Don't tell Canis!

Posted by JMG (Guest Contributor) at 12:17 PM on 20 Dec 2007

Read more about: energy | biofuels | scientific research | innovation

This is one of those stories where you don't know whether to be hopeful or depressed after reading it. Like drug addicts who will try snorting every powder in the house, we seem to be willing to subject any substance on the planet to the real acid test of our age: Will it help us keep carburbia going?

For story: Don't tell Canis!
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(Oops!, somebody must've leaked)

"First they came for the chickens ... "

Mais, en effet, on n'en est pas du tout surpris. What is more surprising is that they have not yet figured out how to make wallpaint, dish-washing liquid, hair mousse, nail polish, deodorant, mouthwash, et alia, out of chicken-mash. No doubt they are trying.

The end of the article is significant, with respect to what I wrote in BioD's "Oxymoron" thread, on science, authority and wealth:

<<
Schulte worked with Ed Clausen, professor of chemical engineering and holder of the Ray C. Adam Chair of Chemical Engineering, and Michael Popp, professor of agricultural economics, in addition to Babcock. Schulte's study, which led to his master's thesis and is available upon request, was supported by the University of Arkansas Mack-Blackwell Rural Transportation Center. His work was awarded first place at the inaugural Admiral Jack Buffington Poster Paper Contest sponsored by the transportation center at its annual advisory board meeting.
>>

"Agricultural economics"! At least that is a franker term than "agricultural sciences." And we all have a pretty good idea where departments in such subjects tend to be located: there is no question of "disinterested" science, free of authoritarian directedness, is there.

One wonders how Admiral Buffington feels.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 1:24 PM on 20 Dec 2007

Both

Hopeful in that while the world burns petroleum at the rate of 300,000 uranium-tonne-equivalents (UTEs) per year, and each UTE brings in millions of fossil fuel tax dollars, Australia has this year been discovering tonnes of the real thing at the rate of 270,000 per year.

Depressed because, like drug addicts who will try snorting every powder in the house, lovers of fossil fuel money will talk up almost any fossil fuel replacement scheme that promises to be ineffective.

Unless we all have been tricked by mind-control rays into forgetting that we each have a 50,000-bird chicken farm*, no chicken derivative will be taking over for our present use of fossil fuel.

How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?

* I suppose that would explain the missing hours in the day that we now more fancifully explain away as "time spent on the internet" ...

by GRLCowan at 2:43 PM on 20 Dec 2007

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