You've got to tell them... Soylent is made from... FOOD!!

Hi everybody.  Still here; still intending to blog more; but reality is against us.  Our part of Minnesota is officially a "disaster area", because of the stuck jet streams; 20 inches of rain in May and June, much of it torrential.  We have secondary bridges and roads out in many places- and no idea when, or even if, they'll be repaired.  We're doing better than many of our neighbors, though.  If they took the risks and planted their crops very early, they may be ok; if they decided to wait- they may get no crop at all; too wet to work the fields for too long.

Besides being overwhelmed with regular work, which is always late and difficult, blogging requires some kind of enthusiasm on my part.  And it's not that there's a lack of things to talk about- it's that there are too many.  And too often, discussion of things like the situation in Egypt just seems futile.  Nothing we say here will have any useful point to it.  It seems.

What finally got me off my figurative fanny today was this stunning bit of insanity.  Watch the video first; and beware of the Golem-Sucks advertising:

Ok, got that?  The 24 year old software engineer has figured out a way to rid the food system of waste, and help out with hunger in the impoverished regions of the world.  It's easy!  Just put it all into powder with a 20 year shelf life!  Why didn't we think of this before??

The stunningly insane part is- how easily he has the entire world press going right along with him.  Not surprisingly, they have a nice, logical set of arguments in favor of powdered food; take a look at them here on their crowdfunding site (the project has ended- alas you can no longer contribute here; but they did raise just under $800,000...)  An end to waste!  No more shopping, or cooking, or washing dishes!  Cool- has to save tons of energy, right?

Well, no.  How did we get to a place were NONE of the journalists covering this (so far as I can see) are familiar with the concept of "embodied energy"?  You have powdered protein here?  Um- where did it come from?  The store, obviously!

This is typical of the "answers" to global problems offered by "young software engineers".  The mind boggles.  It's the kind of analysis any systems thinker - um - thinks about, instantly.  Doing some digging, it did not really take me too long to find a reliable list of Soylent ingredients.  (Incidentally- many of us already know the name, "soylent"- hm; is there a trademark/copyright/IP conflict here?  Already contentious.  You never know what the courts will say, but personally- I would bet that name is "occupied".)

Ok; the list of ingredients:


Maltodextrin (carbs) (made from - corn, or wheat!)
Oat Powder (carbs, fiber, protein, fat) (made from- oats!)
Whey Isolate (protein) (made from - milk!)
Grapeseed Oil (fat)  (made from - grapes!)
Potassium Gluconate  (made from - sugar!)
Salt (sodium)
Magnesium Gluconate  (made from - sugar!)
Monosodium Phosphate
Calcium Carbonate  (limestone!)
Methylsulfonylmethane (Sulfur)  (actually; sulfur added to - natural gas?)
Creatine  (made from - meat!)
Powdered Soy Lecithin  (made from - soybeans!)
Choline Bitartrate (made from - something like sugar!)
Ferrous Gluconate (Iron)  (made from - sugar!)
Various vitamin and mineral supplements


Do you begin to understand?  Leaving aside the glaring suppositions that a) we truly know all our nutritional requirements, and b) this is all of them; exactly where are the energy savings; if instead of humans directly consuming corn, wheat, oats, milk, meat, etc, etc, etc, - we still have to grow all those crops; then reduce the simple components to powder?  Powdering, I assure you, requires a great deal of energy input; as do all separation/ purification processes.  And- are we going to now grow grapes for their seed oils?  What do we do with the rest of the grape?  I'll bet they start using palm oil soon; much more available.

The kid is able to buy the powdered ingredients for cheap right now- because they are indeed all manufactured as part of industrial food processes, and "by products" of animal feed or brewing or cheese making.  So- ask yourself; how does it scale up?  Way, way, up: in order to make any difference to anything, according to their own arguments.  Demand for the powdered components would skyrocket- and so would the prices.

Soon - just as is the case right now with quinoa, the farmers growing the crops would be selling them to the wealthy for their powders, and be unable to afford, once again, to feed themselves from their own crops.

I have to say; this is obvious; and we know this.  And yet- the Polka Dot Gallows paths we're on continue to thrive.

Proof !!

SciFi writer Larry Niven, in his younger days, proliferated "Finagle's Law", which is basically Murphy's Law (Anything that can go wrong, will.) re-written for geeks.

My recollection is "The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum."

I can now add a corollary (that is, in addition to the one I've already added; Greenpa's Law: "Everything can go wrong. Just wait.")

