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Roatan and Bay Islands Discussion List Archive
| Posted On: | 31-Aug-2005 |
| From: | "Elvis Landaverde" [thekinghn.....com] |
| Subject: | Re: [roatan] [Fwd: The future of life as you know it on Roatan Island] |
A really interesting story, Dr. Evans with really good points regarding the use of palm oil to run diesel engines. The other day, I think was at the beggining of august, I was reading "La Prensa" or "Tiempo" one of the Honduran newspapers, if I'm not wrong, and they where mentioning exactly that, that the people, the company Coapalma I think is the name from San Alejo, close to Tela, Atlantida, and other company on the Lower Aguan valley, they are converting some of the heavy equipment that they use for the production of the oil, to run on the same oil that they produce on their plantations. At that time when I was reading the note, they where saying that the cost of runing the engines with oil will be more o lees 30 percet of the cost if the diesel, and that was with the diesel prices of last month in Honduras. Is really good to read your comments regarding the Island Issues. Have a good day Elvis ----- Original Message ----- From: dkevans To: roatan.....com ; hondo1.....org Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 10:56 AM Subject: [roatan] [Fwd: The future of life as you know it on Roatan Island] Good morning listers on Roatán Island. This is a long one...but it is not a dooms-day message!. I have titled this: "_The Future of life as you know it on Roatán Island"_, but could call it "_There's nothing all that new under the sun_". I have been planning to write this for some time, but, well...there's that second novel..."Red at Dawn"...that's keeping me busy. What really spurred me on this morning was when my wife came home fuming and called up to tell me that the gas where we usually fill up had jumped from $2.61 per gallon to $3.00 overnight. In my opinion, inspite of all the death, misery, and economic loss Katrina is still spinning out this morning, she might well go down in history as the storm that broke the back of the Petroleum Industry...but, as stated before, there is nothing new under the sun. In the year 1858 a baby was born in Paris of Bavarian parents. He died, perhaps a suicide (although many think he was murdered) when he vanished and drowned sometime during the night of 29 September, 1913 at age 55 while making a crossing of the English Channel onboard the mail steamer "Dresden" enroute from Antwerp to Harwick. (Why I strongly suspect it was murder is another story if anyone really wants to hear it.) Anyway, this person's name was _Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel_. In 1893, at Augsburg, he patented a compression-ignition internal combustion engine, and always mindful that the petroleum fueled gasoline engine was a great blunder in that it poisoned the air and the earth's environment, Rudolf Diesel planned at first to run his engine off whale oil. However, mankind always runs a good thing to near total extinction before making a change, and whales where even back then known to be limited and becoming extinct, and thus their oil was extremely expensive. Ever resourceful, Rudolf Diesel bought some rancid peanuts from a farmer, pressed them for their vegetable oil, and ran his new invention just fine-thank you. In doing so he announced that he would run his diesel on hemp oil. This, of coursem scared the dollar signs out of men like DuPont, Mellon, and Hearst...who had the petroleun and timber markets cornered. Pollution was very important to Rudolf Diesel, but it was not to the before mention three billionaires, and by 1937 the unholy three were able to push a "marijuana" bill through congress in less than three months and totally destroyed the domestic hemp industry. Anyway, the planet's atmosphere has steadedly deterated since that date, with ....possibly but not certainly...an increase in violent weather, melting of the world's polar ice, heating of surface water on the planet in places like the Gulf of Mexico that kicked up Hurricane Katrina from a category one storm to a category five before she made landfall...but all that too is another story. Let's get on to RECO and your island energy bills that are, like our local gasoline bill this morning...about to take a huge leap upwards whether you like it or not. Let's take a step backwards to earlier days on the island...let's focus on the year 1742. This was during the period when the sun actually never did set on the British Empire, and the Bay Islands were of interest to the British. In the year 1742 a Lt. Barnesley (spelled differently on differnt documents) visited the island and made a survey chart...a copy of which I have before me...that showed seven plantations where the British had earlier transported and transplanted a number of different cultigens, including various types of bananas and plantains, Guinea grass for animal fodder, and the American oil palm... that had been the most important tree over a thousand years before of the Ancient Maya Empire...the cohune. The British also imported the breadfruit later into their sugar islands in the Caribbean as a source of cheap food for their slaves, but that was later (remember Captain Blythe (sp?) of the HMS Bounty, and the famous mutiny of 1790...with Marlon Brando playing Flether Chriatian much later in Hollywood?), and I have no idea when breadfruit was first introduced into the Bay Islands. But, before you think I've slipped my anchor here, lets drag all this back to you and your fuel bills and RECO, and let's not forget Herr Ruldolf Christian Karl Diesel, and the engine he created to run on vegetable oil. A friend of mine here in Wisnton-Salem, N.C. has just converted his old diesel VW to run on pure vegetable oil...he goes out at night and gets Restaurants to give him the old cooking oil they must pay to throw away, strains it, and run his VW on it just fine. Now it so happens that the small nuts from island cohunes...the plams you see growing wild all over the island, were once collected when I was a young man and shipped to the mainland and sold to a processor there who pressed them for their oil and turned it into "blanquita" for cooking purposes. This same oil, so important to the Ancient Maya, can be used for lamp oil, for making candles, for soap, and - dammit- to run your diesel generators on the island...including those of RECO if they could only get enough of the vegetable oil. There is a place I stumbled across once on the mainland while looking for someone to make my clay "/tejas" /shingles for La Casa Promesa...the name of the village is "Cerrocito", and there they have panted the Atelleia cohune in hugh, sprawling plantations...that same palm we have everywhere on the island that looks a bit like an "excited" coconut palm with it's fronds sticking straight up to the sky...and so, if my prediction is correct, they have already a leg-up for themselves for the future. Someday...very soon...you will see that diesels everywhere will be running on vegetable oil...and there happens to be none better than that squeezed from the clusters of small nuts of the ancient cohune...