Slashdot Mirror
Consumer Ethanol Appliance Promised By Year's End
Newscloud brings us news of a startup called E-Fuel promising to ship a home-brew ethanol plant, the size of a washer-dryer, for under $10,000 by the end of this year. We've had plenty of discussions about $1/gal. fuel — these guys want to let you make it at home. The company says it plans to develop a NAFTA-enabled distribution network for inedible sugar from Mexico at 1/8th the cost of trade-protected sugar, to use as raw material for making ethanol. A renewable energy expert from UC Berkeley is quoted: "There's a lot of hurdles you have to overcome. It's entirely possible that they've done it, but skepticism is a virtue."
Rather have Cellulosic, that way you could recycle all your paper and plant matter in house. :)
So a $10,000 still is considered a breakthrough? And what sad material is "inedible sugar?"
TFA mentions that the device requires 14 Lbs. (6.5kg) of NAFTA-approved nonedible sugar from Mexico, which costs approximately $0.025 per pound in addition to several other "ingredients". Regular "edible" sugar costs about $0.20 per pound.
Apart from the blatant inefficiencies present in transporting these quantities of raw materials, I imagine that the cost of sugar will skyrocket even if the thing actually works.
Probably not a good thing...
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
They didn't mention the little fact about having to get a frelling federal ethanol production license. I looked into this a few years back, and...YIKES. (Pay lots of money. Send in a sample. Keep logs of your activities, etc. etc.)
Oh, and how about calculating in electricity costs?
That would take a LONG time to "pay for itself" and this doesn't even take into consideration the various restrictions on the use of such devices that will most assuredly follow shortly after competing interests start buying laws to that end. Further, what will the cost of unprocessed materials be? Ah yes, they'll go up in demand and the prices will rise too.
This doesn't strike me as a good alternative.
Of course, once this machine is actually available, I predict the price of that inedible sugar will suddenly rise to a level where using it to create ethanol yields a final price-per-gallon that is comparable to just buying E85 at your local gas station. After all, the sugar will suddenly have a much higher value in use as a fuel verses whatever they do with it now.
You've got the energy cost in growing the raw sugar, transporting a LOT of raw sugar, and distillation. WHich means a LOT of energy goes into this. And you only really save on taxes (beacuse otherwise, they could just do this in a big factory and bring it too, duh, gas pumps).
Test your net with Netalyzr
Inedible sugar, I think not!
First off, just about any company named E* isn't going to be a company worth doing business with. Didn't anybody learn anything from the dot-bomb bullshit just a few years ago?
Secondly, this will fly when somebody comes out with a gadget that will accept all kinds of organic household waste, not just some product that you have one source for. If there's a device that'll take all of the stuff I normally throw on my compost pile, I'll buy one.
I don't respond to AC's.
North Carolina will probably hunt you down and charge you with tax evasion. They did it in 2007 for a guy buying vegetable oil and converting it to biodiesel.
hell they have been known to test fuel at events, to see if people are using fuel they don't like. They check NC registered trucks to make sure they don't buy fuel over the border.
you think that they just won't slap a silly tax on the sugar?
The one thing people keep ignoring as cars become more efficient are tax addicted governments are going to have to raise them to make up for the losses because of our efficiency and if we circumvent the whole tax strategy they have they will simply make a new one
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They already have consumer ethanol appliances, they go by other names: bread makers, home beer breweries, and the like. Won't help me much on getting around in my car, but I'll be too full and drunk to care.
Then you just distill it to concentrate the ethanol. You'd probably have to make two or three passes through the still to get it up to E85 level.
There's a couple of fairly significant problems with this scheme, though. One is the energy that's used to operate the still; where does that come from, how much does it cost? And the other one - and one that'll be very difficult to overcome - is that ethanol is the stuff we drink. Dilute ethanol with distilled water at about 50/50 and you get some so-so vodka. Add this or that flavor and you've got a party.
The BATF isn't going to like this one little bit. Liquor taxes are an important source of revenue; they'll insist that you comply with their bureaucratic regulations if you're going to make any kind of product that contains ethanol.
