Another Look at Oil from Coal
I would argue that YES, coal-to-liquids processes such as Fischer-Tropsch are indeed very dirty, wasteful, overly expensive and potentially damaging to the environment in terms of carbon footprint...
UNTIL one factors in the waste, expense, and carbon footprint of two GIGANTIC wars.
Then suddenly Fischer-Tropsch starts to look quite benign.
Given that we basically have two choices, continued wars and being held hostage by increasingly fanatical nations and a somewhat dirty domestic process, I think I would choose the latter, even as I continue to work for even cleaner alternatives.
Read the article HUFFINGTON POST/Filling your tank with....coal
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Good luck dealing with those coal boys. I've done it and dealt with them to this day. There's some sort of invisible hand that can "move mountains" at work here.
One thing everyone needs to understand - coal is going to be around for a while, despite what a wretched fuel industry it is.
Another thing the coal folks need to know; there's an invisible border that you cross when you leave the coal fields. Past that border, people hate coal and they would prefer some other kind of fuel or renewable alternative energy.
While coal is still a factor, I recommend people clean coal up and seek out sustainable lifestyles. We are past "PEAK OIL AND COAL". The transition is just getting started. You need to be on the right side of history. For now, we need to work together, and as coal is phased out, there need to be a seamless transition into the new power and energy providers.
Read the article HUFFINGTON POST/Filling your tank with....coal
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My community is facing the prospect of 20 new 1.5 mile long uncovered coal trains per day through the heart of our city to a coal dump smack dab beside sensitive marine eco systems on the Puget Sound. All to supply China with ores from Montana (Peabody coal owned by Australians) on trains (Burlington Northern owned by Warren Buffet) right along our city's waterfront and highest priced development areas.
This would be the largest Coal Port and dump in America (to be built and operated by SSA Marine) for the sake of a few industrial jobs. These are not the 'green jobs' our Govenor Gregoire promised. The existing rail corridor, hailed 100 years ago, hosts a few Amtrak and materials trains to Canada and back daily.
Our pristine natural environment, fresh air, and much of our local tourism and business vitality is at stake. Other cities in Washington and Oregon have fought this off. How else will Montanna get their coal to China? Dust from coal is toxic to wildlife, soils and air. The associated CO2 and pollution in China will drift on prevailing winds back to our shores via acid rain. There are no easy answers. As long as we use coal, we will all be affected from it's extraction and use
Read the article HUFFINGTON POST/Filling your tank with....coal
The Zuckerberg Diet: "I eat only meat from animals I killed myself"
People are spineless and pathetic. I doubt that 1 in 1000 meat eaters would be able to kill the animals that they eat.
They would not be able to put the electrocuting clamp on the pigs head or shoot the steel rod into the cow brain then throw the chain around the hind legs drag it up into the air and slit the throat, watch the blood pulse out in gushing spurts till finally, bless fully the animal stops thrashing and is still.
We see ads for other food being made, cows milked, produce picked, grains harvested. I challenge a meat company to advertise by showing a slaughter house. If the public had to see an animal being slaughtered they would probably not eat it.
Good luck meat eaters you cover your eyes and plug your ears, but it still happens everyday so you can stuff your face.
Congrats to Mark and anyone who is willing to face what eating meat really means.
Read the article GUARDIAN/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg only eats meat he kills himself
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Killing is implicit in eating meat and I do both, although not as dogmatically as some cleaver-wielding billionaire 20 year olds.
I think if everyone who currently eats meat had that experience (which would be coherent) they would become more respectful of the animal and aware of the origins of their food, although I admit that there would also be a lot more vegetarians since we're now so detached from the most basic acts that are part of our daily sustenance.
Read the article GUARDIAN/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg only eats meat he kills himself
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Like many townies, he's just late to the party.
I shoot game when in season (Pheasant, Duck etc.) & vermin all year round
(rabbits).
When you skin & butcher an animal it's never pleasant & you do
appreciate the work involved to achieve kitchen ready status. You also have to
be aware of animal health issues so not to eat diseased meat.
Killing an animal with a knife might be done peacefully on a single animal,
but if it was humane then slaughter men wouldn't use rifles for humane dispatch.
A bullet to the brain is lights out instantly.
As regards eating meat, I went to a lecture by David Attenborough many years
ago & he was asked his views on vegetarianism. As he stated, we have the
physiology of an omnivore, we're not designed to eat just meat or just
plants.
