An Environmental Secret

[MassacrE]

Taken from the Toronto Star

Whatever you do, don't let the public know about hemp. If farmers worldwide grew hemp instead of corn, we wouldn't be in this mess, and if the public ever found out that the looming food/fuel shortage was unnecessary and planned, they might revolt.

You see, hemp produces more ethanol per acre than corn, and does so at a lower cost and with less damage to the soil; one acre of hemp can produce up to 1000 gallons of methanol in just four months. In warmer climates that could mean 3000 gallons per acre, per year. If the US were to sow just 10 per cent of its current farmland as hemp, for example, it wouldn't need to buy any foreign oil. Think about that.

The hemp tops go to good, and the stalks go for fuel, fibre and building materials, so it's like growing two crops in one field. Hemp will even grow on damaged, exhausted or marginal soil, so we don't need to use our prime farmland to grow car fuel. We could even reclaim thousands of acres of unused and abandoned land, and create jobs.

Hemp doesn't need the chemical fertilizers and pesticides that other crops need, which saves fuel and lowers soil runoff pollution. Hemp fuel burns clean, which would lower air pollution and reduce associated health and environmental issues. Hemp also refreshes the soil, so putting it into rotation with other crops will actually heal - not deplete - the soil,

So why do we keep using corn for fuel when hemp is cheaper, better, healthier, and cleaner? Because governments don't want to "send the wrong message to youth" about marijuana.

[|RES|arod]

This is all a conspiracy!!!

[wads]

whos this, agile?

[dys]

I absolutely hate saying this, but he's right.

[stas]

what are the sources on this (scientific ones)? and how much water does hemp methanol production require?

[Levicon]

Don't Believe Hippie Propaganda.
Wanted benefit, the exhaust from hemp fuel can get you high. Then you don't even need to buy it! Just go sit downtown in a major city.

[dys]

nobody believes that. lol

[BoSlim]

Ok for those of us who don't smoke, can someone explain the difference between hemp and marijuana? I realize I could just google it but a simple answer here will suffice.

[shock-g]

hemp is basically the unsmokable version of weed. lots of seeds and almost no THC, definitely not enough to do anything.

[polarity]

Don't Believe Hippie Propaganda.
Wanted benefit, the exhaust from hemp fuel can get you high. Then you don't even need to buy it! Just go sit downtown in a major city.

You fail on so many levels.

[FaLsE_Ph-]

environmentalism and biofuel/ethanol/E85, is all bullshit, it takes more resources, energy, and pollutes more than just using regular oil. but since you're canadian, i support this, go ahead and screw up your socialist nation more! kidding.

[BoSlim]

Ok I was just curious because I didn't know if that meant there'd be lots of theft from marijuana fields growing in the US, but I guess if Hemp is different enough and not really "smokable" then it sounds like a plan.

[FREDBEAR]

If the US were to sow just 10 per cent of its current farmland as hemp, for example, it wouldn't need to buy any foreign oil. Think about that.

I'm choosing this line but my comment really goes for the whole article. I think its great, if its true. Got proof?

Hemp will even grow on damaged, exhausted or marginal soil, so we don't need to use our prime farmland to grow car fuel. We could even reclaim thousands of acres of unused and abandoned land, and create jobs.

I don't think there is really a lot of land that isn't already covered in corn, beans, roads, ditches, water, cows, or people. What little there is I would rather see left to native species rather than cleared and plowed under for hemp.

[MassacrE]

environmentalism and biofuel/ethanol/E85, is all bullshit, it takes more resources, energy, and pollutes more than just using regular oil. but since you're canadian, i support this, go ahead and screw up your socialist nation more! kidding.

If I had to choose between the author of this article, who writes for the largest newspaper in a major metropolis and has a journalism degree combined with a political science degree compared to................you............. I choose the other guy. BTW who are you again? Around since 03 and I've never even heard a whisper of you.

