Abhay Deol of India talks about hemp in the US

An article from india.nydailynews.com by Abhay Deol of India struck me as pertinent, especially as we are in the midst of getting this petition signed to go to the White House - www.minawear.com/about-us/ -  to make hemp legal in the US. Not sure its status in India, I think it is legal, but is certainly not grown in any abundance there - though it used to be very much. 



Abhay Deol at PVR Nest screening. (Photo: IANS)

New Delhi, May 24 -- Conspiracy theorists will have you know that the "war" on drugs is just a way to keep drugs in the black market so that their value remains "high". Comparing cannabis (marijuana/hemp) with hard drugs like cocaine, crack, heroin etc is a way to demonise the drug further.

The downfall of the plant started early last century in the US. Ironically, it was illegal NOT to grow hemp in a few states in the early part of US history. Even George Washington grew it. Its uses were many - as fiber for ropes and sails, to make paper, its seeds are high in proteins, it makes for a stronger, longer lasting material to make clothes with, than cotton. It was possibly the first agricultural crop. It can be grown in most climates, is drought resistant, requires little fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides. Its seeds can be used to make hemp oil.

A little known fact is that it can also be used to produce fuel! Henry Ford's first Model-T (the people's car) was even constructed from hemp! He said it was "grown from the soil" and its impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel! Hemp fuel is also biodegradable, does not contribute sulphur dioxide to the atmosphere and is non-toxic. Farmers around the world would greatly benefit from growing it. But alas, we live in a market driven economy and I personally have come to believe that the market is driven by scarcity.

If upon further research it is proved that hemp can provide us with so many alternatives, it would drive many companies out of business. Think about it, it can replace trees for paper, that would not be good for companies who make profit from cutting down trees. Being a weed, it grows really fast and outcompetes other weeds. Hemp strains produce their own resins that make the crop naturally pest free. Not good for companies that make pesticides! It can be used as a fuel! This is one of the major threats! Oil companies are some of the biggest giants in the corporate world. Both Henry Ford and Rudolf Diesel designed cars that ran on vegetable oils and hemp oil. This was a century ago!

Ford even said that the fuel of the future is going to come from weeds and fruits, anything that can be fermented to produce ethanol/ethyl alcohol. But as gasoline emerged as the dominant transportation fuel in the early part of the last century, as more and more oil fields were discovered, there was intense lobbying by the petroleum companies to maintain steep taxes on alcohol thereby killing the market for alternative fuels.

The rabbit hole goes deeper. The case for hemp as mankind's (and the Earth's) saviour cannot be made by me in a 300 word article (which I have far exceeded). Before the western influence started to dictate our laws, we were happy to spark up, drink, and even eat the damn drug with no one having any objection. Our festival of Holi is proof of that. Today it is illegal. So how is it that bhang is sold at government outlets during Holi? Why is it that sadhus who smoke chillums are not arrested? When and why did we bring a law to ban it? Was it to benefit us, or the US?

ETHANOL FROM STOVER

Finally! An article about making ethanol not from corn kernels, which we eat, but from stover, which is the parts we don't eat. In the New York Times yesterday, 7 July 2011, p. B10, Matthew L. Wald writes about the US Energy Department planning to provide a $105million loan to guarantee the expansion of an ethanol factory in Emmetsburg, Iowa, that intends to make motor fuel from stover. Not yet from hemp, which could be sourced from Canadian growers, but I hope that will follow - along, of course, with hemp in the US - thus providing jobs here.
POET is the company building the new plant, which will produce process 700 tons of biomass daily; currently it only handles one ton. Volume is necessary to make ethanol competitive. POET is not the only company to get a loan, the DoA is lending Coskata, a company backed in part by GM, $250million for a plant in Boligee, Ala., that will also convert household waste. Enerkem, based in Montreal, got a loan of $80million for a plant in Pontotoc, Miss., and Ineos Bio got a loan for $75million for a biorefinery in Vero Beach, Fla.
The increase in such ethanol production will give Americans jobs, reduce dependency on fossil fuels, and drive the price of a gallon.
POET's pilot plant in Scotland, S.D., has been operating since 2008 and converts a ton of corn stover a day into 75-80 gallons of ethanol, which costs today $2.50-3.00 a gallon, about 50cents higher than that produced from edible corn.
The stover is steamed and treated with acid, and then broken down by enzymes into ordinary sugar and a second sugar with one less carbon atom.
POET operates 27 corn based ethanol plants, and hopes to expand. Other companies in the US include Abengoa, from Spain, and Fulcrum Bioenergy from California.
So finally...some really good news. This means that American farmers will have a market for the corn waste parts, and that the energy they use to power their tractors will not come from oil fields across the globe. Of course, the next step is to make hemp legal and use hemp waste for this after growing it for seed.

