date:20050626

just to elaborate a little further on the example of roads, there wasn't a 
lot of investment in them in general; whether for the peasants/serfs or for the 
lords.  and they--the lords--would have done so had they felt it suited them, 
but as keith aptly pointed out, one's affairs were much more local back then.

now, i expect this will raise a few eyebrows, but there is another aspect of 
the then/now comparison which i have thought of often for some years now, and 
insofar as which i honestly doubt we aren't actually worse off today.  i'm 
referring to freedom of movement.  specifically, the freedom to go to far off 
places/foreign lands.  back in the day, travel was not an easy affair 
(relatively 
speaking), given the lack of roads, lodging and transport (other than on 
foot), etc., not to mention the income with which to fund such travels.  
nevertheless, there wasn't anything to really stop one if one had a mind to.  

whereas today, the government (today's lords) has near-absolute control/power 
over one's freedom of movement.  one can't just decide to go to [your 
destination here] without the government knowing about it and approving of it.  
and 
for most of us such movement isn't much more economically feasible than back 
then, either.

-chris b.
---BeginMessage---

Hi John

Yes, but in the 15th century, those dues got you what passed for 
national defense and maybe some roads?


Today my taxes cover national defense, roads, trains and airports, 
educational services, the court system and social services. They 
also provide money to fund scientific research, space exploration, 
protect the environment, and fund public health measures and 
institutions like the CDC.


Um, now let's have a closer look at those things...

Or maybe not, eh? I can't see any of them that'll stand on their feet 
the way you want them to. The whole thing's gone rotten.


That aside, I think the comparison's valid enough, it can stand on 
its own without much clutter, but the comparison you're trying to 
make certainly won't, truly apples and oranges, if not cabbages and 
oranges. Roads? How much travelling did feudal citizens do, want to 
do, need to do? Let alone serfs? Most of them never left the village, 
nor wanted to. Economies were local, along with sort of annual 
travelling enclave economies called fairs. And indeed their lord and 
his men (thugs if you will) pretty much protected them, whereas most 
Americans freely admit you're a lot less safe now than you were 
before 9/11, for all the billions of your taxes spent on the war on 
terror (and on fomenting fear and loathing to prop it all up). And 
so on and on and on. It's all either a sham or it's being drastically 
rolled back. That didn't happen in a 15th century feudal village 
either. I'm not saying it was better, I am saying it was different, 
far beyond any basis for the comparisons you're trying to make.


Best wishes

Keith



So yes, you're spot on, that's progress for you.

jh

Chris Lloyd wrote:
Some bright spark in the UK did a n in depth study last year and 
found we spend more time earning money to pay our taxes than the 
15^th century tenants did to pay off the dues to their landlords 
and that included the house that went with the land. Thatís 
progress for you.Chris.


feudalism** : the system of political organization prevailing in 
Europe from the 9th to about the 15th centuries having as its 
basis the relation of lord to vassal with all land held in fee and 
as chief characteristics homage, the service of tenants under arms 
and in court, wardship, and forfeiture


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Re: [Biofuel] Re: Environmentalism is dead. What's next?

i have to agree.

in this case, the people's homes are being approproated to serve another's 
interest.  how many of them will enjoy any long-term benefit, such as 
employment 
with the new firm?  few, if any, i supsect.

what's more, the development corp (how many of them, btw, reside in the 
disputed area?) not only saying, in effect, we have deemed that the taxes this 
new 
entity will generate are more important than your property rights.  they're 
saying the anonymous future employees of this entity, a significant number of 
whom will inevitably come from elsewhere and reside here or close by, are 
more important than you or your property rights.

how many of the homeowners would have gladly stayed if a genuine 
revitalization plan were undertaken, which focused on local economic 
empowerment and 
encouraged small business creation?  what other proposals were made besides the 
pfizer deal?  what roles did the various parties, pfizer included, play in the 
process and what were their interests?

-chris b.

In a message dated 6/24/05 12:08:53 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 John,

  I am not a consitutional scholar either, but from what I have read

and heard, the neigborhood was not blighted, yes New London has a high

unenployment rate, but taking one persons private property and giving

it to another (corporation) simply because the corporation can

generate more Taxes for the city seems unjust.


  Also whats the difference between Pfizer and Walmart?  Just because

one does RD and the other sells cheap goods on the backs of cheap

labor doesn't really matter.  The supreme court just authorized the

transferr of private land from one owner to another based on how much

money the land would provide back to the city. (IMHO) 

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Fwd: [Biofuel] Money that grows on crops

cool bit of news.

in a similar though sinister vein, surely one of the agro-giants like
monsanto is already working on a gm bacteria or algea to extract gold from
seawater.

-chris b.
---BeginMessage---

http://csmonitor.com/2004/0415/p17s02-sten.html

Money that grows on crops
By Jen Ross | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor CONCEPCIÓN, CHILE He can't quite make money grow from trees, but a New Zealand scientist has devised a way to harvest gold from plants.
The idea: Use common crops to soak up contaminants in soil from gold-mining sites and return the areas to productive agriculture. The gold harvested from the process pays for the cleanup - with money left over for training in sustainable agriculture.

E-mail this story

"We get the plants to do the hard work, and then we basically harvest the plants and extract the metal," says Christopher Anderson, an environmental geologist from Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. "So we farm mercury and gold."
Aimed at small-scale mines, such a program could prove especially beneficial to Latin America, where some 1 million artisanal miners ply their trade, according to estimates by the International Labor Organization. The bulk of them are in Brazil.
Dr. Anderson has already run successful field tests last year in an Amazonian gold mine near Bahía, Brazil. In a few months, he plans to begin a larger project, most likely in Serra Pelada, about 1,800 miles northwest of Bahía.
Small gold mines are especially troublesome for the environment. In the fragile Amazon River basin, for example, there are hundreds of artisanal mines where workers pour mercury, cyanide, and other chemicals onto gold-rich areas to extract the metal. Once the mine is exhausted, they abandon it and move on, leaving behind a toxic soup of contaminants.
Mercury, for example, is one of the most toxic contaminants for humans and animals, and one of the most difficult and costly to clean up. But using regular corn and canola plants, Anderson has found that this can be done at almost no cost, and with benefits to the environment and local community.
The process is called phyto- remediation. First, he treats the contaminated soil with chemicals that break the gold down into water-soluble particles. Then he introduces the crops.
"Basically a plant will take up anything that's in the soil," he says. Corn and canola have a natural ability to take up huge amounts of metal.
Of course, the crops aren't eaten because they're full of toxic metals.
Instead, Anderson harvests them for their minerals as they begin to die. He estimates he can recover 1 kilogram of gold per hectare (14 ounces an acre) and about half as much mercury through this process. Then the gold is used to pay for the cleanup and to educate locals about sustainable agriculture.
During the metal-harvesting, his team trains local people in farming techniques, so once the land is clean, they can reclaim it and use it for subsistence farming. "It's turning waste into a resource," says Anderson. "We're looking to create an alternative lifestyle for these artisanal miners to help them escape the poverty."
Anderson's research has won attention from the international community. Iain Gillespie, director of the biotechnology unit for the OECD, says Anderson is using a proven process to clean mining sites, but adapting it to benefit communities. "I can think of few, if any, better examples of putting the triple bottom line of sustainability into practice - delivering environmental and economic benefit directly to local communities," says Mr. Gillespie.
Anderson's process also has more widespread applications. Plants could be used to stop contaminants from leaching out of mine sites and waste dumps.
Anderson's field trials also yielded an unexpected and potentially profitable byproduct. The plants he harvested had purple leaves because they contained gold nanoparticles, which are purple, not yellow. These nanoparticles melt at one tenth the temperature of regular gold - which makes them highly sought after for industrial processes, such as cleaning up carbon monoxide in fuel cells.
Anderson doesn't yet know how easily the nanoparticles can be processed for industrial use, but the potential is there.
Yahoo! Sports
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football

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Re: Re[2]: [Biofuel] Re: Environmentalism is dead. What's next?



