Biofuels
WSJ writes:
In the late 1800s, Rudolf Diesel himself envisioned a future in which farmers used everyday crops -- notably peanuts -- to fuel machines. Environmentalists have long touted the benefits of fuels made from renewable organic matter. These "biofuels" often burn cleaner than petroleum and could, if used extensively, push back the day when the world runs out of oil. The most familiar is "gasohol," gasoline blended with alcohol made from crops like corn or sugar cane.
...
In India, people who want alternative fuel collect cow dung in a backyard box called a "digester" -- made of bricks and concrete or steel or even rubber -- and add water. Over time organic processes will produce gas. As pressure builds up in the digester, the gas can be piped into a home for cooking. Biogas experts say three cattle will generate enough gas to cook for a family of five. Larger models can produce enough gas to run a motor to pump water or generate electricity.
Indians are accustomed to burning dried cow dung as a fuel, and digesters are common in some areas, but high oil prices have given the idea of dung power new urgency.
...
Oil may be growing harder to find, but as K.C. Khandelwal, an adviser at the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources in New Delhi, notes, "dung is always available."
Virtual World
The new York Times writes about Second Life:
In a world called Second Life, especially (where the virtual Hawaii described above can be found), so many people visit that profitable businesses have sprung up that earn their proprietors real money, not just virtual currency - in fact, a handful of people earn six-figure incomes there. There are discos, casinos and other sites that can be rented for private parties or even for the virtual weddings many people hold.
Practically everything in Second Life's world was created by its residents, who come from 80 countries around the (real) world. Linden Lab, the company that runs Second Life's world, provides a set of content-creation tools that its members have used to create everything from nightclubs and movie theaters to coffee shops and bars to airships, automobiles and clothing stores, a few museums and one or two libraries and nature preserves.
The company itself creates practically none of the buildings and other sites in Second Life, but provides only the rolling landscape on which the more ambitious of its members build.
Remember seeing this chunck of info a while back (2001) about someone doing this on a larger scale in Minnesota. Basically it's a 760 head farm where the owner uses anaerobic manure digestion to produce methane for electricity. The manure goes in a pit, they add some recycled newspapers and wait for the microbes to do their work. The methane powers a turbine which generates enough electricity for the farm and almost 80 houses. When its all prossesed, the manure is actually an even better fertalizer than the original.
http://www.auri.org/news/ainjul01/05page.htm
Posted by rentmejDevelopment issue is bigger than any single element, which is something the world keeps forgetting, but one new book called china‘s global reach--markets, multinationals,and globalization by a original thinker named george zhibin gu has shed big light on the subject,
I wish everyone to read it and think
some interesting excerpts can be found at http://www.trafford.com/05-1822
it is very interesting read as well
Posted by JennyDevelopment issue is bigger than any single element, which is something the world keeps forgetting, but one new book called china‘s global reach--markets, multinationals,and globalization by a original thinker named george zhibin gu has shed big light on the subject,
I wish everyone to read it and think
some interesting excerpts can be found at http://www.trafford.com/05-1822
it is very interesting read as well
Posted by JennyThis weekend, Portland, Oregon hosted a biofuel event in which automobiles were featured that run on old soybean vegetable cooking oil and also featured other alternative fuel powered vehicles. Biofuels on the surface seem to hold some promise to reduce petroleum oil fuel consumption, as soybeans are easy and cheap to grow. Yet at the same time some serious shortcomings exist to this biofuel alternate fuel approach.
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