NEW YORK TIMES LETTERS ON ETHANOL

Of much debate on this blog has been the subject of ethanol, especially following NYT articles. Yesterday, the Fourth of July, a number of people wrote in letters to defend ethanol, among them Bob Dinneen, president and chief executive of the Renewable Fuels Association, the trade association of the US ethanol industry. He rebuts a Steven Rattner who repeats the claim that using corn for ethanol is to blame for the rise in food prices, noting that while 13 billion gallons of ethanol were produced last year (it is not clear from the letter whether this is just for the US, but it would seem to be), 32.5 million metric tons of feed for cattle, pigs and poultry were produced by the US biofuels industry. He remarks on Rattner's comment that ethanol production increases smog and consumes vast amounts of water - Dinneen notes that ethanol gasoline has reduced smog forming emissions by 25% since 1990, and that a gallon of ethanol uses about the same water as it takes to produce a gallon of gasoline.

Presently, the US ethanol industry employs some 400,00 and contributes $53.6 billion to the GDP, paying $15 in taxes.

Another missive, sent in from Robert Zubrin, author of Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil notes that the argument about ethanol driving up food prices is a red herring - he pegs the price fluctuations to the the changes in the price of a barrel! How right on, and I was happy to see that in print, instead of the thousands of column inches of erroneous figures trying to blame the alternative energy producers for food prices. I hope that more in the press read the letters their readers send in and get their facts right.

And when they do, they just might mention the ethanol producing capabilities of hemp, which is one of, if not the best sources of ethanol.

BURNING OUR FOOD AS THE WORLD STARVES

The New York Times yesterday, in an article by Elisabeth Rosenthal, uncovered more about the use of food crops as biofuel. In each and every article there is conspicuous by its absence any discussion of using the cellulose based waste parts of the plants - which are of little use in returning to the soil - as ethanol; for some reason, industry is taking the food right out of our mouths and producing bioethanol from the edible parts of plants - which is backwards, and ought to be addressed. The perception is that by lack of any discussion of this, articles can be used to scare the public away from ethanol and other biofuels - and steer us towards two and only two alternatives: nuclear power and fossil fuels. A recent letter in the NYT recently argued for the former, worded as if these two were the only choices. What both have in common is very rich investors who would like to keep ethanol out of reach.

But why are journalists not working to educate their readers? Are they stupid, do they not care, are they lazy, or are they bought off?

It can become more of a complex issue than one article can address, as Rosenthal does note by quoting Olivier Dubois, a bioenergy expert at the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome; Dubois notes that is hard to quantify the extent to which the diversions to biofuels have driven up the food prices: "The problem is so complex, so it is hard to come up with sweeping statements like biofuels are good or bad," he informs; yet sweeping statements are what the press likes to make of this issue, along with hype. Biofuel use of grain for non-food uses has risen from 1% to 6% recently, so it hardly equates to the 20 to 40% rises in food prices; which may well be due more to a rise in transport prices and plain old greed, along with some major crop failures in the world recently.

One wonders if the production of bioethanol would not in fact decrease the price of food, as the waste parts of edible plants could be sold thus increasing the yield for the farmer, who could afford to sell the edible parts for less...but this simple fact is conveniently not raised.

And if biofuels were widely produced, the resultant decrease in transport costs would also help decrease food costs...so why are we using so much of the edible parts for this? Thailand recently exported 98% of its cassava crop to China for biofuel development. And the US uses 40% of its maize (corn) for fuel, occasioning a 73% rise in its price on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange from June t0 December 2010. As far away as Rwanda, the price of this food rose 19%.

The whole thing seems one mess; but why? Look at our leaders and ask: Are they stupid, do they not care, are they lazy, or are they bought off?

If they were at all serious about biofuels and feeding people, they would legalise hemp in the US - growing if first for the edible seed, and then using the stalks for ethanol.

