[extropy-chat] Peak Oil news

[Robert Bradbury]

On 3/17/06, Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

> Imagine engineering trees that would pipe the sugars they produce to a
> structure at the base of the trunk, where they would be directly
> connected to a network of pipes, collecting the raw material with
> minimal effort, potentially for decades without any expenditure of
> labor.


Interesting you should point this out.  Its almost time to tap the maple
trees for syrup here in northern New England...  The system you describe is
the general approach now used for "commercial" all "natural" maple syrup
production (in contrast to most "maple" syrup one buys in the grocery store
which is engineered with high fructose corn syrup).  Presumably the
relatively high cost of natural maple syrup is due in large part to the
costs of installing and maintaining the piping network that is only used a
few weeks out of the year.  I don't see an easy way of solving that in most
northern climates.  Circulating antifreeze proteins in the sap might buy you
a few more months but you ultimately aren't going to solve it until you
engineer the 'sap' to have a very high ethanol content...  And I suspect we
can all imagine what kinds of problems that is likely to produce.

(As I dread the concept of going into Boston on St. Patty's day...)
Robert
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