King Jester

Lets do some numbers, right? From the Department of Energy stats page (here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat3p4.html) the average energy demand in the US for 2005/2006 was roughly 618.000 mWh of electric "fluid", which divided inbetween 300 mill consumers is roughly 20 kwh per capita. Based on the info provided by the USAToday article, the USAF´s photovoltaic plant will generate 15 mW, and cover 1/3 of the demand of a 8000 people community. So, the "total" USAF base demand is roughly 45 mW (15 times 3) , divided 8000 is roughly 56 kWh per capita, almost three times the average US consumption. Well, I´m not impressed either... As for the cost of the proyect, a quick googling prompted the controversy about New Mexicos mega solar farm proyect (here: http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:lEds2...t=clnk&cd=1 ) with a budgeted cost of 1,6 billion dollars for 300 mW output. Roughly 5.3 millio dollar per mW, compared to roughly 6,6 million dollar per mW for the USAF´s facility. Somebody is keeping the change, me thinks.... Course, I would like to see some definitive numbers of solar farms, but you get the idea... King Jester

Sure, I learned how to pull the "typo" trick to weasel my sorry arse out, and how to pretend I don't care when can't pull my sorry arse out...I don't know though if any of that recently aquired knowledge is of use out there, you know, on the real World, where one has to be accountable for what one says. Well, you know, cheers, and don't forget to eat supper, if you wanna be big and dandy as me... King Jester

Hey DK, I had to look up the meaning of "quaint". Thanks, the maps are indeed "strange in an interesting or pleasing way" as the Merreiam Webster Dictionary defines the word. (Course I chose the one of three definitions that suited me the most...you, know, I have that strange thing about words, I always try to see the bright side in verbal offense...thanks anyway). As for "corporate agriculture" (I think we had settled that already, didn't we?), actually, there are such maps at the NASS site: 1) % land operated by tennants 2) % land rented or leased None actually shows how much land all those gready and evil corporations have gathered, but if you overlap all four maps shown so far (please, do this in a "quantly" way), you get a picture. Sure, its a feast to the eye. But it seems to me hat you are talking apples and I'm talking bananas, pal. I have visited with a broad range of farmer, from 40 acres "single family hill-billy" sugar beet farmers to 3000 acres and plus potatoes, beans and wheat "hired labour, rented land, in-farm harvester and storage bins" tycoons, from Flint (MI) to Dekalb (IL) while working over in the US. My "off the cuff" comment that every farmer had a combine, was ONLY an example of the overhead small and medium farmers have to drag along to make their operations profitable. Of course I know that not EVERY farmer owns a combine, or a sprayer, or even a crop-duster plane...The fact remains, that no matter how cheap small and medium farmers outsource spraying, fertilizing and harvesting, the 80 acre farmer who owns a tractor and a dual cab truck, already owns one to many, and is not going to be able to make ends meet, if doesn't get a) subsidized or b ) get a second job outside the farm. No, the maps don't show that, because maps are an instant picture of a moment, and can not show a process, you would have to look at historical series to see anything changing over time. Thanks to the hard work of our friends at NASS, those series do exist, and show pecisely what you so insightfully stated. Indeed, roughly 4 millions farms disapeared in the US over the last half century, economies of scale and all that... The vast mayority of corn areas? , well, I most certainly agree that Indiana and Illinois are pretty bad yellow...almost FUBAR, one can say, but I also see vast areas of Iowa (the prime corn state??), Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tenesee, Missipippi being mostly green and blue, ergo in hands of their "full owners". As for the wheat growing in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas, I still see a lot of pale green, with slightly more yellow than blue. Lets leave it at a compromising 50/50, OK? Ivanhoe wrote: Try following: google for Brazil + ethanol + economy. There we go, an experiment the size of a huge, freaking big country with 160 million people (one of the World's top ten economies, IRCC) Sure, they dumped several hundred milion dollars into R&D for the last 25 years, because they HAD to replace imported oil. So, how much more emprical data do you need? Who cares, anyway...

