Gorey Details
The wry cartoon shown here was posted on Harpers earlier last month and has been a topic of heated debate among me and compatriots.
Al may mean well, but as usual Harpers cuts to the bone. What alternative is there to alternative (corn) energy? Journey to Forever provides a rather exhaustive amount of information concerning biodiesel and its production and corn oil is most definitely not at the top of their list.
The most generously yielding oilseeds include the Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis) and a few of the greasier landscape trees. Interestingly enough the first non-arborescent perennial on the list is Jatropha curmas, a Caribbean hedgerow shrub with 10 times the oil producing capability of the illustrious corncob. A review by Purdue U summarizes the cultural and ethnobotanical uses for this sustainable crop, including the cure for cancer!
Simmondsia chinensis is the plant from which Jojoba oil comes, and yields are considerably greater than that of corn. It is a California/Mexico native shrub and the oil produced is a rare straight chain ester (with comparatively low iodine value) making it extremely viable as biodiesel component. Somehow it's saving the whales, too.
Of course, any monoculture is not sustainable and is ecologically unsound and harmful. Thats another story, though.
1 comment:
I say , what about the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa? The seeds yield great protien for the hungry, provides an alternative to paper goods, and great alternative to fuel extracted from any chiefly terrestrial, herbivorous or carnivorous reptile of the extinct orders Saurischia and Ornithischia, from the Mesozoic Era.
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