[stas]

If I had to choose between the author of this article, who writes for the largest newspaper in a major metropolis and has a journalism degree combined with a political science degree compared to................you............. I choose the other guy. BTW who are you again? Around since 03 and I've never even heard a whisper of you.

pick the author who quotes no sources all you want, they wind up equal. and lol, like journalism and pol sci degrees make him an authority on ethanol, rofl.

what false posted is CORRECT for most of the known ethanol processes. as an example, corn ethanol is not viable because it sucks up tons of WATER, it would bleed entire cities dry, and we're not talking about watering crops here, we're talking production process. corn ethanol is also not any cleaner in emissions than others. thats why i asked you for more information, which you seem to lack, probably because the author does too (unless you just omitted the all important citations).

[MassacrE]

Clearly the author is wrong, and you're right. mhmm.

[stas]

Clearly the author is wrong, and you're right. mhmm.

clearly you have no clue as to whether what he wrote has any truth in it whatsoever.

we're probably aware of other articles that detail these things (several within the last 7 months in the WSJ). im still waiting for the sources of the information in the article, where is it? if you dont have any, pulling the "hes an author, he must be right" card is pretty weak. plenty of authors lie, mislead, and distort. this isnt the cesspool, we expect you to have FACTS to back it up.

[MassacrE]

uhm so it's ok for you to assume the rules of a non cesspool forum but it's not ok for me to assume a journalist in a major canadian city writing for the largest canadian newspaper has a good head on his shoulders? Whatever dude. Have fun.

[stas]

uhm so it's ok for you to assume the rules of a non cesspool forum but it's not ok for me to assume a journalist in a major canadian city writing for the largest canadian newspaper has a good head on his shoulders? Whatever dude. Have fun.

i asked for his sources. all youve done is be contentious without providing anything other than what was probably an opinion article. if it wasnt an opinion article, im sure it would cite specific studies or government agencies, because thats what good journalists do. the size of the paper and city dont mean anything.

[hate]

Post a link to the article?

[mazui]

all of the people that shun this idea based on the fact that hemp is the male version of cannabis... how many people has marijuana killed? if you guessed zero you're right. how many people are going to be killed by a catastrophic climate disaster or the next world war triggered by the world powers divvying up the last of the worlds fossil fuels? if you guessed most, you're also right.

[Brick]

uhm so it's ok for you to assume the rules of a non cesspool forum but it's not ok for me to assume a journalist in a major canadian city writing for the largest canadian newspaper has a good head on his shoulders? Whatever dude. Have fun.I don't know how much of the article is right or wrong (I'll guess wrong because if it was a miracle crop as stated it would probably have more attention). Despite that, however, you're incredibly gullable if you think you can believe the guy just because he wrote a published article. There is incorrect information in the WSJ every day and you're going to assume a journalist who writes for a popular newspaper will always submit completely accurate information and never mislead readers? Do you believe everything you see on Canada's news channels too?

[Sponge]

gonna need proof that ethanol/biofuel/whatever pollutes more than gas.

i realize it's not more efficient as far as its actual use goes - i was pointed here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density) when reading about ethanol elsewhere - but wikipedia has it that ethanol is more efficient overall than gas (and i figure a wikipedia link, while not the best, is better than nothing):

Several studies released in 2002 estimated that the net energy gain for corn ethanol is between 21 and 34 percent. In comparison, gasoline production yields a net energy loss of between 19 and 20 percent.


i googled the "article," only to find out that the first post is only a letter to editor and not an actual article (ahem (http://register.thestar.com/comment/article/347040)), which is disappointing because it'd be interesting to see if what this guy is saying is legit or not.

[Sinmanc]

Some info on hemp for fuel http://www.hempcar.org/hempfacts.shtml

[MassacrE]

My mistake then, I was reading the editors credentials not the writers. I apologize. That being said the letter to the editor seems to be dead on with regards to the other listed resources.

Brick - I find it odd that you're implying it's gullible to believe what I read in a Canadian newspaper (Canadian papers and media aren't the crooks that the American media are) but then..... you believe if Hemp was a logical and beneficial alternative it would receive more attention? Maybe we're in different worlds but I know better than to believe our governments and American media promote is what's in our and the worlds best interest vs their ability to make a profit.

[FluxCapacitor]

He is just using Canada because that's where you are. All media sources lie no matter what, Canada, America, even the praised BBC. Everybody distorts things 1 way or another, it is how you make money.