Right now I'm spending a lot of time mowing grass. This is in preparation for our harvest- it's really hard to pick stuff off of bushes when the quackgrass and thistles are taller than the bushes; and it's also great cover for rodents down there. You gotta get rid of the grass. So I mow.

The guineas, you understand, are part of our long-term plan for the grass. A) they eat some. and B) they are phenomenal "watch" animals. If we wind up with sheep, or calves- the guineas should be all over, and will alert the dogs to any intruders. Theoretically.

Anyway. Partly I mow up on the John Deere, using a following flail. And, I mow using the Grillo walking tractor, with the Ferrari sickle bar; 7.5 hp Yanmar diesel, and the best sickle bar ever made. I'm in love. But you still gotta walk; for miles, holding on to a jerking, vibrating noisemaker.

So, it's, like- THIRSTY work. For reasons probably connected with Finagles Law, my JD 70 hp 4WD utility tractor (open, no cab) has NOWHERE to put or hang a water container. Apart from improvised places, which always result in tearing off a signal light on a tree branch, or the metal water container being dropped into the mower. So- no water. Likewise, the Grillo is a water-free zone; you just don't want to be carrying a canteen; it'll beat you to death, and a "camel" pack is a hilarious idea- you'll sweat out twice the water you can carry because it cuts off air circulation on your back, completely.

THIRRRRSTY.

Having done this a time or two, of course you can plan for work loops that end up somewhere where you can get water. Obviously.

One of them is our 80 year old Aermotor windmill, which pumps all the water for the Little House. When the wind is blowing, of course. But I do usually try to avoid mowing on windless days (which we have plenty of in summer) - because I'll sweat and die.

So- today the wind is blowing, VERY steady; 12 mph from the NNW. A good clear direction; pumps water great.

I get off the tractor, cool it down, turn it off; pull out my earplugs; and walk to the windmill, which is pumping just as steady as can be.

I bend down, pick up the hose from it- and...

The wind dies.

This is ABSOLUTELY reliable. I've been keeping track; for 25 years (we didn't have the windmill for the first 5).

No kidding. In 25 years, here are the data.

No. of times I've taken a drink directly from the pumping mill (or tried to): 264.

No. of times the wind has died when I picked up the hose: 248.

No. of times the wind quit completely, and I gave up: 197.

Fool that I am; today the wind was so steady, I thought I could sneak in a drink.

Nope. Gave up.

Here is the new corollary to Finagle's Law:

The Aermotor Corollary:

If you really need a drink from your windmill, the wind WILL die immediately, and water pumping will cease for as long as you wait for it to restart.

Those are hard data folks.

Somebody IS out to get us.

lies and damned lies- and models

Stoneleigh, over at The Automatic Earth, cites some articles with a bit of discussion about macroeconomic models yesterday, pointing out some of the limitations there.  (Among the basic assumptions in the most accepted models; consumers are rational!!!!  - and - all have the same preferences!!!!  Yeah, right.)

I'd like to add a bit of insider info on "models", per se.  I started writing this as a comment on TAE, but it kept growing-

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The advent of computers got plenty of academics, in all disciplines, excited. Hey, we can use Big Math! And arrive at New Truths!  Look at how many things we can throw into the soup, and still calculate!  Man, you can correlate everything!

The reality, of course, remains the old bit about "Garbage In, Garbage Out." And the increasing complexity of "models" has made it both much more likely that there will be a bit of garbage in the model somewhere, and hugely less likely that anyone will ever find and remove it. Who actually examines the math- bit by bit? 

In truth; virtually no one, except the author, ever checks the math; not even the academic reviewers will put in the hours, days, necessary to truly proofread these monsters. 

 I've published some calculations on carbon cycle stuff- with surprising conclusions; and as far as I can tell, no one has ever even checked my multiplication.  I got two kinds of reactions- with no checking:  "wow, cool!"; and "I don't believe it."  Check the math?  Check basic assumptions?  nah- why?

But "models" still carry a great cachet of believability- in the Congressional hearing,  "but the model says..." will trump any expert opinion to the contrary. 

Math does not lie- we so desperately want to believe. 

Disraeli nailed it long ago; "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statisics." I greatly fear that models may constitute a 4th kind; with a power even greater than statistics.

This first became obvious to me when I acquired my first Macintosh computer (1984, 128K).  MacPaint was such a breakthrough program; absolutely astonishing.  I was hopeless as an artist with pen and ink; but here, the computer will keep the lines straight; and- you can go back and fix anything, pixel by pixel if necessary.

