Obama: Use 'algae' as substitute for oil

washingtonexaminer.com ^ | Feb. 23, 2012 | Joel Gehrke

[Texas Songwriter]

It reminds me of Michael Dukakis meeting with a group of midwest wheat/bean farmers when the prices were down, and asking them, "Why don't you raise KIWI?"

Mr. Obama has no real life experience to draws from in virtually any vein of life....and the bastard is leading us. We are in a world of hurt.

[varon]

SkyDancer: Bush mentioned cultivating saw grass in a SOTU speech

MNJohnie: To be fair that is complete BS without a hint of a shred of a notion of any connection with fact. But I know, you Leftist trolls never bother letting little things like intellectual honesty and factual accuracy get in the way of your mindless adoration of all things Democrat.

Oh, how easy it is to engage in name calling and accusations motivated by lack of information or intellectual dishonesty.

President Bush in his 2007 SOU, as reported by The New York Times HERE said the following " We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol, using everything from wood chips, to grasses, to agricultural wastes."

In addition, in 2006 The Tuscaloosa News reports HERE"On Tuesday, with a stop at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., the president highlights his proposals to speed the development of biofuels such as "cellulosic" ethanol made from woodchips or saw-grass."

I have a feeling that the truth will wipe the smugness off your face and make you think twice or do some background before publicly attacking someone's integrity

[Secret Agent Man]

I am far more optimistic about using algae as a substitute for Obama.

[Skepolitic]

Bush mentioned cultivating saw grass in a SOTU speech

To be fair that is complete BS without a hint of a shred of a notion of any connection with fact. ...

Well, you're both wrong. Bush did not mention cultivating saw grass in a SOTU speech, but that assertion is not complete BS.

In his 2006 SOTU, Bush said, "We'll also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks or switch grass."

In his 2007 SOTU, Bush said that he wanted to quintuple the use of ethanol and other alternative fuels by 2017. That same year he signed legislation that mandated that "the U.S. must use 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels per year by 2022, including 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuel."

Here's an interesting article on the topic. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17398968/ns/us_news-environment/t/huge-federal-grants-cellulosic-ethanol/#.T0a4dnnvO8A It reports that the Bush Administration planned to spend $385 million on cellulosic ethanol. You can look up the 2006 and 2007 ethanol references in the SOTU yourself. Recent articles in the WSJ suggest that Bush's results from cellulosic alcohol spending was comparable to Obama's Solyndra performance.

Bush was a proponent of ethanol fuels, especially cellulosic ethanol. That assessment is neither conservative nor liberal. It's a simple fact.

[sand88]

To be fair that is complete BS without a hint of a shred of a notion of any connection with fact. But I know, you Leftist trolls never bother letting little things like intellectual honesty and factual accuracy get in the way of your mindless adoration of all things Democrat.

Geez, some Freepers can't remember how weak Bush was on many domestic issues. He often pandered to the idiot Greens. Remember, the great Rove was a big influence.

Below is a 2006 Free Republic posting

Post 17: Bush speaks of sawgrass

[Nachum]

The list, Ping

Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list

http://www.nachumlist.com/

[ridesthemiles]

I can apply many, many words to the occupant of the Oval office, but I would be permanently banned from FR.

[RetSignman]

He better check with his wife first, she may be considering it for another food source for the masses.

[SkyDancer]

Sorry but I do not agree. I'm sitting there watching the speech and I'll never forget him leaning over the lectern looking directly at the camera and him saying the words "saw grass". I was incredulous. I'll always have that image. Imagining the US depending on 'saw grass" - did you bother to click on those links? I guess not because those stories had the words "saw grass" in it. He did not say switch grass but saw grassThere were too many stories out there with him mentioning saw grass for me to put all those links here.

[RinaseaofDs]

I did some consulting for a well heeled investor looking at the science behind this entire algae thing.

I actually came up with something that penciled out:

Instead of buying $100M flue scrubbers for coal plants, just route the exhaust gas into algae ponds and then sequester the NOX and SOX into the algae.

Harvest the algae, render it, and you have fuel.

Here were the problems:

If a regular coal plant requires anywhere from 2 to 4 million gallons of fresh water per day, adding algae ponds would much more than double that figure.

God gave plant cells something called ‘cell walls’ that animal cells do not have. We could get at the oil in the plant cells if it weren’t for the very durable cellulose membrane that requires as much energy to overcome as the amount you’d get from the biofuel. We even looked at spinning the oil out of the cells using waste steam.

Last but not least - light. As long as you could not waste any energy keeping the ponds lit, you’d be in pretty good shape. On the equator, you could harvest a ‘pond track’ (a racetrack cataract full of water in which you grow algae) 3 times a month. In North Dakota, this figure drops to once every five weeks.

Frankly, if you could cheaply and cleanly overcome the cell wall, there are ways of dealing with the logistics, even the water (CEO of Nestle said, “We will run out of water far sooner than we will run out of fuel”). As long as we have an EPA, only God can produce biofuel at a profit.

We actually built a practical proof of concept in Oregon to test this out. It was fun, but at the end we looked at the billions - hundreds of billions - sunk into biofuels and concluded based on the science that the money invested had to be the result of fraud - plain and simple.

The science against algae biofuel is solid.

[Skepolitic]

I suppose we just have to disagree.

But your recollection differs from the text of speech, which can be read at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/31/AR2006013101468.html.

And it differs from what I hear just before the 51:00 mark at the CSPAN video of the speech, which can be viewed at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/190900-2. It sounds like Bush says “switch grass” to me.

[sand88]

see post #65 above. Bush mentions sawgrass.

[SkyDancer]

I suppose so. When you say the word 'switch' as in 'switch grass' your mouth forms almost a smile. (try it). If you say 'saw' as in 'saw grass' your mouth forms an oval. I'll never forget that round mouth as Bush said 'saw grass' - if Bush had said 'switch grass' I would have remembered it as that. I have never heard of 'saw grass' until that night.

From Bush's speech

"This has led to the development of cellulostic ethanol, made using decomposable plants—such as sawgrass, sugar cane, corn waste, and wood products—to produce a derivative of ethanol.

[Jonty30]

The big problem with producing fuel by algae is that the byproducts tend to kill it, so it stops producing.

They need to find one that won’t die, then it just becomes a matter of scaling up the operation.

The enviros won’t necessarily like it, because some desert might die, but the US has a huge desert region where this stuff could be produced, so scaling up the operation, however big it needs to be wouldn’t be that problematic.

[The Duke]

*THAT* is gonna cost him the algae vote for sure!

[OKSooner]

There's something wrong with him alright, he's psychotic.

Not that I have anything against the mentally ill, but there are two problems here. 1) He's President 2) He's not only psychotic but he's evil too.

[OKSooner]

Well, if it was stupid of George Bush to say something like that how is it not Stupid of your boy Barack?

[Munz]

he is just hoping what he can’t burn in a car he can burn in his bong

[SkyDancer]

Obama is not MY BOY TROLL!

[freemarketsfreeminds]

His energy is multi faceted, but make no mistake. He is not incompetent. Obama knows exactly what he is doing. Driving up energy prices not only makes his green cronies more competitive, it facilitates the socialist goal of forcing people to make do with less so we can all be equal(ly poor).