# The hypercritic conservationists



## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Have you ever noticed how the liberals want recycled bags at the grocery store? Good for them I do too. Have you ever noticed how they push for recycling and improvement in gas mileage to conserve? More good things. Have you ever noticed how they jump on other bandwagons without thought? That's the bad part. How can they cry save our forest and at the same time demand ridiculous things that waste energy?

We just purchased a new TV, and were commenting on the owners manual. It was 8 ½ by 11 and 70 pages long. If it had been printed in English only it would have been nine pages. Many of these are two, three, and some even four languages. Considering there are millions of owners manuals printed annually the waste must be staggering.

I see the green dummies are starting to catch on. Ethanol, ethanol, ethanol. Now they are seeing the remain land torn up to produce corn for its huge government subsidy. It cost more to produce not only in energy but results in even more carbon spew into the atmosphere. Get ready to see it end much faster than I thought. I have heard it attacked on radio five or six times this week. It will take a shot to the head with loss of federal support very shortly, and without that it can't survive. Emotional liberals (I know the only kind) loved it, but they will be the first to turn on it now. Get a liberal president (we don't have any other choice) and it will loose federal support their first year in office.


----------



## whitehorse (Jan 28, 2008)

haha, man not 100% sure i follow what you have been trying to post here. Liberals trying to save on wasted goods, recycle, and produce a fuel that is replenishable....

You can sit and debate about many things that might help our environment, that will help our air, slow global warming... but sometimes it's better to do and fail than to have done nothing at all.

Ethanol is a great idea, and has great potential. I love how they say it's taking more energy to produce than ethenol puts out. To that, I have some things to say. Millions of acres are ALREADY being used to produce corn. These "emissions" that spew carbon into the air, are exactly what is being done with or without ethenol production.

Everything can be tailored to be more efficient. I cannot say that corn prices are making the remaining lands be turned into farming. Would it bother you if the farmland was taking up the remaining lands for corn if it ment we could feed our country?

Switch grass is getting the new hype and as thechnology advances, we might just see switchgrass instead of corn. Can we forsee every problem that will come of this? Of course not. Can we give it a try? why not?

So. I will roll with you that corn isn't the best way to cut our fuel troubles. Is it a start? Certainly.

The owners manual deal, yea, it's a mess. You would be disgusted if you saw how much paper is wasted in our University. What I hate even more is when you buy a product that has more plastic covering and protecting it than is in the product itself. I know a lot of things are going streight onto the internet now days. with computers we will be able to save quite a bit of paper, but technology is just out of our finanical reach.

i'm going to keep it real. I don't have all the answers, but if someone has an idea they can put into effect... sure i'll check it out. if it didn't work out, so what. Some things do pan out, but you only hear about the ones that don't.

politically, I have been struggling just how conservative i am, if i'm democrat or republican. But what I can tell you, is that I want what is best for our future, so that some day when I am older, I can take my grandkids out in the woods and teach them everything I know.


----------



## zogman (Mar 20, 2002)

As far as the amount of water it takes to produce a gallon of Ethanol it is beween 4 and 5 gallons. That is/was kept secret until the aquifer at the Granite Falls plant ran dry. Now they want to take the water out of the Minnesota River. What will happen when that runs dry? It's easy to jump on the band wagon. Just make sure the floor boards aren't rotten.


----------



## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

> But what I can tell you, is that I want what is best for our future, so that some day when I am older, I can take my grandkids out in the woods and teach them everything I know.


That's what everyone wants, many of us just see different roads to the same goal.

Switchgrass without a doubt is the way to go. The latest data I read was that seven units of energy could be derived from each unit of energy invested. Corn on the other hand is one unit derived from one and one quarter invested. That is worse than doing nothing, because it makes us more energy dependent, and wastes taxpayer money on subsidizing a worse than nothing program. What it also leads to is breaking up marginal land that without subsidies would be grazing land or hay land. Land that is more highly erodeable than that which is in CRP now.

Where does the excess carbon come from. If you get 20 miles per unit of energy in your vehicle you could use that one and one quarter units of energy to get 25 miles down the road. Instead they are using it to produce one gallon of ethanol that will get your vehicle (ethanol has 70% as much energy as gas) 14 miles down the road. That doesn't make us energy dependent. Now you have emissions from one and one quarter diesel or gas, and the carbons from one gallon of ethanol. You are putting out 100% more carbons. Great. :huh:


----------



## Robert A. Langager (Feb 22, 2002)

Your owner's manual is not printed in four languages due to the liberals. It is printed in four languages as the manufacturer sells the same TV in different markets where English is not the primary language. Blame the manufacturer, it is cheaper for them to print a "one size fits all" manual than to print four manuals and then have to sort them according to where the TV is shipped.