LOL, LOL, LOL You lucky bas****. So you dropped in a little hyphen, and you think that settles it? It's not just the hyphen pal, its not just a typo, as corporate and co-operative do differ by non less than four letters.... so the ball is on your field again to try and explain WTF you meant by "corporate agriculture" (and BTW, whatever you meant by it, I alreday showed you wrong on the share corporations have in agriculture) Fair enough, I fully understand the concept, you jsut failed to back up your claim with evidence (other than your own perception). If you find figures for co-operatively owned or operated machinery in US agriculture, please show them. Of course, even if you can proof that most? / part? / little? equipment is shared by farmers, that still doesn't say a thing about the size of individual farm operations and the number of households / families living of said land, so my point about overhead and small farmer survive-ability without subsidies still stands. I don't know if you "said it" out loud, as I wasn't sitting next to you when you TYPED IT LETTER BY LETTER BLACK ON WHITE FOR EVERYBODY TO READ, on the very post of March, 30, 13:49, which I limited myself to quote without any editing, snipping, slashing or other unruly technicque. You wrote it, not me. It clearly contradicts the "corporate" part of your statement. And plus, as I do reconigze that % of farms is not a good indicator (see the edition to my post), I'll paste here the "nice little map TM" (not by me, but by the NASS) of land use by full owners, which kind'a nicely complements the previous one about "corporate" farming: You can take my word for it, or you can leave my word for it, I don't care either way , but as already said, I am an agricultural consultor (ethanol production is certainly not my area of work, but field crops are) and I worked as such in the US, as part of my professional training. So, I happen to have frist hand expereince on what kind of nice gadgets many american farmers (and I won't say the mayority, nor the average, nor even a signifcant number, but "the " ones I worked with) have in their barns, what the size of thier operations is/was and what kind of living they were making. Just for the record, I did not bring up "specifically" corn ethanol production in the US as being a particularly bright idea. I haven't seen convincing numbers yet. What I did say is that biofuels (which include biodiesel and ethanol from other crops, as well as biogas, and other derivatives of biomass) are workable alternatives for fossil fuels. A point that still stands. King Jester

And I´m geussing you don´t have an internet conection to look up the NASS site? Wait a minute, you have an internet conection, as you do post on TN... a) care to explain the difference between corporative and cooperative, which you so nicely mixed up in the same sentence? b ) Quote from the 2002 NASS census report : New questions were also added on the number of households sharing in each operation=s net farm income and the number of people living in the households of the first three operators. (The income sharing results are summarized in Table 8.) Most (1,647,030) operations reported only one household but 313,574 reported two families, 62,987 reported three families, 28,846 reported four families, and 21,173 reported five or more families. (Note the total does not equal the number of all farms since the question did not apply to hired managers.) Roughly 1,6 mill farms (out of a total of roughly 2 mill farm "operations") are single family owned and operated. I know, I know, you can show anything you want with stats, if you with have the right set of questions....whats that famous quote again: statistics don´t proof anything at all, 90% of pleope know that... As to completely shatter your futile attempt to show that you think you know more than myself about corporate farming in the US, this are the results of the NASS 2002 survey for CORPORATE farming in the US: (hint, the blue color shows the highest land usage by (EDIT: Sorry, my mistake, its not land use, but percentega of farms) by CORPORATIONS, 20 percent or more. None are corn growing regions, BTW). EDIT: There isn´t a comprehensive map with "land use" by corporations, but if you look at land use by owner, its pretty obvious that more than OVER 50% of farm land in corn growing regions still is farmed by single-family operators (and on certain areas way over 50%). Never ever let the facts get in the way of your rantings (haven´t I said that already on this topic? DK, no hard feelings, remember its the FFZ and we are simply fooling around (or at least I am...) King Jester PS: I edited the map comment, as it was incorrect, please re-read.