And if this magic box will produce 170 proof at $2 per gallon - how much of that is going in the car and how much will be going into mixed drinks? Imagine the parties; gallons and gallons of alcohol and more being produced in every neighborhood every day. I suspect the law of unintended consequences is going to kick in on this one...
or are the server/article timestamps off? It's definitely not 3:30 am in any of the US timezones....
Here's to the crazy ones
Not only is Ethanol shortsighted it is exactly the wrong direction for us to take. Ethanol is taken from food sources and results in local, regional and, as it increases in popularity, global increases in food prices as well as predictable food shortages.
Besides the inefficiencies of transporting the raw materials, the finished product CANNOT be piped due to the inherent water in the ethanol rusting/corroding the pipes. So, the only means of transportation is truck, train or barge -- fossil fuel transportation systems.
[!-- insert face-palm photo here --]
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Then people still store flammable ethanol in their garages and houses. Remember how that went in the...umm...like 60's or whatever, I dunno, I wasn't alive back then. You know, during all the gasoline shortages when people stored dozens of gallons in their garages. It turned out to be a bit of a fire hazard lol. But if people can make their own fuel without having to ship fuel across the country to the gas stations, that'd save like twice the gasoline than people think. Plus it would employ mexicans at farms in their own crappy country and make it less crappy so they don't have to come here. And best of all, nobody will stop at gas stations anymore so the country-wide price of beef jerky will fall greatly and I'll be able to buy even more!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Petrol engines run incredibly badly on pure ethanol, unless they're set up correctly. You'd either need to get perfectly consistent results from batch to batch, or you'd need to be really really good at tuning engines (and I mean tuning as in carefully adjusting fuelling and ignition, not sticking blue LED windscreen washers on).
If you're going to use biomass fuel, use biodiesel. The petrol engine is dead. Let it pass with some dignity.
These guys are trying to sell a moonshine still. You can build them very easily. You can bet that whatever impurities they have in "non-edible sugar" will be distilled out.
I think this is a ridiculously inefficient process, and people will want to drink the product instead of burning it.
What could possibly go wrong?
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
The tax savings are SMALL.
.184 $/gallon, and another ~.20 $/gallon. So you could save only .40 $/gallon.
.8 gallons of gasoline.
EG, in CA, you'll still have to pay sales tax on the raw sugar. So your only savings are on the dedicated gas taxes:
With the federal gas tax at
While if you could do Ethanol for $1/gallon production, you could make a fortune, as thats energy-equivelent to about
So that would be "make gasoline at $1.25/gallon". With oil prices NEVER looking back, thats a LOT of profit to be made.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Actually, on page 2 of TFA:
(emphasis mine)
There are so many hurdles for breaking free of dependency on the oil economy... it's spectacular. I wonder if the hurdles are the reason for the stiff price tag for this glorified washing machine?
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
You really don't want to do that.
A question I keep asking myself is whether this ethanol thing is really as price efficient as it's supposed to be. Since farmers are able to make more money in the lucrative ethanol market than in growing wheat for bread production, there will eventually be a shortage of bread and other foods in the name of fulfilling energy needs. Since the laws of supply and demand dictate that a new equilibrium will be reached, I think this means that food prices will rise even more than they have lately, bringing back production of some crops for food, but overall raising the prices of both food and ethanol. We're not going to achieve $1.00 per gallon fuel; instead, we're simply going to cause yet higher prices for everything.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Ever seen a backwoods still?
The problem is getting the 'fuel' to feed this thing. To really make it cheap you need to grow your own, which is way out of the realm of possibility for the average person.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'd be worried about other water-soluble impurities making it across their filtration system. What kind of contaminants are in that low-budget sugar? Ethanol isn't the smallest molecule in the world, and I can see at a minimum metallic ions and chlorides easily passing through. Do you really want chloride deposits building up in your engine? One "failure" caused by a bad tank of ethanol could cost you a lot.
Is this "the answer" for our consumption and supply issues with gasoline? Of course not. There is not going to be a single answer, at least not until we figure out a better battery combined with a global solar grid. Meanwhile, prepare for a myriad of small solutions, like biodiesel, ethanol, heavy crude sources like tar sands and shale, converted coal, none of which are perfect on their own, but which, together, can bridge us to the next big thing.
