On climate change

I agree about the horns, dehorning can usually be done on adults, best when flies aren’t an issue, or higher temperatures perhaps, but it’s not fun or pretty, and traumatizing for the whole herd. And the animal left with horns certainly will bully the others, and potentially tear a strip off a person. So polled is the way to go.

You can use the rubber bands on calves horns too, but it’s a bit of an issue getting them on, and not 100%.

Sorry to hear about the neighbour, I wonder if the Highland might be worse due to problems seeing clearly? I have no idea their temperament, I know that dairy breeds can be notoriously aggressive.

Very true the smaller animals will be best direct marketed, but they are more amenable to home slaughter, and pose less risk per head, and a larger herd can be maintained on a given pasture.

Highlander tend to be very docile. I think it was a case of an old bull just going nuts. Never trust an old bull the can flip over night.
People tell me they don’t like galloway cattle because they are mean. You couldn’t prove it by me mine are as gentle as they come. I think it has alot to do with how you handle them.

Oh I have been told highlander beef tastes different then anything else as well. So you might want to try it before you buy too many.

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I think the BBC article has some basis. It’s fair to point out that a tree is the carbon accumulation of it’s life cycle. I think the truth lies between the two viewpoints. Wood harvest should be considered per acre, or area as compared to the growth of the same area over the same unit of time. Sustainable extraction can only equal the solar maximum of growth potential. In an area like Europe that is a significant constraint on total available sustainable energy. It’s my understanding that Europe had generally reached that limit by or before 1700, as Japan also had, and then both formalized conservation, and Europe began to tap into coal to allow growing energy use.

I think using biomass as fuel, but sequestering the char is the ecologically best approach, even though it significantly increases the biomass use, it directly and permanently removes carbon from the carbon cycle, only utilizing the hydrocarbons. Though that further limits the potential energy of biomass use, it puts us on a safer path.

In response to kingfred709 Colorado Rockies

http://www.srpnet.com/about/stations/snowflakebiomass.aspx

saw mills were also part of forest thinning . It was just logging . in areas that could be logged . so thinning did not occur
in area it was supposed to , and where it did it was clean cut .It was said program was run by cronyism

Thinning pays off. With renewable fuel standards, they can actually get some compensation for thinning out the underbrush. You have companies like red rock biofuels and coolplanet utilizing what would otherwise be a waste product that you couldn’t get any compensation for now that the pulp industry is pretty much fried.

In other words, the better forestry management practices can be at least break even or a small profit vs a net loss.

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A problem with this is that if the wood fuel has to be trucked more than about 50 miles the trucking cost eats up any value the fuel has. This is especially true in the mountains where the roads often don’t go directly from one place to another but have to follow the terain. Smaller generator plants, possibly portable on a few semi trailers that could be set up on large power lines might make it practical.

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Going down that road, there’s so much straw biomass out there, practically every agricultural town and many farms could be generating significant power, and best of all CHP. That would be a game changer I would like to see.

I agree. If each area could use the waste biomass it has as a power source it would be game changer especially for nonurban areas. There would be many new jobs, and more money would stay in the areas where we live.

Is there a railroad nearby ? I don’t see how we can use tar sands or oil shale as it takes more energy for the process then you end up with at the gas pump . Part of the oil sands was turning trees into oil , cool planet is going to try that . Kior tried that and went bankrupt .Because they could not get expected yield .Biomass renewable energy research is directed that way as well . . There was a time when transportation was a horse . I think more land was used for agriculture then compared to now . Some of it has been planted with timber … Most of it just became forest .

Actually, acres under the plow globally has never been greater. As a species we are entering entirely new, and frightening territory. A few years ago humanity finally outweighed all ants on the planet to become the top biomass entity. Arguably the ants are far more important to nutrient cycling and ecological balance, but we are writing a new chapter.

Local use of biomass is the highest efficiency use no doubt. Wouldn’t it be an interesting world if federal governments and utilities could provide funding and technical support for gas turbines running on biomass, and stationary IC generators? The grid is distributed, as are power needs - local employment and value added, local wealth generation, from underutilized resources…

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I think if .gov was in it for the peoples good health there could be much much better use of the land starting with no gmo as its makeing the ground acid or the round up ready monopoly trash deals. Or instead of the food make people hungery,grow real food like the original seeds they have stock piled for after the big crash.

Climate change is based on pollution…

or better said: people causing pollution…

Big company’s are lead by people, thinking “how can i max profit, how can i reduce cost”

normal people are just trying to save a dime… but its all about cost and profit…

Higher energy consumption equals more polluting impact on climate ( no need for being a mathematic genius )

Trying to be more efficient overall is the keyword…

any government should be focusing on sustainability and not on profit

For me: its more profitable if i DO Things On Wood ( Glowing charcoal actually, :grin: )
My profits decrease the polluting impact,
and how about YOURS ?

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Kior essentially did pyrolysis oil then tried to come up with a catalyst to remove oxygen from the molecules.

I never heard about them using pyrolysis oil mixed with the tar sands…
CoolPlanet is actually making the pyrolysis oil for one income stream, but they have another as they are also selling inoculated biochar as a fertilizer. They have field trial results for veggies. I think they are doing it in arizona, since it should hold water better, and irrigation is a huge issue in AZ.

