At 11:42 AM 9/17/2005 +0300, you wrote:
>There were articles going around (CNN, Yahoo, etc) about a German making 
>fuel from dead cats.  Later he denied it, though.
>http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/09/14/germany.catfuel.reut/
>
>I'll refrain from any comments, but I'm sure Roland knows what I'm thinking.

Put a tiger in your tank?

It seems to me that plants have essentially "poisoned" the atmosphere
over the eons (originally it reducing, not oxidizing) from their perspective
by emitting oxygen (when light is present) and consuming CO2, to the point 
where
there is almost no free CO2 left. They have evolved to adapt to the harsh 
conditions,
and other organisms like us have sprung up to take advantage of the free 
oxygen,
but we can't tolerate very much CO2-- more than about 1000ppm and we start
experiencing problems. Modern plants are probably happy with lots of CO2 or 
just
a whisper.

Calculations on biomass energy and solar must be very complex, depending
on the aim of the research. For example, fertilizer requires a fair bit
of natural gas to make, and oil products are used in mechanized harvesting
and planting operations. Similarly, the energy used to manufacture PV
cells is reportedly significant compared to the lifetime output of the
cells.

Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
->> Inexpensive test equipment & parts http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZspeff


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