I said that too, when someone first pointed out to me that the texts that 
the Vikings wrote on the Rune Stones was  of  old Turkish origin. Then 
I was directed to some web sites that dealt with this and it was very 
convincing. Too much info and similarities to be a hoax, but I am not sure 
and therefore probably. The time of the Vikings was around half, or less, 
of a millennium later than the Roman Empire, so from a timing perspective 
it is not unlikely. I found it a very interesting theory. The reason why I 
got into this, is that I am constantly assumed to be a Turk, because of my 
first name. It is an old Viking name in the Nordic countries, but also very 
common name in Turkey. My first name also had the same meaning for the 
Vikings as for the Turks, a noble man.


Hakan

At 06:43 AM 6/26/2005, you wrote:

whaa-a-a?!?

In a message dated 6/24/05 12:05:46 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 the Vikings (probably ancestors to Roman legions

from the part that we now know as Turkey) 




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Re: [Biofuel] VW Diesel

2005-06-26 Thread Jan Warnqvist

Hello Lyn.
Yes, you are missing something. The main problem with SVO as diesel engine
fuel is not the high viscosity, but the final boiling point and the low
cetane number. Elsbett system have taken action before these disadvantages
and have designed a dual air system in the combustion chamber of the piston.
This makes it possible to combust SVO completely, since the outer air layer
isolates from the inner air layer, where the combustion temperature is high
enough. And although the engine is directly injected, it is equipped with
pre-chamber injectors, on which coke will form, but works self-cleansing due
to the typical design of pre-chamber injectors.
Best regards
Jan Warnqvist
AGERATEC AB

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

+ 46 554 201 89
+46 70 499 38 45
- Original Message - 
From: Lyn Gerry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2005 9:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Biofuel] VW Diesel


 I went to the site that Keith recommended and it looks fantastic. What
this
 maker Elsbett sells is a one tank system you can put anything from WVO to
 Dino into. If such a system exists, why are people bothing to make
biodiesel?
 It would be easier, more ecological, economical etc to just use vegetable
oil.

 I think about this problem both in the ecolological sense and the Peak oil
 sense. Particularly with the latter, the fewer things you have to buy, the
less
 exposure you have to being gouged by corporations exploiting scarcity.
 Anyone with access to a few acres of land and a home made oil press can
 create fuel out of a variety of easy to grow crops.

 Am I missing something?

 Lyn

  
  Elsbett. See:
  http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html
  Straight vegetable oil as diesel fuel
  
  Don't get some two-tank system that probably has copper parts in it
  and all it does is pre-heat the oil to lower the viscosity, there's
  a lot more to it than that, even with a Merc.

  forgetting to) - switch on and go, stop and switch off, SVO,
  biodiesel or petro-diesel, in any combination.
 
  We've had a two-tank system for a couple of years but we never used
  it. I just didn't think it addressed the problem fully, and the more
  I learnt the more I thought so. A few months ago we installed a
  single-tank Elsbett system in our Toyota TownAce and we're most
  pleased with it. It does exactly what it claims to do, as we fully
  expected.
 
  http://www.elsbett.com
 
  Best wishes
 
  Keith
 
 
  On 25 Jun 2005 at 8:46, John Hayes wrote:
  
You have the 'SVO destroyed my TDI' folks.
   
And the 'SVO is just fine' pollyannas.
   
  
  I went to the TDIclub site as well. I probably only saw a fraction
  of the posts,
  and what I saw made me realize that I didn't really do Mike's question
justice
  with my previous answer, so this will be long in an attempt to provide
more
  substantive info.
  
  I researched WVO for a while and decided upon the Jetta TDI, which I
bought
  specifically with the intent of doing a WVO conversion. I chose the
Jetta even
  though the golf or beetle would have been more to my personal taste,
because
  the consensus seemed to be that it was desirable to isolate the WVO
tank
  from the passenger area because the tank is heated  - a hot metal tank
of oil
  being not the most desirable presence in a passenger compartment
  
  There are a variety of systems and kits and ways that people have done
these
  conversions and I have no doubt people have ruined their TDI's with
WVO. The
  TDI has very close tolerances, also why it its such a high performance
engine.
   From what I have gathered, gumming up the injectors with WVO is one
of the
  serious risks. Critical issues in the system then are well filtered WVO
and
  that it be HOT.
  
  Just to clarify matters for any readers, a WVO system is a 2 tank
system. Do
  not ever consider just pouring WVO into your regular fuel tank - that
will
  destroy your TDI.
  
  The system I have has :
  
  a heated WVO  tank and fuel lines (the lines are heated by being
bundled
  beside a line filled with  engine coolant) ,
  
  a filter for the WVO (which has already been prefiltered the remove
  the obvious
  particulate  fryer gunk before being put in the tank) This filter
should be
  replaced approximately every 2000 miles,
  
  and a PURGE switch.
  
  The purge switch is a very important part of the system. It is used
when
  switching *back* to diesel from WVO. It pushes the WVO out of the lines
and
  injectors. If you purge for too long, you begin to suck diesel fuel
into your
  WVO tank, but ithat's not really not a problem.
  
  The *problem* in a WVO system *without* a purge function  arises
because,
  if the WVO is not completely cleared from the engine components ,  you
will
  begin to dump some WVO into the diesel tank when you shut off the car.
  After a while, your diesel will be contaminated with WVO. The reason
why this
  is a problem is because your diesel tank is not heated and the WVO is
too
  viscous at room

[Biofuel] Isn't It Time We Regulated Chemicals?


RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT  HEALTH NEWS #820
http://www.rachel.org
June 23, 2005

^ 
^


Isn't It Time We Regulated Chemicals?

By Tim Montague*

If you read almost any newspaper these days, you learn the following 
kinds of information:


** Many plastic toys contain chemicals that can interfere with the 
sexual development of laboratory animals and are now thought capable 
of doing the same in baby boys.[1]


** Most of the rivers and streams in the U.S. are contaminated with 
low levels of chemicals that can change the sexual orientation of 
fish and can interfere with reproduction in animals that feed on 
fish.[2]


** Dozens of toxic chemicals have recently been measured in household 
dust, indicating that common consumer products are contaminating our 
homes with toxicants.[3]


You might ask yourself, isn't the government regulating dangerous 
chemicals? Unfortunately, the answer is No, not in any effective way.


About 1700 new chemicals are put into commercial use each year, 
almost entirely untested for their effects on humans and the natural 
world.[4]


After a chemical causes enough harm for someone to take notice, then 
the government conducts a numerical risk assessment (aka, 
quantitative risk assessment) on an individual chemical. The point of 
a numerical risk assessment is to learn how much of a chemical is 
safe to eat, drink, and breathe. Then the government may try to 
regulate releases of that chemical. But fewer than 1% of all 
chemicals are currently regulated. (See Rachel's #815.)


A scientist at the University of Oregon has described why numerical 
risk assessment doesn't work, and has suggested other ways we could 
control chemical hazards.[5] Dr. Joe Thornton -- a biologist -- 
explains that numerical risk assessment is a fundamentally 
inappropriate way to control persistent pollutants (such as heavy 
metals and chemicals containing chlorine) for two reasons:


1) It assumes that we can learn all the ways that every individual 
chemical can cause harm in humans and in the natural environment -- 
but there aren't enough scientists in the world to do this.


2) Many industrial chemicals tend to stick around for a long time and 
move from place to place in ways that are impossible to predict, so 
often we don't even know what we're looking for.


Thornton proposes we adopt four new ways of regulating chemicals -- 
zero discharge, clean production, reverse onus, and phasing out 
entire classes of persistent chemicals -- because the old way 
(regulating one chemical at a time at the end of the discharge pipe) 
simply doesn't work.


