Articles by Biodiversivist

Electric bike triumphs and travails

Rode my bike to jury duty last Wednesday. It was pouring rain and the winds were gusting into the 50s. I had my trailer hitched up because I was hauling a laptop, magazines, and a battery charger with me. I don't think I could have done this without the electric motor.

However, at one point, a gust -- accelerated by the venturi effect of two skyscrapers -- stopped me cold. I jumped off and cowered in a nook where I found another guy hiding with the remains of his umbrella. I managed to drag, not ride, my bike the last block in a veritable deluge.

Biodiesel is wack

... by feeding carbon sinks to our cars, trucks, and buses.

My wife pointed me to an article on biodiesel in the business section of the Seattle Times yesterday. I discussed this issue once before. But hey, if the Times can repeat the same story over and over, why can't I?

Let me parse this article out.

Plaza says Imperium's contract provides palm oil exclusively from sustainable farms, and it plans to perform audits to make sure that proviso is honored.

You can't possibly verify where a given gallon of palm oil came from, especially in a third world nation where graft and bribes are still standard operating procedure. What would you do if the person you send to Indonesia on a verification mission discovers that your competitors have hogged up all the palm oil from the "sustainable" plantations (whatever those are supposed to be) and that they are sending you oil from newer plantations (ones that more recently usurped rainforests)? Try to envision how effective this strategy will be.

"Quick! Shut down the refinery and lay everyone off! Recall that last shipment! We are using palm oil being grown on recently cleared rainforests!" Spare me. Had he said, "We will not be using oil imported from third world tropical countries because the incentive to destroy rainforest carbon sinks is just too great and there really is no effective way to verify sustainability," I would have been deeply impressed. You will also note that nowhere in this article was global warming mentioned.

Meet the male pill

This news is a few weeks old (I've been uncharacteristically busy lately), but for those of you who missed it, listen up. Researchers have stumbled on the fact that drugs used to treat hypertension and schizophrenia have the potential to become a male contraceptive pill.

It may actually be on the market some time in the next five years. Other than its capacity to alter the course of human history, reduce world poverty, and save the biodiversity of the planet, this really isn't a big deal.

According this source:

The pill, a single dose taken a few hours before having sex, affects contraction of the muscles that control ejaculation, but wouldn't interfere with performance or orgasm sensation, researchers at King's College London say. The result is a dry ejaculation.

No, I don't know what a dry ejaculation is, and I'm not sure I want to. If you click on the video at this site you will be forced to sit through an ad before being treated to a clip of Woody Allen running around in a sperm suit.

The ethanol game

Here is an article I found in the Renewable Energy Access bulletin asking for further government subsidization of cellulosic ethanol so it can compete with other subsidized biofuels.

It gave me an idea. I looked up some statistics to see how much oil the Prius fleet has saved and compared it to how much ethanol is consumed. Turns out that the 500,000 Priuses sold save about five to seven times more oil annually than all of the corn ethanol consumed in the United States.