> I hear the poor people of the world that can't afford food now are really digging renewable stuff like ethanol.


The 'fun' part of that is, that even some members of the "Union of Concerned Scientists" have stated, that even if we bring the human caused carbon footprint to zero, it will still probably not be enough to stop global warming from continuing on - unabated.

Of course, we must remember that the "Union of Concerned Scientists" is in fact, a political organization, and thus anything any of them says, must be taken with a grain of salt, or at least a huge dose of "critical thinking".

Still, science is supposed to be the dispassionate study of observable, reproducible, phenomena, in orderly and precisely controlled ways. So I have always wondered: how can one be dispassionate, and at the same time have a passion, such as "Concern" to color your observations. How does a scientist involved in the politics of his/her own research retain dispassionate objectivity, thus still remaining a true scientist? Can any human alive actually do that? Yeah I know - an impertinent question from the "unqualified" - and not even P.C. either.

But I suppose we can still pat ourselves on the back for our goodly behavior of saving the environment; even if it does cause the less fortunate to starve now; and even without any compensating future benefit, such as actually saving the planet.


But worse yet, ethanol production is a very energy intensive process that puts out enormous quantities of carbon based gases into the air, per gallon produced. One gallon of ethanol actually has a worse carbon footprint than does one gallon of gasoline. It is also not very energy efficient - but it can be made here from "renewable" sources.

So bio-engineers working with the ethanol industry, have been genetically tinkering to facilitate quicker, less energy intensive fermentation processes, with a much smaller carbon footprint. Trouble is, so far all they have accomplished, is a microbe that at near ambient temperature, will quickly ferment even live growing plants, leaving them dead and half dissolved within a few hours - albeit in a mushy puddle of alcohol. Certainly not ready for prime-time!

Now just imagine that microbe leaking out of the lab or a future factory, into the environment, and then dissolving the whole world's food supply into muck, before it could be harvested, or even reproduce itself! Without seed, susceptible plant species would quickly become extinct!

But then again, even though all my 40 years of work as an engineer has been routinely submitted to critical peer review, before exposing the public to its potential hazards; I am still not qualified to ask such critical questions of these Omniscient, Omnipotent, so-called scientists.

It does make one wonder!

OPB


P.S. -- But then I guess I could also wonder: what does any of this thread have to do with trains?

Oh well!