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How Grassoline Works · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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  Speaker 1: from how stuff works dot com? You're getting smarter? Hello,
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  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I'm a
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  Speaker 1: staff writer here at how stuff works dot com and
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  Speaker 1: with me today is my trustee editor, Chris Pallette. Chris
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  Speaker 1: and I don't always see eye to eye on what
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  Speaker 1: should or shouldn't go into the article, but I can
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  Speaker 1: tell you one that we both agree on and find fascinating.
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  Speaker 1: It's an article that I wrote and he edited called
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  Speaker 1: can We Fuel Cars with Grass? So, Chris, why don't
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  Speaker 1: you tell the folks about this article and what it says? Well, basically,
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  Speaker 1: switch grass is one of the feedstocks for a bio
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  Speaker 1: fuel and um. Of course that's something that pops up
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  Speaker 1: in the news all the time. Now is uh ethanol
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  Speaker 1: or biodiesel? UM. But instead of using corn, which is
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  Speaker 1: something of course that that people and animals eat, or
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  Speaker 1: sugarcane um, which is delicious, Oh yes, yes, absolutely um,
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  Speaker 1: but very hard to find in the continental US, UM,
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  Speaker 1: we can use switch grass, which is a great source
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  Speaker 1: of cellulose, which is the substance. I believe you told
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  Speaker 1: me that cell walls are made up of um. Basically,
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  Speaker 1: what they do is they break it down and make
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  Speaker 1: it into a fuel, just like you refine oil into gasoline,
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  Speaker 1: except you can't can't find fossil fuels just anywhere where
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  Speaker 1: you're you know, possibly approaching peak oil, as you mentioned
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  Speaker 1: in another one of your articles. And um, so this
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  Speaker 1: is something that that might be grown all over the
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  Speaker 1: world and lots that aren't good enough to grow crops on,
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  Speaker 1: it might be a really good solution. Well, not only that,
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  Speaker 1: switch grass has the wonderful trait of being able to
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  Speaker 1: improve soil where it grows. So, like you were saying,
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  Speaker 1: it grows in these marginal scrub lands that can't be
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  Speaker 1: used for farming anyway, and it actually improves the soil.
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  Speaker 1: So you grow some switch grass in an area for
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  Speaker 1: about a dozen years and next thing you know, presto chango.
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  Speaker 1: That's arible farmland now. So it would definitely help Africa
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  Speaker 1: out quite a bit, which is one of the regions
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  Speaker 1: where it can grow wild too. So tell us what
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  Speaker 1: switch grass is specifically, Well, switch grass is, as its
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  Speaker 1: name suggests, a grass. Um. It's not particularly pleasant to
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  Speaker 1: look at it's um. You know, I think some people
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  Speaker 1: consider it invasive and more like a weed than anything else. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: farmers especially, Yeah, and it's um. I don't know, can
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  Speaker 1: I I didn't mean find this out to do animals
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  Speaker 1: eat switch grass? Or is it just something that that's
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  Speaker 1: irritating to h I think it's generally irritating. It's used
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  Speaker 1: in some circumstances as an ornamental grass, some types are,
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  Speaker 1: but I think ultimately it was clearly put on the
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  Speaker 1: earth here to be used as a cellulistic ethanol. Well,
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  Speaker 1: I suppose that's it's uh one interpretation of it. UM.
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  Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to to see what happens with it
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  Speaker 1: because UM right now, it's very expensive to refine switch
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  Speaker 1: grass into so eulistic ethanol UM. And of course every
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  Speaker 1: proponent of every different biofuel has a reason why we
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  Speaker 1: should be using theirs UM. But one thing, Josh, that
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  Speaker 1: I found out recently since we publish the article, is
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  Speaker 1: that converting fields to be used for biofuels, for example,
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  Speaker 1: to grow soy or corn or sugarcane or palm or
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  Speaker 1: palm um, can actually be more trouble because in the
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  Speaker 1: conversion process it can release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
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  Speaker 1: I read an article in the New Scientists that said
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  Speaker 1: ten thousand UH square meters of Brazilian rainforests. Converting that
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  Speaker 1: over to UH grow biofuel stock crops um that would
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  Speaker 1: actually release seven hundred thousand um ms of carbon dioxide,
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  Speaker 1: which is amazing. You're have to use biofuels for years,
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of years in some cases to recoup the carbon
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  Speaker 1: debt that you do by converting it. So it's seems
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  Speaker 1: like switch grass might be a great solution to that problem.
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  Speaker 1: Switch grass is an excellent solution, but I don't think
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  Speaker 1: it's the only solution. You know, you can't grow switch
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  Speaker 1: grass in Indonesia. You can grow palm in Indonesia and
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  Speaker 1: make oil from it. And sure, you know, there's a
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  Speaker 1: carbon debt, and that is something clearly that we're trying
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  Speaker 1: to get around, is to put any more carbon or
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  Speaker 1: any other greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. But I
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  Speaker 1: think even more than, even maybe more important than than
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  Speaker 1: climate change is uh war and regional autonomy. Imagine if
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  Speaker 1: Indonesia didn't have to import any oil from anywhere else,
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  Speaker 1: they they were energy self sufficient. Imagine if the US
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  Speaker 1: were energy self sufficient? How much more peaceful would the
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  Speaker 1: world be, do you think, Chris, if we all grew
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  Speaker 1: our own um energy supply? That's true, you know it
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  Speaker 1: makes regions more stable. Um. There are a fewer things
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  Speaker 1: to u to have political conflicts over. Sure, And I'm
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  Speaker 1: not pointing fingers, but war is our fought over oil,
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  Speaker 1: oh sure, and all sorts of other resources. Well, thanks
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  Speaker 1: for joining us this week. You can read can We
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  Speaker 1: Fuel Cars with Grass? On how stuff works dot com.
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  Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, This
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