Energy, Garbage, and Hatred of Cows

In the past year or less we've seen a fashion of amazing stupidity sweep over governments in Asia, Europe, Canada and the US -- a fashion that calls itself "Green" and "Environmentally friendly", even while its practitioners prove that they know nothing about ecology, biology, chemistry, natural history or economics.  Only thundering ignorance or stupidity -- take your pick -- can explain some of the disastrous "Green" policies we've seen being pushed around the world.  

Example: Biden's administration pushing blithely for solar and wind-generated electricity, while ignoring all other sources, even though all real-time analyses show that solar and wind can't produce nearly the electricity that the US needs, never mind anyone else.  Never mind the fact that there are other technologies available right now that can produce far more.  

Hydroelectric power, for example, doesn't need huge rivers and enormous dams;   a simple undershot wheel, stuck out into the current of any flowing stream, can produce a modest amount of electricity -- and an array of several of them can produce quite a bit.  And then there's geothermal -- using lava, or a geyser, to heat water to make steam to turn a generator.  Nobody but the Icelanders have developed this to date, even though there are lava-sites and geysers all over the planet and especially in the US;  Mount Kilauea has been in continuous eruption for the last ten years, and Yellowstone Park has enough geysers that it could easily spare one of them to power half of the state it sits in.  And there's tidal;  the tides roll in and the tides roll out, and the US alone has thousands of miles of coastline.  Then there's clean -- that is, Thorium -- nuclear power;  Thorium isn't radioactive enough to be fissionable, but it's radioactive enough to heat water, to make steam, to etc.  And there's Hydrogen -- the most abundant element in the universe -- which can be captured and burned (oxidized, which produces nothing but heat and clean water) with less energy output than the burning will produce.  As for portable fuels, there's biodiesel -- oil squeezed from algae -- which is beginning to be produced in northern California, but not enough other places.  There's fuel-grade ethanol, which can be made from any cellulose-bearing vegetable trash by purely passive -- solar distillation -- means.  And then there's "natural gas" -- Methane -- which can be produced by passive "cooking" from sewage, manure, or other organic garbage.  And speaking of organic garbage, the Catalytic Depolymerization process can convert any organic garbage -- from old tires to sawdust -- into gasoline, kerosene, diesel oil or syngas.  Only one plant in America today, PKClean in Utah, is working on this, despite its enormous potential to not only make fuel but clean up all the garbage in our landfills and oceans.  The point is that petroleum is no longer a fossil fuel, and there's abundant clean energy if we're willing to take a multi-pronged approach.  We don't need laws ordering us to buy this, not buy that, and march in straight lines on Mondays. 

Admittedly, we have to stop burning coal.  Coal is too valuable to burn!  We need our coal for certain industrial processes, like smelting iron out of ore and then turning it into steel, or making carbon-fiber or artificial diamonds.  Stop burning coal -- which, of course, governments like China's won't do.

Now those are sensible, and profitable, means to get abundant energy and improve the environment.  But what do we see instead?  Governments clamping down on, of all people, farmers.  It's one thing to push for a return to pasture-raised livestock and naturally-created fertilizers -- such as composted organic waste and the above-mentioned leftovers from Methane production;  it's something else again to demand that farmers use no Nitrogen fertilizer, or stop raising livestock altogether. 

The general objection to Nitrogen-rich fertilizer is that it puts nitrous oxide compounds into the atmosphere.  Of course, the atmosphere is made up of 79% Nitrogen and 19% Oxygen to begin with -- everything else making up the remaining 2%  -- and every lightning-bolt fuses some Nitrogen and Oxygen into nitrous oxide compounds which then fall to the ground and are taken up by the topsoil, which feeds plants, and this process has been going on for a very, very long time.  Never mind that nitrous oxide molecules are bigger and heavier than either Nitrogen or Oxygen, and therefore fall to the ground anyway.  No, various ill-informed governments and Captains of (non-farming) Industry have gotten a bee in their collective bonnets saying that all Nitrogen-containing fertilizer use must be dropped by at least 30%, starting right now -- and they'll pass laws to make sure farmers obey.  

Never mind what that does to food-production, and food costs.  The farmers -- and food-consumers, which means everybody -- have protested vigorously.  This is what brought down the government of Sri Lanka, sent farmers in the Netherlands out in tractors to dump loads of manure on government building steps, and cost politicians their seats in American elections.  One has to wonder how those politicians and their cronies could have been so stupid.  

If politicians wanted to pass laws that made themselves look good and Green, all they had to do was forbid the production and sale of synthetic fertilizers, and encourage the use of organic ones such as mentioned above -- created by methods that Nature herself has been using for hundreds of millions of years.  Oh, but that would have required some intelligence, and even doing research oneself, rather than listening to the loudest lobbyist.

As a prime example of how somebody can be brilliant on one subject and incredibly stupid on another, we have the spectacle of Bill Gates, no less, pushing for everyone to turn vegetarian so that farmers will stop raising cattle, because cows are Eeeeevil.  Cows are Evil, apparently, because they take so much energy to raise (?) and because they fart -- and belch -- Methane.  Both these excuses are so thin that one has to wonder if Big Billy has a secret hatred of cows.  

First, cattle and their ancestors (and buffalos, and sheep, and goats, and antelope, and horses, and deer, and pigs) existed millions of years before humans evolved.  Their major food source has always been the multiple species of grass-plants.  They live on the open grasslands that have covered much of Earth's surface since before the fall of the dinosaurs, and are an integral part of the ecosystem.  They do not need to be kept in feed-lots and fed energy-intensive grain crops;  they're actually healthier when free-ranged and fed on pasture-grass, which grows without human support.  The truth is that there are large stretches of land which can't grow human-edible crops but which can feed cattle.  In fact, such lands actively need the droppings and pawings of cattle -- and other hoofed animals -- to maintain the plant-life.  Remove the cows and the land degrades.  The ecosystem itself needs those cows.

Second: Methane.  On the one hand we have energy companies doing some very dangerous mining (fracking) to collect Methane, so as to use if for stove-gas and electricity-generation.  On the other hand we have so-called ecology activists wailing that Methane in the atmosphere is a much more dangerous "greenhouse gas" than CO2, so all its sources have to be stopped yesterday.  Does anybody see a contradiction here?  Methane is produced in Nature by microbes breaking down organic waste in the absence of Oxygen -- in other words: under water, under topsoil, or in the guts of animals.  Eventually the Methane bubbles up out of the water or topsoil (or guts) and floats around in the atmosphere until destroyed naturally -- by a spark of electricity, or a bolt of lightning -- which turns the Methane into CO2 and water.  The CO2 is inhaled by plants, the bigger the better, and the water is welcome wherever it falls.    Lightning strikes somewhere on Earth 200 times per second, so this isn't really a problem.

So why this hatred of cows, really?  Why this stupid oppression of farmers, especially small farmers?  And why the (deliberate?) ignorance of all other energy-sources than coal, "virgin" (drilled up) petroleum, massive-hydroelectric, wind and solar?  Who benefits from this ignorance and stupidity?  Who's pushing it, and why?  Suggestions welcome.

--Leslie <;)))><