY what I said in my original statement, that there is propaganda from both sides of the fence. It's funny how your beliefs influence what you consider marketing/propaganda, while the rest of us hear the marketspeak you use (remember, PETA has to get money from somebody too) and giggle at you parroting information provided by groups with a conflict of interest in the matters at hand.
I barely even know what PETA does or says. It's funny how strongly you have generalized and profiled against me, then base all kinds of personal attack on it. Where have I "parrot"ed information provided by any groups?
Also, of course again I forgot to be precise with you in the previous post. I'm not talking about immediate effects or nutritious values. I realize though that the burden is on my shoulders for what I take healthy to mean. To me healthy is something that won't cause you to die early, make you sicker more often, make you weaker, or fater, etc. All kinds of trash food has vitamins and minerals. That doesn't mean they don't continue to impact your colon to end your ability to efficiently eliminate disease though (for one example).
#"Value is completely wrapped up in efficiency when it comes down to what is best for society."
#What an empty statement!
What is it empty about it? That sentence's foundation is "what is best for society". That means, that in my opinion, when you start with "what is best for society", efficienct is the top most concern. Read that again: What is best for society... Efficient is a very flexible word, but it should still be of top most concern for a society that is looking to change and develop into a lasting society, not one that will just destory itself (of course I realize my opinion is in here as well). Now you also have to understand that I'm talking about very long term, not TODAY, and I'm talking about making things better, not keeping things the way they are, or trying to change into utopia tomorrow. That is why we are doing things such as, using manure for energy, working on electric cars, developing better public transportation, spraying insecticides on crops, using assembly lines, using computers, etc. To do things more efficiently. Now unless you just want to narrowly define value to whatever fits your argument, you can't say that that is an empty statement. I feel that technology is a result of our needs. We don't get less and less efficient as time goes on. Technology has a lot to do with this.
#Of course lots of things apply when you want to get into hypothetical situations about what is best for society, but society rarely does the smartest thing. Maybe in fantasy-land decisions are based on environmental reasons alone, but here in the real world value, whether real or imagined, is dictated by market forces and the parties who purchase/manufacture the product. If value and efficiency where completely intertwined, nobody would buy diamonds, wood fuel would be banned, soy plots would be outlawed, etc.
Where exactly do diamonds enter into "what is best for society"? It seems like you totally missed the point again oh ye bastion of comprehension. So before you blow up and start talking about how I don't understand how the world works blah blah blah, realize that I said "what is best for society". Do you honestly think diamonds enter into a discussion about "what is best for society"? And also, when putting "what is best for society" into perspective, consider a time frame a tad longer than 50 years.
#"Get off my back about being rude."
#Why? You have a history of comments on this story alone where you are condescending and arrogant, which frustrates debate because most of your opinions are just that, with no proof. Let's look through some of your greatest hits for this thread:
Ok here's what you said to me to start off the nastiness between you and I:
#You aren't saying anything that isn't completely obvious to anyone with even a basic grasp of the problems the environment faces
Here you're calling me ignorant about what I'm talking about. That's a tad rude isn't it? I feel like it is.
#Sometimes I wish people (read: hippies) would actually have a clue to how this world works before suggesting childish, badly planned solutions.
You called me a hippy, clueless, childish, and either not thinking about what I'm saying or not understanding what I'm saying (badly planned solutions).
#seriously seem to have some comprehension issues.
Going back to something you said "Efficiency doesn't even enter the conversation until you brought it up."
You're right. That's why the thread I started was called "inefficient". Who has comprehension issues here? How can you say it didn't enter into the conversation when it was the first word in the conversation? Understand that yet? The beginning == Efficiency being brought up. If you don't understand that yet, start clicking "parent".
#certainly need to spend some time working on your comprehension skills and learning to correctly interpret blah blah blah.
yeah... and you must be immune to this if you can't understand where efficiency fits in a thread started off with the word "inefficient"?
#So since you just blabber on and don't have a clue, just stfu.
Great work here. Did you happen to look at what was said to me? He was basically trolling me. I was justified in being rude to someone who practically BEGGED me to be rude by throwing several insults at me. You can't just take a statement like "I'm going to kill you!" and call someone an attempted murderer if the person they are replying to just threw a grenade at them. Disclaimer (since you've taken my analogies literally previously): That was an analogy to help you get the point.
# I don't drink or eat cows. Yet I still eat... amazing eh?
That wasn't "rude". That was joking. This is example doesn't apply. Good try at picking anything for fuel though. The person I was replying to even defended me later when people were still arguing something I wasn't suggesting.
# So here it is in what I hope is easier English for you to understand
You're right, this was bit uncalled for. But it was after several people already took what I meant the wrong way and refused to hear what I meant in the first place, or spent the time to read my other explanations of this, so I was a little upset. Do you not see that he still didn't get my point though, and that is the reason that I was upset? I made it clear over and over again that I didn't mean we should not try to use manure for fuel. Yet he was still arguing it.