Risk assessment assumes that damage is local, short-lived, and 
predictable. But organisms and the environment are complex, 
interconnected, and only partly understood (to put it mildly). 
Therefore, we cannot predict cause-and-effect in any reliable way. In 
the face of these insurmountable difficulties, we can take a 
precautionary stance: when we have good reason to suspect harm, yet 
we have scientific uncertainty, we can err on the side of caution. 
Faced with choices, we can give the benefit of the doubt to public 
health and to nature.


Thornton's four principles begin to clarify how the precautionary 
principal can work in the real world. These principles are:


ZERO DISCHARGE -- Persistent and bioaccumulative toxicants are 
incompatible with ecological processes, and no amount of their 
release into the environment is acceptable.[6]


CLEAN PRODUCTION -- We can consider alternative technologies up front 
and avoid the use of known toxicants in manufacturing. Finding 
alternatives rather than approving pollutants becomes the focus.[7] 
For example, in dry cleaning, we can replace perchloroethylene (perc) 
with CO2 and water-based methods.


REVERSE ONUS -- Apply the same logic used in drug safety: give 
manufacturers the responsibility to show that a product is reasonably 
safe for use before it can be released into the environment. This 
shifts the burden of proof from society to the chemical companies to 
provide information about their products, to monitor for harmful 
effects and to come clean about their findings.


EMPHASIS ON LARGE CLASSES OF CHEMICALS -- Faced with the 
impossibilities of measuring the impacts of individual chemicals, 
simply phase out entire classes of compounds that are clearly 
problematic. PCBs, CFCs and lead compounds are all examples of 
classes of chemicals that have been phased out because of their 
hazards.[5]


Thornton gives six reasons why the current risk paradigm is so flawed:

1. ACCUMULATION OF PERSISTENT POLLUTANTS

Risk-based approaches assume that nature and living things can absorb 
and assimilate synthetic chemicals, breaking them down and digesting 
them. This may be true for sewage, oil, and other naturally occurring 
substances. But persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like pesticides, 
solvents, refrigerants,

[Biofuel] China's Oil Bid Riles Congress


See:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=1087sid=aSWKDh5piHqkrefer 
=top_world_news

CNOOC Offers $18.5 Bln for Unocal, Tops Chevron Plan (Update10)
June 23 (Bloomberg)

-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005 
062302065.html


China's Oil Bid Riles Congress

Attempt to Take Over U.S. Firm Spurs Calls for Retaliation

By Jonathan Weisman and Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 24, 2005; Page A01

Political fears of China's economic might intensified yesterday 
following China's unsolicited bid to take over a U.S. oil company, 
with lawmakers from both political parties warning that Congress will 
take retaliatory action against Chinese trade practices if the Bush 
administration fails to respond.


Under a barrage of questions, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan 
and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow warned the Senate Finance 
Committee against punitive legislation that could trigger a trade war 
and ultimately harm the U.S. economy.


Resorting to isolationist trade policies would be ineffective, 
disruptive to markets and damaging to America's special role as the 
world's leading advocate for open markets, Snow said.


But the $18.5 billion bid Wednesday by China's third-largest oil 
producer to buy California-based Unocal Corp. put such sentiments on 
weaker ground. Already, lawmakers from both parties had stockpiled 
bills to punish China, and President Bush's ongoing effort to ratify 
the Central American Free Trade Agreement had stirred up political 
forces against further trade liberalization. Lingering discontents 
about the economy had politicians looking for a new outlet to voice 
their concerns. The bid by a state-run Chinese oil company to swallow 
a U.S. competitor threw gas on the fire, said Sen. Lindsey O. 
Graham (R-S.C.), who has coauthored legislation that would impose a 
27.5 percent tariff on Chinese imports unless China allows its 
currency to rise in value.


Fighting back is not protectionism, Graham told Greenspan and Snow. 
No more saber-rattling. We want results.


The takeover bid by China's state-controlled CNOOC Ltd. may have been 
the clearest sign yet of an emerging economic power's global 
ambitions, but it came at an inopportune time.


The Senate is set to vote July 27 on the currency tariff bill, 
coauthored by Graham and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). Momentum 
is building on legislation, written by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) 
and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), to allow the Commerce Department to respond 
to allegedly illegal Chinese export subsidies. And new legislation is 
being drafted to penalize China for intellectual property violations.


China maintains it is being used in Washington as a scapegoat for the 
inevitable decline of U.S. manufacturing as jobs continue to slip to 
lower-cost countries. Nevertheless, anti-China sentiment has infected 
virtually every trade issue in Washington, leaving Bush with an 
uphill battle to secure passage even of the relatively minor CAFTA.


CAFTA is more than a trade agreement, Bush pleaded yesterday in a 
speech in Washington. It is a signal of our nation's commitment to 
democracy and prosperity for the entire Western Hemisphere.


Now, China has added national security concerns to economic 
anxieties, with lawmakers expressing fear that China is aggressively 
seeking to corner a strategic asset, oil, and create its own captive 
supply. House and Senate members demanded an administration review of 
the bid, required under the Defense Production Act, to determine 
potential economic and security risks. Treasury officials indicated 
they would agree to the request if Unocal accepts CNOOC's offer.


If you don't review this one, that law is meaningless, Sen. Ron 
Wyden (D-Ore.) told Snow, adding, I don't think being a free trader 
is synonymous with being a sucker and a patsy.


For a world still absorbing the emerging force of a newly capitalist 
China, CNOOC's bid is the clearest sign yet of how China's appetite 
for resources is reshaping global commerce.


The bid sets up a once-unthinkable spectacle: a potential takeover 
battle between an American oil giant, Chevron Corp., and a Chinese 
firm still controlled by the Communist Party government. Unocal's 
board had already accepted Chevron's $16.5 billion offer in April. 
CNOOC's move underscores the urgency of China's drive to secure new 
stocks of energy at a time when its rapid growth and embrace of the 
automobile are pressuring global stocks, generating new tensions in 
the already complex geopolitics of oil.


More broadly, CNOOC's bid for Unocal reinforced the mission of 
China's largest and best-financed state companies to look beyond 
domestic confines and invest abroad in what has become known as 
Beijing's Go Out Strategy. CNOOC's move came days after a 
consortium led by China's largest home-appliance maker, Haier Group, 
launched a pursuit of Maytag Corp., hoping to secure one of America's

[Biofuel] WHO study raises biotech food concerns + FDA spins facts to Congress

Fwd - FYI

From: News Update from The Campaign [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: WHO study raises biotech food concerns + FDA spins facts to Congress
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005

News Update From The Campaign
-

Dear News Update Subscribers,

WHO REPORT ON BIOTECH FOODS

The World Health Organization (WHO) released a report on Thursday 
that calls into question the current safety oversight of genetically 
engineered foods.

The report titled Modern food biotechnology, human health and 
development: an evidence-based study calls for case-by-case risk 
assessment of each new biotech food on its effects on human health. 
It also emphasizes the importance of long-term monitoring to catch 
any possible adverse effects.

Similar to other safety review studies on genetically engineered 
foods, this WHO report raises many concerns over the current safety 
testing methods, but does not suggest that the biotech foods now 
being sold may be causing health problems. (Perhaps the authors of 
these reports don't want to alarm consumers  by suggesting there was 
inadequate review of existing crops?)

While The Campaign is glad that the World Health Organization is 
raising concerns  over the current testing and monitoring methods, we 
don't agree that the biotech  crops now being consumed should be 
assumed to be safe. WHO states that the current crops have had 
pre-market risk assessments. But these risk assessments have been 
done by the biotech companies themselves. Where are the safety 
studies that prove the current biotech crops are indeed safe? They 
don't exist.

There may be low level allergic reactions taking place in tens of 
thousands of people who are currently eating genetically engineered 
foods. But without labeling, it is extremely difficult for the 
Centers For Disease Control to discover patterns of low level 
allergic reactions.

