The Reincarnation of Zosimus

Fourth century Alchemists dreamed of turning lead
into gold. One, named Zosimus, wrote a book called,
"The Divine Art of Making Gold and Silver." My local
library has been unable to locate a copy.

Meanwhile, back at the farm...Idaho's energy czar
Paul Kjellander is urging dairy scientists to develop
technologies to turn Idaho's growing mountains of cow
manure into a source of energy to light Idaho dairy
barns and provide electricity for Idaho's 1.5 million
human residents.

State energy czar Kjellander hopes that processed
manure can be converted to electricity. He told the
Associated press:

"We can put together the right package and right mechanism
to help move it along. You've got to have somebody locally
who is ready to take the risk and move this forward. But
the state can provide the right type of incentives."

During the past eight years, Idaho's human population has
soared 17.8 percent. Idaho has offered tax incentives to
new dairy farmers, and a large emigration of dairy families
from Scandinavian nations has helped fuel that increase,
but with additional dairy farmers there are also additional
cows, and you guessed it, additional dairy urine and feces
to taint Idaho's once-pristine ecosystem.

Idaho is now America's third largest dairy producer,
trailing only California and Wisconsin. That means dairy
manure, and plenty of it.

I pose this question: Isn't America deep enough in enough
financial poop already without having to offer cow-pie
-in-the-sky suggestions and subsidies to ease existing
problems at the expense of taxpayers?

One will sooner find a way to turn lead into gold than
build an economical system to transport droppings from each
cow to be processed into methane. Hundreds of millions of
dollars have been "invested" during the past twenty years
to determine that this plan remains economically unfeasible.

Never Say Never:

If we can toilet train cows and then teach them to stand in
line to deposit their pre-methane energy potential units
directly into a methane converter...on that day I will
be proven wrong. Coming soon: Transmuting cow manure into
platinum...

Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com