Is Domestically Produced Ethanol Worth the Cost? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Domestically Produced Ethanol Worth the Cost?

#51

Post by sliverstorm » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 2:47 AM UTC

DougWebb wrote: post #40

jcampbell1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the real concern is feeding people, you eat vegetarian. It is counter intuitive, but this statement is not exactly a fact. The corn->protein process via chickens is actually quite efficient. I'll give some sample numbers: 1 acre corn -> 150 bushels corn -> 10,000 lbs of corn -> 4000 lbs of chicken -> 1500 lbs of protein. 1 acre of peanuts -> 3000 pounds of peanuts -> 750 lbs of protein. So the corn->chicken proc…

Interesting analysis. We've bred chickens, cows, and pigs to all produce more meat for a given diet, but I guess we've done this better with the chickens. Maybe we need to focus on breeding the cows into creatures that have no legs, fit within tightly packed rectangular cages, and don't need as much internal organ space dedicated to processing food, so that the space can be devoted to tender juicy muscle instead.

I don't even see the connection, other than that you're an incredible cynic perhaps making a reference to Oryx & Crake.

It's not about pounds of meat per animal, it's about input energy to output energy. Chickens are simply better at harvesting energy from their food, and not because we've "engineered" them to be.

Re: Is Domestically Produced Ethanol Worth the Cost?

#52

Post by sliverstorm » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 2:50 AM UTC

lutorm wrote: post #45

sigzero wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A potentially serious problem with ethanol is that it can be incompatible with older rubber compounds. Also in higher concentrations it can cause corrosion to steel and aluminum that is a part of older motorcycle fuel systems.

I know that US regulations for cars have required ethanol-resistant materials for fuel for quite a long time, like several decades IIRC. Do you know if motorcycles are exempt from those regulations? If not, it seems the issue should be the same as with (ie no more serious than) old cars.

In general, motorcycles trail the automotive world by about 10-20 years in all respects.

Re: Is Domestically Produced Ethanol Worth the Cost?

#53

Post by DougWebb » Tue, Aug 02, 2011, 10:07 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #51

DougWebb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting analysis. We've bred chickens, cows, and pigs to all produce more meat for a given diet, but I guess we've done this better with the chickens. Maybe we need to focus on breeding the cows into creatures that have no legs, fit within tightly packed rectangular cages, and don't need as much internal organ space dedicated to processing food, so that the space can be devoted to tender juicy muscle instead.

I don't even see the connection, other than that you're an incredible cynic perhaps making a reference to Oryx & Crake . It's not about pounds of meat per animal, it's about input energy to output energy. Chickens are simply better at harvesting energy from their food, and not because we've "engineered" them to be.

I have no idea what Oryx & Crake is.

You think chickens aren't engineered? American farm chickens are entirely different creatures than you'll find in parts of the world where the chickens are allowed to breed freely. Even on American farms the egg-laying chickens are very different from the for-meat chickens. The for-meat chickens, in particular, are bred to be very efficient at turning food into meat.

My tongue-in-cheek proposal was that we need to breed cows to use less energy in their day-to-day lives, so they can use that energy to produce more meat. Lots of their energy goes towards creating, fueling, and maintaining their legs so they can walk around, so that seems like the first thing that can go. We'd have to selectively breed the shorter cows, and keep going while their legs get shorter and shorter over the generations until they become too short for the cow to walk when it grows up. These essentially-legless cows can then be kept in cages.

The other thing cows spend a lot of energy on is their digestive system, which is the typical multi-chamber system needed for hard to digest grasses. Most American cows don't eat wild grass anymore (unfortunately), they eat what we choose to feed them. If we feed them easier to digest food, they don't need the complex stomach anymore. This is tougher to breed for, so some genetic engineering may be necessary to kick-start the process. But eventually we can get cows with minimal digestive systems that are only able to digest some kind of highly nutritious and easily digestible paste, which we can pump right into a tube in their neck since they're cage-bound anyway. So that'll reduce the energy they need for most of their digestive system, which can be diverted to producing more meat instead.

Now, at this point, their heads and tails aren't really of much use anymore, and eliminating most of their senses and higher brain functions would probably be a blessing...