The paper you cited is 9 years old, a time when oil was at about what, 15 box a barrel?. So, we wuold have to re-run the numbers, using the same model by Pimentel, if you wish, but with current oil price (65 $ a barrel), AND current farm inputs (as an agricultural consultor, I can tell you right away that due to advanced breeding, advanced chemistry, improved machinery AND a strong market driving force (corn price is just about rebounding from a general 10 years low commodity price cycle) production cost for corn went done, overall. For US corn, I don´t doubt it still would be a losing equation, as the US corn growers tend to be small familiar enterpresis with HUGE overhead and sunken costs (i.e one combine harvester per farm, which rests iddle most of the year...and a long etc). There is precisely where subsisidies enter, to keep alive the small farmer. Aboput those energy figures, I will have to tinker around with them for a while. As I said before, I don´t know where Scientific American got their figures from, but I do know that fermentation efficincy has prolly gone a long way since 1998, and the next thing around the corner is corn stalks fermentation (instead of corn kernels). That will make cheap ethanol! Ivanhoe, please noitce my use of the "around the corner" and "will" or "would". More of my grandiutious futurology (the same kind that proofred to we on the mark three years ago when I predicted that GWB would announce "cleaner coal energy". Anyway, who cares, anyhow? King Jester

From I read on his resume, the Sloan Automotive Institute at MIT, John Heywood, has benn working for more than 20 years along with Detroit engiune majkers to comply with CAF, so he should (note I use the word should...) know something about it. Cause till today, it hasn´t appelaed the american public, nor has it been cost efective to replace displcement (cubic inches, macho thing) for turbo-charging and intercooling. Never mind that in Europe 90 % of diesels are indeed turbo and intercooled, and I guess its not diferrent for big trucks in the US. The gas engine may be somewhat trickier to compress and turbo charge, I agree, but it is possible andf makes sense if you cut back on fuel comsumption and emissions as a trade off for the increased aquisition and replacement cost of worn engine parts. King Jester

About the first bit, try to get a copy of January´s Scientific American magazine (I know, I know, its science for dummies, ok, ok). Don´t know if this is obtainable online, nor do I know how they calculated it, but they claim that 1 megajoule of gasoline takes 1,19 megajoules of oil to produce, while 1 megajoule of corn ethanol takes 0.77 megajoules of oil to produce (*). So, that pretty much cries out that you need to proof your above assertion, somehow. * average of six studies by the California Institute of Technology, according to the magazine. King Jester

From the General Electric materail safety data sheet for incandescent light bulbs: Quote: "The lead used in the solder poses little risk of exposure under normal use and handling. While small numbers of these lamps placed in ordinary trash may not appreciably affect the nature or method of disposal of the trash, under some circumstances disposal of large quantities may be regulated. You should review your waste handling practices to assure that you dispose of waste lamps properly and contact your state environmental department for any regulations that may apply. August 2004 Incandescent Lamps-MSD 2" Hard to argue in favour of "ye-olde-incandescent", right? For the record, just fooling around, Hg (that would be mercury, you ign****) is BAD, so, yes they pose a concern, fluorescent (which BTW aren´t new guys, they have been around for decades, and in places like Vegas or Times quare there are tons of them on the marquesines). But, lets hear what EPA (Evil Pricks Association?) has to say about it: Quote: I. GENERAL Until 1999, fluorescent light bulbs were considered “Hazardous Waste” under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Most fluorescent light bulbs (lamps) contain varying amounts of Mercury, a toxic and environmentally persistent chemical. In 1999, EPA reclassified fluorescent lamps from a “Hazardous Waste” classification to “Universal Waste” classification that reduced regulatory requirements for storage and manifesting and encouraged the recycling of these materials. Furthermore, "green tip" fluorescents, do in general comply with the TLCP (toxic leaching test), as the amount of mercury in them is close to 0.02% w/w (see Phillips MSDS here). Not downplaying anything here, just presenting more evidence... King Jester