I have found that ethanol is an interesting topic. This factsheet has helped me understand all of the information around it...wow, it's expensive in so many ways outside money!
Stanford proved Ethanol is more pollutive than standard gasoline... http://www.therawfeed.com/2007/04/ethanol-pollutes-more-than-gasoline.html I guess Al Gore was asleep during that press release.
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
I remember seeing a story on CITY TV in Toronto a couple of years ago about some guy in Toronto who was making ethanol from old newspapers. He had a still set up in his back yard, and neighbours would give him their old newspapers. He produced enough to fuel his own car and some of his neighbours' cars.
He didn't want his real name used in the story though, because he wasn't sure if what he was doing was legal.
wouldn't it make more sense to put the 10 grand towards a more fuel-efficient vehicle?
I would hate for there to be any incentive to change the current urban-sprawl mentality of a nation built on cheap energy. We need to continue to make things needlessly far apart, segregating housing and businesses in such a way that even when they are only a mile apart a car is required to travel between them. Just imagine all the ugly stores right next to houses and sidewalks all over the place that would have to spring up if we couldn't afford to drive our SUV's 3/4 of a mile for a gallon of milk.
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
...it's late, I didn't read your comment properly. Sorry.
Now if they made a device I can dump my lawn clippings into, that made ethanol, I would be the first in the queue. ;)
how about putting the 10 grand towards a vehicle that uses less fuel?
I am sure the International Ant Coalition will have something to say about this. It could get ugly folks.
....terrorist.
Lets not forget about them mobile WMD plants we saw pictures of.
This will help make the spying on US citizens seem legit.
If the last 6 months have taught us anything is that fuel at the expense of food to eat is NOT a good trade off. The last thing we need is another product taking us down that path.
In the article they cite using non-edible sugar, however this sugar needs to grow somewhere, thereby it will displace edible food crops.
Look the biofuels thing was a nice idea but it didn't work, unless we want to end up with half the planet starving. Let's start looking in new directions before we waste anymore lives/effort/time in a misguided attempt to 'grow' fuel.
- James
if this is such a great idea, why not just set up a medium-sized production plant, make ethanol from "inedible sugar", and make some money?
What do they mean by "inedible sugar", anyway? Bagasse? Ultra-high cellulose sugar cane? It's not a standard term.
Besides, shipping a solid material to homes to make ethanol, then getting rid of the solid waste, is an incredibly inefficient process. You're going to need maybe 150-200 pounds of sugar to fill up the tank of an SUV. Then you have to get rid of maybe a hundred pounds of sludge. Does this thing come with a home forklift?
If I was going to invest $10k, I'd splurge another couple grand for a photovoltaic system. With subsidies many states in the US are currently offering, you could install a system to completely power your home. For just a bit more, you could cover the recharging of an electric vehicle or more than cover a plug-in hybrid. The roi a couple years ago was about two-thirds the life of the system. Depending on energy costs in your area, that could be better. Same investment, no transportation of raw materials or future costs AND powers your home as well as potential vehicle.
I prefer cities too. But some people don't. And if we can allow those people to live their fuel-intensive lifestyles in a way that doesn't rely on foreign imports or a net carbon addition to the atmosphere then let's do it.
There are worldwide food riots, right now. So is converting food into fuel a good idea?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This whole Ethanol idea is a disaster waiting to happen.
A simple fact - Mexico produces a total of 5 million tons of sugar a year. That amount, according to the article, is enough to make about 800 million gallons of ethanol. US consumes 400 million gallons of gasoline a DAY for transportation. That means the entire crop of Mexican sugar would be completely used up by cars in TWO days. What would we do the rest of the year I don't know. And guess what this would do to sugar prices. Also - no more sugar in your food either.
And if the proposition is to use this as an addition to oil-based fuels, well - we are talking less than 1% of total gasoline requirement from entire Mexican crop. This would hardly make a dent in oil consumption, but sure as heck would wreck havoc on the sugar and food markets.
We Irish had an advanced civilization long ago based on this technology, but then we started drinking the damned stuff...
The premise of the E-Fuel 100 MicroFueler is you pay 10K to have a pre-made still (for lack of a better word) to make ethanol. Then you take your home-brew and put it into your car. I'll let others poke holes in this approach.
