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Thursday, June 16, 2005

Poppy and the Seed

Bush did a decent job in his speech at the 16th Annual Energy Efficiency Forum on Wednesday. It helps that he read from a script. (He even said good things about France!) I find it interesting that Bush always orthogonalizes his ideas, compartmentalizing his thoughts according to a black&white dogma.

BUSHEthanolBio-diesel
CornWe've got to be aggressive about finding alternative sources of fuel. And one such source is ethanol. Ethanol comes from corn -- and we're pretty good about growing corn here in America, we've got a lot of good corn growers.
?
Soybeans?By the way, we can get the same type of alternative fuel from soybeans. It's called biodiesel. And that's a promising source of energy.1


And the following call to arms strikes me as either damning or revealing, depending on your Freudian interpretation:
Bush: Now is the time to act. Now is the time to put a strategy -- we should have done this 10 to 15 years ago.
Who was president 15 years ago? Dang-nabbit, Poppy, why'd you go and get us into this mess for?



1 A few days ago this: "Bush: I'll tell you an interesting opportunity for not only here, but for the rest of the world, is biodiesel. That is a fuel developed from soybeans."

1 Comments:

Professor Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Prez is almost half right.

Biodiesel can be made from soy - or any oil for that matter - canola (rapeseed), cotton, peanut, corn etc. would all work fine.

It would be tough to make ethanol from soy though - need the sugar that comes from converting the starch. Corn has a good deal of starch soy beans do not. I'm guessing but potatos (vodka) and barely (beer and whiskey) probably would work good. Also sugar beets.

To make ethanol mix fermentable sugar with yeast to make beer and distill to get rid of water.

In certain parts of this country we still make pretty good corn whiskey.

9:23 PM  

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