[InnerFury]

from what i read, and understand(which is very little on the subject) the process of turning corn, hemp or other plants is a waste of resources and you only come up with a 25% margin of gain from the conversion and distillation processes. i dont even know if that factors in the amount of land required to make this either. I saw this information on the news and a few technology magazines i read.

if i had to guess the author probably just saw hemp on the list of items that can be converted, found out it was better than corn and thought he could stir up people with his article.

the reason i am led to believe this is because cellulosic ethanol production seems to be the way of the future in ethanol production and is more of a 2nd generation view to this process as compared to using just plants. which seems to be an already outdated thought process.

http://www.mmdnewswire.com/the-mrket-for-cellulose-ethnol-1158.html

the link is a small report based of the energy business report's "the market for cellulose ethanol". that book cost 500 dollars and is 170 pages, so i didnt have the resources to actually quote from that.

[senor-turkey-lurkey]

I'm not going to look up my source on this. I'm fairly sure I saw it on one of those TV shows about global warming.

But I think there is a ratio that goes
Corn = just over 1:1 (energy out:energy in) ratio
Sugar Cane = used in some South American country is approx 20:1
Switchgrass = somewhere near 70-80:1

[Brick]

Brick - I find it odd that you're implying it's gullible to believe what I read in a Canadian newspaper (Canadian papers and media aren't the crooks that the American media are) but then..... you believe if Hemp was a logical and beneficial alternative it would receive more attention? Maybe we're in different worlds but I know better than to believe our governments and American media promote is what's in our and the worlds best interest vs their ability to make a profit.Flux pretty much said it. Also, just to reiterate, I'm not saying that I fullybelieve one thing or another. I'm sure there are facts in there that are true. However, misleading facts are about the most common thing you'll see in any newspaper.

[ffej-OD]

we expect you to have FACTS to back it up.

*unless its a thread about religion.

[PerPlexeD]

*unless its a thread about religion.


ziiiiiiiiing

[ohman]

Corn-based ethanol is (as stas has so gently outlined) a waste of resources, and in the end gives marginal to non-existent reductions in greenhouse emissions.

Hemp, if this article is to believed is marginally better. But, by far our best bet is cellulosic ethanol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_Ethanol). Not derived from switchgrass (per the wiki link) or any other plant based source, but entirely grown from bacteria. I worked in a lab my sophomore year that was heavily involved in cloning and characterizing cellulose synthase enzymes.

[FaLsE_Ph-]

I'm around on the catacombs, I don't usually post too much, just read around. I did play TFC for a long time, for the most time in [SMP] if that answers your curiosity massacre.

Personally I don't trust many journalists if any at all, every single person and organization such as a newspaper has their own agenda that they're trying to pass, keep in mind no one is really impartial anymore.

This is off topic, but I'm just a little curious.
For example, you have these journalists back in the 1970's talking about Global Cooling and how we're entering an ice age, and now those same journalists flipped sides and now say the Earth is warming? These journalists are just jumping on the bandwagon and writing about what sells to people. Right now, it's a fad to be Green, and unfortunately many of these hippies are just hindering our Energy production and costs.

- (side note) Come on now, if you truly believe in Al Gore's lies and deceit (and keep in mind he's making a ton of money off of this) answer me this, we know that the Earth warmed and cooled before without a significant presence of man, how did it do that?

Anyways, these so called expert journalists with their degrees and IVY league schools, they're no smarter than you and me. They're not the expert on anything except that they probably could write better than me. I mean you can't possibly agree 100% with everything you read in the newspaper because the author has a double major right? That's ignorance.

I'm strictly looking at the science and the facts, the fact is that ethanol uses more resources than oil and is just inefficient to produce today, maybe down the road they'll find a cheaper way, but as of right now, no.

Also, a lot of my information I get is from Dr. Bill Wattenburg who holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Nuclear Physics. Surely a Electrical Engineer and Nuclear Physicist knows a little more about Ethanol than someone with a Poli Sci/Journalism degree.

A Berkeley study showing why production of Ethanol is not worth it

http://www.kgoam810.com/viewentry.asp?ID=333727&PT=PERSONALITIES

[TkMasTaH]

I remember reading this somewhere (but I dont have the time/effort to go find it again), but I believe I read that ethanol is more harmful to the ozone layer than is fossil fuel.

