False Ideas and Thoughtless Activists

From Back40 comes this example of a "Great Shiny New Thing" that will fix one aspect of the current environmental woes -- only it ain't so... bq. Ersatz Green Here's an example of the false ideas coming from thoughtless activists.
For those who haven't already heard of PLA, it is basically a replacement for polyester that's made from corn. It means compostable plastic packaging, and is also used to make "Ingeo" cloth, but is not structurally sound enough to make "durable goods" with. One downside is that it's made from corn kernels, not husk or stalk, so growing for plastic competes with growing for food instead of taking a waste stream. However, it's a great material, a huge step in the right direction, and hopefully its success will continue to grow.
bq. There is no such thing as maize waste. Every bit of it is food for some creature. Farmers chop the whole plant up for silage; seed, cob, leaves and stems are all livestock feed. bq. Even worse, it's a net cost to the environment to use maize as an industrial packaging and the cost would reflect that if not for massive subsidies. It takes so much energy to cultivate, fertilize, harvest and transport maize that it uses more fossil fuel to make than it produces in alternatives. When the environmental costs of soil degradation, erosion and water use are factored in it doesn't make any environmental sense at all. bq. The only way it makes sense to use plant materials for industrial materials is if they come from perennial plants that don't need annual cultivation and are inedible except by fungi. That means woody material high in lignin that even ruminants can't digest; even termites need fungi to digest lignin for them. Also his comments on Buddy Cat are worth reading. Life is hard but a good friend can make it a lot better... Critters is friends too...

October 2022

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

Environment and Climate
AccuWeather
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Climate Depot
Ice Age Now
ICECAP
Jennifer Marohasy
Solar Cycle 24
Space Weather
Watts Up With That?


Science and Medicine
Junk Science
Life in the Fast Lane
Luboš Motl
Medgadget
Next Big Future
PhysOrg.com


Geek Stuff
Ars Technica
Boing Boing
Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
FAIL Blog
Hack a Day
Kevin Kelly - Cool Tools
Neatorama
Slashdot: News for nerds
The Register
The Daily WTF


Comics
Achewood
The Argyle Sweater
Chip Bok
Broadside Cartoons
Day by Day
Dilbert
Medium Large
Michael Ramirez
Prickly City
Tundra
User Friendly
Vexarr
What The Duck
Wondermark
xkcd


NO WAI! WTF?¿?¿
Awkward Family Photos
Cake Wrecks
Not Always Right
Sober in a Nightclub
You Drive What?


Business and Economics
The Austrian Economists
Carpe Diem
Coyote Blog


Photography and Art
Digital Photography Review
DIYPhotography
James Gurney
Joe McNally's Blog
PetaPixel
photo.net
Shorpy
Strobist
The Online Photographer


Blogrolling
A Western Heart
AMCGLTD.COM
American Digest
The AnarchAngel
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Babalu Blog
Belmont Club
Bayou Renaissance Man
Classical Values
Cobb
Cold Fury
David Limbaugh
Defense Technology
Doug Ross @ Journal
Grouchy Old Cripple
Instapundit
iowahawk
Irons in the Fire
James Lileks
Lowering the Bar
Maggie's Farm
Marginal Revolution
Michael J. Totten
Mostly Cajun
Neanderpundit
neo-neocon
Power Line
ProfessorBainbridge.com
Questions and Observations
Rachel Lucas
Roger L. Simon
Samizdata.net
Sense of Events
Sound Politics
The Strata-Sphere
The Smallest Minority
The Volokh Conspiracy
Tim Blair
Velociworld
Weasel Zippers
WILLisms.com
Wizbang


Gone but not Forgotten...
A Coyote at the Dog Show
Bad Eagle
Steven DenBeste
democrats give conservatives indigestion
Allah
BigPictureSmallOffice
Cox and Forkum
The Diplomad
Priorities & Frivolities
Gut Rumbles
Mean Mr. Mustard 2.0
MegaPundit
Masamune
Neptunus Lex
Other Side of Kim
Publicola
Ramblings' Journal
Sgt. Stryker
shining full plate and a good broadsword
A Physicist's Perspective
The Daily Demarche
Wayne's Online Newsletter

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on October 29, 2004 9:05 PM.

J. F. Kerry and Stem Cell Research was the previous entry in this blog.

Storm Blogging is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 5.2.9