For $10,000 you can convert your gas powered car to be powered by electricity. "A typical conversion, if it is using all new parts, costs between $5,000 and $10,000 (not counting the cost of the donor vehicle or labor). The costs break down like this:
- Batteries - $1,000 to $2,000
- Motor - $1,000 to $2,000
- Controller - $1,000 to $2,000
- Adapter plate - $500 to $1,000
- Other (motors, wiring, switches, etc.) - $500 to $1,000"
The advantage here would be a form of daily transportation with zero-emissions, using a quiet motor that's cheaper to operate per mile (3).References
"It's one thing to talk about the poetry of machines. Quite another to listen to it for yourself."
ethanol appliance for every home?! Perhaps, they could build one ethanol appliance for the outlets. People dont want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!
They don't have to live in the cities, but we don't have to support infrastructure to make their lives easier. Suburbia is probably the biggest mistake of the 20th century.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Pez
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Yeah, ethanol fuel is awesome, it will allow the corn behemoths to grow more, and sell for more. Nevermind what corn production already does to the US soil and horizon.
First you get the sugar, then you get the money, then you get the women.
God spoke to me.
I already have a "Consumer Ethanol Appliance":
It's called a Beer Bong.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
If we could figure out a way to turn fecal matter into biodiesel, just think of the possibilities for sources...
Outhouses, sewer treatment plants, and the Republican National Convention could all provide us with cheap, renewable, sources of energy.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
Practical application of this sentiment being...?
In a free society, you have to work with people, not against them. There's still plenty of dependence upon people in suburban or rural areas, and any manner of uprooting them that could work fast enough to create the needed benefit would be completely unfeasable. Even if you could get people to move, you'd just trade in long car drives for suburban blight (which we're starting to see already as a result of reurbanization and mass-relocation-- more as a result of the credit-crunch, but it's the same effect) and construction waste.
Realistic change means "bringing the mountain to Mohammed". Any feasable solution has to be cheap enough and simple enough, and have enough immediate benefit, that the benefit outweighs the inconveniences.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
My Grampaw made Moonshine and his still didn't cost $10,000...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
For the last hundred years, getting fuel for internal combustion engines has basically been a matter of sticking a giant slurpee straw into the ground and pumping it out. We're having a hard time grasping that the Slurpee cup is running dry, and our first instinct is to go to desperate measures to maintain the status quo. The first - and most obvious - source of replacement fuel is biomass, so we're go crazy about corn, sugar and cellulose ethanol extraction. Unfortunately, it's not nearly as cheap or easy to refine as the old "suck the hydrocarbon soup outta the ground" technique. In fact, it's just not practical on a large scale. We need trees and corn for other stuff, and inedible sugar just isn't available in quantities sufficient to replace millions of barrels of oil.
Once governments have finished their attempts at alchemy, they'll increase funding for alternative powerplants for traditional vehicles. That'll prove to be too expensive or infeasible on a large scale. The next step will be to replace traditional automobiles with microvehicles like the Twike and ultra-compact cars. At the same time, people will finally start turning their attention to mass transit. Unfortunately, the cost of building effective large scale transit systems in North America will be stratospheric if the cost of diesel fuel to run construction equipment skyrockets (with an accompanying rise in the cost of materials). It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. One thing's for sure - expect a lot of enormous missteps by government and business, along with some irrational panic from the public before some smart people manage to figure out ways of evolving our society into something less energy dependent and consumer-oriented.
No matter how well intentioned this is, it'll be heavily regulated once people start using it as an easily-accessible, high-yield still.
Not sure why this is so expensive, though, when a dedicated individual can build a still which will give the same purity for next to nothing out of old parts, and large volumes at that. The technology isn't exactly complex, it can be traced as far back as the Babylonians, and later the Greeks.
Who knows, this could even rekindle the fire of the dying moonshine culture. Modern mind-altering substances like marijuana have mostly taken its place, but this could get some people interested for old time's sake.
So yes, they could indeed cut the railroad a deal, but for how long?
;)
Personally, I'd see them electrifying the switching yards first. That's where you have a fair bit of the acceleration, after all. You'd keep the engines for the time being for speed maintenance and starting if they have to stop outside of a yard. Or go up a hill.