# you are the type who doesn't care about the survival of his or her own species
I can't even find where I said this. It was probably justified for any shred of "rudeness" though since most of the other stuff you picked was irrelevant.
#Compare the definition of redundant with the number of times this joke showed up, and you might be able to answer your own question
I was kidding here. Of course you aren't seeing that because you are looking for fuel and trying to turn anything I say into what fits your argument, which is pretty low.
#blah blah blah
You still go on and on about me not understanding the discussion. The problem here was that people were basically replying to what I said as if I said something else.
You really should go back and look at who I was arguing with about getting rid of cows. The only other person I found besides you (just scanning, not picking carefully) that I was arguing with about getting rid of cows at all was someone I was arguing with about the english integrity of a sentence I made. Since you went on and on about, I take it that you came across some other post that speaks differently.
Could your arguments be anymore cosmetic? You do a damn good job setting up a cosmetic argument that has zero weight, because you're still saying I didn't understand the thread that I started and continue to accuse me of being out of place by ushering in the word efficiency for no reason... IN A THREAD THAT STARTED WITH THE WORD "INEFFICIENT" HAHAHAHA.
ok here's my last attempt for you... If you really even care to realize that you still don't get it... Go back and read through my posts also, and keep in mind that what I meant was "don't increase cows" and what people were saying was "we should use what resources that the cows we have are giving to us". I did go back and read through and that is what was happening, not what you are suggesting. The only person that fit the bs that you are saying was you. Only a few people understood, and you weren't one of them.
This is my sig. The post is over.
Mohammed said that people have free will to choose to follow Allah. Then, he told the Caliph of Egypt, "Convert, or die." Apostacy is a capital offense in Islam - free will, indeed; if you leave the fold, become a Christian or anything else, you get your head chopped off.
The incident I refer to also shows the warmongering ways of Islam. Islam did not spread via the rational, logical discussion of God/Allah. It was spread through war. Please keep in mind, that prior to the stupid Crusades (which was medieval catholicism, not 'christianity), the Islamists took, by force and through killing innocent people who just happened to disagree with them, the land now called Israel by the civilized world, and 'Occupied Palestine' by the shit eating, rock throwing monkeys of the world.
Last night I was walking with my girlfriend here in Riyadh, where I live. We were accosted by Muttawah - that is the religious police, whose official name is The Society to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice - the exact same name as the murderers in the Taliban who went around and killed and tortured women for being outside the house without their Mahram (male escort that they are not allowed to marry - son, nephew, father, brother, but oddly enough, not the cousin, that's ok to marry here), or men who did not wear a beard that was long enough to suit them. Crusaders, indeed. These muttawah accosted us because my girlfriend was not wearing her scarf to cover her hair - which is not required by Saudi law for non-muslim, non-Saudi women. But these guys, impotent bullies all, drive around in GMC Suburbans yelling at people to go to prayer, and yelling at women to cover or take off their lipstick.
After 9/11, all we heard in the press here was how bad it was for the poor widdle Muslims in the world, being yelled at outside of mosques. Well, at least they have mosques to go to; could I or any of my collegues go to a church, synagogue, or temple for comfort during these stressful times? No, because Islam is the only religion allowed here - the practice of any other will get you deported at best, or beheaded at worst, as some poor Filipino Christians in prison found out a few years ago.
If you look at a map of the world, and highlight countries where there are large Muslim populations, you will find a great deal of civil unrest. Everywhere they are, there is fighting - they can't seem to get along with their neighbors, and always want to start killing infidels in order to establish a 'pan-islamic state,' like, say, Afghanistan. In Malaysia about 25 years ago, a Muslim lost a local election to an ethnically Chinese Malay - the Muslims went door to door slaughtering non-Muslims in the community who voted out their guy.
In the US, where are all the Muslim converts coming from? The prison system. Interesting.
The Muslim world has spent too many years ignoring the atrocities commited in the name of Allah, speaking out of two sides of its mouth (Arafat is so stupid that he apparently doesn't think the rest of the world can find Arabic translators, as he would constantly say one thing in the press in English, condemning a particular terrorist act, then commend the 'martyr' in Arabic) for me to take any of them seriously any more. They allowed and financially encouraged the Taliban (only recognized as a legitimate government by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan), knowing full well the atrocities committed there. Indeed, the Taliban are made up mostly of Saudis and Pakistanis, with a sprinkling of Yemenis for flavor. They kill and torture, and the Muslim world looks the other way. When someone finally has the balls to stand up to Hussein and say, "Enough, you're out, next batter up," all we here from the Arab/Muslim world is, "Crusade! Infidels in the Holy Land!" Well, as an Infidel in the Holy Land, I say, shut the fuck up.