One of the first things I did was make a diagram of a biological/genetic project I was working on at the time.  Took me half a day (no time at all, compared to finding an artist, teaching them what I wanted it to show, etc.) and looked totally professional when done.

And totally convincing.  Wow- this looks like- The Truth.  Neat, clean, and logical.

And I knew damn well it was NOT a proven hypothesis; there were plenty of doubts possible, and remaining; but I'd made the diagram up as an argument, and they didn't show.  Everybody who looked at it was convinced.  And on totally inadequate information.

I was so impressed- and frightened- by the power of the Pretty Diagram that I immediately, made up another:

Just clean up the presentation- and it will look like the absolute truth.

My insider's info: the mathematical models used to describe the dynamics of salmon populations- are junk.  And most relevant fisheries biologists, and plenty of ecologists, know it.

Primary evidence- uh, they don't work; the salmon fishery in California is closed, this year, since the number of returning fish dropped to 5% of normal.  Catastrophic.  In fact, the mathematical ecologists have known for decades that the original salmon models are junk.

Once launched, models take on a life of their own.  A major purpose for them is to communicate with lawmakers.  Having acquainted the lawmakers with Model A- it's almost impossible for an agency to go back to the legislature the next year, and say "oh, incidentally, we've discovered that Model A is total crap."

So what you do is refine Model A.  The problem being, Model A still contains crap; and arguably, crap, multiplied by anything, is still crap.

Models, regardless of the field they are applied to; whether economics, ecology, or global weather patterns- are like all technologies.  They have no intrinsic ethics; they are true only to the extent their inputs are accurate, and honest.  And that's assuming that the model has any chance of reflecting reality in the first place; by no means a given.

They are a particularly powerful tool for liars- because there are so few people who are qualified to refute them.  And they are very seductive even for those with the best of intentions.  Young scientists get sucked into the worlds of modeling constantly- becoming enamored of the power, and promise- and gradually becoming apologists for the entire process.  And; well; this model right here- which they helped write...

One more technology where the potential for abuse and misuse is immense- mostly unrecognized- and not policed.

The salmon models are blindingly simple, compared to macro-economic models.  

One somewhat objective way of looking at it:

Salmon models can be tested, and possibly refined.  Did the predictions turn out true-ish?

Global warming models also- can be tested.

Economics models- uh- we're immediately out of the realm of hard numbers, into the worlds of fantasy and opinion.  Are the premises true?  Opinion.  Numbers true?  No physicist, or ecologist, would accept the kinds of measurements economists claim as accurate.  There are simply too many assumptions, ifs, maybes, blatant guesses, and we hopes in all those economic data.  And lies.

Ah, but the model shows- this is true.

And I can make a model to show anything I want.

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Ok.  So why, I hear you cry, is this discussion of any value to me?  I come here for information on how to build potty houses, for crying out loud.  And the occasional bit of stunningly wonderful poetry.

One of the basic problems we face is the increasingly difficult task of figuring out who is telling us the truth about our world, and its possible futures.

There's really no way of escaping the need to be able to judge your source's veracity.  You need to know how to guess; is this person lying?  a fool?  misinformed?

It's not easy; and is not going to get any easier.  Perhaps it will be useful to realize- if they're basing their claims on some complex and unexaminable "model" - and they're quite vehement about how this proves their claim- beware, oh, beware.

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Update, 6/16; an article in the Washington Post today contains this bit of comment, regarding the mortgage bubble collapse- " 'Nobody had models for that,' said David E. Zimmer, then one of the executives at People's Choice, a subprime lender based in Irvine. 'Nobody had predicted people going into default in their first three mortgage payments.' "

So- models- that did not work- were being used to guide actions.  Result?  Millions of foreclosures- suicides- etc, etc.

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Update 9/19/08 - mid panic- An article yesterday in the NYT, on "How Wall Sreet Lied To Its Computers" - almost catches up to us-

Peak Patsies - is here-

Sorry, got another one of those "I can't help it, the news is driving me crazy" posts today-

Everybody is commenting on "the economy" these days. It ain't looking good, as everybody knows. Oodles of people blame it on- oodles of things. I need to add an oodle.

We know about Peak Oil - in spades. Yep, sooner or later, we DO have to hit the end of oil- because we do, after all, have just one planet we can stripmine. Lots of quibbles are possible - oh, we'll find another Prudhoe Bay soon - probably under the Greenland icecap, or the Ross Ice Shelf. Ha ha.