NAS REPORT RAISED THE SAME CONCERNS

Last July, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a report 
titled Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to 
Assessing Unintended Health Effects.

The NAS report had similar findings and concerns as the WHO report. 
The NAS report stated: There is a need, in the committee's judgment, 
for a broad research and technology development agenda to improve 
methods for predicting, identifying, and assessing unintended health 
effects from the genetic modification of food.

FDA SPINS THE DATA TO CONGRESS

In spite of numerous reports criticizing the oversight of genetically 
engineered foods, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration refuses to 
accept there are problems with the current regulatory scheme.

Last week the Director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and 
Applied Nutrition, Robert E. Brackett, Ph.D., testified before the 
U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry about 
the FDA's regulatory program for genetically engineered foods.

Rather than acknowledging the findings of the NAS report and others 
about the need for significant improvements in the oversight of 
genetically engineered foods, Brackett assured the Senate committee 
that everything was working great with the current system.

It was particularly disturbing that Brackett said the NAS report 
found that genetically engineered foods are as safe as their 
conventional counterparts. Actually the NAS report stated that the 
likelihood of unintended genetic effects were significantly higher 
in genetically engineered foods. They even had a chart showing this 
on page 64 of the NAS report.

Next month The Campaign will put together an ACTION ALERT to the 
Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry pointing out 
how Director Brackett misrepresented the facts contained in the NAS 
report when he testified before them. And we will point out that the 
new WHO report raised the same concerns as the NAS report about the 
need for better risk assessment and safety monitoring.

THE FDA CONTINUES TO REFUSE TO ACCEPT THE FACTS

It was disappointing that FDA administrators never listened to 
concerns of their own scientists when they set up the original 
regulations for genetically engineered foods in 1992. At that point 
in time, FDA scientists recommended that each crop should be reviewed 
on a case-by-case basis. But instead, the administrators ignored the 
concerns of their own scientists and stated that genetically 
engineered foods are substantially equivalent to conventional crops 
and need no special testing or labeling (unless the crops contain a 
known allergen or have a significantly altered nutrient content).

And now that several of the most respected scientific bodies in the 
world have called for better pre-market testing and post-market 
monitoring, the FDA continues to argue that the current system is 
working fine and does not need to be changed.

READ THE REPORTS YOURSELF

Posted below is an article from the Food Navigator - USA web site 
titled Health effects of GM

Re: [Biofuel] VW Diesel


Hello Jan


Hello Lyn.
Yes, you are missing something. The main problem with SVO as diesel engine
fuel is not the high viscosity, but the final boiling point and the low
cetane number. Elsbett system have taken action before these disadvantages
and have designed a dual air system in the combustion chamber of the piston.
This makes it possible to combust SVO completely, since the outer air layer
isolates from the inner air layer, where the combustion temperature is high
enough. And although the engine is directly injected, it is equipped with
pre-chamber injectors, on which coke will form, but works self-cleansing due
to the typical design of pre-chamber injectors.


Are you talking about the original Elsbett 3-cylinder multifuel diesel engine?

Best wishes

Keith



Best regards
Jan Warnqvist
AGERATEC AB

jan at carryon.se

+ 46 554 201 89
+46 70 499 38 45
- Original Message -


I went to the site that Keith recommended and it looks fantastic. What this
maker Elsbett sells is a one tank system you can put anything from WVO to
Dino into. If such a system exists, why are people bothing to make 
biodiesel?
It would be easier, more ecological, economical etc to just use 
vegetable oil.


I think about this problem both in the ecolological sense and the Peak oil
sense. Particularly with the latter, the fewer things you have to 
buy, the less

exposure you have to being gouged by corporations exploiting scarcity.
Anyone with access to a few acres of land and a home made oil press can
create fuel out of a variety of easy to grow crops.

Am I missing something?

Lyn

 
 Elsbett. See:
 http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html
 Straight vegetable oil as diesel fuel
 
 Don't get some two-tank system that probably has copper parts in it
 and all it does is pre-heat the oil to lower the viscosity, there's
 a lot more to it than that, even with a Merc.

 forgetting to) - switch on and go, stop and switch off, SVO,
 biodiesel or petro-diesel, in any combination.

 We've had a two-tank system for a couple of years but we never used
 it. I just didn't think it addressed the problem fully, and the more
 I learnt the more I thought so. A few months ago we installed a
 single-tank Elsbett system in our Toyota TownAce and we're most
 pleased with it. It does exactly what it claims to do, as we fully
 expected.

 http://www.elsbett.com

 Best wishes

 Keith


 On 25 Jun 2005 at 8:46, John Hayes wrote:
 
   You have the 'SVO destroyed my TDI' folks.
  
   And the 'SVO is just fine' pollyannas.
  
 
 I went to the TDIclub site as well. I probably only saw a fraction
 of the posts,
 and what I saw made me realize that I didn't really do Mike's 
question justice
 with my previous answer, so this will be long in an attempt to 
provide more

 substantive info.
 
 I researched WVO for a while and decided upon the Jetta TDI, 
which I bought
 specifically with the intent of doing a WVO conversion. I 
chose the Jetta even
 though the golf or beetle would have been more to my personal 
taste, because

 the consensus seemed to be that it was desirable to isolate the WVO tank
 from the passenger area because the tank is heated  - a hot 
metal tank of oil

 being not the most desirable presence in a passenger compartment
 
 There are a variety of systems and kits and ways that people 
have done these
 conversions and I have no doubt people have ruined their TDI's 
with WVO. The
 TDI has very close tolerances, also why it its such a high 
performance engine.
  From what I have gathered, gumming up the injectors with WVO 
is one of the
 serious risks. Critical issues in the system then are well 
filtered WVO and

 that it be HOT.
 
 Just to clarify matters for any readers, a WVO system is a 2 
tank system. Do
 not ever consider just pouring WVO into your regular fuel tank 
- that will

 destroy your TDI.
 
 The system I have has :
 
 a heated WVO  tank and fuel lines (the lines are heated by being bundled
 beside a line filled with  engine coolant) ,
 
 a filter for the WVO (which has already been prefiltered the remove
 the obvious
 particulate  fryer gunk before being put in the tank) This 
filter should be

 replaced approximately every 2000 miles,
 
 and a PURGE switch.
 
 The purge switch is a very important part of the system. It is used when
 switching *back* to diesel from WVO. It pushes the WVO out of 
the lines and
 injectors. If you purge for too long, you begin to suck diesel 
fuel  into your

 WVO tank, but ithat's not really not a problem.
 
 The *problem* in a WVO system *without* a purge function 
arises because,
 if the WVO is not completely cleared from the engine 
components ,  you will

 begin to dump some WVO into the diesel tank when you shut off the car.
 After a while, your diesel will be contaminated with WVO. The 
reason why this
 is a problem is because your diesel tank is not heated and the 
WVO is too
 viscous at room temperature to flow through the injectors 
properly. The

 WVO must be at 190

Re: [Biofuel] VW Diesel


Hello Lyn


I went to the site that Keith recommended and it looks fantastic. What this
maker Elsbett sells is a one tank system you can put anything from WVO to
Dino into. If such a system exists, why are people bothing to make biodiesel?
It would be easier, more ecological, economical etc to just use vegetable oil.


Swings and roundabouts. See Three choices:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html#3choices

Elsbett systems are not all the same, they're tailormade for each 
different car, or engine rather. Prices (that I know of) range from 
650-750 Euros (US$780-900), plus freight (70 Euros in our case). For 
the sake of argument make it US$1,000. Installing the system takes a 
bit of time and skill, and you might have to pay an injection pump 
workshop to adjust the pump for you, and perhaps fit the new 
injectors.


Anyway, with biodiesel, at 60c/gal if you make it yourself and use 
WVO, that $1,000 will get you 1,666 gallons of biodiesel. That would 
last most people three years or more, and you won't have to spend 
anything on converting the motor.