(from the old mosquito indian word "ó-une") to run those diesels. What a bonus for the poor camposinos on the mainland...and what a bonus for the world! There is no polution of the atmosphere, the kernel of nuts themselves make an excellent food for humans and animals (though I wonder how high the food would be in cholesterol? Oh well, I'll research that some other day), the husk once squeezed of their valuable oils burns extremely well as cooking fuel, or can even be used in animal food if prepared properly. The trick is how to get the nuts grown when there are many people who do not want any cheaper fuels brought into the island...yes...we DO have our own DuPonts, Mellons, and Hearsts on the island...but such negative efforts will be short-lived all over the planet. Mankind, will find a way to keep his energy sources as cheap as possible and still make a profit. We have laws in the States as mentioned nefore that would prohibit us from growing acres and acres of hemp...an excellent source of vegetable oil...but we coulkd grop cohune palms wherever the weather will allow, and that certainly includes Honduras where these beautiful palms are native...and it would include West Africa where the African Oil Palm grows wild as well. It could be very good news for many poor countries...If the DuPonts, the Mellons, and the Hearst of the world don't stand in the way! Of course we have the Japanese...oil poor as they happen to be....and they are designing ever better and ever cheaper solar energy products. But on the island the sun does not shine all the time, and we do have that Novemebr through February period of rain and therefore less sunshine...and, to the best of my knowledge, the sun shines no place at all at night...so solar is - as it now stands- not an immediate answer to our electrical and energy needs. Of course the wind does blow on the island, but to my knowledge- ( I kept count for the hell of it this year)- there were only seven scattered days and only a few more nights that the wind blew on the island between 14 May and 12 June of this year...and I am quite certain there will always be those hot, still days when the good old East Wind does not oblige we who sweat on the island. Plus wind-driven turbines are vastly reported to be a source of sure death for thousands of wildlife from bats to migrating birds & butterflies...but who cares about them...right? But we do have to care about our wallets if we are too damn stupid to care about the rest of the planet, and a source of cheaper energy that will help the entire planet is and has been available since 1893...and will, in the end, make a great stop-gap until the Japanese creat better storage cells for solar energy, or that day in the future when the hydrogen-energy cell is available for us all that produces as its waste product only pure water...that day will come...to be sure...but why wait? Why pay through the nose for a product that is ruining our envirenomet and health...why not use Rudolf Dielse's gift to us all right now? I happen to be lucky. Long ago I bought an ONAN 10KW military diesel generator...an ancient military model I bought from Charles George (Vegas to you islanders). It even has heaters built in if I needed them, but then La Casa Promesa is on Roatán...a tropical island...not some place in Minnesota or Canada...or even Ohio...and by golly, I happen to own not only a decent diesel generator, but our family property happens to be part of one of those plantations described on that 1742 sketch chart I spoke of earlier, and there are a great number of cohune trees still on our property as well set out long ago by the British. And I very badly need a way to keep my Oversears Research Center's operating expenses down...including that of operating my large, stainless-steel steam distiller that furnishes fresh, pure drinking water to my students, family, and guests. So keep posted and I'll let you know how this experiment turns out. Someday, we won't be needing those tankers to bring in expensive petroleun products to our island...they will still be coming in, of course, but their cargoes will be less toxic vegetable oil, and the poor of Honduras who own a little land will have a new source of income. All this was attempted several times in various places...even in Belize. But the cheap cost in those days of petroleum diesel and gasoline did not make the experiments cost- efficent. They sure as hell will be now, and there will come a day when the gasoline engine will be found only in scrape yards and museums...mark my words...and old Rudolf Diesel's dream of cheap, non-polluting energy from non-polluting vegetable oil will come to pass. There will be all sorts of folk who will stand in the way and become a part of the problem...there always are...but they will not matter much in the long run. And the day will come that we have vegetable oil run vehicles everywhere as well, and on this beligued world of ours we will all breath a bit easier...as will the entire planet...the polar ice may slow in melting, the reefs ...what will be left of them...will survive, and maybe...just maybe...we will have less "Katrinas" to deal with everywhere. See...I told you this was not a doomsday message. All the best...dke http://www.thejudasbird.com http://www.roatanet.com ------------ YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS a.. Visit your group "roatan" on the web. b.. roatan- c.. the Yahoo! Terms of Service. ------------ -- --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page /dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/maOolB/TM --~-> http://www.roatanet.com To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roatan/ roatan- : | |
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