Today, though, we have clear evidence of an unreported, unrecognized "peak" - the actual cause of all the credit collapses going on. And you heard it here first.

We have hit the peak on readily available - fools. Idiots. Patsies. Dupes. Consumers.

Take a look here; NYT- end of spending. Basically - in the USA, in 1989, most of us were "saving" around 10% of our income. The rate is currently - negative.

There are no more savings to stripmine- which is what the credit guys have been doing for decades ("hey, borrow a little more-cheap!- you can always pay it off if you get in a crunch...")

And, to everyone's astonishment- people are reacting. By - not using their credit cards anymore. Living within their income.

The ramifications, for "business as usual" are HUGE.

Even the analysts are starting to get it.

Also today - NYT Markets fall... did you know something like 2/3 of our economy is in the "services" sector? That means stuff where no physical goods are made, or change hands - it's things like the barber, your accountant, the dry cleaner, restaurants- where someone is doing something for you that you COULD do for yourself. Guess what? More people are doing stuff for themselves. (Because they have no money- you think Exxon Record Profits of $40BILLION AGAIN could have anything to do with that? We've talked about their record profits in this blog before- here.)

I've always suspected there was a limit to the "taking in each other's laundry" economy. Something very much like Doug Adams "Shoe Event Horizon." Doug was not dumb.

What it truly amounts to - is a catastrophe for the business world that has so long relied on sales of hyper-inflated real-estate with only imaginary value; SUV's which fill a need -oh, that NO ONE has; and plastic gizmos (thanks Colin) with a) no concept of physics, and b) no concept of human behavior - it's the loss of the target market. Suckers. Ok, not the loss-

But quite possibly the Peak. Sooner, and more certain, than Peak Oil - and with no imaginary new resources under ice waiting to be exploited-

Peak Patsies - is upon us. The end of constant growth; the end of expansion.

Peak Fools. Peak Chumps. Peak Suckers. After decades of uncontrolled strip-mining of this limited resource- the veins have finally given out. The great Patsy Mines are in trouble.

Peak Consumption - perhaps is a phrase that will fly, in the long run. Or Peak Gullibility, if we're feeling cranky.

Wow. Buckle your seat belts.

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SGL's comment made a point I'd intended to put in here, and forgot in my hurry to zip off to a chore-

The Patsy Pool has long been considered infinite. We'll never run out of fools - is a favorite saying of pundits across the ages.

Ah, but you see- that's exactly what we've always said about... oil....... North America........ oceans..... and the atmosphere. They're too big to ever be affected by our tiny actions.

It's one more "infinite" resource where we've hit the end; and the ramifications are huge.

And- we need to differentiate between "stupid" - and "fool". I ain't dumb; but I've for sure been a fool, and been fooled; more than once. :-)

Picking the right path...

Billy M left a comment on an earlier post asking for some basic opinions/advice- 

"The research I've done on heating for food has only resulted in seemingly balanced arguments from the two options I have at my hands. I have an old propane grill ($5 at a garage sale), as well as an electric stove that came with the place I am renting. The most convincing information I read said that propane actually releases a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere, since it is a natural gas, and that the methods of obtaining electricity have become efficient enough to surpass the carbon emissions of propane. However, other readings have said that propane may just be slightly more efficient than electricity, although the fact that it is a natural gas does in fact bring down the resourcefulness of the energy source.

I don't own any type of device that would allow me to burn wood...

So I guess what I'm wondering is if you have any facts/opinions straight out of how someone should go about heating food (if they did in fact have all three options -- wood, propane and electricity)

Billy, you're not alone in wanting to know "the right answer" for a question- I'd love to be able to give it.

What struck me immediately here though was the missing component- Billy, basically.

What kind of cooking do you do?  What kinds do you LIKE to do?  Are you allergic to woodsmoke?  Do you enjoy cutting, splitting, handling firewood, or are you really too busy?  How much "extra" time do you have- either to wrangle wood, or propane containers?-

Etc.  Hopefully you get the idea.  Who you are- what you need- and even what makes you happy- all these considerations are genuinely IMPORTANT to the answer.

You are important.  We need to remember that.

"Sustainable" practices WON'T be- if they make people miserable, and they won't stick to them.

  Which seems obvious, but quite a few enthusiasts will, in the excitement of the moment, adopt practices that they can't/won't - uh, sustain.  Because in their enthusiasm for the greater good, and the benefit to the planet, they forgot- WE are part of the planet we're trying to save here- and we matter, too.