CORNY STORY IN THE PRESS: FOOD PRICES SET TO ROCKET

The New York Times and other US papers printed a story about the coming food price rise. As it is expressed on the AP newswire, which many churnalists chose to cut and paste, the problem is due to the ethanol trade. The article implies that to make ethanol one uses the kernels, the edible part of the corn (maize). That would not be practical, as ethanol is best produced from the abundant cellulose which is in the leaves, stalk and hobs. Our bodies do not digest this; other animals do.

The articles then go on to point out that corn is used in high fructose corn syrup and corn chips...but does not blame these manufacturers, whose products, unlike ethanol, are not essential. Ethanol is an energy product and is used in cars from Canada to Brazil; Henry Ford proposed using it in cars, using farm wastes and hemp. The powers to be promoted petroleum instead, forcing America to suck on the gaspipe. And suck, and suck and suck. So no wonder that ethanol is being put in a bad light by bad journalists. We can write a letter to the NYT and the NY Daily News but they often ignore anything they do not want to hear....

So corn prices double, and the price of a gallon may do so also. If the papers got behind solid science then we could solve the economic crisis, but that is not what they exist for.

So expect higher food prices and sluggish response to sensible energy development. But at least blame Doritos and Cap'n Crunch for the rise in the corn prices, not ethanol producers, who can use the waste parts of corn we don't use.

THIS YEAR'S INFLATION

The New York Post yesterday carried the prices of commodities, metals, bonds, etc. and reviewed their performance for 2010. Gold, for instance, closed at $1413.10 an oz.; up 29% for the year. A sign that people are afraid of other investments...not good news unless you are holding gold.

Three commodities that have some bearing on hemp, as they could be replaced by or sourced from hemp, are soybeans, cotton and ethanol. Soy is up to $13.66 a bushel, a 31.4% change from last year; cotton, however, is up much more dramatically - closing at $1.40 a lb., up 85.8%. This is making for runaway inflation and more expensive clothes, not to mention, a lot of water wasted on this thirsty monocrop.

Ethanol is at $2.36 a gallon, just under the price of petrol here in the US - and would be even cheaper if it were made en masse from hemp and other farm wastes.

John Crudele in his article about the US economy notes that consumer spending is up 5.5% -which is being toted as a good sign, but he notes that some of this spending is merely money spent on higher prices at the pump - and, he might have added, on clothing now that cotton spot prices are almost double those of last year.

So again, it is time for America to grow hemp. Ease the demand on water and create a commodity that can be produced on US soil for a change. But I doubt the Post will ever tell us such a truth.

GROWING OUR OWN

Tired of hearing about the rise in the price of petrol? Sick of being over the barrel to greedy oil companies?Well, it looks like someone is finally exercising common sense, though it may well be a day late and a dollar short. Let's hope not. Our political leaders and our press are not doing much to help us, and that includes the do-gooder lefties at the Observer et al. That paper is one of the few in the UK that comes in a plastic wrap, but of course it's an ethical plastic wrap, maybe blessed by Rabbi Lucy Siegle. And of course the 4x4s they advertise are ethical 4x4s. Don't mind me if I point out that driving one of these is tantamount to treason, as they force more consumption of petrol, driving the price up and bringing on disaster. This week in the UK the military was on call to guard petrol supplies. Lucy Siegle might take note. She might also take note of the following ethanol companies that are budding in the US, where they are finally listening to the fact that we can use plant waste and not the edible parts. Maybe they read this blog. Remy Chevalier kindly sent me an article by Katie Fehrenbacher who made a list of such companies, and so I will excerpt her work here. Well done Ms. Fehrenbacher!

There are over a dozen companies racing to build ethanol plants in the US, which will use waste material and plant byproducts and woody energy plants. The Twenty in Ten Initiative aims to increase renewable and alternative fuel use in transportation to the equivalent of 35 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2017.

Companies working on this include:

Verenium, which is in the final stages of testing and evaluating its demo facility, which can produce 1.4 million gallons a year. Japanese companies are using their knowledge to build a similar plant in Osaka. Verenium is publicly traded, Nasdaq symbol VRNM.

Coskata, which is producing ethanol in its labs and plans to build a pilot project in Madison, Pennsylvania, with the aim of producing 100 millions gallons a year in an undisclosed location.