Read the article The Register/Billionaire Zuckerberg Kills to Eat
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I still think that you should not be a be able to eat meat if you do not have the stomach
to deal with where it comes from.
So should you have to kill everything you eat a la Zukkerburg, no that would
be unworkable today. But I do think that people who want to eat meat should at
least have to kill an animal every so often. Bit like taking a driving test.
Every couple of years go to an abattoir (so the thing you kill would not have to
suffer more than normal, by your lack of experience) and do your 'meat
certification'.
I also think PETA and other animal rights groups should be behind this idea,
as I think that there are a lot of people out there eating meat who would not
have the stomach to kill anything, so the ranks of veggies would increase as a
by product, though we would have a new phenomenon of the 'grudging veggies'.
It all comes down to can you look the nice fluffy lamb in that face and takes
it's life, if you can I have no problems with you, enjoy your lamb and mint
source. If you can't, like me, I have a big problem with as a person who cannot
look the animal in the face, but are quite happy to eat it's flesh afterwards,
that's cowardly in the extreme.
Read the article The Register/Billionaire Zuckerberg Kills to Eat
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Why not just take medicines that you've concocted yourself or only ply in
aircraft that you've built yourself, or insist on representing yourself in
court? Perhaps because it's stupid? Perhaps because someone else might do a
better job?
Zuck's attempt to take the moral high ground by "doing it himself" presumes
firstly that there is something morally dodgy about the omnivorous diet our
species was born to and secondly that there is something wrong with people
cooperating. I think the first is adequately dismissed with "if God
intended..." jokes. The second, however, is just plain odd. Especially from a
man who runs a social networking website.
Read the article The Register/Billionaire Zuckerberg Kills to Eat
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I applaud him for trying this, but if he wants to eat meat that he personally
killed then he should look into Boar hunting. Especially since they are an
introduced species here in California, and are doing damage to the ecosystem.
Heck I am trying to get a chance to go boar hunting this fall. He should try it
as the meat is not contaminated with chemicals, pesticides, and antibiotics like
domestically raise pigs.
Plus it tastes so much better due to a omnivorous
diet of everything from acorns to grubs. Compare that to a diet of corn, and
maybe some slop that domestic hogs usually get. Plus there is less fat on a wild
pig compared to domestic hogs.
Read the article MERCURY NEWS/Zuckerberg goes on a diet: Only meat he eats is what he kill
The Trouble with Tilapia
It's completely disgusting and it's a nasty business and it's not a response to feeding a hungry world, it's a corporate response to human appetite with no regard to serious consequences that radiate from farming these fish, and there's little nutritional value. And of course the corporate methods of fattening pigs, cattle and chickens rapidly for slaughter in infanthood is the same with these fish. Feed 'em corn.
Read the article NEW YORK TIMES/Another side of tilapia, the perfect factory fish
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I think this is a case of throwing the baby out with the bath-water. Wild fish just aren't going to be an option for much longer so I think that if we want to continue to have fish as part of our human diet that we need to continue to improve ways to make aquaculture more sustainable and more nutritious.
The primary ecological concerns around tilapia farming as outlined in this article were centered on farming the fish using pens in lakes. We can get around this by farming them in tanks using recirculating aquaculture techniques. In fact, recirculating aquaculture facilities can be set up anywhere, including in old abandoned buildings in city centers where the harvest can be closer to the end customer. The other environmental issue is about disposal of the fish waste.
As a passionate aquaponic gardener who uses fish waste as the primary plant fertilizer throughout my greenhouse this concept absolutely baffles me! Fish waste, when run through a properly set up aquaponics system, is a nearly perfect, complete plant food. Why would there ever be a waste disposal problem - just grow plants with it!
As far as the nutritional aspects of tilapia I firmly believe that as soon as consumers start demanding better farm raised fish feed by better feed that the feed will be improved. Right now we are just complacently buying tilapia from China and assuming it is healthy for us. We need to speak out for organic fish feed with sustainably farmed fish meal (or a fish meal substitute that is high in Omega 3) and no GMO corn and soy!
Read the article NEW YORK TIMES/Another side of tilapia, the perfect factory fish
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Tilapia isn't a bad fish! It is easy to grow and tastes great when properly raised and harvested. What is bad are the current practices surrounding the raising of tilapia. There are solutions available now to solve these problem, however. We just need to demand that they be used!
Thanks for the story of tilapia. I appreciate well-researched reports.
