The next Cuban gristle crisis: US Navy warship powered by beef fat The USS Stockdale, a guided-missile-launching destroyer, has set sail powered by an unusual fuel – waste beef fat. The ship, deployed this week in the USS John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group, is part of the Navy's Great Green Fleet initiative, which is trying to make swabbies more environmentally friendly by using alternative …
I'm with you bro. We should introduce worldwide rationing on farm animals which will put the price up so only the super rich can afford to eat meat. The rest of us should get by on beans and lentils - it's healthier for us and the environment. Screw freedom of choice!
If this stuff's $2.05 a gallon, then it seems to me that if the objective is to ensure a strategic fuel supply for the navy it would be a lot cheaper to build massive underground storage and buy the real thing off our Arab and other oil-producing "friends", especially while it's down at $30 a barrel.
it's healthier for us and the environment."
I realise of course that you were being satirical, however there are those who actually do believe that it would be better for the environment. It would in fact require a huge extension of arable monoculture farming right across the face of the planet in order to do this. The irony of the vegan position is that it would do massive damage to the earth's ecosystem if we all dropped eating meat.
Mmmh, In East Africa, once the bananas are harvested, the shrub is chopped down and applied as fertilizer for the next upcoming sucker. After a few years the shrub grows on one meter or even higher heap of itself. Don´t know, how its handled on the plantations that deliver so called bananas to europe.
Africans they are not due EU import regulations. Chiquita dictated the definition of an EU banana standard.
You don´t find any of the 20 or more varieties of african bananas in europe. Nothing of the non sweet, starch rich cooking bananas or the 4" long super sweets. Just the mealy Chiquitas.
same applies for potatoes. Last night´s business idea is to open up a fish´n chips with 10 varieties of potatoes to choose from. European citizens have been prohabited to enjoy the riches of what the world has to offer by the Food Mafia.
Sorry, went off the topic here (again).
Next week, i will be back in Africa and enjoy an avocado the size of a handball and a doublesize pineapple, NGM Wheed, a real steak, triple destilled banana gin ...
Not for holidays but for my new IT-ManAnger contract. Asante Sana
@Martin Summers. You didn't miss anything worthwhile - it certainly isn't worth repeating. Somebody came home from the pub in a bad mood guessing from the timing and the comment. The original and a lot of the deleted were 'anonymous cowards' as well. I think alcohol and the 'Post anonymously' button are a bad combination. Either that or restrict the ability to post anonymously to only once or twice a day (preferably not after beer o'clock).
I shouldn't have fed the troll but the comment irked me as well even though I'm not a great fan of America either.
This post has been deleted by its author
If we're talking alternative fuels, there only one AltFuel good enough for the US Navy: Unicorn farts.
High energy content, smells nice, and actually removes CO2 from the air when it burns!
There is one caveat; Ironically this potent fuel is a bit TOO energetic for long-term reliable use in engines. Happily tho a small admixture of gnome farts produces a satisfactory burning rate.
I read about a guy who ran his moped on monkey spunk, but I seem to remember it was a little sluggish and the local zoo wasn't being very cooperative, so he traded it in for a better model that ran on leopards fanny batter.
Although come to think about it, it was a Viz cartoon strip and might not have been totally accurate.
Anyway, I assume after reading that most deplorable AC comment above, I couldn't be any more offensive if I tried.
" ships were almost entirely made of renewables "
not really true.........tree felling for ships wildly exceeded the growth and replanting rates.
Thats why there are few old healthy oaks in Britain - all the good ones were felled. All the old oaks alive now survived because they were diseased with rotten crowns or cores
Thats why we imported mahogany and other timbers for ship building
Thats why there are few old healthy oaks in Britain - all the good ones were felled. All the old oaks alive now survived because they were diseased with rotten crowns or cores
What a load of crap.
