Like Putting Steel to a Grindstone - Sparks

Flying Everywhere

Just read a couple of articles about global warming and extracting the remaining oil. OH MY GOD! That's a christian woman having sex. Here is an atheist woman having sex; oh my ..... Oh my? All right, enough of that, move along.

First global warming. Anyone who disagrees with this scenario is threatened with losing their jobs and labeled as lower than Holocaust Deniers and the unwashed masses. Remember in the 70's they were screeching about global cooling at that time. Could have convinced me. I remember those cold winters; but of course I live in Minnesota.

I have my own motive for seeing more of this global warming and the melting of the ice caps. I am especially interested in seeing Greenland lose all of their ice. My remembrance of history may not be exactly right, but here goes. Leif Erickson aka Eric the Red sailed west from Norway and landed on Iceland and Greenland. I believe (not know for sure) that he was the original explorer / settler of these 2 islands. Greenland for sure. But anyway, he named Iceland correctly, but Greenland? I remember in a grade school class this was being taught and the teacher asks, in a rhetorical way, why would he name Greenland green land? Get it? That has always stuck with me. Then last year or so the History Channel ran a program called the Little Ice Age. Don't know if you saw this or not. But, this happened in the 1400 - 1500's. Because the program talked about the settlers in this country where there was no summer at all to plant new crops to see them through the following winter. Now, this was all over the northern hemisphere. Very cold temperatures, crops did not thrive, and massive starvations because of this. This lasted for quite awhile. Back to Greenland. If all of the ice melts, then there should be proof of settlements on that island further inland.

Hasn't the earth always gone thru cooling and warming periods? Trying to put all of the 'blame' on humans just doesn't cut it. Hit by an asteroid once in a while, volcanoes, and don't forget about the sun figuring in on some of this.

Burning fossil fuels pumps all of this carbon dioxide into the atomsphere. Again, from my science classes, CO2 is supposed to be good for trees, grass, and other plants. Now I'm going to get ridiculous here. Yeah, I know, get ridiculous. If you wanted to commit suicide and put a rubber hose from you car's exhaust pipe into your mouth, you would die of carbon ??? posioning. How about this? You go to the hardware store and buy a carbon ??? detector to put in your utility room where your gas furnace and gas hot water heater are. If you said monoxide, you're the winner in this little exercise and you get a cigar. What? You said your name is Bill Clinton? Give me that cigar back!

All right, I'm not a chemist, so I don't know the whole makeup / composition of these exhaust gasses. Follow the money on this issue. Who is getting large grants ($) to study this phenomen?
Its also political to destroy the USA's large and successful capitalist system.


Oil reserves and alternative fuels.
Yes, oil will run out sometime. Hard to say when though because of oil reserves off shore and then there is oil shale. I've read some material on oil shale in China and they are developing ways to extract oil from this stuff. The same articles went on to say that there are huge oil shale deposits in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. I also heard many years ago that South Dakota has a huge amount of oil shale. Remains to be seen what the economies of developing this stuff is.

There is talk of alternative energy sources like ethanol and hydrogen. Production of ethanol is great for the farmers who grow corn. Then if they can produce ethanol from any green stuff like grasses or other plants that can be grown economically, great. An advantage to this is 2 fold. First, take all of the land in CRP and put back into production. Second, taxpayers don't pay to idle land. Oops, just got the farmers mad at me.

Now, the downside to producing ethanol is the huge amount of water that is used in the production process. Where is this coming from. Deep wells? Plant close to a river? The farmers around here do alot of irrigation with wells. Problems with that is people are concerned with the depletion of the water aquifer for human use and then such a deep draw down on the aquifer could bring nitrates into the environment. Someone please help me out with this.

Hydrogen fuel cells sound like the answer to this problem. But, here are a couple of gotcha's.
If someone can figure out how to burn water; problem solved. Water should be the most flammable material on the planet, but it isn't. Its composed of 2 parts of Hydrogen and 1 part oxygen. H2O. Again, I'm not a chemist, but it must be the way the molecules are attached to each other. I'm hearing it takes more energy to seperate the gasses than it is economically feasible to use the end products. Then the byproduct of hydrogen fuel cells is water. What is this? Perpetual motion? You can get more energy out of a machine than what it takes to run it. I don't believe this and neither does anyone else.

So the byproduct of these hybrids; hydrogen and electric, is water. Is this a good thing? I don't know what the quantity of water would be. In the summer maybe not so much a problem. Winter. That is an entirely different thing. And I'm not talking about just the northern latitudes.
If the water is running out a discharge pipe you have ice on your roadways. Look at the winter this year that went deep into Texas, Oklahoma, and California. Accidents all over the place.

Lets say that some chemical engineer and a mechanical engineer discovers a way to pump water into your tank and the engine in your vehicle can take the water and break it down into a usable fuel as you need it. Like some glorified carbureator / fuel injectors on our engines now. Do you think these guys (gals) would be rich? But, that is the least of our concerns. How is the government going to tax this? Sorry, I am not a tax and spend democrat, but we do need taxes to maintain and build roads. People hooked up to city water are already metered. But, how much is for fuel and how much is for cooking, bathing, cleaning, watering the lawn, etc? What about private wells?

Now, I'm bragging. The 2 Edge Sword cuts both ways.