The Diesel Tree

1. Miss Cellania
   April 2nd, 2008 at 5:17 pm

   Great minds think alike… I got going to post the same story, with the exact same image!

2. Sargasso
   April 2nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm

   That tree was made in the image of the FSM.

3. CheeseDuck
   April 2nd, 2008 at 6:56 pm

   What!? Then why are diesel prices so darn high?

4. Thomas
   April 2nd, 2008 at 8:11 pm

   Screw the diesel, where can I buy the plants?

5. gibson8or
   April 2nd, 2008 at 10:02 pm

   Are you sure this isn’t part of an April Fool’s Day prank? Like the BBC spaghetti farmers?

6. Moore
   April 2nd, 2008 at 10:36 pm

   That’s nothing, there’s a wonderful weed which has been used as medicine for thousands of years but it’s illegal for most humans to use because it’s good for them and helps them to keep the corporate/government wool from being pulled over their eyes. Big pharm hates it because they would rather sell you addictive crap with side effects than having you grow your own weed at home. What is this weed? Cannabis.

   Those who outlaw nature should be jailed, not those who enjoy using nature for their health and recreation. Why is marijuana schedule I again? No medical benefits to it you say? Blow me.

7. Manticore
   April 2nd, 2008 at 10:38 pm

   bulldoze subdivisions and start farming these. lol.

8. Sofar
   April 2nd, 2008 at 10:49 pm

   So all you need to create diesel is water, dirt, and time, same as our food. How does it compare to the amount of biodiesel you can squeeze out of a field of corn? What’s the environmental impact of planting these trees?

9. su.wei
   April 2nd, 2008 at 11:14 pm

   i think diesel prices went up because they had to add something to reduce the sulfur emissions…i could be wrong though

10. Zeon
    April 3rd, 2008 at 12:53 am

    Cool one man… Lets see wha the government does with that.

11. QC
    April 3rd, 2008 at 2:03 am

    Oh good one! Had me going there for about a sentence or two. Great April Fool’s prank, guys!

12. K!P
    April 3rd, 2008 at 3:01 am

    diesel engines will run on almost annything. anny old diesel will run fine on sunflower oil for example. (if the weater is to cold you need to heat it so it stays thin) In fact: Rudolf Diesel ran his prototype diesel engine on coal dust. yep. dust.

13. Pol x
    April 3rd, 2008 at 6:20 am

    The whole brouhaha surrounding biofuels confuses me.

    Both the proa and anti parties are saying that you shouldn’t make a choice between food and fuel.

    Seems to be missing the point.

    It’s not making fuel out of corn or sugar cane, but making fuel out of the by product, the stalks and husks etc.

    So it’s fuel without the loss of food.

    And Diesel DESIGNED his engine to run on veg oil, ground nut oil initially.

14. luke
    April 3rd, 2008 at 6:35 am

    Is this real?

15. sparge
    April 3rd, 2008 at 7:49 am

    QC - The original ABC story was posted March 25:
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/25/2198815.htm

    But anyway — this might be doable for sustenance farmers with excess land, but at 30-40 liters annually per tree, there won’t be enough production to compete with petroleum diesel. As a (very) rough guess, that’s only about twice as much syrup (not sap) that is produced from a maple tree annually, and a gallon of that stuff will cost you $50 easily.

    A better option would be a higher-yield source of biodiesel, such as sugarcane or switchgrass, even with the extra processing that they must go through. Or even better, reduce our energy consumption.

16. Clyde2003
    April 3rd, 2008 at 8:41 am

    So I just ran the math. If the United States wanted to replace ALL of its crude oil with this “tree diesel,” they would have to plant an area slightly larger than the state of NORTH DAKOTA! That’s more than 69,000 square miles! Just a little fact everyone should know…

17. Jen
    April 3rd, 2008 at 9:22 am

    Take a look at your glass pipe there, buddy. See all that nasty, stanky brown and black gunk? That goes into your lungs. Marijuana is good for you? Give me a break.

18. Miss Cellania
    April 3rd, 2008 at 9:30 am

    No, this is no April Fool. But the tree won’t grow outside the tropics. Fine for Australia, but undoable for the US. Maybe Mexico? It’s another reason we need to protect the rain forests.

19. Scooter
    April 3rd, 2008 at 10:33 am

    our future energy needs don’t lie in an single source. What we need is hundreds of sources (i.e. wind, solar, bio-fuels, geo-thermal) if we are to replace our addiction to oil.

20. Thomas
    April 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 am

    I’d sacrifice North Dakota to be rid of Saudi Arabia.

21. Thomas
    April 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 am

    Just sayin’…

22. sparge
    April 3rd, 2008 at 10:45 am

    Miss Cellania - Commercially farming this tree will do terrible damage to the rainforests, as they are cleared to make “diesel plantations”.

23. Pol x
    April 3rd, 2008 at 11:16 am

    Switch grass in the the american prairies, grows naturally wild could get a couple of harvests every year and makes tip top bio fuel.

    It’s not one thing or another, it’s lots of things.

    there is no magic bullet.

24. Tom
    April 3rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm

    Well, That would be great if it could be implemented in such a way that it preserves the natural diversity of the rainforests, but I don’t see that happening. It would likely be better to use algae for biodiesel production, as it can be farmed on otherwise unusable land, and requires nothing but stagnant water and sunlight.

25. Sofar
    April 3rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    @Clyde2003: We already have several states’ worth of land dedicated to the growing of corn, farming requires a lot of land. How much land are we currently using to drill for oil? Hypothetically, if we could support ourselves with our own oil how much land in America would we need? How does the environmental impact of drilling for oil and planting trees compare?

    @Jen: I find it strange that most of the people who launch themselves into fake coughing fits and claim that I’m giving them cancer whenever I light a cigarette still fire up the bong every morning at half past nine.

26. Ali S.
    April 3rd, 2008 at 5:11 pm

    I have a cousin who lives in California and he’s been thinking of trying out the idea of used cooking oil in diesel cars (of course with minor changes in the engine). We all need cooking oil to cook food so why not use it to fuel our cars? Love the idea of using alternate fuel sources.

27. DDT
    April 4th, 2008 at 11:00 pm

    Produced biodiesel and ethanol is a joke. It’s a 1:1 ratio for the amount of energy it takes to make the product, and the actual amount made.

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