----------



## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

I had wondered about that, and think it is true when we see those published in multiple languages. From that same person (in manufacturing) he said that the English, Spanish was pushed onto some companies claiming that English only was racist. I wasn't sure if that was a Mexican activist group he spoke of or a liberal activist group. Much like the traffic signs in some states now. Up here in North Dakota we don't much need Spanish on the bathrooms, but some places have it.

If they are legal, learn English.


----------



## whitehorse (Jan 28, 2008)

Plainsman, there is a need for Spanish in the United States... 
You say that if they are legal, they should learn english?
Maybe you havn't been informed that the United States does not have an official language. Maybe if we had one, I would agree with you. 
It's not that they do not want to learn english. Instead, it is that learning our language can take several years. 
I have helped in after school programs with kids that are ELL (english language learners), and have seen rooms FILLED with parents trying to learn english, with words such as CAT, BATHROOM, and other basic words. 
I don't think we can blame any one of those individuals for wanting a better life, and better yet, I think we owe them a chance. I really doubt that spanish speakers have influenced your life other than petty things like owners manuals. 
To say they need to learn english would be to say we should learn the Ojibwe language...... good luck with that


----------



## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

I simply see things like recycling as valuable, but ethanol as worse than worthless, and multiple languages in owners manuals as a waste of energy and resources. 
I also think that someone who intends to stay here needs to learn English, not only for the rest of us, but for themselves. The people you talk about trying to lean English are doing the right thing. For me it is a matter of respect. Unlike the people in California Schools who fly the Mexican flag instead of ours. Enough is enough, and language is only a small part of it. 
Do they come here to join us, or simply to take?

As far as the owners manuals perhaps I should be angry with the manufacturers for waste. In a time of recycling someone is dropping the ball. My first thought was that it was forced upon the manufacturers by bleeding hearts. Perhaps that's wrong, and the fellow I talked to was just passing the buck.


----------



## cwoparson (Aug 23, 2007)

> My first thought was that it was forced upon the manufacturers by bleeding hearts. Perhaps that's wrong.


I think you are wrong. Most products today are sold in many different countries other than where they are manufactured. To print different manuals for each country would probable use more ink and paper if separate manual face covers were printed plus different labor setups. For example there are 21 countries that speak Spanish.


----------



## whitehorse (Jan 28, 2008)

ethanol is not worse than worthless... eyeyeye...

just takin a stab, but if you add up all the wasted reading material in a years worth of owner's manuals, and stack them next to newspapers, magazines and what not, you'll see what is really filling our landfills.

So does this not make you just as evil as these companies? Maybe you live with out the paper, maybe you recieve no magazines, and therefore are able to blame everyone but yourself.

I don't see how you can make any reasonable argument that someone in the united states should HAVE to learn english. If they do, thats great, if not, who cares? I know you struggle getting through every day of your life, because people in the united states speak spanish... and I sympathise your struggles. All you can say is that it is a matter of respect. What do YOU know about that word.. respect... All I read on your posts, are you slamming liberals, politicians, and anyone NOT like you. 
Maybe a better statement would be to say"it's a matter of power"

I think it's great to see the mexican flag be flown in the united states, because THAT is respect... A respect FOR those students, and their CULTURE, and our neighboring country... What an awful person it would take to think a mexican flag is degrading to our country in any way. It's a symbol of their Culture....


----------



## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

> I think it's great to see the mexican flag be flown in the united states, because THAT is respect... A respect FOR those students, and their CULTURE, and our neighboring country... What an awful person it would take to think a mexican flag is degrading to our country in any way. It's a symbol of their Culture....


I think that tells me all I want to know about your. This is the United States. Here we fly the American Flag. We do not fly it upside down, with the Mexican flag above it. If you want that go to Mexico. You will find that the only people who will agree with you about the Mexican flag flying over an upside down American flag will be illegal aliens, radical even fanatical liberals, traitors, and the mentally challenged. I hope that is politically correct enough for you.

Ya, I am ticked at liberal politicians. They want to legalize illegal aliens. Do you know why. Because they know that many will vote for the welfare supporting liberals.


