“Follow the maths” could also be said Follow-the-Numbers; Do-the-Arithmetic so far as how many actually do woodgas for engine fuels.
I’ve come to believe and maintain at best this is only ONE out of a Million of the general population.
Yep. Yep. That means only ~340 in all of the USA.
Now add in another 100 in the combined Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa.
Now add in the ones in all of geographical Europe including the UK, and the western Russian Federation. So what? Another 400-600. Enough, to for a time; to support at least two European woodgas forum groups. Holtz Gibt Gas. And another, earlier.
Other parts of the world like Asia, the rest of Africa and Central and South America’s I’ll say it is far less that a 1 in a 1,000,000.
Sure. Sure. Put up a YouTube of a DIY one-off system; one-time fueling an electric generator (unloaded) can rack up multiple 100,000’s of views.
So the interest is certainly out there.
But where is the run-time lessons and been-doing-it experiences support in those?
The YouTube’s having these put up, at best only gets a few hundred; to at most, a couple of thousand views. Pitiful.
Ha! So prove me wrong.
Quote all of the published authoritative papers. Bio-mass conferences (that have gone no-where).
And I’ll start listing off the 100’s of millions of dollars/Euro’s wasted on big failure projects.
Woodgas for engine fuels is a DYI technology. Period.
And again my opinion for those who will be successful it begins with occupied space heating with wood.
As Mr Wayne has said, “Show me your wood pile.”
Steve Unruh
And I hope it stays that way. Easier to stay under the radar for those willing.
WW2 was an exception - with all its commercial brands of gasifiers and fuel logistics. Kinda shows what it takes to make the general public accept the extra hassle.
How MUCH for a gasifier??? Well Mr Teslonian showed me how to make for less than $500 out of propain thaks!!!
Yeah these are the videos that get huge views and yeah then those of us trying to do this right and build something that can be used daily. Yeah we dont get chit for views.
There is a maxim I use that an idea is immediately suspect if you resort to using Tesla’s name or work to support it. Still a personal hero of mine warts and all.
Yeah, without Tesla we would not have nearly the modern electrical powered world that we have. Edisons rejection of AC then his $'s attempt to tank AC power generation and usage greatly tarnishes his reputation.
In the “Electric Wars” the stand out guy imho is George Westinghouse.
Concurrent with this was the wireless transmitter ego battles.
Then came the automobile developer wars.
Quite the contrast between Fords evolved “a car for every farmer” after two false business starts; versus the rich/investors-mans game of William C. Durants created GM evolved into of buying-up, and buying-out, for results. Then the gone solo engineer Walter Chrysler. Believing superior engineering would be the golden ticket.
How precedent these all were to the personal computer revolution late 1970’s to current.
The later cell phone wars of now. Many of the same personality types involved.
Who is the hero? Who is the villain? Mostly though, all specialty brilliant but unable to think through the ramifications of their creations.
My own opinion is the ones who learned, and used mass psychology, and addictions cycles are the real scum despicable’s.
I have a small handful of names.
More than a small handful - then my problem is really . . . me, myself and I.
Mirror, mirror.
S.U.
Hmmm. Sounds like some of my Dutch relatives. Wasn’t it four ethnic Dutch shopkeepers in New York City who got together and created the Christmas bonanza for themselves? They took their own ‘sinterklaas dag’ and moved it from December 5 to December 25. They omitted unsavory aspects like Zwarte Piet. And they added a huge pile of gifts, instead of just one small one, only for children 12 and under.
But hey! How does Coca-Cola make billions selling fizzy sugar water? And the sugar trade? Blaah! What would be left of our economy if we only dealt in things we really need?
Rindert
Mainly a question of rhetoric. So, maybe I could have said - What would be left of our economy if we didn’t deal in things we were better off without?
Most of us would agree that we are better off without tobacco, for instance.
Rindert
It wouldn’t hurt it at all. People will always find something else to spend money on.
There IS the adjustment in the supply chain, so if everyone quit smoking today, the tobacco farmers, factory workers, etc in that supply chain would be hurt pretty bad.
And they wouldn’t pay taxes anymore.
Now imagine if we all just stopped drinking alcohol.
And what if we all suddenly learned to take very good care of our teeth, to the point that we didn’t need so many dentists.
Similar with eyeglasses. What if we all suddenly learned to train children’s eyes, using eye exercise methods, so that very few of us would need eye glasses.
I could continue this list for a very long time. If we did a lot of this kind of thing there would be much less money changing hands, fewer taxes collected, a much smaller economy. And what would all those out-of-work people do? Perhaps we would become a nation of mostly subsistence farmers? Might not be such a bad idea, in my opinion.
Rindert
A little bit of alcohol is supposed to be okay for you, anything in excess is of course is bad.
on the Teeth there are some probiotics that can helps fight off various tooth issues.
For eye exercises when kids are young? I don’t know if that helps prevent glasses or not. It may in some cases. but not all.
What do they do now? they steal. It is a natural animalistic behavior.
Even subsistence farmers need some money and trade. Even the Amish use equipment from John Deere. So there has to be some industry.
Overall it is this great ideal that isn’t going to work. Especially when I read that 1/3 of the kids in chicago schools can’t read to grade level. And they have lowered those standards over the decades to get people to graduate to get them out of the system.
Where are they going to double-check the information they have been told? Someone else that can’t read?
I won’t argue you with you there, though history has taught us that people will find all kinds of things to use as a medium exchange. The veterans of the revolutionary war in Ohio used whiskey. I read about this in The Whiskey Rebelion, by Hogeland.
Rindert
Whiskey is probably still used as a medium for trade in some areas. If you are going to encourage people to stop drinking, then it’s value as a currency diminishes.
I guess I am not sure of the point of moving towards subsistence farming. I DO get more diversified agriculture crops. I do get people who want to provide at least some food for themselves or be part-time farmers. I do understand organics. I do understand better soil health. I don’t understand any widespread subsistence farming. At the end of the day farming is a business, not a charity.
Now, this could have been spun, so subsistence farming is what salatin is suggesting. He certainly isnt subsistence farming, he is making a lot of money but he is using ‘subsistence’ techniques. Even then, he isn’t self-sufficient. He does try to cut out as many expenses as possible which does add labor. However, he is also not far from a huge metro area that can easily pay higher prices for his products. I don’t think he uses many if any chemicals, GMO, etc. I could see like bayer/monsanto jumping out and labeling him as subsistence because it eats into their market.
