Skip to main content

This Can't Be!

Barely three days have passed since I posted "Lies, health, hunger and biofuels," hoping that this sore subject would go away for several days.  Today I opened the Business Section of NYT, rubbed my eyes, and cried: "This cannot be!"

I just read that madmen inside a federal government agency are trying to usher a new era of self-decomposing food supply in the U.S.  Can you imagine?  Your cereal, bread, corn flakes, anything, will be self-digesting and liquefying on your table if you wait a little, regardless of how well you keep it?   These madmen are attempting to introduce the U.S. public to a practical lesson in enzymatic chemistry:  just 1 genetically modified corn grain with the alpha-amylase enzyme in it per 10,000 other grains will make corn flour and its products go soft and unappetizing.  That's 1/100 of 1%! One could hardly think up a better allegory for the intellectual rot and moral decay blowing from Washington.

What happens when these self-rotting plants start cross-breeding with normal corn?  Corn pollen can travel for miles and cross-pollinate other corn plants.  And this madness is unleashed on all of us to make it easier to produce something that would never exist if we were not paying for it with our hard-earned tax dollars to begin with.  This something is large-scale production of ethanol from corn.

I am speechless.  I hope that we will finally start to demonstrate our feelings and never, ever elect anyone, who panders to an Iowa caucus.  I mean anyone!

Here is the reaction of Richard Brenneman.

Here is a comment by Professor Ignacio Chapela.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ascent of the Angry and Stupid

Scientifically speaking,  stupid  people harm themselves while also harming others. In addition, stupid people are irrational and erratic, and are very dangerous to others. After discussing the destructive role of the stupid in any society whatsoever, I will focus on the delicate interplay of actions of intelligent and helpless people, who in balance make or break a functioning democracy.  Unless things change fast in the US, we can kiss our democracy goodbye for decades. If you want to see how a virulent ascent of the stupid looks up close, and what implications it has for our fight against social injustice and climate change, please watch the brilliant " Don't Look Up " movie. Unvaccinated people demonstrating in Los Angeles. There are tens of millions of the raving mad and/or angry, stupid people in the US and other developed countries. Source: New York Times , 12/25/2021. I overlapped at UC Berkeley with Professor Carlo M. Cipolla for a decade, until his death in t...

Confessions of a Petroleum Engineer and Ecologist

I just attended an SPE workshop, "Oil and Gas Technology for a Net-Zero World – Defining Our Grand Challenges for the Next Decade."  Of the 60 people in the audience, I knew 1/3, some very well.  It makes sense, because I have been an SPE member for 40 years, and a Distinguished Member for 20 years.  Last year, I received an SPE EOR/IOR Pioneer Award for my work at Shell and UC Berkeley on the thermal enhanced oil recovery processes that involved foams, and their upscaling to field operations. This was nice, because Shell recognized me as one of their best reservoir engineers, and in 1985 I received an internal Shell Recognition Award for the same work. But I am not a mere oil & gas reservoir engineer.  First and foremost, I am a chemical engineer and physicist, who has thought rigorously about the sustainability of human civilization , ecology and thermodynamics of industrial agriculture and large biofuel systems, as well as about the overall gross and net prima...

Goodness, mostly

  So I am listening to the Polish internet radio, " New World ." A small group of young people there exudes such gentle happiness and unobtrusive presence that I am instantly transported to a better world of my youth. Today they discussed and read some of the poems of Wisława Szymborska, a great Polish poetess who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in literature. Today we celebrate the centennial anniversary of her birth.  A new complete collection of  Szymborska's poems and letters just came out, all 724 pages of them.    A young woman with an especially pleasant voice reflected calmly: "We must greet strangers and always reply to their greetings. I have noticed that seeing good, happy things brings more of them to my life. It is as if goodness is passing me by very fast and unless I see it instantly it vanishes. Puff!"  Then they played a short recording of another young woman, who sent her early morning greetings accompanied by the quiet cries of young an...