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biomass material into a vessel. The material is rapidly heated to 500 degrees Celsius (932 degrees Fahrenheit) by a tornado of hot sand, and then rapidly cooled. The process creates a pourable bio-oil, which constitutes about 75 percent of the output.

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organic Rankine cycle power plant by Ormat, which is much simpler than conventional steam Rankine cycles and allows unattended operation of the facility.

http://www.ormat.com/ormat-remote-power-solutions-added-values

ensyn was owned by Ivenhoe energy that went bankrupt in 2015 ensyn does not mention it says it is owned by shareholders top of list is chevron also head of company is from chevron .

I thought I should post something about batteries regarding chevron

Chevron and Cobasys[edit]

By 2001, the Ovonics technology was owned by the oil company Chevron.
In 2001, oil company Texaco purchased General Motors’ share in GM Ovonics. Texaco was itself acquired by rival Chevron several months later. The same year, Ovonics filed a patent infringement suit against Toyota’s battery supplier, Panasonic, that led to a negotiated settlement in 2004. The agreement included extensive cross-licensing of each company’s patents, a joint research venture to improve nickel hydride battery technology, and restrictions on Panasonic’s use of its large format NiMH batteries for certain transportation uses until 2007.[10][11] In 2003, Texaco Ovonics Battery Systems was restructured into Cobasys, a 50/50 joint venture between ChevronTexaco and Ovonics, now known as Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) Ovonics.[12] Energy Conversion Devices announced that they had exercised an option to purchase back 4,376,633 shares of stock from a Chevron subsidiary, and would cancel and return them to authorized-unissued status. This is the exact number of shares that was listed as owned by ChevronTexaco in the January 15, 2003 filing.

ChevronTexaco also maintained veto power over any sale or licensing of NiMH technology.[13] In addition, ChevronTexaco maintained the right to seize all of Cobasys’ intellectual property rights in the event that ECD Ovonics did not fulfill its contractual obligations.[13] On September 10, 2007, ChevronTexaco (now known as simply “Chevron”) filed suit claiming that ECD Ovonics had not fulfilled its obligations. ECD Ovonics disputed this claim.[14] The arbitration hearing has been repeatedly suspended while the parties negotiated with General Motors over the sale of Cobasys back to GM. As of March 2008, no agreement had been reached with GM.[15]

In her 2007 book Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America, Sherry Boschert argues that large-format NiMH batteries (i.e., 25 amp-hours or more) are commercially viable but that Cobasys would only accept very large orders (more than 10,000) for these batteries. The effect is that this policy precludes small companies and individuals from buying them. It also precludes larger auto manufacturers from developing test fleets of new PHEV and EV designs. Toyota employees complained about the difficulty in getting smaller orders of large format NiMH batteries to service the existing 825 RAV4 EVs. Since no other companies were willing to make large orders, Cobasys was not manufacturing nor licensing any large format NiMH battery technology for automotive purposes. Boschert quotes Dave Goldstein, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Washington D.C., as saying this policy is necessary because the cost of setting up a multimillion-dollar battery assembly line could not be justified without guaranteed orders of 100,000 batteries (~12,000 EVs) per year for 3 years. Boschert concludes that, “it’s possible that Cobasys (Chevron) is squelching all access to large NiMH batteries through its control of patent licenses in order to remove a competitor to gasoline. Or it’s possible that Cobasys simply wants the market for itself and is waiting for a major automaker to start producing plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles.”[16]

In an interview with The Economist, Ovshinsky subscribed to the former view. “I think we at ECD made a mistake of having a joint venture with an oil company, frankly speaking. And I think it’s not a good idea to go into business with somebody whose strategies would put you out of business, rather than building the business.”[17] In the same interview, however, when asked, “So it’s your opinion that Cobasys is preventing other people from making it for that reason?”, he responded, “Cobasys is not preventing anybody. Cobasys just needs an infusion of cash.”

In October 2007, International Acquisitions Services, Inc. and Innovative Transportation Systems AG filed suit against Cobasys and its parents for refusing to fill a large, previously agreed-upon, order for large-format NiMH batteries to be used in the Innovan electric vehicle.[15] In August 2008, Mercedes-Benz sued Cobasys for again refusing to fill a large, previously agreed-upon order for NiMH batteries.[18][19]

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Just finishing up a week with friends in Rwanda. We are slowing deforestation by converting crop waste into charcoal and using the excess pyrolysis heat to make human solid waste safe to use as a binder for charcoal briquettes. Urine is mixed with charcoal and used as a high nitrogen soil amendment that sequesters carbon in the earth. Charcoal briquettes are used for cooking fuel and can also power IC engines. The human waste is captured in a simple water free and odor free toilet that costs $20 to build from local materials and stops flies from spreading disease to neighbors. I don’t know how many bowel movements it will take to make up for all that jet fuel that carried me over here, but it sure is fun making helpful stuff side by side with the locals. DOW inspires and encourages the do something practical attitude that made this project come to life.

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You have a noble mission in Rwanda, congratulation Bruce, it is not so common to give a true meaning to his life

I was thinking about farm land that had become a military base to develop the atomic bomb , afterwards it became forest preserve . agricultural areas that became urban areas . Personnel on duty went hunting deer and had a log roll over him breaking his leg badly. . Agricultural land that became a military base that has always been forest .Logging is a more dangerous occupation then the Military .

https://www.youcaring.com/bruce-southerland-474461

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