The lesson to learn from the upcoming war is this, Muslim world: Either you clean up your back yard, or someone with lots of expensive toys will come do it for you. It would be better for everyone if you did it, but the other way works, too.
Yes, this is off-topic and I expect down-modding katir, but I can handle it.
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
Slashdot is now fabricated with 100% recycled bits. No CFCs were used in its manufacture. YMMV. IANAL.
HAND.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I didn't realize that the super cow powers of apt-get really existed! But this proves it.
the last line after typeing apt-get:
"This APT has Super Cow Powers."
figured I'd let you troll at me a little more..
Through that logic, by only eating vegetables now, I've become more manly?
also the stfu part was because he was attacking me. Of course that doesn't matter right? Just like I'm attacking YOU now by calling you a prick? Next I expect to here: "Oh everyone's a prick now, and you are just perfect."
haha
This is my sig. The post is over.
I served in the US Navy working on missile guidance radar systems .
.
.
I'd call me a confused christian .
I believe Saddam is evil, and there is 20+ yrs of history to prove it .
I do not like war, but if we shirk this, it is only going to get worse, and be much harder to deal with in the future .
As for Wahhabism, I learned of it online, and doing ALOT of research .
Alot of Muslims did speak out to this information, it did not get alot of air time .
If you talk to peaceful but leary muslims that are from the middle east they will explain it to you better than I can here
Here is but a precursor to all the info on wahhabism, I even spelled it wrong (grin)
I wanted to understand this secular view of Islam , and as there are MANY versions
of the christian faith .
Wahhabism gains alot of its popularity thru taking the disenfranchised and giving them a focal point for their unhappiness .
That focal point is the US at this time . Alot of religions use their members as a means to an end, and to achieve alterior motives.
I feel that is partly what is going on now
There are alot of angry ppl out there looking for someone to blame for their life being unhappy and unfair .
Little do they know that alot of americans live in trailers, and are considered poor white trash.
My family was this for quite some time.
Only education at a university got my mother free of it, and only going into the military
and learning electronics and then computers on my own got me free of it .
Our media portrays us very differently than what alot of us are really like.
There are alot of good ppl here, and alot of bad ppl here, but to be honest that can be said of any country .
Peace...
Ex-MislTech
http://www.geocities.com/duanenavarre
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I love being trolled! yay!
My mother's computer is about 2 hours drive away from me. I built it back when the celeron 300a came out... so it's sa bit too slow for me to deal with now. I'm thinking about getting her something faster and using that box as a router though.
This is my sig. The post is over.
as long as i dont get a horrible smell coming from the outlets then i'd say its a good idea(tm)
Another usage division tends to be that if you raise irrigated crops, you're a farmer, and if you raise dryland crops (like most grains) you're a rancher. Hence "wheat rancher" is a common term in the western plains.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Remember that "religion" can cover just about any mindless obedience of policy and rules including government and choice of programming language (if you have never seen a flame war between VB folk and well... anyone else then you should search out some on the web (note I hate VB but am not an "anti-VB" zealot either)). If a very non faith or diety based "religion" popped up today involving the purification of our bodies and lives by not eating meat, not smoking or drinking, and making sure we had the absolute best in hygiene habits and quickly got out of control (over 100 years) would it be fair to say that anyone who for personal reasons did not drink or smoke and excercised regularly was a mindless puppet or was bad? Not unless he supported the negative actions of the new "religion." More importantly, if hygiene and sanitation is touted as the upmost of importance for life by these zealots yet they employ chemical and biological weapons to further their cause then wouldn't you say they themselves are not following the faith?
The key point is that you can get this murderous, mindless zeal with or without any particular faith system. The majority of people are too lazy to ever stop and think for themselves as critical thought, independent analysis and personal responsibility are frightening to them. An example is how you will find the very religious group of "anti-religious" (or better, "anti-Christian") self labled scientific community and its followers that so eagerly bash any Christian as an illogical, mindless simpleton yet will blindly follow the "scientific facts" that they themselves have neither proved much less even known the people who made them. I have never understood why so many see science as in competition with faith. To me, science is the explanation of how the universe that God created actually works. (I base my distaste of most theories of evolution and thus apart from adaptation based really upon scientific knowledge and personal distrust of those who shove such outlandish theories down our throuts) Nothing beats the zeal of theorists who will refuse to observe facts that may interfere with their biased opinions. Science is great if followed correctly and used to discover knowledge therefore an ethical scientist will when asked about religion admit if his knowledge of religious text is from manuscript and word of mouth or by understanding of its meaning. Thusly he/she will admit that there are theories then there are proven facts and that even the best mathematical theorem is merely an abstraction of reality and subject to error and thus to emotional zeal from its "faithful believers." We could easily have a religion of science you know... Stupid is stupid, regardless of what Stupid's underlying justifications are.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.