I don't read AC A human right
Who care about inedible sugar.
Much more important is the law of supply and demand. Just how much sugar is there? How much does it cost, and what it the cost after 15,000 E85 enabled SUV drivers decide to pick up an appliance to cut their fuel costs? I see a run on a limited resource and it's natural price adjustment.
History repeats itself. When Kerosene was the primary use for crude oil, gasoline was a waste product as it was too explosive.
When corn was cheap and became an ethenol source, it too went up in price.
When inedible sugar was discovered as a fuel source.. History repeats itself.
I can see this being very popular on college campuses.
This sig is false.
Suburbia is probably the biggest mistake of the 20th century.
I don't understand the problem. So don't live there if you don't like it. Sure, they may cause more air pollution but that problem is going to be solved shortly by things like this.
Or are you just upset that in order to find undeveloped space to enjoy a weekend getaway you have to go five hours outside the city rather than two?
I enjoy rural life, but there's a difference between living out here in the boonies and living in the suburbs. Out here, we don't commute 50+ miles to drive one way from our cookie-cutter neighborhood past 10 identical ones that we didn't like, across a city, just to get to work.
I currently have a 3 mile commute to the office, which is usually done via a small motorcycle. A 5 mile drive takes me to the far side of town from where I am. I can drive to work, walk a few blocks from the office to pretty much any store I need. With a little looking around, most foods can be found locally grown or raised, saving processing and transportation costs. Gardens are very common, and many people hunt as well.
Compare that to my previous place in suburb hell: 50 mile one-way commute, stores located far enough apart to make parking in one place and walking difficult other than at shopping malls, which often only had one store I needed to go to in the first place. Pressure to "keep up with the Joneses" with the amount and size of "stuff" (cars, rarely used boat-as-a-status-symbol-in-the-driveway, TV/home theater/media room, etc) and catching a lot of crap if you refuse to play the game. A lot of wasted gas sitting in traffic. No place for a garden, and everything shipped in.
My only real complaints about city life, assuming a city with a decent public transportation system (Boston, NYC, and DC come to mind, though none are perfect by any measure) are simply a lack of available space, and the cost of that space -- otherwise add traffic and a lack of a good transport system to the list. City life was pretty nice in and shortly after college though.
Short version: Yes, to have a city lifestyle out in the sticks is going to cost a lot more, because you'll be driving farther, or having everything shipped out to you. No, not all of us out here care about having the city lifestyle. Likewise, not all of us out here in the sticks are hillbillies and rednecks (although they do exist, and are every bit as annoying as you imagine). Which lifestyle is best for you depends a lot on exactly what you want out of life, but one isn't inherently "better" than any of the others. Except maybe suburban life, which just sucked.
I truly think this is a good-no, scratch that-great idea. Not because I think home production of ethanol is the wave of the future. Instead, I think this is brilliant because people will finally begin to realize how inefficient the process is, particularly with water consumption. Once Joe Sixpack sees his water bill skyrocket, perhaps he'll realize he's better off simply reducing consumption by driving less and using other modes of transportation.
Practical cellulose ethanol is on the doorstep of commercial viability, and it does not need subsidies for Kansas and Nebraska. What will the Senate say about ethanol subsidies when the dominant producers don't have any political clout? I suspect they will find a way to prevent the subsidies from moving out of the farm belt.
Most of the current "green" momentum is about encouraging more consumption rather than less. The "green" movement these days is mostly driven by corporations looking to sell more products, so any solution which reduces consumer spending will be marginalized.
I see all sorts of posts complaining about fuel prices. Yes
I am sure that production of crops for fuel production is having
some small effect on food prices. However, the rising fuel cost
in the US is having a much, much greater effect.
1. Farmers are paying much much more to run their
large diesel tilling and harvesting equipment.
2. High Nitrogen Fertilizer is made from natural gas, again much higher.
3. Drying bill, corn feedstock has to be dried again with fossil
fuel, again higher prices.