----------



## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

cwoparson said:


> > My first thought was that it was forced upon the manufacturers by bleeding hearts. Perhaps that's wrong.
> 
> 
> I think you are wrong. Most products today are sold in many different countries other than where they are manufactured. To print different manuals for each country would probable use more ink and paper if separate manual face covers were printed plus different labor setups. For example there are 21 countries that speak Spanish.


I still think it's waste, but a very small one compared to other things. It's like the NRA, I can't get them to stop sending me two of everything. One with my middle initial, and one without. Like it's two different people at the same address. Then there are the credit card companies that I get a letter from nearly every day. The owners manual just ticked me the other day. It was much more than a cover, it was an excess of 50 or 60 pages. Oh well, a very small thing compared to other waste. Like ethanol. I did get on sort of a rant over a small thing.


----------



## Robert A. Langager (Feb 22, 2002)

Plainsman said:


> It's like the NRA, I can't get them to stop sending me two of everything. One with my middle initial, and one without. Like it's two different people at the same address.


I got so mad at the NRA for all the crap they sent I called them and *****ed. Wouldn't you know it, the have a "limited correspondence list", which they put me on. Now I only get my magazine and my renewal notice, that's it. I wondered how much of my dues were spent filling my mailbox with junk mail.

I too am a big hater of junk mail. You supposedly can get your name taken off the list for a $1 fee. 
https://www.dmachoice.org/MPS/mps_consu ... iption.php

You can opt out of credit card offers here for free:
https://www.optoutprescreen.com/opt_form.cgi

This wastefulness is not a product of those darn liberals, but rather it is a product of the society as a whole. We are a use it and toss it society. It will take generations to cure us of that mindset.


----------



## whitehorse (Jan 28, 2008)

i think it makes sense that these "aliens" be tax paying, licence enabling citizens... instead, being illegal, they cost the taxpayers billions of dollars. Thats a lot of money to pay out for ignorance.
Is it their culture that bothers you? is it their language? Religion? They are people trying to make a better life for their families. Would you not want the same? 
Does this mean I want them to be able to just walk across the border? not at all! They are already here, and for many, they are in just as bad living conditions as before. We cannot keep up with the amount of people that are snuck in each day, importing many more than we deport. you talked about how you just hate corn ethenol becuase it is so inefficient.... So I ask, what is effecient in trying to deport so many people? I know that those billions of dollars have been justly spent, so that skitso's like you feel safer at night. 
Build better borders, admit we've done a poor job. It's gonna cost billions to do, but it is already is doing that. The people that are here have already demonstrated their willingness to live. They did so by leaving homes, family and friends behind so they may be BETTER than what it is like in mexico. 
Other wise, help aid our mexican neighbors. Then again, if people WANTED to live in mexico, how would that make the United States look? Like we are loosing power (god forbid). I know, instead of spending money to help issues like education and poverty in mexico, we'll just spend 9 BILLION dollars a month in Iraq. not to mention the millions of lives that have changed and RUINED because of the war, both foreign and domestic. We learned a lesson from Nam, well maybe not so much, we just need to swallow the pride factor....


----------



## cwoparson (Aug 23, 2007)

> I don't think we can blame any one of those individuals for wanting a better life, and better yet, I think we owe them a chance.


No one blames anyone for wanting a better life. But they can be blamed for breaking our law and they are owed nothing when their first act in this country was to break the law.


----------



## whitehorse (Jan 28, 2008)

any one willing to do an illega actl for the betterment of their family and children, are heros in my eyes. To do nothing is to be a coward.
For many of these people, they have TRIED and were unable to gain citizenship. 
We are talking about struggling for years and years.
FYI 250 million people come into the united states LEGALLY. Maybe our attention should be put into breaking mexico's poverty driven country, but that would make too much sense...


----------



## whitehorse (Jan 28, 2008)

this sure has kinda drifted off topic


----------



## morel_greg (Apr 16, 2007)

> any one willing to do an illega actl for the betterment of their family and children, are heros in my eyes. To do nothing is to be a coward.


So someone who decides to rob a bank to better the life of their family and children is a hero to you. I think somthing is really wrong with that. Attempting to better the life of you family is a great thing but you shouldnt break the laws to accomplish it.


----------



## whitehorse (Jan 28, 2008)

I was pertaining to getting into this country.. responding to cwoparson's response.

you say you shouldn't break the laws to improve their life... under no cercumstances... and I think there is something really wrong with that!