The Government recognised that there was indeed a shortage of Oak around the time of Trafalgar. That's why many, many oaks were planted and are still alive today. Oak Tree Common in Hartley Wintney is one of those plantations. Apparently they stopped when someone told them that it would be at least 100 years before those trees would be good for ships. By then we were building them out of iron and steel.
not all the oaks alive today were alive back then either. I have at least 20 such trees in my Woodland that are less than 30 years old. They are thriving now because the old oak that overshadowed them was felled a few years ago. The wood from that tree is keeping my home nice and cozy thank you very much.
". That's why many, many oaks were planted and are still alive today"
you make my point for me. If felling oaks for shipbuilding had been sustainable, then that planting campaign would not have been needed: the forests would have been self-regenerating.
As it was, we couldn't, and didn't have sustainable forests, and when that was realised, the Admiralty planting scheme - which was half-hearted at best due to costs - was abandoned as pointless.
and I go back to my original point - the only oaks that survived our shipbuilding were the diseased ones. Go and take a look around somewhere like Sherwood, which does have a lot of old trees. They are all diseased and dying, the good ones were all cleared. They may have been dying for three hundred years or so, but in oak terms that's recent. Those trees in that plantation you're citing? Mere youngsters in comparison - and probably only just getting big enough to use for smaller ship timbers
the problem of course is finding enough men skilled in the work of shaping the timbers and jointing and erecting them correctly. Not a very common practice nowadays
They should come to Tasmania then. There's a very nice wooden boat building school not five minutes drive from where I'm sitting.
http://australianwoodenboatschool.com.au/
I imagine I'll be having breakfast next door tomorrow morning at the Living Boat Trust
http://lbt.rforster.org/
@ x 7: Rubbish. 'self-regenerating' and 'sustainable' are not the same thing. Sustainable forests are usually well managed by people, not by nature. Trees are mature long before the 'three hundred years' you quote and those that are that age are past their best and, yes, diseased and dying. It's called old age.
@ John Arthur
Clear felling all the usable trees and not planting replacements until its too late (which is what happened) is not by any mechanism "sustainable".
Real "sustainable" would have meant cropping the trees at a rate at which continuous ongoing exploitation without loss of the reserves would have been possible. That didn't happen. To be honest it doesn't happen very often: even so-called sustainable FSC accredited schemes are often than not more a paper masque over a totally unsustainable felling regime.
In reality the only provable sustainable large-scale forestry operations are those which use softwoods for paper production, with the felling on a relatively short 40-50 year cycle, or the even shorter-term coppiceing of willow or aspen for biofuel.
But going back to the ships timbers: you'd be hard pushed to get a ships frame out of an oak thats less than 300 years old. Having said that, ideally you'd use elm as a better material but theres not much chance of that nowadays
Rubbish. 'self-regenerating' and 'sustainable' are not the same thing. Sustainable forests are usually well managed by people, not by nature. Trees are mature long before the 'three hundred years' you quote and those that are that age are past their best and, yes, diseased and dying. It's called old age.
While you are correct that 'self-regenerating' and 'sustainable' are not the same thing, we do not know what might might be a truly sustainable farming or forestry system. All methods currently known result in topsoil loss at a rate greater than it is generated. Thus we can say that one system is more or less sustainable than another, but not be sustainable indefinitely.
Also, Huon Pine is still in its infancy at 300 years and I have seen an intact stem that fell at the age of 2,300 years. As the chap who showed to me described it: "This tree was 300 years old while Jesus was playing full back for Jerusalem!" Huon Pine is in many respects the best boat-building timber of all.
As American corporations seek to monetise everything, perhaps the missiles that are fired are preceded by a PA message "this armed munition is brought to you by McDonald's... we're lovin' in".
I feel sad that the day has come that even the propellant of a warship is grounds for another press release.
Measuring bullshit - you have the following units:
What's with leaving Australia out of this? Bet you never had a Minister for Communications who claimed "unfettered legal power" over telecommunications regulation, including the ability to request Australian telcos "wear red underpants on their head".
