🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <afok8f02nbt@drn.newsguy.com>, nospam@mybox.org says...
> In article <MPG.178963beb7fdc62f989e40@shawnews.vn.shawcable.net>, tnr says...
> >
> >In article <afo2dd01jtp@drn.newsguy.com>, nospam@mybox.org says...
> >>In article <MPG.17883d872b43c11a989e3c@shawnews.vn.shawcable.net>, tnr says...
> >> >
> >> >In article <afkbi90307a@drn.newsguy.com>, nospam@mybox.org says...
> >>>>In article <MPG.17870385780939ef989e35@shawnews.vn.shawcable.net>, tnr says...
> >> 
> >> (about replacing petroleum with olive or other vegetable oil)
> >> 
> >> >> >
> >> >> >Sorry, I had been counting on a bit of insight. Number of barrels is 
> >> >> >certainly not hard to increase to pretty much any level you want,
> >> >> 
> >> >> Really?   On whose land?  Under whose authority?  
> >> >
> >> >Yes, the land of anyone who wants to do so and the usual, respectively.
> >> 
> >> Insight?  You proposed the necessity, I didn't.   Try it on for size.
> >
> >Mmmm? What "necessity" exactly did I propose? 
> 
> Sorry... the screen was getting too cluttered and I cut that part rather than
> editing out all the quote-markings.
> 
> And by the way, I've grown to like your style... I don't agree with you, but you
> make me think rather than just telling me I'm an idiot.   It shows a respect I
> didn't expect from you and I owe you the same.   I've been condescending and
> even insulting about my disagreement with you sometimes, and I owe you an
> apology for that.
> 
> Consider the apology offered.

That is very gracious of you - thank you. Yes I understand and that kind 
of loud flailing usually happens on both sides of a question. For 
example there is one person in this thread who very clearly does not 
understand the implications of the political theory underlying his 
statements. You can't converse effectively with someone like that 
because they simply don't understand what they are saying let alone what 
you are saying in return so they substitute anger and invective. My 
major motivation in sticking my nose into most threads is simply to try 
to get people to examine their beliefs a little more critically, or from 
a different perspective. Noramlly that gets me labelled Left Wing, Right 
Wing, Homophobe, Religious nut, Godless aetheist and so on. You are the 
first person in a long time to recognize the actual intent and pattern. 
:-)

 
> What you proposed was the necessity for applying some insight.
> 
> >> Sure, it's quite possible that plants can be manipulated to directly produce
> >> what are now petroleum extracts and synthetics... but is there enough arable
> >>space on which to grow them?  Not unless the same plants can be found which both
> >> feed humanity and produce its petrochemicals.
> >
> >Excuse me but you are claiming there is enough land for hemp production 
> >so your real claim is this: no amount of selective breeding, gene 
> >tinkering, splicing, etc. will ever produce a plant that can make as 
> >much synthetic rope (would it still be synthetic?) per acre planted as 
> >hemp would make natural rope [per acre planted]. This is a very extreme 
> >claim for you to be making. What knowledge do you have that leads you to 
> >put forward such a proposition?
> 
> I ought to flesh it out then, since you've mistaken what I meant.
> 
> The claim I make is this: because the bulk of the non-water mass of a hemp plant
> is fibre useful for the production of rope, fabric... whatever, there are lots
> of uses for the sort of fibre that comes from the various varieties of hemp;

Mmmm... if I reword that in what ought to be a logically equivalent 
manner I get: there are lots of uses for the sort of fibre that comes 
from hemp because the bulk of the non-water mass of a hemp plant is 
fibre useful for the production of rope, fabric... whatever. Which seems 
tautalogical in nature.

> because in order to be competitive with petroleum, such plants would either have
> to be harvested to produce more petrochemical-fibre-value than the fibre/mass
> ratio of a hemp plant or excrete such product while remaining alive long enough
> to outproduce hemp, *and* would have to consume less land resources that the
> pumping of oil/gas does;

Mmmmm I don't see why it would have to consume less land resources than 
pumping oil/gas. As long as the total production cost (and that could 
include processing to final product, pollution, human cost etc.) is 
cheaper then it would be competitive.