4. Fueling trucks to haul the produce again insanely expensive.
Actually the market is working exactly as it should. The countries that supply most of
our oil also import large amounts of food due to the fact that most of them are located
in poor agricultural areas. Now we know that there is no real shortage at the moment
and the price is being driven by the market and not the supply. The more painful the food
prices get the more incentive the oil producing nations have to further increase
supply to drive the prices back to a reasonable range.
Now in the good old US it is not likely many of us are going to starve anytime
soon, we have the most efficient agricultural machine on the earth. However
it is a unfortunate fact that many countries that depend on us for food
supply are going to have to pay the price, at least till this crazy fuel
market levels out.
Got Code?
Where can i get gas/benzin for $1/gallon ? Here it costs 1.40 Euro per liter, which is around $8.33/gallon.
So it is way to cheap in the US. You need the government to apply taxes so prices gets over $6/gallon, and the car industri will find cheaper fuel.
Well, let's see, we have the car culture it's contributed to, which kills things like public transit, the ensuing loss of community from sprawl, nigh complete cultural bankruptcy as chain stores, restaurants and outlets take over since transplants into exurban and suburban areas have no real ties to the previously existing communities. Then we have the loss of farmland to unneeded vanity development. And of course the fact that one of the big reasons for the rise of suburbia was cowardice and racism re: "The great white flight".
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
If it's a bad idea, not many people will buy it. It's that simple.
Ethanol doesn't work to lower the carbon deficit because we transport the materials with gasoline. What happens when we transport ethanol using ethanol-powered vehicles? I'm sure you can at least guess at the right answer.
Overall ethanol is not the cure to any of our problems, but it is a temporary step in the right direction. Every person that buys this thing is losing money in the long run but is making a small difference in the world. Less dependence on oil is a good thing no matter how you slice it.
Maybe this isn't the best solution. Hell, maybe it's not even a good solution. It does have some benefits that have to be considered. We should be investigating alternative fuels from many different angles, and this is one of them. Electric cars are another, just like solar power, wind power, etc.
There's no need to come down hard on technology that is trying to better society. Why is everyone always so afraid of change? If it's a bad idea, no one is going to buy it. No one is forcing YOU to buy one, so stop crapping all over the people making these things.
It has been a bad agricultural year for many countries. China has been hit hard.
There is not a WORLD food shortage (the US already produces enough food yearly to feed the world), but some regions are definitely hurting, and this definitely increases prices. Less supply + same demand = higher prices. Supply is definitely driving at least a significant portion of the price change.
Speaking of the US agricultural system, we need to do away with the sugar tariffs and corn subsidies. We have a great agricultural system, but most of it is augmented by taxpayer dollars. We pay some farmers to not farm. We pay some farmers to let fields rot. This is not what I'd call a free market situation.
Between the cost of the machine, ingredients to brew the ethanol, and the electricity need to run the thing, how could you possibly save any money? Not to mention ethanol is (usually) about half as efficient as gasoline, and oh, yeah, it releases more of the dreaded CO2 when burned.
When are people going to realize that we've made this bed and now we have to sleep in it. Keeping gas prices down could have only worked so long at the best scenario. If you want a solution, let the market find one. Don't get on this ethanol bandwagon blindly and cause even more trouble than we're in right now.
Now, let's all watch them moderate me to flamebait because I don't agree with their little dream.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
Uh, guys, it's *ethanol*. The BATF in the US, and every other government, will have *lots* to say about home stills.
Unless I've missed something, and it's not == Everclear (tm)?
mark
It's still illegal to make liqour in the USA, although you can make limited quantities of beer and wine for your family.
I wonder if those laws would be abused to prevent people from distilling their own fuels. The energy company lobbyists must hate that idea! It would not surprise me to learn that this home ethanol plant is illegal for the sole reason that people might *gasp* make their own liquor with it some how.
Blar.
You must look at these posts from that point of view. American Christers, so unlike their Jesus, think that the nation needs to be protected from booze via governmental control.
Are you seriously saying you don't understand the term 'sin tax' in it's historic and literal contexts?
Not saying it's right, I think religion is 100% shit and the people who sell it should be imprisoned for false advertisement.
Blar.
Usually means, I am a Fundie. And your tax misrepresentation is bogus, we don't use that tax money for those things we use it for wars for oil.
Why not! Yeah I know you probably need acres and acres of the stuff.
Blar.
