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THE BOOK!

A LITTLE HISTORY

In 1983, David Blume wrote and hosted a 10-part how-to television series called Alcohol as Fuel for KQED, the San Francisco PBS affiliate. He also wrote the definitive how-to book on ethanol, Alcohol Can Be A Gas!, which was going to be sold on the air.

The book was at the printer preparing to go to press, and the first airing of the television series in San Francisco was underway, to be followed by release to 140 PBS stations nationwide. Big Oil got wind of the project and convinced KQED to halt the printing and cancel the release of the series to the rest of PBS.

Although there were lawsuits, KQED’s oil-funded lawyers crushed Blume, and the series ended up locked in KQED’s vault, while the rights to the book went back to Blume. The book sat on the shelf for the past 20 years.

Beginning in 2003, Dave Blume set about updating the book in a big way. He raised money from individuals (not institutions or corporations) to fund his research into the current state of the art in alcohol fuels. He traveled extensively in both the US and Brazil, collecting and documenting innovations and the success of Brazil’s alcohol fuel program. Four years of full-time work with a team of researchers has resulted in a completely new and greatly expanded version of the book.

THE NEW BOOK

Alcohol Can Be a Gas! (subtitled Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century) is an information-dense, highly readable, profusely illustrated manual, covering every aspect of alcohol fuel from history through crops, hands-on fuel production, and vehicle conversion. It’s the first comprehensive book on small- to farm-scale alcohol production and use written in over 90 years.

Internally divided into six books, the single volume contains 640 8.5″ x 11” pages, with more than 500 illustrations, charts, and photos. It sports a 700-word glossary and a full index. It retains the original 1983 foreword by R. Buckminster Fuller. Alcohol Can Be A Gas! is a complete toolbox for farmers, green entrepreneurs, and activists to wrest control of our energy system from the Oilygarchy and put it back in the hands of the public.

Explore our Independent possibilities here

UPdate: We need to make sure we control our food, water and ENERGY !!

buy food locally AND buy food locally,

We have a great opportunity to make a difference on the progressive
community frontlines!

Renewable Energy World had the courage to run DavidÕs new article on How
we are losing the battle to control the
independent biofuels production market and there are a lot of pseudo
Ðscientist types throwing eggs because they donÕt like
the thought that many of us believe that control belongs in sustainable
communities (rather than in Swiss Bank-managed big
petro businesses). Everyday more of us recognize that we can control and
optimize food and fuel production sustainably by
managing it at the local level.

As we have seem demonstrated repeatedly throughout the history of
capitalistic market conquest greed usurps common
good and this is exemplified by battles like those between TeslaÕs genius
and JP MorganÕs greed and materialism and Henry
FordÕs biofueled Model T being forced to run on gas by JD RockefellerÕs
manipulation of the WomenÕs Christian Temperance
Movement.  Why defend greed and industrial tyrants simply because they
have capital (now)?

Clearly the history of market development is littered with the carcasses
of those who had right and good principles driving
them yet who failed to sense the extreme means money tyrants will employ
to reach their self-vested interests.

You will note a number of comments in the REW forum that advocate for
electrical solutions and apparently people have
forgotten how we create electricity for the most part today. Coal fired
and nuclear fired power plants and Hydro electric
plants that are in danger of exhaustion due to the unprecedented drought
conditions we now suffer globally all contribute to
and are falling victim to climate change and depleted resources.

All of our alternative energy sources save one pose only a minor bump in
Big OilÕs superhighway road trip to energy and
food dominance in our world. That one hope and standout is Alcohol fuel.
Big Oil knows that and fights to obliderate its
presence at every opportunity and with every tactic it can leverage. The
Petroleum Institute uses straw man arguments
about food shortages and Òenergy in vs. energy outÓ statistics that only a
Republican Party Chit counter could appreciate to
dazzle and deter the Alcohol fuel faithful.  Unfortunately Big Oil
recognizes that it has a large part of the environmental
community mesmerized by the intoxicating snake oil pandering from its
propaganda machine. Sad, but true until we are able
to wake them up.

Let’s wake people up at REW.
Let’s write what we know to be true and real and provide the answers and
energy, these people think we donÕt have. It is
amazing how many apologists there are for the oil industry that has given
us life-threatening climate change, millions dead
and wounded in immoral wars, puppet governments and despotic rulers, every
human rights abuse known…. So what do
you like, tar sands, shale oil and or coal to gas?  Enjoy these pictures
of Tennessee.
http://images.google.com/images?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=tennessee%20coal%20s
ludge%20spill&um=1&ie=UTF-
8&sa=N&tab=wi

The bottom line is Alcohol Fuel production is:
Local.  We buy locally produced food from farmers markets, why not locally
produced energy?
Sustainable.  Depending on the region, there is a crop, (often a weed,
kelp beds using no crop land, mesquite trees from
desert land, cattails from marshes, etc.), from which to make ethanol
requiring no cultivation, fertilizers, pesticides, just
harvest, distill and go.
Jobs producing.  According to DOE, small-scale, locally produced,
CO2-sequestering ethanol can create 25 million, non-
exportable jobs.
Environmentally cleaning.  Moving to an ethanol energy supply will
sequester 12X the CO2 from the air as it takes to
produce.  What do plants need?  CO2!
American.  Yes, no more war.  Imagine.

We can all chase our tails with unachievable, high tech, GMO alternatives
like fictitious cellulosic ethanol, and nice but non-
scalable and non-transmittable solar and wind, OR we can get busy pushing
for Independent Ethanol Production, and take
back this country!

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200808153   10 min.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Y08RSDP6s   5 min.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jew3ah24Zj4   78 min. (most comprehensive,
watch it during dinner or folding laundry).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-blume/bailout-gm-but-heres-what_b_14584
4.html

Now go to:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/02/oil-companies-
and-ethanol-plants-slash-burn-and-buy

Let;s let the REW ranters know they have been mislead.