But meanwhile you've had to go to the trouble of making all that 
biodiesel. Or, on the other hand, you've had to go to the trouble of 
heating and filtering all that SVO anyway.


It's a matter of choice. I think they're complementary, not 
either/or, certainly not one vs the other (the silly which is 
better argument).


So now we use SVO, but we still make biodiesel anyway. We have other 
diesels here that we use it in, tractors, a Yanmar that powers a 
shredder and so on, and we barter quite a lot, we supply it to the 
folks who come to our seminars, and we use it for promoting biofuels 
- we supplied biodiesel for the power supply at the 5-day Sun and 
Moon Festival held at Kyoto University last week for instance. 
Regardless of whether we personally prefer SVO and Elsbett (we like 
it, but we like biodiesel too), a major reason for installing it was 
to help promote the SVO option in Japan, which very few people here 
have heard of. Yet.


By the way, there are folks in the US selling two-tank kits who say 
any oil, any motor. Well, maybe, I wouldn't bank on it. Elsbett 
doesn't say that, their warranty is limited to SVO use, virgin oil 
not WVO, and they send you the Euro specs for rapeseed oil used as 
fuel. We think it's fine to use WVO as long as it's GOOD WVO, if you 
can tell the difference. Someone else here in Japan, who fitted the 
first Elsbett system here, just before we did, brought me some of the 
oil he'd been using. He got it from his works canteen, very good oil 
he said, and they'd told him there was no animal fat in it. I 
titrated it at 7.5 ml 0.1 NaOH solution. Ouch! He doesn't use that 
oil anymore. He doesn't eat at the canteen anymore either. The oil we 
use is usually about 1.2 ml.


Some other folks in the US are selling a single-tank Elsbett 
lookalike, having bought a couple of Elsbett systems first and done a 
sort of copy. They're not diesel engineers, or any engineers, and 
they seem to have designed it mainly for marketability - claimed to 
be easy to install and so on, and it has a fancy filter so you 
allegedly don't need to pre-filter the oil. With only a two-year 
history and no user-reports that I've seen, as opposed to Elsbett's 
illustrious record in diesel engineering, well, caveat emptor.



I think about this problem both in the ecolological sense and the Peak oil
sense. Particularly with the latter, the fewer things you have to 
buy, the less

exposure you have to being gouged by corporations exploiting scarcity.


Or creating scarcity. I once saw economics defined as the art of 
articificially created shortages.



Anyone with access to a few acres of land and a home made oil press can
create fuel out of a variety of easy to grow crops.


True. Or by-products of other crops.


Am I missing something?


I don't think so. You might enjoy these two previous posts:
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg18745.html
Re: Biofuels hold key to future of British farming

http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg48264.html
How much fuel can we grow?

Best wishes

Keith



Lyn

 
 Elsbett. See:
 http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html
 Straight vegetable oil as diesel fuel
 
 Don't get some two-tank system that probably has copper parts in it
 and all it does is pre-heat the oil to lower the viscosity, there's
 a lot more to it than that, even with a Merc.

 forgetting to) - switch on and go, stop and switch off, SVO,
 biodiesel or petro-diesel, in any combination.

 We've had a two-tank system for a couple of years but we never used
 it. I just didn't think it addressed the problem fully, and the more
 I learnt the more I thought so. A few months ago we installed a
 single-tank Elsbett system in our Toyota TownAce and we're most
 pleased with it. It does exactly what it claims to do, as we fully
 expected.

 http://www.elsbett.com

 Best wishes

 Keith


 On

[Biofuel] War-bent administration

2005-06-26 Thread r

If this war-bent administration really wants Thirld World War, all it 
has to do is keep bossing around China, especially concerning petroleum 
issues.


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Re: Re[2]: [Biofuel] Re: Environmentalism is dead. What's next?

hello, hakan.

ok, i thought you meant something along those lines.  still, i don't get the 
link between the roman legions and the turks.  or are you referring to the 
byzantines (if so, they didn't have 'legions')?

i'll have to try and google the website you speak of, and see what they say.  
though, unless i'm reading more into it than you mean to suggest, i must say 
it seems highly dubious.

-chris

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Re: [Biofuel] War-bent administration

i agree that if there is another world war-type conflict, trade/economic 
tensions between the u.s.a. and china is the obvious breeding ground.  but i 
don't 
think it will be caused by a war-bent adminitration, at least not this one.  
it foresee a rather more complex (and worrisome) dynamic.

-chris b.

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Re: Re[2]: [Biofuel] Re: Environmentalism is dead. What's next?

btw, hakan, without getting into a whole spiel about the vikings and 
linguistics/linguistic origins as well as the turks, there was a corps of 
vikings--the 
varingian guard--who served the emporors of byzantium.  thus they would have 
inevitably left relics in what is modern day turkey.

-chris b.

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Re: Fwd: [Biofuel] Money that grows on crops


Hello Chris, Kirk


cool bit of news.

in a similar though sinister vein, surely one of the agro-giants like
monsanto is already working on a gm bacteria or algea to extract 
gold from seawater.


Hm. Will nickle do for starters? I came across this below in my files 
today - The Phytomining of Certain Elements.


Best

Keith


-chris b.

Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 07:32:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kirk McLoren [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: biofuel Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Subject: [Biofuel] Money that grows on crops

http://csmonitor.com/2004/0415/p17s02-sten.htmlhttp://csmonitor.com 
/2004/0415/p17s02-sten.html


Money that grows on crops

By Jen Ross | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

CONCEPCIÓN, CHILE  He can't quite make money grow from trees, but a 
New Zealand scientist has devised a way to harvest gold from plants.


The idea: Use common crops to soak up contaminants in soil from 
gold-mining sites and return the areas to productive agriculture. 
The gold harvested from the process pays for the cleanup - with 
money left over for training in sustainable agriculture.



The Phytomining of Certain Elements

Cooperative Research and Development Agreement No. 58-3K95-7-570

between

USDA-Agricultural Research Service
The University of Maryland
The Environmental Consultancy of the University of Sheffield
and Carol Nelkin, Trustee

Final Summary Report

by

Rufus L. Chaney, J. Scott Angle, and Alan J.M. Baker.
July 26, 2001 + Revised Final Patent Report

INTRODUCTION:

Mining of metals using traditional technologies often caused 
contamination of surface soils, and left solid waste deposits rich in 
metals. And soils surrounding metal smelters have historically become 
heavily contaminated with Ni and other elements in these ores. When 
such soils require remediation, the default remediation technology 
(soil removal and replacement), costs on the order of $3 million per 
hectare-30 cm deep. Alternatives to this expense are needed to deal 
with such contaminated soils.


The existence of natural plants which hyperaccumulate (absorb and 
translocate to shoots, reaching over 1000 ìg Ni/g dry tissue when 
grown on soils where the plants occur naturally) Ni and Co offered an 
alternative method to remediate such soil, a new technology called 
phytoextraction. In particular, a number of Ni hyperaccumulator 
species had been shown to accumulate over 2.0% Ni, and could be used 
as bio-indicator plants to find Ni rich serpentine soils. The 
USDA-ARS, University of Maryland-College Park, and the Environmental 
Consultancy of the University of Sheffield collaborated in inventing 
a method to use such natural plants to phytoextract Ni from 
contaminated soils which could also be applied to mineralized 
ultramafic soils which are extensive on Earth. Also, all Ni consumed 
in the US is imported or recycled because US Ni mines have closed. Ni 
is a strategic metal, and phytomining the extensive serpentine soils 
in the northwestern US and some other states could allow the US to 
produce Ni metal needed as a strategic resource.


Viridian Resources, LLC, learned of the possible application of the 
phytoextraction technology to Ni and Co, and entered a Cooperative 
Research and Development Agreement with ARS, UMD and ECUS to convert 
our basic scientific observations into practical commercial 
technologies for phytomining soil Ni and Co.