It seems to me the comparisons are:

1. is the hemp product cheaper than the equivalent oil product
2. is the hemp product cheaper than the equivalent bio-engineered 
product
3. is the equivalent bio engineered product cheaper than the equivalent 
oil product


> because I think it very unlikely that genetic research (and I am an optomist on
> that front) can produce plants as cost-effective on a fiber-for-land basis in
> the short time necessary for the world to switch to those sources before direct
> petrochemical fibre manufacture's contribution ends with the destruction of the
> planet's human habitability;

Knowledge has been said to increase cubically as a function of time. I 
am quite a bit more optimistic than you I think. That we can grow human 
ears on the bodies of mice, take cells and convert them to stem cells 
and then guide them into compeltely different kinds of cells than 
originally, that we can make bucky balls and bnucky tubes and on and on 
I think we are on the cusp of attaining staggering capabilities.

 
> I think the pursuit of having plants take over the manufacture of what are now
> "petrochemicals" in the current sense of the word is a pipe-dream.

Obviously I disagree.
 
> Does that clarify it sufficiently?

Well I'm not sure I see any differene between what you are saying now 
and what I had said I thought you were saying ("> >Excuse me but you are 
claiming there is enough land for hemp production... ") other than that 
I was limiting it to the production of rope as a sort of generic standin 
for hep products. Your claim still seems to reduce to: we can't engineer 
anything better than hemp. Which is as I said before an extreme claim.

 
> >> i.e.:  it's not remotely practical, so forget it.
> >
> >Did you know that Man was never meant to fly and that the earth is the 
> >centre of rotation for the solar system?
> 
> I didn't know the first part.  It's obviously not something deduced from man's
> inherent capability, since he plainly *can* fly.  It's true that he needs to

But a century or so ago he couldn't and people thought "that's the way 
nature intended it"... it's the usual example for people who 
underestimate science.

> create mechanical means to help him to do that, but he's inherently capable to
> do so, or he wouldn't have managed it.  I'd like you to show me that he wasn't
> meant to, if you have (or your country's economy has) the time and the
> resources.
> 
> The second part is a deduction made from fairly elemetary physics and concluded
> from observations that bear out the reasoning.  If I hadn't already learned it,
> I could easily be shown the truth of that.

Mmmm actually you couldn't... the Earth is not the centre of rotation 
for the solar system. Religions believed that for many centuries, and it 
was physically dangerous to contradict them with little things like 
physics and math, but were eventually proven wrong.
 
> Back to oil...
> 
> >>>>> I'd be willing to bet it will be long before we run out of the original
> >>stuff.
> >> >
> >>>>Petroleum, you mean?   We will probably be forced to stop using it long before
> >> >Yes.
> >> >
> >>>>we run out of it.  In fact, I'd be willing to bet we'll be forced to move
> >>human
> >> >> settlement away from most coastlines before we run out of it.
> >> >
> >> >Ahhh you're a global warmer.
> >> 
> >> Huh?  I'm just stating a fact.  That doesn't mean I think it's the way things
> >
> >Whose fact?
> 
> Mine.  I said what I believe (or rather, what I'm willing to bet on,) about what
> will happen in consequence of the likely behaviour of humanity's leaders... and
> my belief is a fact.

Ummmm no, your belief is your opinion. That you believe it is a fact but 
that does not make your opinion fact.
 
> I might be wrong - I most devoutly *hope* I'm wrong - but it's fact that I
> believe what I said.

Not exactly the normal use of the word. It is rarely challenged that 
some one is not presenting their true beliefs. But whether or not there 
is a significant long term rise in sea level is not fact - at least as 
far as I know.
 
> >>It is non-renewable in the sense that there isn't time to replenish the supply
> >>once it's gone... this merely assumes that we could somehow mitigate or learn to
> >
> >According to you. What is your background in synthetic petroleum 
> >production?
> 
> I have none.   Few people have any.  If it were practical and economical at

Then you really don't know if it is a non-renewable resource or not.

> present, I'd like to think it would already be happening (or at least proposed
> in earnest) on a massive scale... but it isn't, and I believe there are a
> variety of reasons for that - not least among which is the possibility that it
> would wreck the established petroleum production industry.

