It was one of the dumbest "green" ideas ever proposed: Convert millions of acres of cropland into fields for growing ethanol from corn, then burn fossil fuels to harvest the ethanol, expending more energy to extract the fuel than you get from the fuel itself! Meanwhile, sit back and proclaim you've achieved a monumental green victory (President Bush, anyone?) all while unleashing a dangerous spike in global food prices that's causing a ripple effect of food shortages and rationing around the world....

A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/26/ING3PHRU681.DTL

Chad Heeter

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Please join me for breakfast. It's time to fuel up again.

On the table in my small Berkeley apartment this morning is a healthy-looking little meal -- a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee. Like most of us, I prepare my breakfast at home, and the ingredients for this one probably cost me about $1.25. (If I went to a cafe in downtown Berkeley, I'd probably have to add $6 more, plus tip, for the same.)

My breakfast fuels me up with about 400 calories, and it satisfies me. So for just over a buck and half and an hour spent reading the morning paper in my own kitchen, I'm energized for the next few hours. But before I put spoon to cereal, what if I consider this bowl of oatmeal porridge (to which I've just added a little butter, milk and a shake of salt) from a different perspective. Say, a Saudi Arabian one.

Then what you'd be likely to see -- what's really there, just hidden from our view (not to say our taste buds) -- is about 4 ounces (113g) of crude oil. Throw in those luscious red raspberries and that cup of java (an additional 3 ounces (85g) of crude), and don't forget those modest additions of butter, milk and salt (1 more ounce (28g)), and you've got a tiny bit of the Middle East right here in my kitchen.

Now, let's drill a little deeper into this breakfast. Just where does this tiny gusher of oil actually come from? (We'll let this oil represent all fossil fuels in my breakfast, including natural gas and coal.)

Nearly 20 percent of this oil went into growing my raspberries on Chilean farms many thousands of miles away, those oats in the fields of County Kildare, Ireland, and that specially raised coffee in Guatemala -- think tractors as well as petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides.

The next 40 percent of my breakfast fossil-fuel equation is burned up between the fields and the grocery store in processing, packaging and shipping.

Take that box of McCann's oatmeal. On it is an inviting image of pure, healthy goodness: a bowl of porridge, topped by two peach slices. Scattered around the bowl are a handful of raw oats, what look to be four acorns and three fresh raspberries. Those raw oats are actually a reminder that the flakes require a few steps 'twixt field and box. In fact, a visit to McCann's Web site illustrates each step of cleaning, steaming, hulling, cutting and rolling that turns the raw oats into edible flakes. Those five essential steps require significant energy.

Next, my oat flakes go into a plastic bag (made from oil), which in turn is inserted into an energy-intensive, pressed wood-pulp, printed paper box. Only then does my breakfast leave Ireland and travel 5,000 fuel-gorging, carbon-dioxide-emitting miles by ship and truck to my grocery store in California.

To All,

Good morning.

I hope this finds you all well, well rested, in good spirit and enjoying a good and fruitful day.

I offer the following exchange in the spirit of being helpful since in my hopefully humble opinion we all need to change our wasteful ways before we end up destroying the Earth and eventually ourselves because of our selfish insanity.

Long live The Fighters (for God),

Percy

http://thewayhomeorfacethefire.info
http://jahtruth.net/plan.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheCallToArms/message/17

 

Dear Anonymous ,

Good morning.

We hope that you and Friend of Anonymous are well, well-rested, in good spirit and will have a good and fruitful day.

I want to use yesterday’s yard sale as an exercise to teach you some important things about life.

Yesterday you managed to salvage 200 frns from the losses you had made over a number of years.

What I want you to do is to calculate approximately, so as not to make it unnecessarily difficult or time-consuming, what the original cost was of the items sold yesterday, roughly, including the petrol, tags, insurance and wear and tear and depreciation, etc. on the vehicle used to go looking for and purchasing them and add to it the hours/days/weeks of time involved in doing so.

I've just opened my new site Modern Energy Research Library - MERLib.org The site is still very young and under construction.

