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Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

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Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#161
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that it caused the price of corn to go way up, meaning the poor in Mexico found food far more expensive. International markets and all that...

NAFTA and successive treaties forced Mexico to allow much cheaper corn from the USA to displace many smaller corn farms in Mexico, only larger farms could survive that and farming of corn is declining in Mexico. Also inexpensive processed food displaced traditional diet goods at the same time for the same reasons, probably contributing to obesity epidemic that only started in Mexico after those treaties.

This chart

https://statbase.org/data/mex-prevalence-of-obesity-among-ad...

Says that obesity was shooting up in Mexico before that. The obesity rate doubled in the 15 years before NAFTA. After NAFTA the rate doubled again in about 30 years. I can't really see any obvious change after 1994.

Are these numbers incorrect, or were you meaning some other metric of obesity or obesity epidemic?

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#162
post #119
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's time to develop new sealing materials? edit: thanks for the downvote. I should've said "Maybe it's time to _invest into developing_ new sealing materials?" ;)

Maybe it's time to stop burning food as fuel. What are the jets going to do anyway, bomb Iranian children? Remember when George W Bush signed into law the corn ethanol bill. Corn tripled in price within 8 years. Fuel didn't get cheaper. In fact it cost more to produce the ethanol.

Ethanol was always a political thing, and not technical. It was passed because it would triple the price of corn.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#163
it's the first time I have heard that bulldozing and burning tropical forests to put in palm oil plantations is "efficient" perhaps profitable , but that is generaly a function of subsidies and regulatory entitlement, in this case "green" that somehow overlook the bulldozers and the brown stained rivers from errosion, running all the way out into oceans where the silt smothers more life,the resulting products stamped with an improbable number of eco certifications, little wreaths and such. So after all that green washing success, why not jet fuel! Gold medal in the cynicism games for sure.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#164
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stouffers Spaghetti & Meatballs: 1. Cut film to vent 2. cook 6 1/2 mins on high 3. Let stand 1 min A frozen pot pie is 10.5 min. I don't know any frozen dinners for 3 min.

Pot pie microwave time 4-5 minutes: https://airfry.guide/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Banquet-Chic... As to let sit time, if you can instantly pop a potato or other food into your mouth after it comes out of the microwave you haven’t cooked it.

Marie Calenders are 10.5 min.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#165
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See Marie Calendar pot pies. 10.5 minutes.

Marie Calendar pot pie, the instructions list 5-6 minutes of time in a microwave. https://contenthandler-raleys.fieldera.com/prod/392493/1/0/0... They do want you to let them cool, but that’s true of anything you heat to a cooking temperature in a microwave. Potatoes have the same limitations, but most people don’t include the “don’t be an idiot” instructions in recipes just cooking times.

The ones I buy say 10.5 min on the box. Shrug.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#166
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This canard again [0]? You're comparing one piece of beef with a massive bag of Doritos. The banana's irrelevant, but last time you compared it to an enormous block of chocolate [1]. From experience a microwave meal should take about 3 minutes to cook so I don't know how you're taking more than 10 minutes unless, like your food item comparisons, you're cooking enough of them to feed an entire town. 0: https://news.yc…

Stouffers Spaghetti & Meatballs: 1. Cut film to vent 2. cook 6 1/2 mins on high 3. Let stand 1 min A frozen pot pie is 10.5 min. I don't know any frozen dinners for 3 min.

You didn't specify frozen - I'm looking at a meal taken out of the fridge, which still has a shelf time of ~a week. You're not comparing to a frozen steak either, which will also need an extended cooking time.

If you're concerned about cooking time then don't buy frozen, or let them defrost, and they take less time to cook. Since you're comparing to preparing a whole piece of steak and a potato, that shouldn't be too hard to do.

Also, your example is $3.34 [0] i.e. less than your $5 steak and 50 cent potato.

0: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Stouffer-s-Spaghetti-with-Meatbal...

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#167
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more to the environment than the greenhouse effect. Coconut plantations would compete with rainforest in much the same way palm oil ones do, since they have more or less identical growing climates. If you want to use biofuels, use a plant that grows in low-value areas like open fields. Something like corn or sugarcane.