@ x 7 Trump was measured previously but a few overlooked units: Rubio, Carson, Bloomberg, Obama, Ryan, Pelosi, McConnell, Reid (from Nevada), all A-List Hollywierd celebrities. - I do not have a high opinion of the feral overlords. As for other countries, I am sure there are deserving units for dishonorable mention.
"How do you measure quantities of bullshit, anyway? By the trump? "
I think you may have just invented the perfect term for measuring bullshit. I propose this be added to the El Reg SI Units page forthwith.
For those unfamiliar with the word trump in English, it's a word to describe a fart, a noxious emission of gastric gases, a small explosion between the legs, flatulence, a bottom burp, a honker, thunder from down under, sphincter whistle, arse trumpet, trouser ripper and so on.
"Battleship" is a term for a particular class of naval vessel, one which hasn't been built for 60+ years, and one which has not been in service anywhere for 20+ years. A battleship has 30+ cm of hardened steel armour - not 1.5 cm of mild steel hull plating. And guns of 28+ cm caliber. No guns of over 13 cm exist on any in service naval vessels that I am aware of.
The blunder is on the sub-title. The title and the text use the correct term, "warship".
</berserk mode>, sorry for the outburst.
You forgot the Zumwalt Class which has a 15.5 cm gun system. Aside from that, I totally agree and I'm a destroyerman with seven years of straight sea time thereon. Having a "real" battleship with, perhaps, some RAP [Rocket Assisted Projectiles] rounds around would be all too the good.
Good rant!
[Thirty-one knots with a bone in my teeth ;-) ]
"Only because germans called clunky, barely functional submersibles "boot" and murricans can't into translation....." Er, no. The distinction between ships and boats was a European naval creation from the days of steam-powered dreadnoughts. The Royal Navy took it to the extreme, declaring that only steam-powered vessels (such as cruisers and battleships) could be called "ships" and therefore have a name, whereas the smaller, petrol-fueled "boats" only got numbers. The rest of the European powers follow suited. Submarines had oil-burning engines ("diesels") and thus fell into the "boat" class. They were also discriminated against as old-style naval officers considered them a dishonest form of warfare. Nothing to do with the Yanks.
And to take Matt's point further, submarines were really just a logical extension of the MTB/MGB torpedo / gunboat attack concept - there was a natural evolution to make those small fast boats visually smaller and lower in the water (for "stealth" purposes) until eventually it made sense to hide the attack boat underwater...and the "boat" name was retained
In real life, rather than trekki fiction, I think you'll find spacecraft is the correct terminology, with NASA's shuttle being a spaceplane as it also flew / glided in the atmosphere. Where is the logic in using fictional TV programmes to define real-life nomenclature?
@Destroy All Monsters - If there is "spectacular ignorance" in this thread, then surely yours must be the Mt. Everest of such.
"Clunky, barely functional submersibles" - Perhaps you should take your cue from Donald Macintyre and his colleagues before spouting your faecal-brained nonsense. Or, as an alternative, the opinion of a "Former Naval Person" may prove to be enlightening to you.
"germans" - Surely it is Germans.
"murricans can't into translation" - WTF? The Americans can't do translation? The Americans aren't into translation? Destroy All Monsters can't into English?
"most ship of the ships" - Since the first submersibles over 100 years ago, to the true submarines of today, THEIR OPERATORS have referred to them as "boats". This holds true for the Kaiserliche Marine, the Kriegsmarine, the Royal Navy, the United States Navy, and I'll wager, many other navies as well.
Perhaps they should have consulted with you before doing so.
"The NCC-1701 is..." Ah, the icing on the cake, or in your case, the snow on the mountain. Thank you for giving us a reference to a fictional spacecraft. How that is germane to a discussion of real history, I will leave for others to discern.
A far more appropriate fictional reference, in my opinion, is the Sherlock icon in your post. Perhaps if you were to engage the services of Mr. Holmes, he could provide you with the clue you so obviously lack, although the task may strain even his considerable powers to their utmost.
Nuclear strategic submarines are not boats.