CRADA Objective:

	The goals of this Agreement were to cooperatively conduct 
planning, research, development, testing and evaluation activities 
that are needed to develop plant genotypes andmanagement practices 
needed for commercial phytomining and phytoremediation (collectively 
called phytomining) of nickel and cobalt from serpentine or lateritic 
serpentine soils, soils rich in Ni + Co, or Ni+Co contaminated soils; 
to identify locations of such land needed to commercialize 
phytomining of Ni and Co; to develop methods such that phytomining 
could be an economically competitive technology for decontamination 
of soils, and for production of Ni ore; and to develop methods to 
recover Ni from the plant biomass produced by phytomining.



Accomplishments:

	The CRADA cooperators developed a plan to domesticate a Ni 
phytomining crop, a crop which accumulates Ni from contaminated or 
mineralized soils at an annual rate rapid enough to achieve 
environmental remediation of contaminated soils, or to provide a 
phytomining alternative to traditional mining by surface pits. 
Ultramafic or serpentine soils form from serpentinite rocks, and 
because the rocks are low in nutrients, many plants cannot grow on 
these soils. The soils are extensive in the northwestern US where 
more than a million acres are known to exist in CA and OR. 
Preliminary investigations and literature review indicated that these 
soils contained adequate Ni to serve as a phytomining substrate which 
could provide more annual value in growing phytomining crops as Ni 
ore than for growing crop plants on fertile soils

Re: Fwd: [Biofuel] Money that grows on crops

2005-06-26 Thread Michael Redler


As we all know, technology has a way of changing what materials we consider valuable.We seem to be in a period of flux which makes me very interested in your comments. I had no idea that these companies had this kind of ambition.

Because of it's namesake, Saltzburg used to be one of the most wealthy cities in the empire. What will happen to gold once it becomes so abundant? Perhaps it will only be abundant to the rich andand the secretsof it's ability to extract gold from sea water will be tucked securely away.

Gold from sea water -- a kind of biological "mortification" and "revivification".

http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/sci/history/AHistoryofScienceVolumeIV/chap2.html

MikeKeith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hello Chris, Kirkcool bit of news.in a similar though sinister vein, surely one of the agro-giants likemonsanto is already working on a gm bacteria or algea to extract gold from seawater.Hm. Will nickle do for starters? I came across this below in my files today - "The Phytomining of Certain Elements".BestKeith-chris b.Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 07:32:44 -0700 (PDT)From: Kirk McLoren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: biofuel Subject: [Biofuel] Money that grows on cropshttp://csmonitor.com /2004/0415/p17s02-sten.htmlMoney that grows on cropsBy Jen Ross | Contributor to The Christian Science MonitorCONCEPCIÓN, CHILE  He can't
 quite make money grow from trees, but a New Zealand scientist has devised a way to harvest gold from plants.The idea: Use common crops to soak up contaminants in soil from gold-mining sites and return the areas to productive agriculture. The gold harvested from the process pays for the cleanup - with money left over for training in sustainable agriculture.The Phytomining of Certain ElementsCooperative Research and Development Agreement No. 58-3K95-7-570betweenUSDA-Agricultural Research ServiceThe University of MarylandThe Environmental Consultancy of the University of Sheffieldand Carol Nelkin, TrusteeFinal Summary ReportbyRufus L. Chaney, J. Scott Angle, and Alan J.M. Baker.July 26, 2001 + Revised Final Patent ReportINTRODUCTION:Mining of metals using traditional technologies often caused contamination of surface soils, and left solid waste
 deposits rich in metals. And soils surrounding metal smelters have historically become heavily contaminated with Ni and other elements in these ores. When such soils require remediation, the default remediation technology (soil removal and replacement), costs on the order of $3 million per hectare-30 cm deep. Alternatives to this expense are needed to deal with such contaminated soils.The existence of natural plants which hyperaccumulate (absorb and translocate to shoots, reaching over 1000 ìg Ni/g dry tissue when grown on soils where the plants occur naturally) Ni and Co offered an alternative method to remediate such soil, a new technology called phytoextraction. In particular, a number of Ni hyperaccumulator species had been shown to accumulate over 2.0% Ni, and could be used as bio-indicator plants to find Ni rich serpentine soils. The USDA-ARS, University of Maryland-College Park, and the Environmental Consultancy
 of the University of Sheffield collaborated in inventing a method to use such natural plants to phytoextract Ni from contaminated soils which could also be applied to mineralized ultramafic soils which are extensive on Earth. Also, all Ni consumed in the US is imported or recycled because US Ni mines have closed. Ni is a strategic metal, and phytomining the extensive serpentine soils in the northwestern US and some other states could allow the US to produce Ni metal needed as a strategic resource.Viridian Resources, LLC, learned of the possible application of the phytoextraction technology to Ni and Co, and entered a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with ARS, UMD and ECUS to convert our basic scientific observations into practical commercial technologies for phytomining soil Ni and Co.CRADA Objective:The goals of this Agreement were to cooperatively conduct planning, research, development, testing
 and evaluation activities that are needed to develop plant genotypes andmanagement practices needed for commercial phytomining and phytoremediation (collectively called phytomining) of nickel and cobalt from serpentine or lateritic serpentine soils, soils rich in Ni + Co, or Ni+Co contaminated soils; to identify locations of such land needed to commercialize phytomining of Ni and Co; to develop methods such that phytomining could be an economically competitive technology for decontamination of soils, and for production of Ni ore; and to develop methods to recover Ni from the plant biomass produced by phytomining.Accomplishments:The CRADA cooperators developed a plan to domesticate a Ni phytomining crop, a crop which accumulates Ni from contaminated or mineralized soils at an annual rate rapid enough to achieve environmental remediation of contaminated soils, or to provide a

Re: Re[2]: [Biofuel] Re: Environmentalism is dead. What's next?



Chris,

Maybe I am adding more to it than it is, but the connection is there. A 
very common
Viking name, that we know existed from the Vikings and I think that it was 
a Hakon
in the Ericsson crew, that discovered America. The Roman Empire and their 
conscript
armies, was going far up North in Europe, including England. When it comes 
to my
name, I am very sure. I discussed this with some people from Turkey and 
that were

those who made me aware of the similarities between the rune stones and the
Turkish writings. I saved the link to the web site, but lost it when my old 
computer crashed.

If you find it, tell me, because I have not looked for it since then.

Regarding my name, it made something clear and that was why I got so many
email in Turkish.

If you then start to look at the  Viking villages, with its clear structure 
of advanced military
fortifications etc. It also explain the mobility of the Vikings, the highly 
sophisticated
shipping and navigation knowledge. The question is, from where came the 
Vikings and

their tales about far away countries and Gods.

It is two years since I looked closer on this, but I will see if I can find 
something again.


Hakan




At 08:06 PM 6/26/2005, you wrote:

hello, hakan.

ok, i thought you meant something along those lines.  still, i don't get the
link between the roman legions and the turks.  or are you referring to the
byzantines (if so, they didn't have 'legions')?

i'll have to try and google the website you speak of, and see what they say.
though, unless i'm reading more into it than you mean to suggest, i must say
it seems highly dubious.

-chris




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Re: [Biofuel] VW Diesel

2005-06-26 Thread William Adams

Anyone: Is there a glossary link for newbies explaining such acronyms as 
WVO, SVO, Dino, VW Diesel, etc.?

Bob A
- Original Message - 
From: Lyn Gerry [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To: Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2005 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Biofuel] VW Diesel

I went to the site that Keith recommended and it looks fantastic. What this
maker Elsbett sells is a one tank system you can put anything from WVO to
Dino into. If such a system exists, why are people bothing to make 
biodiesel?
It would be easier, more ecological, economical etc to just use vegetable 
oil.

I think about this problem both in the ecolological sense and the Peak oil
sense. Particularly with the latter, the fewer things you have to buy, the 
less

exposure you have to being gouged by corporations exploiting scarcity.
Anyone with access to a few acres of land and a home made oil press can
create fuel out of a variety of easy to grow crops.