The whole decision- what kind of fuel SHOULD I cook with - can get pretty crazy complex if you keep picking at it.

Propane is a fossil fuel- bad carbon.  It's mostly delivered on trucks- diesel fuel; more fossil carbon. Where does your local propane actually come from?  Natural gas is often moved in pipelines/pipes- pretty efficient, if available- but still fossil carbon.

Electricity is mostly coal (bad), and nuclear (BAD); with minor bits of natural gas (badish) wind (ok) and hydro (okish) - depending on where you live.  If you've got the option as some do to essentially purchase straight renewable electricity- that could make a difference in your decision.  

Wood is "current budget" carbon- good carbon; and it CAN be renewable, though like everything else wood can be done badly.  If you live in a city - it may not be legal- most available wood-burning stoves are much dirtier than they have to be, and wood smoke is pretty irritating for the neighbors.  Do you have a good supply?  The space to store it, the time?

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As an aside here- firewood is kind of dominating my life at the moment- because of the floods last fall, and global warming.  I cut and gather it myself; the floods made harvest much more difficult/much more time consuming- so I wasn't able to do my normal autumn wood cutting.

  And- the firewood we had cut from our own plantings; stacked, curing/drying - got soaked thoroughly by the 14" of rain in August/Sept- and is unburnable.  Given normalish weather- it wouldn't be nearly so wet, and we'd have had days of low-humidity sunny windy weather in Sept/Oct that would have dried it very well.   So in fact I'm cutting firewood every other day- and burning it fast, since it's cold this winter; lots of below 0 F nights.

There are a LOT of other things I need to be doing- but here I am.  The Little House has no backup heating system- it's firewood only (with a little passive solar boost- not useful at 1 AM).

Will rainy autumns happen more often?  Don't know.  This wet autumn, though, may be the thing that pushes me over the edge into adding a layer to my firewood process- a drying/storage shed.

There have been many years where a rainy week in November got my wood a little wet- making me aware that if all the winter stacks had been under a roof, I'd be burning less wood; doing less hauling- but- it's always been a fairly minor factor.  And every time that happened, I've done mental calculations- what would it cost me- money, time, and new habits- to design and build a wood drying shed?  A bunch.  How big would the benefits be?  Considerable.  Balance?  Kind of six of one, half a dozen of the other.

This year is the first where all the stacked wood is so wet it's nearly useless.  I can make it burn, but it gives little heat, and clogs the chimney fast.  The balance may have shifted- instead of being a minor improvement, the shed may now be a necessity, up-front costs or not.  

It strikes me that this kind of shift may be another major aspect to global warming- tiny local processes/technologies may no longer be reliable.  Pushing people over all kinds of edges.

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Maybe the best I can do for an answer to Billy M's very sensible question is to describe my own answers.  More than one answer, since I've changed, over time.

When I first moved to the Little House, a major factor in the calculation was money- we didn't have any.  We DID have wood- 40 acres of hardwoods.

With that in mind, I designed the Little House to use wood both for heating and cooking- all year.  Including our sultry hot continental summers.  (It's a huge advantage to be able to design a dwelling from the ground up- with all the integration factors being considered.  I still missed a few, of course.)

The House can essentially be tweaked to function like a big chimney/cooling tower in the summer - the downstairs has big windows in all 4 walls; the upstairs/loft has one huge window (floor to ceiling) on the north, and a normalish window on the south.    All the windows but the small one upstairs open on a hinge- so unlike a sash-window, where the actual opening can only equal half the window area at best, the hinged windows when open make holes equal to the entire window area- huge, in our case.

And- there's a BIG opening between upstairs and down- so if all the windows are open, any heat from the stove is quite free to rapidly move up, and out.

It works fine, too- we did all our cooking with wood for probably the first 5 years or so.  

Then several things changed- we had children (available time and energy vanished), we got involved in other projects that were important too; and we got a little money coming in.

  Suddenly it became more sensible to use propane for cooking in the summer.

And that's what we still do.  The stove that heats the house is a modern Canadian stove designed for both heating and cooking.  If we need heat- it's on, and we cook with wood.  If we don't need heat- we cook with propane.  The time required for the propane is a small fraction of time needed to cook with wood in the summer- and no question, July and August are a little more comfy if we don't have to crank up the woodstove to make a cup of coffee, or soup for lunch.

One departure from that practice can be canning- if we're canning tomatoes or whatnot- we will usually use wood- canning takes a lot of heat; and ergo a lot of money.