After running Mediawiki for a while on http://777001.com I decided to migrate to Drupal instead and came up with the new domain name

The current focus of attention is Victor_Schauberger and his insights into implosion technology and vortexes, the natural movement of water and air, and the concept of looking at, comprehending, and replicating the self-sustaining processes of nature.

Earth-shattering never-before-seen video testimonials released for the first time, featuring seven energy inventors. Affidavit witnesses urge an end to suppression of new energy technologies that could eliminate our suicidal dependence on fossil fuel.

This article is from http://www.WantToKnow.info/050711carmileageaveragempg

"Consumers and regulators are putting more pressure on the auto industry to enhance fuel economy, which was stagnant at an average 20.8 miles per gallon among all 2004 models and below the 1988 high of 22.1 mpg."  -- Detroit News, 4/11/05


"The Prius is the first significant departure from the combustion engine to make any major inroads in the auto industry since Henry Ford invented the Model T in 1908."  -- Newsweek, 9/20/04 <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5963500/site/newsweek/>

"Ford's Model T, which went 25 miles on a gallon of gasoline, was more fuel efficient than the current Ford Explorer sport-utility vehicle -- which manages just 16 miles per gallon."
 -- Detroit News, 6/4/03

Energy, Oxygen Consumption and Production

From "Coats & Schauberger - Living Energies - Viktor Schauberger's Brilliant Work With Natural Energy Explained", page 32

The amount of energy a human being requires for survival over one year is averagely 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh). According to Walter Schauberger's calculations a human being operates at the relatively insignificant energy level of an electric light bulb, namely 100 watts.1,000kWh is also the average amount of energy received from the Sun annually per square metre of ground surface. Theoretically, therefore, all a human being needs to do is to stand on its square metre and obtain its energy from the Sun. Were it able to transmute this energy directly, then its annual energy requirement would be satisfied. This amount of energy,however, is associated with the consumption of 260kg of molecular oxygen (O2) per year, which is equal to 29.659gr of oxygen per hour. These are the amounts of energy and oxygen required by a human being for the maintenance of bodily functions, reproduction, creativity and intelligent thought for a whole year.

The only possible outcome of the purely categorizing compart-mentality, thrust upon us at school, is the loss of our creativity. People are losing their individuality, their ability to see things as they really are and thereby their connection with Nature. They are fast approaching a state of equilibrium impossible in Nature, which must force them into a total economic collapse, for no stable system of equilibrium exists. Therefore the principles upon which our actions are founded are invalid, because they operate within parameters that do not exist.

Our work is the embodiment of our will. The spiritual manifestation of this work is its effect. When such work is done properly, it brings happiness, but when carried out incorrectly, it assuredly brings misery.

---

"They call me deranged. The hope is that they are right! It is of no greater or lesser import for yet another fool to wander this Earth. But if I am right and science is wrong, then may the Lord God have mercy on mankind!" ... ""How else should it be done then?", was always the immediate question. The answer is simple: "Exactly in the opposite way that it is done today!"" More quotes to follow...

by Morten Ovesen, the Malmö group.

 Viktor Schauberger around 40 years old.

  A brief biography could be like this:

Viktor Schauberger was an Austrian forester who was active during the first half of the 19:th century. He had a huge beard and a friendly laughter, this he combined with an uncompromising belief in himself and his ideas. He was obstinate in combination with a choleric temper. He was a good drawer and probably a skilled craftsman. Even if Viktor was not schooled the academic way he had a deep knowledge in biology, physics and chemistry. His sense and understanding on how water flows in the nature was exceptional. From his observations he formulated his new hydrodynamic basic theory. His friends and opponents described him as highly intelligent and with this intellectual sharpness he made a deep cut in his (and ours) physical paradigm.

