Topic one

       The process that goes into putting food on the table in America has changed dramatically in the last 50 years. In the past, most farms were small and labor intensive. They required a relatively large group of highly skilled workers to raise animals and produce food. Antibiotics did not have widespread use. Technology and standardization were less prevalent. Farms were somewhat unique. Present day farms are large and built for mass production. The process is streamlined. Workers are fewer and less skilled. Everything is standardized for maximum efficiency. Animals are fed a specific amount of food to get the greatest return on investment. There is also a widespread use of antibiotics. This leads to the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria which leads to a host of other problems, including human and animal disease that can't be treated by drugs.
    Another problem present day farms have is waste treatment. Before, animals weren't confined and their feces was spread out throughout the land they grazed on. Now, with the animals packed together in huge groups, feces is produced at a fast rate in a confined area. Farms are typically in rural areas, away from waste-treatment plants. So this huge amount of waste isn't disposed of properly and can threaten the neighboring human population with disease and water contamination.
  This problem is fixable, but would be detrimental to the IFAP system. Farming could be taken back to the old ways where animals aren't as densely confined. This way manure would be less dense and the problems associated with it would be less severe. The system of farming could be promoted by government subsidies for SMALL farms only.   

http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/nspills.asp


   

EROI HW

EROI

1.) We should extract oil from tar sands first because they have a higher EROEI than oil shale.
2.) One similarity between the process used to get oil from shale and the process used to extract oil from tar sands is the use of heat. Heat causes the kerogen in oil shale to form crude oil and natural gas while it used in the tar sands to extract bitumen, which is further refned.
3.) A key difference between the process that is used to get oil from shale and the process used to get oil from tar sands is, the bitumen extracted from the tar sands needs to be upgraded with either methane or hydrogen from more natural gas in order to be refined further. With the process used to get oil from shale, adding another substance is not needed for refining the crude oil and natural gas derived from it.
4.) The author believes that offshore drilling will decrease greenhouse gas emissions in the future because he believes that restricting drilling will make oil more expensive, making it more economically viable to exploit low EROEI fuel sources. This will cause more greenhouse gases to be produced to extract these low EROEI fuels in addition to the greenhouse gases produced when these low EROEI fuels are used. The author also believes that restricting drilling will increase our demand for foreign fuels who may not be carbon efficient as us. The author believes these effects of restricting offshore drilling would produce more greenhouse gases than offshore drilling itself.
5.) I eat food to gain energy. I gain more calories (energy) than the calories (energy) used to eat the food and exploit the energy from it. If there was less calories in the food I ate than the amount of calories I needed to eat and digest that food, I would die.