That is very possibly so. Also gas is cheap in the US and Canada. WE 
might see a lot more interest in alternatives if the price were closer 
to that in Europe.
 
> Before you ask: the petroleum production industry already has a huge
> technological, financial and material investment in doing things more or less as
> they are done now... and that investment is partly destroyed and hugely
> disrupted if they are forced into the radical change that your idea represents.

Only if they don't et to controil the new technology. It would't 
surprise me at all if those companies had huge research efforts underway 
to be the first to develop and patent alternative technologies.
 
> You're suggesting a cultural change, a political change, a power-structure
> change and a sweeping change of technological thought, all in one go.

You got me - I think big ;-) Not necessarily all in one go though.
 
> It ain't gonna happen, because humans don't work that way.  Not in the world I
> grew up in, they don't.

Larger cultural changes can happen in the blink of an eye. Look at China 
throughout the 20th century or the fall of the Soviet Union for example.
 
> >> live with the effects of its continued use until it runs out.  I don't claim
> >> anywhere that the facts as we know them bear this assumption out.
> >> 
> >>The presence and increasing rate of global warming is one reason I believe that
> >>the facts *don't* bear that assumption out.   I don't think there's enough time
> >> to find the means properly to adapt or mitigate.
> >> 
> >> That time *might* be found if we stopped depending on so much petrochemical
> >> stuff for which perfectly good short-term renewables could substitute well.
> >> 
> >> More science?  Hemp fibre is carbon removed from the atmosphere only weeks
> >
> >More? So far you haven't preented any science.

And while not wanting to be unnecessarily abrasive you still haven't.

> >>ago... nylon/polypropylene/rayon/polyester fibre is carbon removed from the air
> >>before our species evolved, and from the re-introduction of which our atmosphere
> >
> >That's amazing! How do the hempplants know to only take carbon from the 
> >atmosphere that has been recently introduced?
> 
> You're being silly, I hope.   The fact that a hemp plant was recently alive
> means that only recently, it was removing carbon from the air... and thus that
> the carbon it contains is carbon currently in circulation in the biosphere.

Yes I was.
 
> What I said (or what I intended you to infer, using a bit of insight,) was this:
> 
> When you use hemp fibre, you are using currently-circulating carbon stores only
> set aside for the short term, and when that fibre rots, it returns that carbon
> to circulation... the net result on current carbon circulation is zero.
> 
> When you use petrochemical fibres, that presupposes that you have already
> brought petroleum out of the ground... carbon that was taken out of circulation
> millions of years before our species came to be, in an era when life was adapted
> to a *far* more carbon-rich air supply than we evolved to... and you are placing
> (barring total recycling) a good deal of that carbon back into circulation in
> tha atmosphere.   We bury them or toss them into the sea or *burn* them when
> we're done with them... in large part, they degrade one way or another into
> atmospheric carbon... and that part that does so turns mostly into CO2: into
> *the* primary greenhouse gas.
> 
> Every milligram of that fibre re-contributes carbon whose removal *created* the
> current biosphere.
> 
> Beginning to see a problem with this stuff yet?

Only until you find a way to efficiently add oxygen and hydrogen to that 
atmosphereic carbon at which point you have turned that old carbon into 
food.
 
> >>In the strictest practical sense, you're absolutely right: our continued use of
> >>it will wipe us from the face of the earth before we run out of places to find
> >> and gather it.
> >
> >Or we'll find cheap ways to make it or make directly the end products 
> >for which we now use petroleum.
> 
> I'd like to believe your alternative is likely to come to pass... but I don't.
> 
> There are too many greedy, short-sighted and even stupid people in charge of the
> world's "means of production" to make it possible, I'm afraid.
> 
> It's the same sort of people nearly 3/4 of a century ago who outlawed hemp
> because of its threat to their industries, remember?

A sensible move at the time though. A lot of things that were reasonably 
practical to do back then become unpractical when you iuncrease the 
population by an order of magnitude. My preferred solution, or partial 
solution, to the petroleum problem is to reduce global birth rates until 
we have a sub 500 million population.