Jeff Manuel

It's publication day for ETHANOL: A HEMISPHERIC HISTORY FOR THE FUTURE OF BIOFUELS. Want to know why the US turns 40% of its corn crop into fuel? How the US and Brazil became the world's two largest ethanol producers? Tom Rogers and I have answers. oupress.com/9780806196015/…

Thanks to @adam_tooze for featuring the paintings of Paula Kamps, a friend and talented artist, in today's Chartbook. adamtooze.substack.com/p/top-links-10…

Also available for pre-order from Amazon amazon.com/Ethanol-Hemisp…

One month away from the publication of ETHANOL: A HEMISPHERIC HISTORY FOR THE FUTURE OF BIOFUELS. Tom Rogers and I describe the linked history of the US and Brazilian ethanol programs for the first time. Online pre-order available now. oupress.com/9780806196015/…

@DerekKrissoff To be fair, there is a lack of intellectual diversity among university administrators. Almost all of them want their institutions to survive and even thrive. Gee thinks differently!

After screwing up a university this terribly, you could aim to atone through quiet, dignified work. Or you could be Gordon Gee.

@redbuckman Honestly, most of today's land-grant ag schools are variations of Borlaug studies

Reflecting on a missed opportunity I would have loved to join a university as the Chair of Borlaug and Bosch Studies.

@szintri Anything that's a feedstock for biobased diesel, apparently

If you were going to launch a brand new breeding program for a crop for the arid high plains (Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota) what crop would you pick?

@biofuelslaw re: Trailblazer, any discussion of Wyoming's "make carbon dioxide great again" bill? (wyoleg.gov/Legislation/20…) If passed, would this put Wyoming's primacy for Class VI wells at risk?

🚨Green Plains (#GPRE) announced significant progress on the Trailblazer CCS project this morning and gave us some eye-opening calculations on #corn #ethanol CI scores using the new #45z GREET model. They calculate a 32 POINT CI reduction using #CCUS. 👀 tinyurl.com/2nt27wdy

@biofuelslaw Worth noting that the Chemical Foundation's final audit of that Atchison plant found that it lost $300k-$600k before closing. Frank Uëkotter has a good 2021 article on it (and the larger 1930s chemurgy movement) doi.org/10.1080/073415…

In 1936, a Dow Chemical consultant predicted that all gasoline in the U.S. would be replaced with #ethanol, possibly by the 1950s. Was this prediction more or less realistic than the U.S. government’s grand challenge to satisfy 100% of jet fuel demand with #SAF by the 2050s?

#WomensHistoryMonth "By answering the call to defend Alberta’s oil industry against a critical public and politicians in Ottawa, Canadian petroleum became more than just a job for these women; it became an identity and a way of life." - @jeffmanuel niche-canada.org/2024/05/30/the…

@TheStalwart Miami didn’t work out, but new Magnitogorsk for crypto/AI is gonna be a boomtown.

So one thing I'm wondering with Miami not becoming Silicon Valley 2.0. If all these VCs with all their money and their little tweets couldn't make it happen. What does that say about the prospects for the various startup/charter cities that people want to build from scratch?

@joguldi Word of warning: double-check installation & connections of any system you get. My friend’s under-sink filter sprung a leak from the water supply line and it flooded the whole first floor of the house. The (expensive) system used cheap, brittle plastic connectors.

Doing the math for a water filtration system for the kitchen that will filter PFAS, pharmaceuticals, and microplastics. Ok, we can afford it. And I find myself wondering: so how much would the city have to raise my taxes to provide this for all my friends and neighbors? And why isn’t this number part of @wirecutter or @ewg analysis? Because that’s part of my personal equation for where my time and money go, and it should be for others, too.

Probably the result of too much time looking at those cartoon natural resources maps as a kid.

The geography of refinery supply chains is endlessly fascinating. California’s refineries are importing Iowa’s soybean oil while the Midwest’s refineries bring in Alberta’s dilbit.

@Matthuber78 Hah! It’s a great book in the classroom. I never met Crosby, but I have to think he would have liked learning about the Firehawk.

@jeffmanuel Wow I’m teaching this next week. Cookivores!

Teaching Crosby’s _Children of the Sun_ today, we talked about fire as a uniquely human tool. But then a student told us all about Australian Firehawks, raptors who intentionally set wildfires. Every time we draw a line between human and non-human nature, the animals surprise us.

@Matthuber78 In case you’re unfamiliar with them, Shane Hamilton had several articles in the 2010s that did a nice job analyzing the term’s genealogy.

This piece really needs a clearer explanation of what “agribusiness” *is*. It’s mentioned 38 times as the menacing force causing all sorts of problems, but what do the beef/soy production networks look like? Who’s financing them? Who are the workers?

Wut. China imported 0.6% the amount of beef in 2002 vs. 2022. “Chinese imports of frozen beef surged between 2002 and 2022 from eleven thousand to over two million tonnes.” phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-w…

@ibogost Re: the post, it’s a good point that colleges could be more creative on the housing side. Take a page from Airbnb and let students live in fancy tree houses or yurts, set up a pad w/ hookups and do bring your own RV, etc. The postwar barracks model does seem outdated.

@ibogost That’s true, I guess. I’m just trying to think through conversations I’ve had this year (mostly w/ young men) who have internalized that college is basically a very expensive consumer experience and they’re opting out.