Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you,
Speaker 2: David bloomback with us. David is a commercial farmer, regenerative
Speaker 2: ag tech consultant, biofuels pioneer, noted author. His book is
Speaker 2: Alcohol Can Be a Gas, and a global food waste
Speaker 2: optimization consultant as well. Early in his career, David worked
Speaker 2: on experimental energy products with NASA as well as Mother
Speaker 2: Earth News. A successful business leader and entrepreneur, he wrote
Speaker 2: the Amazon dot com critically acclaimed ag tech bestselling book,
Speaker 2: As I mentioned, Alcohol Can Be a Gas. David, welcome back,
Speaker 2: my friend. Have you been well.
Speaker 3: I've been doing great, George, always great to come on
Speaker 3: the show with you.
Speaker 2: What new projects are you undertaking these days?
Speaker 3: Oh well, there's quite a few really, But you know, methane,
Speaker 3: which we're going to talk about tonight, is kind of
Speaker 3: tangential and maybe interesting. But I'm still working, you know,
Speaker 3: on taking our road back from oil companies and maybe
Speaker 3: a little more freedom for us on the ground.
Speaker 2: To lots of things going on these days. I want
Speaker 2: to talk with you about the push. First of all
Speaker 2: from the United Nations down the local communities where they're
Speaker 2: all looking for cleaner electricity, cleaner energy. Is that doable?
Speaker 3: David, Oh, absolutely, we can make cleaner energy. You know.
Speaker 3: The stuff we're using now is dinosaur energy from basically
Speaker 3: corporations that have figured out how to sell something that
Speaker 3: doesn't last forever and always goes up in price, and
Speaker 3: we keep buying it. And that's like gasoline or oil products,
Speaker 3: and of course natural gas, which is also a petroleum product.
Speaker 2: I've had natural gas in all my electric and gas
Speaker 2: ranges for years and years and years. In California, they
Speaker 2: want to reduce it, probably even do away with natural
Speaker 2: gas and propane.
Speaker 3: Why, well, some places have already done it. You can't
Speaker 3: even get a hermit in Berkeley, California to put in
Speaker 3: a gas line into your house.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So people need to realize the most amazing system we've
Speaker 3: created in the United States for distributing gas. It comes
Speaker 3: from some well somewhere in a pipeline and magically comes
Speaker 3: to your street up into your house and it's right
Speaker 3: there at your stove. So you know that when you
Speaker 3: think about the spider web of steel pipes underground everywhere,
Speaker 3: that's delivering all this gas, why would anyone want to
Speaker 3: do without it? So think about natural gas is it's
Speaker 3: like if you think about underground, you know where the
Speaker 3: oil is and the rock down below, and the natural
Speaker 3: gas is under pressure with all that rock above, and
Speaker 3: it's kind of like a soda, you know, and you
Speaker 3: pop the top, you know, like you drill a well
Speaker 3: and the gas comes on up. So you know, when
Speaker 3: you first get the gas, it's full of wall kind
Speaker 3: of horrible stuff. But they do a pretty good job
Speaker 3: cleaning up benzene and caluene and xylene and all that
Speaker 3: stuff you really don't want in the house, and so
Speaker 3: natural gas gets to you pretty clean. And when you
Speaker 3: burn it, well, heck, you know. Natural gas is the
Speaker 3: oil company term for the chemical methane. And we've all
Speaker 3: kind of heard a methane without knowing what it is.
Speaker 3: But methane is the simplest of these alkanes, which is
Speaker 3: a group of chemicals, and it has one carbon and
Speaker 3: four hydrogens all glued together. When you go ahead and
Speaker 3: burn the methane like in your natural gas burner on
Speaker 3: your stove, what's happening is the carbon grabs on to
Speaker 3: a couple of oxygens and the hydrogen grabs onto some
Speaker 3: oxygen and you got two different things. Now, so this
Speaker 3: carbon with the oxygen, well that's carbon dioxide again. What
Speaker 3: you're breathing out the hs the hydrogens that are sitting
Speaker 3: on it, they become water. Weaper. If you're way up
Speaker 3: north and you're cooking in the kitchen for a bunch
Speaker 3: of friends, you notice the windows always fog up when
Speaker 3: you have a natural gas stow because the moisture is
Speaker 3: being released as as it's created when you burn the gas.
