Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Burn Dem Bunnies

To show what a terrible person I am, I'm highlighting this story of burning bunnies: here. And confessing, it makes me giggle.

To understand why I think it's funny, you'd have to be in my head. But if I can, I'll draw a picture.

It's also the juxtaposition of something that's presented in such a horrible way (burning bunnies?) but is actually so ridiculous as to be suspect. I mean, really, how much fuel can you get from bunnies? I know Sweden's a low-population country, but it's also a damn cold one. You'd probably have to burn ten bunnies an hour just to stave off hypothermia.

Now, if you read the article, there's a distinct scolding going on there at well. The photo caption, for example, reads "Many of the bunnies used for biofuel were once pets, a pest control worker said."

Ahhh, now we get to the meat of it. As it were.

This is somebody official obliquely scolding people for abandoning pets by threatening them with a horrible death. (You have to kill animals if you care about them, apparently.) Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd seriously challenge whether the investment of energy used in hunting, shooting, skinning/gutting/whatever, rendering the fat, turning the fat to bio-diesel can be recouped significantly by said diesel.

But some of you more science-minded guys can put me some knowledge here if I'm wrong.

4 comments:

  1. Ha! You pick up and comment on an Althouse post that I completely skipped over.

    Trying to say something intelligent about biofuels, but first a full disclosure: I actually drive the 2003 version of this and I burn what's called 5% biodiesel in it. I get about 35-40 MPG. I'm not a enviro-wacko, just more of Cheney-style, it's a personal virtue person. The 5% biodiesel is good for the motor too ever since they took sulfur out of the fuel.

    All said and done the energy conversion processes are probably neutral at best. I'd like to see more midwestern power plants burning crops directly for electrical power, using waste heat to dry them first and recollecting the water.

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  2. Hey I had to shoot and gut all the bunnies from the Watership Down posts. Plus Amy Winehouse.

    But I did get a lot of ethanol from her ass. Just sayn'

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  3. Blake, OT, but I know you're a Red Eye viewer. Thought you'd think this was interesting.

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  4. knox--

    Yeah, I saw that! Kind of wild, really. You'd think, at some point, some sort of survival instinct would kick in.

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