----------



## cwoparson (Aug 23, 2007)

> FYI 250 million people come into the united states LEGALLY


As legal guests and then the majority returned to their own country without demanding citizenship or draining the economy through use of our citizens benefits. They didn't break the law so why should a few be allowed to. Your talking apples to oranges.

Mexico's poverty is from corruption, not resources. Just how do you propose to handle that?


----------



## hunter9494 (Jan 21, 2007)

IMO we don't owe anyone, anything who is in the US illegally.
the idea of giving illegals a driver's license is legitimizing their being here which is just plain wrong!


----------



## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Robert, thanks for that information. My mail box is packed each day, and less than half is anything I want. The owners manual was no big thing, it was just one that came on top of a dozen other dumb things. I notice my Canon Camera comes with three owners manuals. One in English, Spanish, and I think the other one was French. We are a wasteful society.


----------



## seabass (Sep 26, 2002)

Plainsman said:


> It cost more to produce not only in energy but results in even more carbon spew into the atmosphere.


Hi plainsman,

I think you are perhaps citing some older reserach on the energy input versus output of ethanol? I know there was a net loss in the past, but if you survey some abstracts from some recent solid research journals (i.e. Science, Nature, Proceedings of the Nat'l Acad of Sciences), you generally see improvements in the science behind ethanol production. I have a bunch of PDF files I've started to collect from reputable journals, in case any one wants them. FYI, these journals are extremely hard to publish in, so their data has to be very very tight.

I personally am not sure how I feel about ethnol from corn at this point. I cite this only to point out that science usually improves on ideas. Which is why we fly jet airplains and not in "planes" like the Wright Bros devised.

Here is an abstrct from PNAS (2006 103: 11206-11210).

Negative environmental consequences of fossil fuels and concerns
about petroleum supplies have spurred the search for renewable
transportation biofuels. To be a viable alternative, a biofuel should
provide a net energy gain, have environmental benefits, be economically
competitive, and be producible in large quantities without
reducing food supplies. We use these criteria to evaluate,
through life-cycle accounting, ethanol from corn grain and biodiesel
from soybeans. Ethanol yields 25% more energy than the
energy invested in its production, whereas biodiesel yields 93%
more. Compared with ethanol, biodiesel releases just 1.0%, 8.3%,
and 13% of the agricultural nitrogen, phosphorus, and pesticide
pollutants, respectively, per net energy gain. Relative to the fossil
fuels they displace, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced 12% by
the production and combustion of ethanol and 41% by biodiesel.
Biodiesel also releases less air pollutants per net energy gain than
ethanol. These advantages of biodiesel over ethanol come from
lower agricultural inputs and more efficient conversion of feedstocks
to fuel. Neither biofuel can replace much petroleum without
impacting food supplies. Even dedicating all U.S. corn and soybean
production to biofuels would meet only 12% of gasoline demand
and 6% of diesel demand. Until recent increases in petroleum
prices, high production costs made biofuels unprofitable without
subsidies. Biodiesel provides sufficient environmental advantages
to merit subsidy. Transportation biofuels such as synfuel hydrocarbons
or cellulosic ethanol, if produced from low-input biomass
grown on agriculturally marginal land or from waste biomass,
could provide much greater supplies and environmental benefits
than food-based biofuels.


----------



## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Seabass, thank you very much for that information. If you have some PDF files I would be interested in a couple of abstracts, especially from the Academy of Science. Current scientific data would be helpful. I think the Academy of Science would be non biased. Thanks again.


----------



## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

I have a beef with spell check too. Did you notice the title of the thread? It's supposed to say


> Hypocritic


, but I must have spelled it wrong and spell check changed it. Darn thing must be a liberal program right?  As long as I was allowing myself the luxury of whiz and moan about owners manuals I thought I might go all the way and complain about spell check too. 

I like the turn this thread took about ethanol. I must admit that after retiring I don't read the scientific literature as much. It will be good to get up to speed on this once I get some literature from Seabass.

I think cellulose production will be the way to go for ethanol. It will take a couple of years for biomass to get up to speed so we need to incorporate a program much like CRP to support the farmer while his new switch grass fields mature. I think they may be able to cut at the end of the second year, but most farmers can not go a season without income. They will need a CRP payment for that field before biomass production is sufficient for harvest, be that two years or even three.

Cellulose ethanol is a win win situation. Society gets carbon sequestered in the soil (not much, but some), wildlife has habitat (better than corn), farmers have stable income with little investment after the first year (net income is what counts right), and we all have an efficient renewable fuel supply system.


----------