Am I missing something?

Lyn

Elsbett. See:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html
Straight vegetable oil as diesel fuel

Don't get some two-tank system that probably has copper parts in it
and all it does is pre-heat the oil to lower the viscosity, there's
a lot more to it than that, even with a Merc.

forgetting to) - switch on and go, stop and switch off, SVO,
biodiesel or petro-diesel, in any combination.

We've had a two-tank system for a couple of years but we never used
it. I just didn't think it addressed the problem fully, and the more
I learnt the more I thought so. A few months ago we installed a
single-tank Elsbett system in our Toyota TownAce and we're most
pleased with it. It does exactly what it claims to do, as we fully
expected.

http://www.elsbett.com

Best wishes

Keith

On 25 Jun 2005 at 8:46, John Hayes wrote:

  You have the 'SVO destroyed my TDI' folks.

  And the 'SVO is just fine' pollyannas.

I went to the TDIclub site as well. I probably only saw a fraction
of the posts,
and what I saw made me realize that I didn't really do Mike's question 
justice
with my previous answer, so this will be long in an attempt to provide 
more

substantive info.

I researched WVO for a while and decided upon the Jetta TDI, which I 
bought
specifically with the intent of doing a WVO conversion. I chose the 
Jetta even
though the golf or beetle would have been more to my personal taste, 
because

the consensus seemed to be that it was desirable to isolate the WVO tank
from the passenger area because the tank is heated  - a hot metal tank 
of oil

being not the most desirable presence in a passenger compartment

There are a variety of systems and kits and ways that people have done 
these
conversions and I have no doubt people have ruined their TDI's with WVO. 
The
TDI has very close tolerances, also why it its such a high performance 
engine.
 From what I have gathered, gumming up the injectors with WVO is one of 
 the
serious risks. Critical issues in the system then are well filtered WVO 
and

that it be HOT.

Just to clarify matters for any readers, a WVO system is a 2 tank 
system. Do
not ever consider just pouring WVO into your regular fuel tank - that 
will

destroy your TDI.

The system I have has :

a heated WVO  tank and fuel lines (the lines are heated by being bundled
beside a line filled with  engine coolant) ,

a filter for the WVO (which has already been prefiltered the remove
the obvious
particulate  fryer gunk before being put in the tank) This filter should 
be

replaced approximately every 2000 miles,

and a PURGE switch.

The purge switch is a very important part of the system. It is used when
switching *back* to diesel from WVO. It pushes the WVO out of the lines 
and
injectors. If you purge for too long, you begin to suck diesel fuel 
into your

WVO tank, but ithat's not really not a problem.

The *problem* in a WVO system *without* a purge function  arises 
because,
if the WVO is not completely cleared from the engine components ,  you 
will

begin to dump some WVO into the diesel tank when you shut off the car.
After a while, your diesel will be contaminated with WVO. The reason why 
this
is a problem is because your diesel tank is not heated and the WVO is 
too
viscous at room temperature to flow through the injectors properly. 
The

WVO must be at 190 degrees F to liquify it adequately.

I am not a car mechanic, and the above description is what I've gained 
from
online research  and conversations, and this was the data I used to 
decide

whether and what conversion I would do.

Hope this helps.

Lyn

  And the professional 'we need more scientific data' skeptics.

  And the 'yes, we need data but your studies are too old' 
  counter-skeptics.

  Yup. I  think that about sums it up.

  jh

  Keith Addison wrote:
   Hello John

   Just FYI, there is a major debate on SVO use raging at TDIclub.com
   right now. It's actually spilled over into 3 different threads in 
   the

   biodiesel section of the forums(sic).

Re: Re[2]: [Biofuel] Re: Environmentalism is dead. What's next?



Chris,

The Viking era in the Nordic countries, around 800 ac?

Hakan


At 09:02 PM 6/26/2005, you wrote:

btw, hakan, without getting into a whole spiel about the vikings and
linguistics/linguistic origins as well as the turks, there was a corps of 
vikings--the

varingian guard--who served the emporors of byzantium.  thus they would have
inevitably left relics in what is modern day turkey.

-chris b.




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Re: [Biofuel] VW Diesel

hi, bob.

wvo = waste vegetable oil

svo = straight vegetable oil

biod = biodiesel

dino = petroleum-based fuel (or so i infer)

e85 = 85% ethanol fuel (the norm in the u.s.a. is 10% max)

e100 = 100% ethanol

vw diesel simply refers to a vw diesel.  i think that about covers it.

-chris b.

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Re: [Biofuel] re property taking supreme court

2005-06-26 Thread Larry Foran

Brian,
  Her comments were exactly what I was trying to get across in the
other thread.  Now City Planners can use acquistion of Taxes as a
means to take personal propery.  There is a situation in Houston in
which a family owned river front business is about to lose 300 feet of
their property so a developer can build a marina and restaurant - by
eminent domain.  Guess we will all need powerful corporate lawyers to
keep our homes.

Larry

On 6/24/05, Brian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Thank you so much for the link.  The dissenting opinions of Justices
 O'Connor and Thomas are what I found most enlightening.  I couldn't agree
 with them more.
 
 Brian
 
 - Original Message -
 From: S Chapin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
 Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 11:03 AM
 Subject: [Biofuel] re property taking supreme court
 
 
  Brian,
  http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/23jun20051201/www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/04pdf/04-108.pdf
  or go to Common Dreams .org and look for US Supreme Court link (right side
  somewhere). See also NYT article by Linda Greenhouse.
  Difference between public use and public purpose? Pfizer
  pharmacueticals will build a research complex. (who are BTW immune under
  the patriot act from lawsuits?) I wonder if under the same arguement
  public purpose could enable a community to declare a Wal-Mart eminent
  domain and turn it into a hospital??
  S. Chapin
 
 
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  messages):
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[Biofuel] Re: New thread - the Vikings.....

2005-06-26 Thread bmolloy

Hi Hakan,
 The Vikings have an intriguing history (if you don't mind
my putting in my twopence worth). Originally a collection of pagan
seafarers, the Vikings developed into a military force when they struck easy
pickings in the wake of the Roman pullout from their northern colonies,
including England. From about the Eighth Century onwards, driven by
overpopulation at home and attracted by the relative helplessness of the
abandoned Roman colonies, they spilled out from the Scandinavian homelands -
today demarcated by Denmark, Norway and Sweden - in small fleets of war
canoes that swept across much of the known world.
In Europe, mostly around the sea coasts, they raped, pillaged and destroyed
much of the post-Roman culture, bringing about the so-called Dark Ages in
which literacy was kept alive in a few isolated monastries that escaped the
invaders.
They invaded the British isles in force and also set up settlements in
Greenland, Iceland and North America. Their kings ruled in Ireland, England
and Scotland and also held sway over the Atlantic Ocean islands of the
Orkneys, the Faroes, the Shetlands and the Isle of Man. The Duchy of
Normandy in France was founded by Vikings. Their war canoes also raided as
far south as the Mediterranean and some Viking chiefs set up trade treaties
with the Greeks.
Eastwards they penetrated far into Russia (the name Russia is from the
Scandinavian word Rus). and were for a time dominant in the Russian cities
of Novgorod, Kiev and other centres.
They were finally stopped at the borders of the Byzantine Empire, founded on
Constantinople. The Byzantine was the eastern half of the Roman Empire that
survived for a thousand years after the west had collapsed. The Vikings were
so highly regarded by the Byzantines that they served as mercenaries to the
Emperor in the form of the famed, and feared,Varingian Guard.
The Vikings faded as a military force at the end of the 11 century just as
European nationhood began to arise and with it the use of trained armies.
However they left traces of their culture, and genes, throughout most of the
western world.
In England today, in any town north of line across the English midlands, you
will still find Scandinavian influences in the local accent, with Newcastle
being the most heavily accented from standard English. English towns with
names ending in by (as in Whitby, Newby) indicate their Viking origins.
Given the history of the Brits, and the number of blondes and redheads among
them, the Vikings obviously also left a lot behind a lot of their seafaring
and fighting genes.
Regards,
Bob.