Range Fuels is expecting to produce 100 millions gallons a year in Soperton, Georgia, with plans to finish construction in 2009. Range Fuel uses a thermochemical process to turn biomass into synthetic gas and then fuel.

POET presently works with corn based ethanol, but is working on using other plant sources. It envisions producing 125 million gallons a year, 25 million of which will be cellulosic ethanol, for which they expect their faclities to be finished by 2011. It is located in Emmetsburg, Iowa.

Mascoma is working with the University of Tennessee to build a demo refinery in Monroe County that will use switchgrass that will produce 5 millions gallons a year. It also has operations in other states.

ZeaChem has a test facility in Meno Park, California, where it has brewed ethanol from poplar wood. It works with GreenWood Resources, a forest manager. A test facility that will produce 1.5 million gallons a year is under development in Portland, Oregon.

SunEthanol aims to have a pilot plant producing by 2009. Former CEO Jef Sharp says it is working with ICM and also planning a commercial scale plant with an undisclosed partner.

BlueFire Ethanol has in the works a 3.1 million gallon per year facility in Lancaster, California. It is working with the US government on a second project that will convert waste from landfills, which is projected to turn out 17 million gallons of ethanol per year. It trades on OTC as BFRE.

Abengoa Bioenergy opened a pilot plant in York, Nebraska in 2007. Plans are under way to build ethanol faclities in Hugoton and Colwich, Kansas, the two of which are expected to produce 60 million gallons a year.

Iogen is a Canadian company building a refinery in Saskatchewan, and has also received funding from the US government to build in the US, possibly in Shelley, Idaho, where they expect to turn out 18 million gallons a year.This, however, may be on hold.

SunOpta is another Canadian company, it has a long history in the ethanol business, but continues to delay its financial statements. It claimed last year that it has several pilot facilities operational in the US funded by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories. Trades on Nasdaq as STKL.

KL Process Design Group opened a wood-fibre ethanol refinery earlier this year in Upton, Wyoming.

Cleantech Biofuels, based in St. Louis Missouri, is working with Hazen Research to produce ethanol from solid waste in Golden, Colorado. Trades on the OTC as CLTH.

American Energy Enterprises (AEEE) is located in Brookfield, Connecticut, in which state it is hoping to produce 24-50 million gallons a year in the near future, and upgrade to 100 million using a process called "dilute acid hydrolysis."

We might here note that if Henry Ford had built his ethanol plants in the '30s, using hemp and farms wastes, we would not be in the mess we are in today. What transpired was a tragedy, as greed took over. The Secretary of the Treasury for many years was Andrew Mellon, also the richest man in America. Sounds like a plutocracy to me, and who can deny some amount of conspiracy? Mellon's family and friends worked hard to suppress hemp and ethanol consumption was made illegal. His nephew-in-law was Harry Anslinger, who was appointed to an agency specially created for him - the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. And just to help things along, the Hearst press ran articles that were bigoted and untrue which associated hemp with racially motivated rapes and murder.

As one of the fastest growing biomass plants in the world, the present US government might well revive the '40s Hemp for Victory campaign and come to the aid of its citizens - but it is not, and again, who can deny that there is some amount of conspiracy here? Bush is not doing the job, and the Arabs, who some claim are all terrorists, are growing rich. Since Bush got in the price of crude soared from $30 - $140+. This allows for options traders to make a killing, literally, and please do connect some dots. There is no defence, except of course for the stupidity one, which one might accept to a degree.

If we let right wing and left wing extermists talk us out of energy development, we will be in an awful state very soon. Listen to moderates who talk sense, and who are not tied in to oil companies or messed up 'climate change' theories. Both those sides are wasting our time, our resources, and our lives.

2B OR NOT 2B

Much speculation exists as to why bees are dying off in Colony Collapse Disorder, and we have covered a good amount of that here. Mobile phone masts and verroa mites are two suspects, but now there is a hypothesis that ethonal, or rather the byproducts of ethanol, are killing the bees. Killer ethanol. However, there may be a bias to this theory, in that there certainly are interests which desire to keep us away from any alternative energy. On the other hand, we need to look at this and give an answer either way.