That the way to go, Ivan, never ever let facts get into the way of your ranting.... Try a Google search "before", it usually helps to sieve out the biggest chunks of crap, of course it takes finer mesh to catch the subtle crap.... MIT´s take on the "super engine" (guess they should be somewhat reliable) Quote: "These small engines could be on the market within five years, and consumers should find them appealing" Well, anyhow, who cares, anyway? King Jester

You can find how much you´re saving here. . Of course, you need to know what the company is charging you for kwh. The rest is quite self-explanatory. King Jester

Very down-to-Earth common sensed editorial by USA Today (not exactly an elitist newspaper, nes pa?) Cripple the economy? My ar** BTW, whats the netikette here, paste full article or just link? King Jester

Thank you Reg! I vaguely remembered the article by defesa.net.br, and probably got it mentally mixed up with another article about M-5 Staurt conversions and the X-1 series. That and my poor portuguese. There aren´t very many (indeed, I havne´t seen a single one) pictures of brazilian M-4´s with HVSS, and you gave the reason: only one was build! I always liked/admired the ingenous work put into building X-1 and X-1A1/2, also the APC conversion of Stuarts (only one prototype?). Are X-1A´s still in use with the brazilian Army? King Jester

Going from memory here, IRCC brazilians did quite a bit on their Shermans. They rebuild the M-4 vertical suspension into HVSS suspension, with new tracks, M-51 style. They put Scania engines in, also. Don´t know waht they made to the main armament. I´don´t how many tanks were converted that way. I thnik I remember the conversions were made by the defunct company MOTO PECAS. They also made several attempts to convert M-4 s into recovery vehcles, different from both M-31, M-32 or M-74´s. They basically took a turretless M-4 hull, put two hinges in the upper front for A frame, and a cable winch in the turret hole. Again, don´t know how many coversions werre made. There was also, IRCC, a bridge layer conversion (they had the M-5 Staurt bridge layer as well). So far I remember having read on a brazilian site (portuguese) called defesa.net.br or similar. King Jester

Yes, its right around the corner, if you know where to look and what to look for. 20 years is, technology wise, around the corner, its not even the span of a human generation. You may be driving around a green-coated hydrogen fueled car that never needs to stop at the pump before you go in pension. It took between aprox. 5 years to phase out leaded fuel in the US (and geez, I´m quite sure they still use it somewhere around the globe). And that was a small, small, small technologicall shift. 20 years is nothing, given the extreme technologial shift neede/ambisioned/desired. But as I already said before, photocells as they exist now, in their current form, cost and efficiency, as of 2007, are already a viable solution for descentralized power generation, as is wind energy, tide-motrix energy, and otehr forms of renevable (infinite, if you wish) energy. You may need to look for the convinient location (geography plus demography) to pull it off economically, so far its true (i.e. powering NYC or Al Gores condo, for that matter, is out of the question for the foreseeable future, that much is true) As for bio-fuels, its pretty obvious that they work nicely as oil replacements. Have loocked up the numbers for a-energy? I´haven´t had the time to look it up, but a-energy isn´t cheap. It has lots of advantages, but also disadvanteges. For example breeder size isn´t at all flexible. There is alwasy a minimum sized plant, and incrementing the size is stepwise. Yu may need to build a huge overcapacity as part of the sunken cost of the proyect. And you can not regulate outoput all that well, shuting down or increasing power generation requires several weeks preps, so a-plants are unable to compensate net shortages inmediatly, etc etc. Just several disadvanteges which come to mind. Of course the renewable energy sources have their disadvanteges too, I´m not closing my eyes. Anyhow, I´m for once very sad that my government (Argentina) abandoned ethanol fuel in the early 80´s, after having spend millions on R&D. We could be doing businees with the US, instead of Brasil, as we speak. But we got lured by cheap oil. In the 80´s and 90´s I could drive my 6 cilinder Dodge Coronet without bothering to check fuel price. What a waste. I choose public transpoirt whenever I can now. King Jester