- Original Message - 
From: Hakan Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2005 9:57 AM
Subject: Re: Re[2]: [Biofuel] Re: Environmentalism is dead. What's next?



 Chris,

 Maybe I am adding more to it than it is, but the connection is there. A
 very common
 Viking name, that we know existed from the Vikings and I think that it was
 a Hakon
 in the Ericsson crew, that discovered America. The Roman Empire and their
 conscript
 armies, was going far up North in Europe, including England. When it comes
 to my
 name, I am very sure. I discussed this with some people from Turkey and
 that were
 those who made me aware of the similarities between the rune stones and
the
 Turkish writings. I saved the link to the web site, but lost it when my
old
 computer crashed.
 If you find it, tell me, because I have not looked for it since then.

 Regarding my name, it made something clear and that was why I got so many
 email in Turkish.

 If you then start to look at the  Viking villages, with its clear
structure
 of advanced military
 fortifications etc. It also explain the mobility of the Vikings, the
highly
 sophisticated
 shipping and navigation knowledge. The question is, from where came the
 Vikings and
 their tales about far away countries and Gods.

 It is two years since I looked closer on this, but I will see if I can
find
 something again.

 Hakan




 At 08:06 PM 6/26/2005, you wrote:
 hello, hakan.
 
 ok, i thought you meant something along those lines.  still, i don't get
the
 link between the roman legions and the turks.  or are you referring to
the
 byzantines (if so, they didn't have 'legions')?
 
 i'll have to try and google the website you speak of, and see what they
say.
 though, unless i'm reading more into it than you mean to suggest, i must
say
 it seems highly dubious.
 
 -chris



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[Biofuel] Calcium Acetate/Alcohol Fuel

2005-06-26 Thread Michael Redler


I found a movie demonstration for makingsolid/semi solid fuel. I thought some of you might be interested.
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCESoft/CCA/CCA3/MAIN/CANHEAT/PAGE1.HTM
Mike___
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[Biofuel] vikings, turks and romans (was: Environmentalism is dead. What's next?)

hakan,

i wasn't disputing everything you suggest.

what i do have trouble with, and correct me if i'm misinterpreting you, is 
the notion that the vikings could somehow be descended both from the roman 
legions and the turks.  could there have been contact between the romans and 
scandinavia?  possibly a trade relationship?  certainly, but i find this 
questionable because the vikings would have had little if anything to offer 
that the 
romans weren't already getting from the peoples of britania, and western and 
central europe.  it seems more likely that scandinavian goods would have found 
their way to the romans indirectly, via trade with the germanic peoples of 
central 
europe.

but even if we suppose that there was direct trade contact, i highly doubt it 
could have had sufficient regularity or depth to be of significant 
cultural/technological/political impact, with the possible exception of their 
longboats. 
 but even this i've never heard suggested, and it seems about as likely that 
this influence could have come from phoenician traders.  that is, if the 
viking longboat wasn't an entirely autoctonous technology.

there may be more to the turkish/turkic relationship, because the history 
gets a little more complex.  but it seems highly speculative in the least if 
not 
utterly baseless and fanciful, to suggest that the connections are anything 
but extremely remote in some cases, and superficial in others.

anyway, except for the fact that (as was pointed out earlier in this thread) 
everything is connected to everything, we seem to have gone pretty far afield.

perhaps you'd like to continue this discussion off-list?

-chris b.

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Re: [Biofuel] Re: New thread - the Vikings.....



Bob,

The Vikings are interesting, also because they were very good in physiological
warfare. I did find an article about that they probably came from the 
middle east,

but it is in Swedish,
http://www.fof.se/?id=043jPress
It is a well known and reputable Swedish research publication. Unfortunately I
could not find the Turkish site in English or any English site. The English 
are

always talking about The Vikings with origin from the Nordic countries and the
period after 800 ac.

It says that a new and very probable theory is that the writings on the stones
from the Vikings, use the written language of nabateic and that it is probable
that the Vikings origin is Middle East and the area which now is Sinai, Jordan
and South of Israel. The article says that it is possible that the Vikings 
came

from Roman support troops, with long bows, which were not used in Europe
at the time, but for the Vikings. It says that if these theories are right, 
it was

a 1000 men Roman troop with long bows, stationed at the Northern border of
the Roman Empire and this support troop was coming from the area that used
nabateic language. This explains in that case that the Turks can read what the
Vikings wrote and on a more basic plane, why my name is Hakan.

The Vikings also had a special name for Constantinopel (Miklagård) which was
an important trading point for them and it is many sagas about the Vikings
visits. Miklagård meant the big city for the Vikings.

I am talking about the origin of the Vikings and that is before 400-800 ac and
you are referring to the history of the Vikings 800-1100 ac.

Hakan


At 02:06 AM 6/27/2005, you wrote:

Hi Hakan,
 The Vikings have an intriguing history (if you don't mind
my putting in my twopence worth). Originally a collection of pagan
seafarers, the Vikings developed into a military force when they struck easy
pickings in the wake of the Roman pullout from their northern colonies,
including England. From about the Eighth Century onwards, driven by
overpopulation at home and attracted by the relative helplessness of the
abandoned Roman colonies, they spilled out from the Scandinavian homelands -
today demarcated by Denmark, Norway and Sweden - in small fleets of war
canoes that swept across much of the known world.
In Europe, mostly around the sea coasts, they raped, pillaged and destroyed
much of the post-Roman culture, bringing about the so-called Dark Ages in
which literacy was kept alive in a few isolated monastries that escaped the
invaders.
They invaded the British isles in force and also set up settlements in
Greenland, Iceland and North America. Their kings ruled in Ireland, England
and Scotland and also held sway over the Atlantic Ocean islands of the
Orkneys, the Faroes, the Shetlands and the Isle of Man. The Duchy of
Normandy in France was founded by Vikings. Their war canoes also raided as
far south as the Mediterranean and some Viking chiefs set up trade treaties
with the Greeks.
Eastwards they penetrated far into Russia (the name Russia is from the
Scandinavian word Rus). and were for a time dominant in the Russian cities
of Novgorod, Kiev and other centres.
They were finally stopped at the borders of the Byzantine Empire, founded on
Constantinople. The Byzantine was the eastern half of the Roman Empire that
survived for a thousand years after the west had collapsed. The Vikings were
so highly regarded by the Byzantines that they served as mercenaries to the
Emperor in the form of the famed, and feared,Varingian Guard.
The Vikings faded as a military force at the end of the 11 century just as
European nationhood began to arise and with it the use of trained armies.
However they left traces of their culture, and genes, throughout most of the
western world.
In England today, in any town north of line across the English midlands, you
will still find Scandinavian influences in the local accent, with Newcastle
being the most heavily accented from standard English. English towns with
names ending in by (as in Whitby, Newby) indicate their Viking origins.
Given the history of the Brits, and the number of blondes and redheads among
them, the Vikings obviously also left a lot behind a lot of their seafaring
and fighting genes.
Regards,
Bob.

- Original Message -
From: Hakan Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2005 9:57 AM
Subject: Re: Re[2]: [Biofuel] Re: Environmentalism is dead. What's next?



 Chris,

 Maybe I am adding more to it than it is, but the connection is there. A
 very common
 Viking name, that we know existed from the Vikings and I think that it was
 a Hakon
 in the Ericsson crew, that discovered America. The Roman Empire and their
 conscript
 armies, was going far up North in Europe, including England. When it comes
 to my
 name, I am very sure. I discussed this with some people from Turkey and
 that were
 those who made me aware of the similarities between the rune stones and
the
 Turkish writings.

Re: [Biofuel] vikings, turks and romans