On NPR's Science Friday, Ira Flatow had David Blume on in the last segment.
Cattails have been a food staple [yes, the things that grow in marshes] of American Indians, something I did not know up until today. If someone had told me you could eat these, I would have said "you're nuts".
Not only can cattails be used to create prodigious amounts of ethanol, they also clean up polluted waters. Blume made this simple, elegant statement about cattails.
[paraphrased]
"If we went to cattails to process sewage we could accomplish most of this .. using less than 2% of the nation's farmland [with ethanol produced from cattails] to replace all the alcohol and diesel in the USA"
Blume also speaks extensively about the need to change the methods used on farms to capture the full value of crops, from growing mushrooms to fish food.
I found the audio segment to be totally fascinating. Listen to the whole segment, if you can.
Blume's book "Alcohol can be a Gas" is going to be my next purchase.
http://www.amazon.com/...
There are others who have been touting the positive benefits of using cattails. Kudzu and other 'pest plants' have yields that promise to outstrip using normal food stock for ethanol. Unlike plants grown for food, cattails and kudzu grow without any fertilizer or care.
It's simply the effort to harvest them that is required.
Yes, some of the estimates of ethanol yield from cattails were lower .. here's some links
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/...
http://www.news-record.com/...
http://www.thefuelman.com/...
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspo...
Kudzu
http://www.strategypage.com/...
Here's an NPR story about Kudzu
http://www.npr.org/...
Kudzu Considered for Potential As Fuel Source
Listen Now [2 min 55 sec] add to playlist
Weekend Edition Saturday, February 3, 2007 · Corn can be made into ethanol, so why not kudzu, the non-native weed that grows at will throughout much of the southern U.S.?
Tyler Rowland, a high-school senior in Tallahassee, Fla., tells Scott Simon about his bid to turn kudzu into fuel.
But what Blume said today on Ira's show is backed up by decades of clamoring for use of plants like cattails to produce ethanol.
These answers, that ubiquitous plants like cattails and kudzu can provide sources of ethanol that rival oil, gas and coal will be fought every step of the way by the corporations that that control the current distribution channels.
That less than 2% of farmland converted back to the wetlands they once were anyway, providing enough energy to eliminate oil is just incredible.
Kudzu is a horribly invasive plant which proliferates in the South.
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Each area of the country has biomass, cattails, kudzu or a combination of these waiting to be turned into fuel. If the new administration is serious about national security, jobs, and saving the planet, I'd like to think some thought and some serious money will be diverted from the coffers of the oil and gas companies as soon as possible.
A great place to start is repealing this awful piece of legislation, that gives $6B away to oil and gas companies as subsidies and tax breaks.
http://www.citizen.org/...
What Public Citizen say are $6 billion in waivers and compressed deprecitation for oil, gas and natural gas companies.
WHY?
Why did DEMOCRATS vote for this awful bill?
This money should be used to start the process immediately to wrest the nation away from oil, gas, coal that are poisoning us, making us beholden to totalitarian regimes and subject to attacks from extremists on pipelines that extend halfway around the planet.
Repeal the 'Domenici-Barton Energy Act of 2005'.
It should be one of the very first actions taken by the 111th Congress.
important update:
http://www.mercurynews.com/...
About 2½ years ago, as they measured the plants' ability to restore the islands' soil, scientists noticed that their "big garden," as Miller calls it, was removing a lot of carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
"We were capturing a lot of (carbon dioxide) at levels much greater than other systems — marshes and forests, grasslands," said Roger Fujii, the project's director and the Bay-Delta program chief for the Geological Survey's California Water Science Center.
Scientists say the cattail and tule plot removes two to three times as much carbon dioxide as the other natural green spaces.
That revelation persuaded state and federal officials to expand the project. They are now trying to determine whether the tules and cattails could be put to use combating global warming through what they call "carbon-capture" farming.
Full transcript of the NPR is here
http://www.permaculture.com/...