One of my Irish friends likes to say that God invented alcohol to keep the Irish from taking over the world.
-
I have two reservations about this, first making ethanol is also known as moonshining, and the process must comply with restrictions of the ATF.
The second is that ethanol is still really the wrong answer, a quick check of butanol fuel at wikipedia shows that it is a far better substitute for gasoline, not requiring so called "flex fuel" capability. And the recent progress in making butanol from cellulose shows promise of providing a cheap(er) fuel supply.
Not as a literal tax, but consider the 'gay marriage' issue. Gay couples pay more for health insurance than straight married couples because their unions aren't recognized.
The only arguments against gay marriage are religious in nature, and yet here we are with an inequity that costs the 'sinner' more.
Or perhaps we need a new word altogether.
Blar.
OK. And exactly HOW do they intend to get that sugar junk from Mexico to some exurban numbskull who falls for this idiot scheme in, say, Seattle, or New Hampshire?
Oh, that's right - they'll TRUCK IT. So, they will burn hundreds of gallons of high quality PETROLEUM to ship organic junk to New Hampshire so some idiot can rev up his ethanol machine to generate fuel that has a FRACTION of the energy density of deisel fuel used to deliver it, just so he can stick in his SUV so he can schlep his fat ass a mile down the road to pick up some smokes and a six pack of Budweiser.
Now THAT'S what I call a fine use of resources.
Here's an EXCELLENT lecture on the stupidity of biofuels.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
During prohibition. made his own hootch and wine.
You can't drive at anywhere normal road speeds on 4kW. Even a very basic small car will have at least a 70kW engine. I know the car isn't using all 70kW all the time, but it's got to be using probably at least a third of that to maintain 40MPH (power requirement goes up with speed due to aerodynamic drag, etc). 4kW is probably adequate to move a modern car up and down the driveway at a walking speed but not much else.
Plus now I'd have to carry extra weight (the generator) in the car even when I'm not using it, further dragging down the performance of this ersatz-electric-car.
Putting moderation advice in your
The real question is will this work with the current flex fuel systems in the market today? I bought this vehicle not expecting to use this feature at all and I even felt a little guilty by perpetuating the biofuel movement. The only reason I got it was because it had all the other options my wife wanted and was on the lot. If this actually works by year and then becomes mass marketable with government backing and rebates in a few more years I would seriously forking out some dough to get one. You could even get a bunch of the neighbours together and share cost. The only other thing we would have to think of is how to sell a 7-eleven Big Bite Hot Dog and a Big Gulp.
Do you reject the right to choose a religion and to not not have rights and freedoms restricted due to that choice?
If being gay is a choice, why is that choice not protected?
Blar.
I was an atheist raised in a religious household in a religious town. I was called all sorts of names and threated with all sorts of ridiculous claims. So go fuck yourself with your gun.
Religions preach an 'afterlife' and a 'god' that nobody can see...why aren't they subject to truth in advertising laws? They don't say "We think" or "we believe our god is the one true god", they say "Our god is the one true god".
Blar.
What happened to "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free"?
I abhor the Iron Curtain we are building. I live in San Diego, and I'm powerless to stop this insanity. Slashdot, in all its libertarian slant should be the very last place I see this kind of bigoted tripe.
How about this: Let's have a quota of people that need to be exported. That way when anyone comes in you ship a person on the export list out. If you think about it this way you can see what the issue is. Somehow you think that by living here you are somehow more deserving to live here than an immigrant.
ALL PERSONS WERE CREATED EQUAL.
Most people here seem to have forgotten that.
Bye-Bye Karma: Sometimes you gotta stand up for what you believe in.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
it's inedible sugar, not denatured sugar, inedible sugar is probably not refined for human consumption and probably has more to do with FDA inspections than actual product quality. If you want denatured sugar just go to the grocery, buy some sugar and pour
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
No, you're not seeing the point. Whatever it is that makes the US such a popular place to emigrate to, and it still is pretty popular despite recent developments, we should maintain that.
I think it's partially geography and partially culture that is responsible for our success. Now, I can't do anything about geography, so I'm going to ignore that bit for a moment. The cultural bit is interesting.