Corn ethanol is a scam and consumes as much energy to make as it “produces.” Let’s not do that either.

Nobody who had looked at it believes that. Even the well known critics admit it is energy positive. The ratio isn't very good, but it is energy positive.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#168
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve got the answer with CAHSR. The only form of government that can build high-speed rail well is one like the CPC: a dictatorship which doesn’t need the consent of the governed. If we put them in charge of CAHSR they would have the job done in a couple years, but we would have to allow them to nationalize every single property in their way, by force if necessary, and cities, towns, unions, etc. would have no righ…

How US builds new highways in this situations, which are not different from rail in context of land use

The US rarely builds new highways anymore though. They expand existing ones a lot, but it is rarely a new build. Where they are built, it's on the edge of town where the entire farm was sold to a developer who specifically reserves some of it because the developers are well aware that people will not buy it in their new subdivision unless there's good roads to get into it.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#169
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It already takes 6 hours to fly. Add in security, checked bags, getting to and from the airport and it's close to 10 hours. 10 hours is still significantly faster than a hypothetical HSR. Remember that it would also have to stop along the way. Secon, not everyone lives/is traveling to a place that is near a hypothetical train station; you have to keep in mind that American cities tend toward sprawl. HSR leaving fro…

> Remember that it would also have to stop along the way Why? > Highly dependent on the individual & service class. There are flights that offer lie-flat seats for most of the passengers on board? I have to confess I haven't ever seen any domestic flights in North America that have lie-flat seats. But maybe I'm just poor. > But the point of this is you're actually physically there in less time. And more tired when yo…

A large advantage of the train is all the places on the way. I don't actually want to get from New York to Los Angeles. However, I live in the middle of the country between the two cities and by stopping near me, I could get on that train and I could travel, probably not to either New York or LA, but to some other city also in the middle of the country.

Night trains sound like a good thing, but in reality they're not. They work well only in the cases where a city is just far enough that it's an overnight trip, but not much more. Which is to say you get on the train, you brush your teeth, you go to sleep, you wake up in the morning, and you have just enough time to get practice before you get off the train. If your train instead arrives at 4 a.m., that's way too early and so you're gonna be sleeping on the train or they're gonna have to wake you up early in the morning. The other one is particularly a great option. The other way is even worse though if you're on the train go to sleep and you get wake up in the morning and there's still several more hours to do while you're sitting on a train doing basically nothing - except thinking the whole time, you know what? I could have just flown. This would have been an hour to the airport, another hour in line, three hours of flight, and they'd be there. And then they could sleep in a hotel, the cheapest economy hotel room is still much larger than the best luxury train sleeper car.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#170
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The opposition would be insurmountable to making it take 12+ hours to travel from NYC to LA, for example. It already takes 6 hours to fly. Add in security, checked bags, getting to and from the airport and it's close to 10 hours. Also you waste a day or ruin a night's sleep on the redeye. Compared to that an overnight train with a bed sounds delightful. People could do almost-day-trips, coast-to-coast, with no ill…

You still need all those things for a high speed train. The only reason it’s a little less today is that almost nobody takes passenger rail. Keep in mind these old downtown stations built in 1900 won’t be able to handle the kind of passenger counts that would “need” to be shifted from the airports, so don’t delude yourself into thinking you wouldn’t need big train stations built in the outskirts, crowded and irritati…

But your high-speed train enables a lot of things that are not really feasible to do on an airplane. speed train enables a lot of things that are not really feasible to do on an airplane. You should be thinking about a train for things where I could drive my own car but it'd be a little bit annoying to spend an hour on the road.

I happened to be in Des Moines a few years ago and waiting for my airplane an announcement came on that the plane to Chicago was delayed. And I overheard someone near me say, why would you fly to Chicago? You can just drive. Realistically, if Chicago is your destination from Des Moines, depending on where you go, it is quite possible that you can drive your car and get there faster than flying. However, a high-speed train could likely get you there faster than the airplane. Chicago was of course a large city. There's a very big difference between I want to go into the loop versus my destination is an outer suburb. I would expect your high speed train makes two or even three stops in the city of Chicago plus, some stops in other cities that happen to be along the way.

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