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One more aside- cooking in China.  As part of my work, I've hiked well up into the mountains in a number of places there, out into nearly untouched countryside.  These are ancient communities, long in "balance" with their environment.  Chances are, this clan has lived here since these people were Homo erectus, not Homo sapiens.  That long.  

They long ago hit the limits of their environment; and adapted, in many ways.  Only the rich can afford to burn wood- there's just not enough of it, and mostly it's needed for other uses, tools, furniture, housing.  They burn- rice straw, and pine needles.  Under a wok.  That's exactly what a wok is for- cooking over a very quick, hot fire.  Their whole cuisine is adapted in that direction- because of the primordial shortage of fuel.

I'll bet you could cook entirely on - junk mail.  If you had the will, and someplace outdoors for the smoke to go away.  :-)  You'd need something like a ventilated 5 or 10 gallon steel can for the fire to burn it, and the wok to sit on- (I'm kidding- mostly... probably too many toxins in junk mail smoke to be good cooking fuel...)

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So.  Answers to questions like this are going to be highly variable, I think.  Forever.  Because one of the most important components in the decision making algorithm is always going to be personal.  How does this fit your life, your finances, your region?

If it makes you miserable- in the long run, it's not a good answer -

The good answers should leave you - solvent, not overworked, and satisfied.

Thinking is good. Numbers are good.

I'm seriously jammed for time in my other life right now; luckily there are two excellent quickies available for me.

One - readers will know that I sometimes toss out calculations for someone to do- someone did! In a very early post I asked someone to just quickly figure out how much gasoline is used, worldwide, just to run the airconditioners in the car- every day.

Brian West did take a quick run just today- outstanding! Do please take a look at the original post and his comment # 2; Unthinkable.

The number he gets is pretty scary- actually, there were 2 factors he left out (understandable in quick/dirty first tries) that would make a pretty large difference- that's the number of cars that actually HAVE airconditioning; and, the percentage of time the airconditioners are actually running. I think that would make a big difference it the final number.

Here's his calculation:

"Using some Very Rough assumptions:

cars worldwide = 600,000,000

average daily car mileage = 40m

average car fuel consumption = 27.5mpg

average increase in fuel consumption when using air con = 7.5% (the figures I found varied from 2%-18%)


...656, 250, 000 gallons


or for us more metric antipodeans, that's 2, 483, 906, 250 litres, or enough fuel for quite a road trip.."

THAT'S PER DAY.

Now- I DO think that's going to turn out high- there are a lot of cars out there without a/c, or with a/c that doesn't work. At this point it's a wild guess- but let's guess it's only 1/5 of the cars out there that have working AC - that would make it a mere 131 Million gallons/day.

Then, too- nobody runs their AC all the time; but then there are some that DO - like everyone in TX, FL, AZ - so let's say half again. That gets us to a mere 65 Million gallons/day.

Or - 23 BILLION gallons/year. And that estimate is brutally short of Brian's original - which would be 237 billion... ??

boy, that seems pretty high.... Something else we're missing, so we can do a quick check on whether these numbers make any sense at all - what's the stated dail/annual global gasoline consumption? Somebody's got that number. I tried a quick google, and hit the reason why I ask others to to this; it's a tangled mess, and the only stats I could find quick were "total petroleum products" - in barrels. uh. what?

Points-

a) Doing these kinds of calculations is pretty EASY - don't leave them to the experts- use your own brain and your own googling ability.

b) Is 23 billion gallons/year- and climbing- worth talking about? or 237 BILLION, if Brian's number is closer? (I'll bet mine is actually low- other corrections might well move it back towards The West Number.)

c) Boy, you better check your numbers before publishing....... :-) I put up like 3 different versions here this morning; because... I'm jammed for time..... haste makes waste..... had to do it over and over... and it's probably STILL not right. No time.

d) Regardless; all those little tiny individual actions- that don't make any difference-
MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE.


Ok, item 2 - this blog has been given an Award!
Thinking Blogger

:-) Gollyjeepers.

Thanks, More Deliberately. I am honored, humbled, etc. And vastly amused that you think I "probably won't appreciate the recognition..." I'll be chuckling about that a good while. Hey, my crusty grandpa act is working! No- I'm human. A pat on the back feels good. Thanks. And, of course, I'm TOTALLY tickled that I'm #3, and Colin is #4. HA! :-)

(that's intended as purely silly juvenile humor, Colin- nothing more. ) :-)

gotta zoom off for the day-