Eric Pollitt of Global Hemp has been keeping me informed about the ethanol and corn use debate, his part of the world is Illinois and they know a thing or two about corn there, which is a ubiquitous crop, along with soy. The two monopolistic agrobusinesses can be quite selfishly motivated, we need to grow other crops just to keep a balance. And if we are to produce ethanol, having of course answered the question about its effects on the hymonoptera - fancy word for bees and their congeners, we need to look at whether corn is the most appropriate crop to grow for it. At present hemp is still illegal in Illinois, even though it was once prevalent there. The latest on the legal status of hemp is that in Vermont, the state legistaure voted overwhelmingly in favour of cultivation, and the governor sensibly let this pass into law. However, there is the federal government to deal with next, and we can see what happens by looking at the recent case in North Dakota where the top Republican in the state legislature is suing the feds over their right to cultivate what the Fouding Fathers grew.

Hopefully the states will win, and the feds will buzz off.

WATKIN DEPARTURE FUELS DEBATE ON BIOFUELS

On Monday(10 March '08) Karl Watkin announced his resignation from D1 Oils, the UK company that was promoting jatropha (photo above) as a biofuel. Jatropha had been the hope of many, and world leaders, including Bill Clinton, had backed it. 250,000 jobs had been created as part of the emerging jatropha industry, and jatropha plantations had sprung up from India to Africa.

All this was not without controversy, as some claimed that this plant poisoned the environment. While I am not sure about this, it is certain that the debate poisoned the investment climate and jatropha has suffered a setback. Watkin pointed out a number of parties as guilty of suppressing this plant, including commentator George Monbiot of the Guardian. A statement put out last month by D1 included Lord Oxburgh's assessment that Monbiot's views were 'absurd'. His lordship is correct, and statements on this very sight reflect much the same. One thing noted here was the way Monbiot and others talked about biofuels in such a way as to lump all together, even biodiesels with bioethanol. "This lack of differentiation," asserts Watkin, "combined with the London Stock Exchange's failure to address both the liquidity problems of [its junior market] Aim and the impact of shorting of illiquid stocks, have conspired to erode the value of D1."

Friends of the Earth also weighed in against jatropha, but then again it is not impossible FoE just bashes anything they are not getting funding for. Here in London they run around wearing environmentally desrtuctive cotton and using tree pulp paper. Any efforts to interest them in hemp has been a waste of time.

So is jatropha the next wonder crop? My answer is I do not know. There may be some legitimate complaints about it, and it may take more time to evaluate the equation. But would I put hemp forward here are the crop for biodiesel? No. Hemp can produce a good oil, but the fact is that hemp oil sells for much more in health food markets (retailing for £20 a litre), so it would be hard to get it at a cost that would work to the public. Hemp bioethanol, however, made from the stem, is very cost effective and tons of it can be produced from an acre in one season.

Jatropha does deserve real evaluation, not just slagoffs from journalists with an agenda, or competing organisations given too much space in the press. Hemp has its purposes, and other plants have their uses too. We support the cultivation of the best possible crops, including hemp, black salve, bamboo, jute, nettles, jatropha, etc.

MAY IN REVIEW

Hemp is in the air, and in the field, but flowers will have to wait a month or so. As the hemp grows in the field, each day a little bit, so does the movement. Lots of little things to do last month, such as finishing up Bulletin # 1 of the British Isles Hemp & Natural Fibres Industries Association: Hemp as a Replacement Crop for Heroin in Afghanistan. Copies of this 24 page report are available from The Hemp Shop in the UK.

Some dark forces in this world might not like this, as they have, after invading Afghanistan, made poppies to prosper. And guess what, in Iraq, the rice fields are being plowed up and replaced with poppy fields. Is this the progress Bush was talking about? No wonder he wants to stay there forever. US troops are free guards, courtesy of the US taxpayer. One such taxpayer lost her son in Iraq, and when Bush handed her the medal, he joked about it and told her not to sell it on Ebay. Where is the dignity?

And where is the hemp? He finally got talking about ethanol, and it seemed too good to be true. Turns out it was, the idiots used up corn and drove the corn prices sky high so the Mexicans were protesting at his visit. Henry Ford used hemp and farm wastes, but I guess the modern environmentalist does not take the time to read such details, they just jump out there with George Bush and George Monbiot, and when it all fails, they tell us biofuels don't work. Try doing what has been proven effective and you just might be surprised.

