BIKE: First the bad news then the good news

[Patrick Goetz]

Roger Baker wrote:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/11370598.htm

> Innovative turkey-to-oil plant eats money, spits out fowl odor
> Residents have complained that the smell makes them retch.
> 
> "It's rotten," said Beth Longstaff, a resident who was shopping at
> Wal-Mart recently. "You can't get away from it. It's like something
> out of a horror movie."
> 
> Ann Carter, who owns Epicurean Delights, a wine, cheese and gourmet
> food store, said the first time she smelled the odor, she went
> outside and checked in the alley to see if something was there.
> 
> "It was worse than a farm smell," Carter said. "I figured something
> had died."
> 

Hey, it's totally worth it if it means that I can keep driving my H2. 
We need to get one of those plants in Austin, along with some factory 
poultry farms to provide the guts.  Perhaps this could be located at 
Mueller or could be the property-tax-relieving business/industry 
Pflugerville has been looking for.  Heck, let's get one in Pflugerville 
AND one at Mueller.  I can already hear Fred Meredith screaming that 
Hays county is being left out again, so I guess we need 3 factory 
poultry farm/guts' cooker complexes so that the honorable motorists of 
Hays county can have one, too.

Hmmm, If I had a brain I would reckon that the energy equation for this 
industry could be a bit out of whack since it takes, um, how many galons 
of gasoline to produce a pound of meat?  Thank heavens I'm not burdened 
with any such useless analytic capabilities.

Oh what the heck, let me pretend like I'm a Hays Countian (hence 
gentleman scholar) for a moment.

The article stated that 200 tons of poultry offal could be converted 
into 100 barrels of oil.  The average American consumes about 200 pounds 
of poultry meat every year (believe it or not); hence with 1.2 million 
Austin area residents, that means 120,000 tons of poultry consumed each 
year by Austinites.  If we assume 1 pound of offal is produced for each 
pound of meat sold (the number is probably considerably less), then we 
can produce 60,000 barrels of oil each year.  Each barrel of oil yields 
19.7 gallons of gas (+ 10 gallons of diesel), so we can produce 29.7 x 
60,000 = 1,782,000 gallons of motor vehicle fuel per year.

So, (ignoring the fact that the number of cars per capita is greater 
than one) and assuming one car per family of four, this means each 
Austin family gets slightly less than 6 gallons of gas/diesel.  Per 
year.  Assuming we don't waste any fuel raising birds or cooking their guts.

ahem.  You peons need to start eatin a LOT more chickin and turkey to 
support our way of life is all I can say.