From: http://www.free-energy.cc/electrolysis.html

"...Water can be broken into Hydrogen and Oxygen using electricity. Standard chemistry books claim that this process requires more energy than can be recovered when the gases are recombined. This is true only under the worst case scenario. When water is hit with its own molecular resonant frequency, using a system developed by Stan Meyers (USA) and again recently by Xogen Power, Inc., it collapses into Hydrogen and Oxygen gas with very little electrical input. Also, using different electrolytes (additives that make the water conduct electricity better) changes the efficiency of the process dramatically. It is also known that certain geometric structures and surface textures work better than others do. The implication is that unlimited amounts of Hydrogen fuel can be made to drive engines (like in your car) for the cost of water. Even more amazing is the fact that a special metal alloy was patented by Freedman (USA) in 1957 that spontaneously breaks water into Hydrogen and Oxygen with no outside electrical input and without causing any chemical changes in the metal itself. This means that this special metal alloy can make Hydrogen from water for free, forever...."

See full article for video-clip, which is in the Macromedia Flash format

comment by JAH

Another view, this time a contrary one, to help confuse things even more.

There are certainly many dried-out oil-wells and water-injected dead ones too, that have not replenished themselves and nothing on or in the Earth is "infinite" so this person's information is not completely truthful, but some of it is worth consideration. In this world of liars it is difficult to trust anyone's opinion except Father's.

Also, it is not so very long ago that Russia's planes were all grounded for lack of fuel and they were asking/begging for help from American oil-companies with know-how and equipment to help them develop their oil-fields and now this person says they are suddenly the world experts and way ahead of the Yankees (?).

With the green-house effect and melting ice-caps, having an "infinite" supply of oil would make things much worse.

In 1970 the Russians started drilling Kola SG-3, an exploration well which finally reached a staggering world record depth of 40,230 feet. Since then, Russian oil majors including Yukos have quietly drilled more than 310 successful super-deep oil wells, and put them into production. Last Year Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest single oil producer, and is now set to completely dominate global oil production and sales for the next century.

http://www.energybulletin.net/5721.html

by Aric McBay

"We advocate for a transition to small, sustainable communities "

Megan Quinn is the Outreach Director of Community Service, Inc. Community Service is a non-profit organization founded in 1940 that has advocated for small, local communities as the most fulfilling, healthy way to live. It's latest program, The Community Solution, seeks to bring about the re-emergence of the small community and a more agrarian, low energy-use way of life, as the solution for "Peak Oil." http://i.am/jah/greeneco.htm

by Ran Prieur December 19, 2004

http://ranprieur.com/essays/saveearth.html
1. Abandon the world. The world is the enemy of the Earth. The "world as we know it" is a deadly parasite on the biosphere. Both cannot survive, nor can the world survive without the Earth. Do the logic: the world is doomed. If you stay on the parasite, you die with it. If you move to the Earth, and it survives in something like its recent form, you can survive with it.

Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil
Contributed by Norman Church
Friday, 01 April 2005

also see the article titled "Eating Fossil Fuel"

"Concentrate on what cannot lie. The evidence..." -- Gil Grissom

INTRODUCTION

Eating Oil was the title of a book which was published in 1978 following the first oil crisis in 1973 (1). The aim of the book was to investigate the extent to which food supply in industrialised countries relied on fossil fuels. In the summer of 2000 the degree of dependence on oil in the UK food system was demonstrated once again when protestors blockaded oil refineries and fuel distribution depots. The fuel crises disrupted the distribution of food and industry leaders warned that their stores would be out of food within days. The lessons of 1973 have not been heeded.

by Robert Freeman

Published on Monday, March 1, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0301-12.htm

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig tells the story of a South American Indian tribe that has devised an ingenious monkey trap. The Indians cut off the small end of a coconut and stuff it with sweetmeats and rice. They tether the other end to a stake and place it in a clearing.

Soon, a monkey smells the treats inside and comes to see what it is. It can just barely get its hand into the coconut but, stuffed with booty, it cannot pull the hand back out. The Indians easily walk up to the monkey and capture it. Even as the Indians approach, the monkey screams in horror, not only in fear of its captors, but equally as much, one imagines, in recognition of the tragedy of its own lethal but still unalterable greed.

Pirsig uses the story to illustrate the problem of value rigidity. The monkey cannot properly evaluate the relative worth of a handful of food compared to its life. It chooses wrongly, catastrophically so, dooming itself by its own short-term fixation on a relatively paltry pleasure.