Another proven use of hemp to which it has not been put by the wanna-be environmentalists is in the production of shopping bags. Anya Hindmarch came out with her bags in April and was bagged by the national press, and in May we worked on the hemp bag which is featured on this site. Our protests were mentioned in the May issue of The Ecologist, which is doing a reader offer in the July/August issue. We plan some fun with this, as it would really take the mick to carry this bag around all the posh spots of London, and maybe a bit outside the US Embassy.

From the US Dave Olson called to say he was coming over, which means we will be able to give him a hemp bag to take back. Doug Yurchey wrote a sequel to his famous piece on the real reason hemp is illegal, taking a swipe at Judge Judy and the idiot brigade which is keeping hemp out of reach for Americans. So either you buy your petrol from the Middle East or you use up all your corn and the price of corn flakes goes up.

On a sad note, it does not look like Dave Monson of North Dakota got his permits in time to sow hemp, as George Washington commanded. The good ol' DEA dragged its feet and efforts on the part of the US taxpayer were wasted. Let's hope to reverse this sad state of affairs and have hemp in the ground in the US this time next year.

STILL ILLEGAL

To see hemp outlawed in the US is crazy, after all these years you'd think they would welcome a plant that can provide better ethanol than corn, which is now being grown ubiquitously but not quite as profitably as the farmers want. Yes, the price is going up to $4, but so are the expenses, land being one of them, and most farmers rent. Then the way the US government is involved is not quite healthy, and is it any surprise that the companies benefitting from Bush's ethanol initiative are all his buddies?

Could that be the reason that he is into ethanol all of a sudden, going green? Or is it because he is drinking again, and ETOH (what paramedics call it, a code word for 'drunk') is all of a sudden very cool. Rumour has it he was a bit smashed when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of England came the the White House. And more than rumour has it that after her visit to Bushland she visited the Chelsea Flower Show in her own land, where she was given a private viewing of some hemp plants in pots at an eco stand.

So it's time for Americans to take Bush over to a flower show to do the same. Or, if they cannot find this species growing in the land of the brave, they have only to look north to see some 50,000 acres of it in full bloom, prospering under the sign of the maple leaf. Above is a logo of one of Canada's first hemp shops, where books, clothes and other hemp items are on sale. It may be a good place to take Bush when he visits Canada.

THE DEBATE HEATS UP

On a US Senate website there is a list of top scientists who are saying that global warming is not the product of our pollution (posted 15/5/07). The list includes Dr. Claude Allegre, Bruno Wiskel, Dr, Nir Shaviv, Dr. David Evans, Dr. Tad Murty, Dr. David Bellamy, Dr. Chris de Freitas, Dr. Reid Bryson, Hans H.J. Labohm and Tim Patterson, inter alia. Many of these started out as alarmists but have re-studied the data and feel that it is the sun, and not man-made pollutants, which have caused the warming. Only an idiot would deny that there is global warming.

Given the site, one tends to wonder if this is not propaganda, but on the other hand, much of the hysteria, which is promulgated by the likes of Johann Hari and George Monbiot, also looks dodgy. Then there is the fact that the global warming industry is out to make money just like Du Pont and GM. It's hard to take sides, and most honest people would agree that it is a complex argument, best not entrusted to Messrs. Hari and Monbiot. Neither is it to be entrusted to big business or their bestest friend in the whole world, the US government.

One point made by the scientists is that the debate takes energy away from other issues, including the production of ethanol and the curtailing of the cotton industry. I would like to see some real journalists take these on and not just the loud mouths at the Guardian and the Independent. Could it not be that both these papers are in the business of advertising big cars and expensive cotton threads?

The hot air that these papers exhude (and the trees they fell to print their opinions on) is a danger, but if we take a closer look at some of the global warming fanatics, we may want to put a stop to them as soon as we can. Some of them are ready to inject diatomaceous earth (used in kitty litter) into the stratosphere. James R. Fleming, writing in The Wilson Quarterly, notes that they talked about these kinds of big ideas "even as they joked about a NASA staffer's apology for her inability to control the temperature in the meeting room..."

So NASA cannot even keep themselves cool, yet it hosts idiot savants who want to churn ocean water and blast kitty litter into the air. All, of course, at great cost to the taxpayer, and who reaps the benefit? The bevy of savants, journalists, scaremongers and politicians who can divert tax monies to these sorts of schemes... the same people who were crying about global cooling a few years ago. Now they're back, and they are wasting our time as we research proven solutions such as hemp and locally produced ethanol.