And a ship is "a sailing vessel square-rigged on all of three or more masts, having jibs, staysails, and a spanker on the aftermost mast" so nuclear strategic submarines aren't ships either. It's fun learning new things :-)
Sleek, swift, streamlined ship,shield-clad and shining,
tell to me the tale of your trip
when the limpest of men were your lining
-- Bob Calvert
JoS "[Thirty-one knots with a bone in my teeth ;-) ]"
Puh. I've done at least 120 knots on water. Not kidding. Skipping across the lake, a solid 120 kts on the dial. Just enjoying the ride. Partial throttle even.
Then my friend applied full throttle, the craft lurched to 140+ kts nearly instantly, he pulled back on the stick, and the floatplane rocketed skyward.
Kinda funny that an airplane makes a vastly faster boat than almost any boat. Not even trying to be a boat, and ends up being way faster than any boat in town. I told him that he should enter it into boat races.
theres been no change to the ship design at all. The animal fat has been converted into a form of biodiesel which is functionally identical to normal military diesel and can be used in diesel engines and gas turbines. The US Navy have even had some aircraft using it (most jet turbine engines can burn any old crap within reason)
Anyone with an ounce of vision would combine free Obama care liposuction for the 'Wall Mart Wobblies' ™ and convert their blubber into bio-fuel. Dual benefit of no need to buy the raw ingredients and will have a major benefit to the health (or at least appearance) of the American population at large (punny).
@ Scrotus Canus - Have an up vote. Just the thought of this makes me laugh, solve the obesity problem and fuel the Navy. Have to think of a new slogan to make it happen.
Also, since they shrank in size the clothing manufacturers world wide will be drooling over the sales in the US. Going to need new threads.
Do they burn pork fat when crusing around Muslim lands?
"Today's deployment proves that America is on its way to a secure, clean energy future, where both defense and commercial transportation can be fueled by our own hardworking farmers and ranchers, reduce landfill waste and bring manufacturing jobs back to rural America."
I foresse submarines running on NUCLEAR BEEF throwing out ORGANICALLY GROWN SLBMs tipped with WHOLE EARTH THERMONUCLEAR GREEN SHOOTS.
The average subcutaneous (under skin) fat depth for a US grain fed feedlot animal is 3 inches.
Contrast this with paddock roaming grass fed beef such as in New zealand which is 1/2 inch.
In fact the lean beef issue is so great for the US they import lean beef from countries like NZ to mix with their excess beef fat for the beef burger industry which is monstrous in the US.
So I would be in intrested to see how this could disrupt said beef burger industry.
In fact the lean beef issue is so great for the US they import lean beef from countries like NZ to mix with their excess beef fat for the beef burger industry which is monstrous in the US.
Australia you mean? Shouldn't that be the other way round? It's New Zealanders who emigrate to Australia, rather than vice versa. But you are correct; both countries produce the most excellent beef. I can see some very tasty looking Wagyu X Murray Greys through my study window right now. Yummy! :-)
We will need dead horses for that.
In june 1941 the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union with over 600000 horses. Most of them died.
An unknown number of horses died during the battle of the Somme in 1916 with over 1 (one) million human casualties. And at least the German rations contained plenty of horse meat. Peter Hart, The Somme.
"The Great Green Fleet shows how we are transforming our energy use to make us better warfighters, to go farther, stay longer and deliver more firepower. In short, to enable us to provide the global presence that is our mission."
What if they stay home, bombing no one, taking care of their own country, smoothing out contrast and come out with a humbler approach to others? We really do not need a yet another police state that systematically pursues his own agenda. You know, just for a change!:)
it will run on other hydro carbon fuels too.
Like any other diesel engine, it doesn't have to be fueled processed black oil.
I doubt that fueling warships with dead cows is the main goal of this project, if it is then crikey, that's morbid.
The option to put peanut oil, dead cow oil, sun flower oil, rapeseed oil or even black gold into the tank is a good move.
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