If you try to absorb too many people of a different culture into your own, you will fail. There is a continuum of influx that ranges from "successfully indoctrinated" to "overwhelmed by incoming culture" and if the culture does, indeed, play a significant role in our success (so far), then we should try to preserve that culture, by limiting immigration to the left side of the range.
It's not about who is "deserving" or not. It's simply about cultural preservation. I'd like to see as many people as possible come into this country and be successful, but if they're coming from cultures where people are traditionally not successful, I don't want, by sheer volume of immigrants, to be forced to incorporate those aspects of their culture that have been detrimental.
Now, I think that there are aspects of other cultures that would be nice to incorporate into our own, but that we, as a culture should decide what to incorporate, rather than the other culture. Now, the people already here are the culture, so your "export list" is a tad baffling.
So yes, we should bring in as many people as we can, but no more. Lest we lose the thing that made them want to come here in the first place.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Well, let's see, we have the car culture it's contributed to, which kills things like public transit,
But public transit only works in city environments. In a suburban environment you need personal vehicles. Public transit in major us cities is thriving.
the ensuing loss of community from sprawl
I disagree that this is actually happening. Suburbias have their own communities mostly based around parents and their children's activities.
nigh complete cultural bankruptcy as chain stores, restaurants and outlets take over since transplants into exurban and suburban areas have no real ties to the previously existing communities
If people didn't like chain restaurants and stores they wouldn't exist. I hate "mom and pop" stores, they never have my size in stock, if I don't feel like chit chatting with them they want nothing to do with me, and they charge almost twice what I could pay for things over the internet. If you can find the benefits in such places then by all means frequent them. But just because other people don't enjoy those same benefits you do doesn't mean we somehow aren't seeing something.
Then we have the loss of farmland to unneeded vanity development
If we need more farmland then the cost of land will rise to the point where those developments get bull-dozed and farms go up in their place. If someone wants to build a monstrous house then why stop them?
And of course the fact that one of the big reasons for the rise of suburbia was cowardice and racism re: "The great white flight".
So because people leaving high crime areas fifty years ago had racism as one of their motivations all of suburbia is now stigmatized? Give me a break.
Most of the problems I agree with you on could be solved by a carbon tax. If people want to have a huge home, great, just make sure they pay for the additional air pollution that heating and cooling that place causes. And let them pay taxes on their gas that account for those carbon emissions. Then we use the carbon tax for carbon reduction efforts, problem solved. Most the issues you cite though seem to be ones that hinge on personal preference, not inherent strengths or weaknesses of variances in population densities.
Plenty of religions advertise, plenty of religions require their believers to go out and sell the religion or not get to the promised happy place.
Ever seen ads in a newspaper? Big signs outside a church?
I'm an 'idiot'? You are a fucking imbecile for 'believing' in something with no proof or even decent evidence. Not only that, but you are a liar.
Blar.
I don't see any difference between not allowing an undesirable culture in and deporting an undesirable culture, ergo the export list. If you wanted to keep out undesirable culture you should be thorough and have a list of undesirable cultures you want deported. I'm sure there are a lot of cultures here you don't want. Say Trailer Trash or high crime rate neighborhoods?
America is a "melting pot". We do not indoctrinate (force our worldview on immigrants), we meld or combine. It ends up being the average of theirs and ours.
How do you measure the success of a culture? If you measure it just by wealth I would say that is big part of what is wrong with this country.
To discriminate against a culture that is not breaking the law is similar to racism. Having an import queue, and even worse having it be because you don't "like" their culture, is saying that they are somehow "less human" than you are. In this case it's culture based; with racism it's color based.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Yes, but your "recent progress . . . shows promise" comment about cellulose derived ethanol sounds exactly what the cellulose/ethanol guys have been saying for two decades. Twenty years, at least. When I go to pick up my copy of Duke Nukem in my flying car, I bet I stop off at the gas station and fill it up with . . . well, who knows, but it won't be cellose derived ethanol. And the flying car won't have a drip-pan evaporative carburator that gets 200 mpg.
This sounds a little hokey and questionably efficient, and it is also vaporware, but on the other hand, any hillbilly knows how to make ethanol from sugar in small batches, so it's marginally possible that a california dot-communaire could have figured it out.