REAPING WHAT WE SOW

Saint Paul believed that people reap what they sow; "be not deceived", he warned, "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap; he who sows to the spirit shall reap life, but he who sows to the flesh shall reap corruption."

A more recent warning about reaping corruption comes from a leading German zoologist, Hans-Heinrich Kaatz of the University of Jena. Kaatz talked to the Observer (UK) in May of 2000 and foretold the disaster that is now occuring with bees. He asserted: "I have found the herbicide-resistant genes in the rapeseed transferred across to the bacteria and yeast inside the intestines of young bees." [full report posted on rense.com]

At that time, the UK Agriculture Minister Nick Brown advised farmers to destroy all crops contaminated with GM. Two years later, the government was less active, as a report in the Sunday Times was to show. In that piece (15/9/02), it was revealed that GM crops tainted honey from 2 miles afield. UK government response then was to say they did not believe it was a source of concern. Five years on we have different faces in that office, and they are not much concerned either.

They might be, if they listened. A yet more recent report just might get their ear, that of organic beekeeper Sharon Labchuk, who states that among the 1,000 or so organic beekeepers who write in to her newsletter, none has had a case of CCD in their hives. Michael Bush, to whom she refers her readers, notes that the media does not tell us the real causes of this problem, and asks if media coverage will affect government response. Unfortunately, it may, the bullies in the media set the tone and the politicians dance to it.

At times, some do stand up to the bullies, and this month it was Senator Chuck Grassely, a Republican from Iowa who demanded that Big Oil explain why they are not producing ethanol. In his opinion, and in that of many others' as well, Big Oil is stalling on the issue to sell us more petrol. Ethanol could be produced from farm wastes, so obviously, Big Oil has little interest in it. However, the left is just as guilty here, as they went and supported the palm oil fraud that has destroyed so many habitats in poor countries the mainstream press can ignore. The likes of George Monbiot might want to take some responsibility for their nonsense along with Big Oil.

It is becoming more and more apparent that individuals have to act on issues rather than wait for governments, right, wrong or left, to do so. This week a farmer in California took on the pesticide companies by suing them for pesticide residues which blew on to his farm, destroying his dill to the tune of $500,000. Larry Jacobs of Jacobs Farms is suing Westerm Farm Services. While the whole case may take as long as the OJ case, there is at least an injunction issued by the Santa Cruz County Superior Court to stop spraying.

Some might call this litigation unusual, but there is precedent for it in that very state, where northern orchard growers sued to limit spraying and the state granted stricter ordinances against the use of herbicides. Indeed there is solid legal basis for both cases, as Jacobs' barrister, Austin Comstock, points out: "There's a traditional concept in Anglo-Saxon law that you use your property in a way not to damage mine...if you damage mine, there's some redress there."

Sounds almost Biblical there, Mr. Comstock.

ECO TERRORISTS

Image right is of an oil palm, of which Jonathan Green in the Daily Mail writes yesterday. It is being used to provide biodiesel, and is destroying the forests. But why did they do this when ethanol can be produced from farm waste? Further, this confuses the issue of biofuel, making people think it is all bad. Part of the reason is sloppy journalism; few journalists really want to take the time to develop their stories, so they get a few soundbites and off they are like mad rats to make deadline.

Had they spent half-an-hour or so looking at the details, we might not have whole populations in Sumatra slaughtered for the sake of biodiesel, which they were slap happy to promote a while back; a few years ago, there were many who were proclaiming that biodiesel was the Messiah, probably the same fools proclaiming that global cooling was coming and it was the end of the world.

So what are the important details that they overlooked? For one thing, biodiesel has a high viscosity, and is not so good in cold climates. For another, one must grow lots and lots of oil rich plants, which leads to monocrop culture and an increase in crop specific pests and diseases. Large swathes of forest land have been cleared, with the support of fools like Tony Blair, and now people in places we aren't aware of are dying of starvation.

Ethanol, on the other hand, comes from existing farm wastes. People like George Monbiot seem to be quite unaware of this as they dismiss biofuel, and sadly, while he gets paid well, people in Indonesia are suffering for his kind of journalism. If he and the press gang had listened a decade ago, they could have been heroes, turning unwanted farm waste into ethanol, as Henry Ford encouraged. Ah, but today's journalists can't be bovvered to listen to him or any serious environmentalists. Instead, they are out attending parties sponsored by the media giant Sony, who slaughtered a goat as a sacrifice to the 'gods' of war and had semi-naked wait staff put things in journalists mouths, unless they wanted to put things in their own mouths, like the goat's blood and organs.

