Had a bit of an argument with some crunchy moms this morning…
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Had an early gymnastics class with Finley. A few crunchy moms were discussing GMOs in food and how horrible they are and how they eat food as nature intended…
Me - “Nature’s a bitch.”
Paraphrasing for brevity -
Them - “What?!”
Me - “The entire thing is set up kill you. To test your immunities, to test your capability to survive extreme conditions, to batter and bruise and kill you with the expectations that the surviving organisms are better suited for long term survival, but even those will face more challenges. Nature’s a bitch”
Them -“You can’t mean that”
Me - “Sure I can. You’re bitching about corn. The modifications to corn are one of the things keeping a large number of people from starving to death. Hey, starvation’s natural… And it leads to other natural things like disease. E. coli is natural, so is salmonella. We combat them with unnatural methods including man made medicines and improved nutrition. But hey, you carry on with that paleo stuff. They lived to be about what? 30? But remember that natural isn’t always good and manmade isn’t always bad.”
Them - “If you’re not going to take this seriously…”A couple of them are friends with Karla. I think I’m in trouble, later.
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One of the things that struck me on my recent cross country drive was the sheer magnitude of corn growing across hundreds of miles of plains in the Us. Everywhere there was corn. Everywhere.
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One of the things that struck me on my recent cross country drive was the sheer magnitude of corn growing across hundreds of miles of plains in the Us. Everywhere there was corn. Everywhere.
@bachophile said in Had a bit of an argument with some crunchy moms this morning…:
One of the things that struck me on my recent cross country drive was the sheer magnitude of corn growing across hundreds of miles of plains in the Us. Everywhere there was corn. Everywhere.
Interesting statistic I ran across - to generate all electricity used in the US with only solar would require a little under 20k square miles of land. That’s less than a third of the amount of land currently in use for just corn-based ethanol.
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
-Cormac McCarthy -
@bachophile said in Had a bit of an argument with some crunchy moms this morning…:
One of the things that struck me on my recent cross country drive was the sheer magnitude of corn growing across hundreds of miles of plains in the Us. Everywhere there was corn. Everywhere.
Interesting statistic I ran across - to generate all electricity used in the US with only solar would require a little under 20k square miles of land. That’s less than a third of the amount of land currently in use for just corn-based ethanol.
Interesting statistic I ran across - to generate all electricity used in the US with only solar would require a little under 20k square miles of land. That’s less than a third of the amount of land currently in use for just corn-based ethanol.
But that would presume a way to store enough energy to make it through the days with no or little sun. Which we don't have. Which makes the point a little moot.
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Can you imagine if you and Aqua were gay dads, the amount of shit you'd start talking to fellow parents?
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This is a simple factual comparison about land efficiency of corn ethanol
vs solar. Nothing moots it, it’s simply a testable empirical question.We can’t exactly generate all our electricity from corn ethanol either. Doesn’t change anything about my post.
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That other 40k square miles would hold a lot of batteries.
Also that amount of ethanol only represents about 8% of the total amount of energy we use in generating electricity. So you’d need like 12x the amount of land currently dedicated to ethanol to be in equivalent range.
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That other 40k square miles would hold a lot of batteries.
Also that amount of ethanol only represents about 8% of the total amount of energy we use in generating electricity. So you’d need like 12x the amount of land currently dedicated to ethanol to be in equivalent range.
@jon-nyc said in Had a bit of an argument with some crunchy moms this morning…:
That other 40k square miles would hold a lot of batteries.
Also that amount of ethanol only represents about 8% of the total amount of energy we use in generating electricity. So you’d need like 12x the amount of land currently dedicated to ethanol to be in equivalent range.
Ok, now let’s talk about the amount of earth that has to be mined to make those batteries.
If you’re uncomfortable with ethanol, just think of it as a solar derivative in liquid form.
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There’s no reason for a simple fact about relative land efficiency to make you guys so defensive. You can just acknowledge it and continue hating on solar for reasons other than land use.
There are plenty of arguments against corn ethanol, let inefficient land use just add one to their number.
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There’s no reason for a simple fact about relative land efficiency to make you guys so defensive. You can just acknowledge it and continue hating on solar for reasons other than land use.
There are plenty of arguments against corn ethanol, let inefficient land use just add one to their number.
@jon-nyc said in Had a bit of an argument with some crunchy moms this morning…:
There’s no reason for a simple fact about relative land efficiency to make you guys so defensive. You can just acknowledge it and continue hating on solar for reasons other than land use.
There are plenty of arguments against corn ethanol, let inefficient land use just add one to their number.
Oh, I agree. I just don’t think wind would be more efficient. Actual food crops would be nice.
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@bachophile said in Had a bit of an argument with some crunchy moms this morning…:
One of the things that struck me on my recent cross country drive was the sheer magnitude of corn growing across hundreds of miles of plains in the Us. Everywhere there was corn. Everywhere.
Interesting statistic I ran across - to generate all electricity used in the US with only solar would require a little under 20k square miles of land. That’s less than a third of the amount of land currently in use for just corn-based ethanol.
@jon-nyc said in Had a bit of an argument with some crunchy moms this morning…:
@bachophile said in Had a bit of an argument with some crunchy moms this morning…:
One of the things that struck me on my recent cross country drive was the sheer magnitude of corn growing across hundreds of miles of plains in the Us. Everywhere there was corn. Everywhere.
Interesting statistic I ran across - to generate all electricity used in the US with only solar would require a little under 20k square miles of land. That’s less than a third of the amount of land currently in use for just corn-based ethanol.
That'd be a great use for Nevada.
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Resistance is futile.
Pollen rides the wind currents and goes where it will. Very few strains of corn have no modified genes.
And...Just in the last couple of hundred years...Golden Bantam is one of the very few heritage sweet corn plants. It came along in the late 1800's and popularity really took off early in the 1900's when you could start to buy it commercially. Until then, yellow corn was for horse feed, people usually ate white corn, mostly as corn meal, roasting ears, grits or hominy.
But, Golden Bantam is a cross between even older yellow sweet varieties.
Now, having said all that, how many of you have ever grown Golden Bantam? It has a really good taste, sweet, but with a lot of "corn" flavor. And as far as I'm concerned, the juice ain't worth the squeeze. I can plant a good hybrid...Maybe an old one like Merit or Funk's G90, or a newer one like Peaches&Cream. It will make twice the ears, be sweeter and have a longer window of sweetness to pick it in. GB makes small ears and you better watch it like a hawk or you'll miss the best flavor window.
GB works best for the backyard gardener who wants enough corn to eat fresh and put up a few ears, while keeping costs down by saving seeds. I'd rather pay $20, plant four rows and make 400 or 500 ears.
