The Emperor Wears No Clothes
by Jack Herer
Biomass Energy
In the early 1900s, Henry Ford and other futuristic, organic, engineering geniuses recognized (as their intellectual, scientific heirs still do today) an important point – that up to 90 percent of all fossil fuel used inthe world today (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.) should long ago have been replaced with biomass such as: cornstalks, cannabis, waste paper and the like.
Biomass can be converted to methane, methanol or gasoline at a fraction of the current cost of oil, coal, or nuclear energy – especially when environmental costs are factored in – and its mandated use would end acid rain, end sulfur-based smog, and reverse the Greenhouse Effect on our planet – right now!*
*Government and oil and coal companies, etc., will insist that burning biomass fuels is no better than using up our fossil fuel reserves, as far as pollution goes; but this is patently untrue.
Why? Because, unlike fossil fuels, biomass comes from living (not extinct) plants that continue to remove carbon dioxide pollution from our atmosphere as they grow, through photosynthesis. Furthermore, biomass fuels do not contain sulfur. This can be accomplished if hemp is grown for biomass and then converted through pyrolysis (charcoalizing) or biochemical composting into fuels to replace fossil fuel energy products.*
*Remarkably, when considered on a planet-wide, climate-wide, soil-wide basis, cannabis is at least four and possibly many more times richer in sustainable, renewable biomass/cellulose potential than its nearest rivals on the planet – cornstalks, sugarcane, kenaf trees, ect. (Solar Gas, 1980; Omni, 1983; Cornell University; Science Digest, 1983; etc.).
Also see Chapter 9 on “Economics.”
One product of pyrolysis, methanol, is used today by most race cars and was used by American farmers and auto drivers routinely with petroleum/methanol options starting in the 1920s, through the 1930s, and even into the mid-1940s to run tens of thousands of auto, farm and military vehicles until the end of World War II.
Methanol can even be converted to a high-octaine lead-free gasoline using a catalytic process developed by Georgia Tech University in conjunction with Mobil Oil Corporation.