These and other stupid diversions get the attention of the fourth estate, which is quite rude when one calls up and tries to get them to pay attention to the real issues. The water supply is now being contaminated in the US, but where was the press? It's up to reporters and bloggists like Schmoo to run these stories while Sony puts things in their mouths at parties promoting violent video games.

Which makes them complicit in the earth's demise, as some kind of laid back eco-terrorists, helping to cover up the facts in the tradition of William Randolph Hearst.

ETHANOL, HEMP & THE PRICE OF CORN

As the price of a barrel rises these days, and let's review, it has risen sharply since September, 2001, other commodities rise as well; how I wish I had bought gold when it was cheap, at a mere $350 an ounce! Having missed such a golden opportunity, there is comfort in knowing there are other markets. In Iowa this month, the price of a more mundane item, corn, was up for discussion. While it had no such stellar rise as petrol and precious metals , it is nonetheless going up a notch, from $2.00 a bushel to $2.10 a bushel. OK, that's only 5%, but enough to encourage farmers to pick corn this year rather than soy, wheat or cotton.

Part of the rise in the price of corn is due to its cellulose content; cellulose is a carbohydrate which converts easily to ethanol, and for many people tired of paying lots of money for petrol, this is an important bit of information. Truckers have been demanding biofuel for years now in the US, as their incomes are shrinking as inflation rises. So the corn farmers are now able to sell what was once farm waste, the inedible parts of the corn plant, and do the country a service as well. Patriotism, without shedding blood.

However simple some things may be in life, there are always those who can get things wrong, and in the reporting of this in no less a paper than the New York Times, there were worried voices expressing concern about using a food plant to supply energy. Do these people really imagine that they are going to use all the kernels to make fuel? Do they not realise that the kernels are a fraction of the plant's weight, they are the seeds, thus they contain the proteins that make them valuable as a food; the rest of the plant can be dehydrated and fermented for biofuel. We kill two birds here for the price of one.

Sloppy reporting over the years about energy plants is not limited to the Grey Lady in the Big Apple; no less a rag than the UK's Independent will write articles about biofuel without an understanding of the whole picture. Recently, they wrote that it was unfeasible for the UK to farm energy as the rape crop would not produce enough ethanol from its stems. Right they are, but why are they talking about rape when Henry Ford, who certainly did know a thing or two about cars and energy, talked about hemp and farm wastes?

At least the NYT article (Matthew Wald, 16 January, 2006) took notes from those in the business, such as Robert C. Brown, a professor of mechanical engineering at Iowa State, who noted that the idea that using corn for energy was taking food from our mouths was incorrect. Benie Punt, also quoted in the NYT, is a manager of a plant in Siouxland, and he was also able to point out that the leftovers from the ethanol conversion are even used as animal feed.

The scare tactics, interestingly enough, come from the Washington based International Food Policy Research Institute, whose director, Joachim von Braun, warns that: "even a small shift could have big effects...the mouth of your car is a monster compared to your family's stomach needs." OK, one does not need to be a rocket scientist, or related to a former Nazi rocket scientist, to see that this argument is actually better suited towards two other goals - reducing driving and reducing dependence on foreign energy. For an idiot, it stands to reason that we better not use farm wastes to produce ethanol, unless we want a big raise in the price of food.

Actually, by harnessing the energy in farm wastes, the US would quite likely get back on its feet finacially, while providing jobs in the energy and agricultural sectors to its own citizens. If farm wastes were not enought to provide the country with its energy supplies, then certain crops could be grown to provide more, such as hemp, which is one of the fastest biomass producing plants in the world, ready to harvest in a season with little effort. Its stems are high in cellulose, and the seeds can be harvested for oil and cattle feed among other products.

The Founding Fathers grew hemp, so there ought to be little objection to growing this in the US, it can, by the way, be grown in all 50 states. With a little more education and the will to succeed we can. Recently, Sir Richard Branson put his money into ethanol production after listening to Al Gore hold forth on the subject in London. Sir Richard is using farm wastes, thus utilising what is already cheap and available. Little wonder that he became the billionaire that he did.