Human overpopulation is the root cause of all these problems: how to feed soon to be 9 billion humans without destroying the planet. More on this topic can be found on the Times' Dot Earth blog.
Infinite steep growth rates, both in human numbers and growth on how much we consume .. well it's a path to disaster.
As to consumer choice, somewhere we forgot to value quality and chose quantity. Judging by the bulging waistlines, it would be far healthier to spend more on local food (grown in known, regulated conditions) and eat less.
Perhaps we need to require that we consumers have journalists photograph and investigate the source of all of our food. That alone would exclude the incredible stupidity of buying food from China. The only foods we should buy from China are local Chinese specialties. They should be luxury items here, consumed rarely.
Tilapia can be farmed sustainably in aquaponics, which is the combination of recirculating aquaculture (fish farming)and hydroponics (soilless plant culture). Essentially, in aquaponics the fish waste is broken down by microbes into usable nutrients for the plants. In absorbing the nutrients, the plants help to clean the water for the fish. For every pound of fish raised, you also get roughly 10 lbs. of vegetables...all from one input of feed, one infrastructure and one effort. This is efficiency at its best. Aquaponics is a growing industry because it provides high quality protein and vegetables without the use of fertilizer, pesticides or herbicides. You can learn more about aquaponics at www.aquaponics.com
Read the article NEW YORK TIMES/Another side of tilapia, the perfect factory fish
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The world population growth rate is slowing primarily due to urbanization, but that still leaves almost 7 billion of us on planet earth...Planned Parenthood and the pill or not. Out of that huge number, the U.N. FAO estimates about 20%, or 1.4 billion,people primarily depend upon fish for the protein in their diet. Meanwhile, 90% of the large commercial fish species have been removed from the ocean. Most of the catch now is small fish like sardines and anchovies, ironically which have proliferated as the large predator fish have disappeared.
World catch rates have only increased due to extensive exploitation of every oceanic region and species. Many familiar commercial species are listed as threatened. The case of the Atlantic Cod is a good example. When Henry Cabot sailed to the New World in the 15th Century, he found the waters of the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada so teeming with cod, his men caught as much as they wanted by just lowering baskets directly overboard into the water and letting the cod swim in! Those fantastic days are long gone.
By the early '90s, cod stocks off Newfoundland's coast were almost wiped-out by foreign factory ships from Russia and Asia. Belatedly, the Canadians closed the fishery; but it has yet to recover. Newfoundland entered a profound economic depression, alleviated only by heavy Canadian government welfare to laid-off fishermen. As luck would have it, the Newfoundland economy was finally rescued when abundant oil reserves were also found offshore on the Grand Banks. Yet, the cod stocks still have not recovered.
Wild fish catches cannot feed almost 2 billion people and growing, mostly in the developing countries. As a result, aquaculture is playing an increasing role. And not just in the developing world. Most of the salmon you buy in the grocery store is "farmed", not wild caught; and tilapia and catfish are produced almost industrially. Catfish production has a longer history and better environmental record than tilapia production, because it mostly occurs in this country (Mississippi is one of the world catfish leading producers) where there is some environmental regulation.
In the developing countries, there is little if any environmental regulation over aquaculture; and even where there are regulations, pervasive government corruption makes for easy avoidance. One must merely grease the right palms to avoid the regulations.
The solution is to find fish or invertebrate species that consumers will like, which grow fast, and which will not overly pollute a containment pond or natural lake. Preferably, species that are not disease vectors as well. In this regard, much research has been looking at freshwater crustaceans, like crayfish. Cajuns in this country will gladly testify to the tastiness and reproductive capacity of "crawdads"; but there are larger, more prolific species outside this country.
One interesting project has been looking at the Australian freshwater lobster, the world's largest freshwater crayfish, native to the Murray River, SW Australian rivers and streams, and Tasmania. These crayfish look almost exactly like Maine lobsters and are about the same size. They are also reportedly more tasty than Maine lobsters. One problem has been a low growth rate; but scientists are working on speeding that up. The great thing about crayfish is they can tolerate less than pristine water conditions, are active scavengers and carrion eaters, so they can be fed almost any kind of dead animal protein. Some, like the giant Australian fresh water lobsters, also eat algae and water weeds, along with carrion.
Someday, large numbers of people around the world may be dining regularly on delicious, giant freshwater lobsters. How's that for progress in aquaculture.
Read the article OREGON LIVE/Make that a "World without... unfarmed fish."
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