Speaker 3: So it's a pretty harmless fuel, except for the fact
Speaker 3: that that extra carbon dioxide is controversial nowadays because it
Speaker 3: comes from underground. It's millions of years old, and now
Speaker 3: we're releasing it into the air and increasing the amount
Speaker 3: of carbon dox on our air, which is a whole
Speaker 3: subject for discussion, David.
Speaker 2: Most gas furnaces in the North and the Midwest work
Speaker 2: on natural gas as well. It's today is still the
Speaker 2: cheapest form of energy, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, But it's about to start ratcheting up because you know,
Speaker 3: there's only so much of it in the ground, but
Speaker 3: there and so that it goes up in price because
Speaker 3: it's non renewable when it comes from the ground. But methane,
Speaker 3: I make it right on my farm. I have a
Speaker 3: one hundred foot long bag I've made out a pool liner,
Speaker 3: and I put plant matter in from my alcohol plant,
Speaker 3: the waste products after I've made the alcohol, and it
Speaker 3: goes in there, and it's underwater in this bag, so
Speaker 3: it starts rotting without air. And so when things don't
Speaker 3: have air and they're rotting, instead of giving off other things,
Speaker 3: they give off methane. So my natural my my methane
Speaker 3: that I used to power power my still comes from
Speaker 3: plant waste, you know, weeds, grass, whatever, you know. In
Speaker 3: my case, apple pulp. You know that I'm making alcohol
Speaker 3: from well the peels are left over at the end. Well,
Speaker 3: I felt the methane digester and it powers my still.
Speaker 3: So I'm not even using the utility company's gas to
Speaker 3: make my alcol a hall for fuel.
Speaker 2: Nationwide, do you see a ban of gas stoves coming
Speaker 2: up or maybe even gas furnaces, Well, you got to.
Speaker 3: Understand what it's all about, and yes, it's coming. You know.
Speaker 3: When you see something like this, uh, you got you
Speaker 3: got to wonder what's behind it, you know, And it's
Speaker 3: easy to blame the government because they're making the rules.
Speaker 3: Like here they are talking about basing out natural gas,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, all said and done, it's a
Speaker 3: pretty clean fuel. But uh uh so, so who So
Speaker 3: if we're saying the government is doing it, well, the
Speaker 3: government doesn't do it on its own. There's a guy
Speaker 3: up above them with you know, with strings that are
Speaker 3: making that that government puppet dance and take actions. So
Speaker 3: who benefits from banning natural gas? Well, you know, we
Speaker 3: have a limited amount of that right now and it's
Speaker 3: going to run out. But one thing we have a
Speaker 3: lot of is coal. You know, we're oil. We might
Speaker 3: only have a couple of decades left coal. We have
Speaker 3: two hundred years of coal left at least. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: could be even more if you go further. But so
Speaker 3: a lot of our utilities in the United States are
Speaker 3: coal fired plants, and the whole world is recognized that
Speaker 3: the pollution from coal burning just is far worse than
Speaker 3: almost anything else. So what you're seeing is the oil
Speaker 3: companies hedging their bets knowing that they're not going to
Speaker 3: be able to keep supplying natural gas. And the way
Speaker 3: they want to get around that is electrify the country
Speaker 3: and power it with their coal or nuclear Okay, so
Speaker 3: here we are talking about two really dangerous energy sources
Speaker 3: with lots of waste problems. I mean, oh my god,
Speaker 3: the ash, the toxic ash left over from burning coal
Speaker 3: is unbelievable. So what we're seeing is the government being
Speaker 3: manipulated into doing what the fossil fuel industry wants, which
Speaker 3: is a conversion away from natural gas. Because if we
Speaker 3: start running out of natural gas from oil wells, well
Speaker 3: people will start making natural gas. Right now. If you're apartment,
Speaker 3: USDA will give you a grant to put in a
Speaker 3: methane gas generator, a thing that makes the natural gas
Speaker 3: from say you're cow maneuver in a dairy or that
Speaker 3: kind of thing. It'll digest in the in the underwater,
Speaker 3: and it gives off lots of natural gas. But that's decentralized.