[Suicidal Anomaly]

So I didn't read all the way through this thread but from my understanding it's well known that the amount of energy it takes to produce ethanol is more than the amount it takes to produce gasoline. It also doesn't produce as much energy (something like 1.4 gallons of ethanol would = 1 gallon of regular gas) and it can't be transported in pipes since unlike gasoline it eats through the pipes. This means it has to be transported which means even more energy poured into the process. As others mentioned it's essentially a waste and right now the main thing ethanol production is doing is raising the price of corn.

[SoulEdge]

and everything else that eats it or uses it

[sc`]

Hemp really is somewhat of a miracle plant in terms of the versatility, hardiness, and benefits. There's a reason you haven't heard more about it... it's illegal.

[FluxCapacitor]

Hemp isn't illegal...marijuana is. They are different plants. Hemp cant get you high.

[sc`]

And what exactly do you think hemp is? They are the same plant, just different strains. They are both the cannabis plant.

From Wikipedia:
"The US is the only industrialized country where hemp is illegal to grow."
"Industrial hemp remains legal for import and sale in the U.S., but U.S. farmers still are not permitted to grow it."

I'd say that if something's illegal to grow, it can generally be classified as illegal.

[LiTNiN]

OMG Mass...many many months/years away...and you're still here.....love it. you have a free vacation at my N. Wisconsin cabin if yer ever in town you jackass......your post basically crystalizes the essence of my thoughts, ....glad to know you'll be here in another 3 years when I check in.


edit = cause I know there is probably some little punk ass kiddiy out there that thinks they are the grammar police...screw you

[LiTNiN]

Hemp isn't illegal...marijuana is. They are different plants. Hemp cant get you high.

Always knew you were misinformed

[agi|e]

Corn-based ethanol is (as stas has so gently outlined) a waste of resources, and in the end gives marginal to non-existent reductions in greenhouse emissions.

Hemp, if this article is to believed is marginally better. But, by far our best bet is cellulosic ethanol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_Ethanol). Not derived from switchgrass (per the wiki link) or any other plant based source, but entirely grown from bacteria. I worked in a lab my sophomore year that was heavily involved in cloning and characterizing cellulose synthase enzymes.


Interesting stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol

"Cellulosic ethanol is chemically identical to ethanol from other sources, such as corn starch or sugar, but has the advantage that the lignocellulose raw material is highly abundant and diverse."

"The ground of North American forests is littered with millions of tons of cellulose-containing waste-wood including bark, branches, and leaf litter which has fallen from trees. This material could be harvested and converted into ethanol fuel. The processes that produce lumber products also generate cellulose waste that is discarded that could be used to produce cellulosic ethanol."

"According to US Department of Energy studies conducted by the Argonne Laboratories of the University of Chicago, one of the benefits of cellulosic ethanol is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 85% over reformulated gasoline. By contrast, starch ethanol (e.g., from corn), which most frequently uses natural gas to provide energy for the process,may not reduce GHG emissions at all depending on how the starch-based feedstock is produced. A study by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, find "net climate warming" effect of ethanol produced from corn, rapeseed (canola), and sugarcane when compared to oil.[1]"

Of course taking all the organic material off of forest floors would probably be bad longterm for the forests health.

[stas]

Corn-based ethanol is (as stas has so gently outlined) a waste of resources, and in the end gives marginal to non-existent reductions in greenhouse emissions.

Hemp, if this article is to believed is marginally better. But, by far our best bet is cellulosic ethanol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_Ethanol). Not derived from switchgrass (per the wiki link) or any other plant based source, but entirely grown from bacteria. I worked in a lab my sophomore year that was heavily involved in cloning and characterizing cellulose synthase enzymes.

interesting stinc, i was not aware of that. sounds like another cause on facebook to join but not actually act on!

[SoulCutter]

So I didn't read all the way through this thread but from my understanding it's well known that the amount of energy it takes to produce ethanol is more than the amount it takes to produce gasoline. It also doesn't produce as much energy (something like 1.4 gallons of ethanol would = 1 gallon of regular gas) and it can't be transported in pipes since unlike gasoline it eats through the pipes. This means it has to be transported which means even more energy poured into the process. As others mentioned it's essentially a waste and right now the main thing ethanol production is doing is raising the price of corn.

This man speaks truth.