Speaker 3: The oil companies don't own that, and that is a problem.
Speaker 3: So they don't want to see us expand the non
Speaker 3: petroleum natural gas, which is renewable and it doesn't add
Speaker 3: any carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: Is there anybody or any organization fighting these possible restrictions.
Speaker 3: I think it's too early to see a big mobilized
Speaker 3: organized fight over this. You know, people are sensing that
Speaker 3: there's something wrong, like why is the government doing this?
Speaker 3: But until they know the bigger picture and the plan
Speaker 3: to you know, basically run up colon nuclear, you know,
Speaker 3: it'll get to a point where they'll say, oh, sorry,
Speaker 3: all that electricity we're having you cook with and heat
Speaker 3: your house with, well, you know, we don't have enough electricity,
Speaker 3: you know, and so you know, we're going to have
Speaker 3: to start using nuclear power plans. So we're going to
Speaker 3: have to do you know, it's going to give an
Speaker 3: open door to technologies that really need to go away.
Speaker 2: Is it a diversion, David.
Speaker 3: It's it's a diversion from anything that's renewable and decentralized,
Speaker 3: in other words, something we can do ourselves. You can make.
Speaker 3: You know, I've seen people use truck tires to uh,
Speaker 3: not the tire but the inner tubes to make natural
Speaker 3: gas to you know, to cook their food. You know,
Speaker 3: you take a big truck tire and you put a
Speaker 3: bunch of you know, plant matter in it and fill
Speaker 3: it with water, and you know you have if you
Speaker 3: have a you know, right from where the air hose
Speaker 3: used to be, that can be put a valve on
Speaker 3: that and it comes right up to your stove and
Speaker 3: there you go. You're running on your own natural gas.
Speaker 3: So methane is is a good thing if it's made
Speaker 3: from plant matter, and it's really negative if it's made underground.
Speaker 3: So where does methane come from? Well, methane in the
Speaker 3: atmosphere comes. The two top sources are drilling for oil.
Speaker 3: When they hit the deposit, there's enormous amounts of natural
Speaker 3: gas just going up into the air. And then the
Speaker 3: ongoing operation of an oil well is the second biggest
Speaker 3: source of methane in the air. But number three is
Speaker 3: a big surprise, which is the landfills all that organic
Speaker 3: matter that.
Speaker 2: We How do you capture it.
Speaker 3: Though, Well, they do that right now all over the country.
Speaker 3: They sink pipes into the they cover the top with
Speaker 3: a rubber membrane, and then they sink pipes into it
Speaker 3: and it pumps out all kinds of ethics. I remember
Speaker 3: when they built in the Bay area here the shoreline
Speaker 3: amphitheater on the site of an old dump, you know,
Speaker 3: and they were at the first concerts that were you know,
Speaker 3: playing there. It's a huge, huge, grassy, you know, mound
Speaker 3: that used to be the landfill, and people would light
Speaker 3: up a joint and all of a sudden there be
Speaker 3: a JETI flame cover you know. So, yeah, nature makes methane,
Speaker 3: but when it makes it from plants, it doesn't get
Speaker 3: into the whole argument about are we having global warming
Speaker 3: or not because of too much carbon dioxide. But methane
Speaker 3: in the air eighty times more potent in creating global
Speaker 3: warming than carbon dioxide.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that's a bad idea.
Speaker 3: Oh, we don't want methane in the air, not at all,
Speaker 3: you know. And so the oil companies are the biggest
Speaker 3: and they're they're not even being fined for that yet,
Speaker 3: and you know the harmous worldwide problem.
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