I started to mention that and link to a study that measured soil C, but the rude AC didn't merit it. As you said, growing corn for food kernels and tilling the rest in is fine. The amount of carbon that comes out of the soil is roughly equal to the amount that's in the leaves and stalks, so tilling those back in makes food production roughly carbon neutral. If you take those tillings to make cellulistic ethanol, then the soil carbon is reduced. The carbon that was in the soil ends up in the air.

Of course none of this occurs on other planets, which are also warming, but that's another discussion.

Unfortunately, no. You may be aware that the air is 79% nitrogen, yet fertilizer is mostly nitrogen, because plants take nitrogen from the soil , not from the air. Corn does the same with carbon. That's one reason that corn is a stupid way to produce ethanol and switchgrass is a better choice.

There are two major reasons it DOES matter, as explained in TFA. First, much of the CO2 is not from burning the ethanol, but from producing it. Imagine if the tractors, stills, etc. burned four gallons if diesel to produce on gallon of ethanol. Every gallon of ethanol you put in your car caused four gallons of diesel to be burned. That's the concept, though of course it's not quite that simple.

Secondly, it isn't the total amount of carbon that matters. There is always the exact same amount of carbon on the planet, modulo meteorites. The problem with fossil fuels is that they take carbon out of the ground and put it into the atmosphere. It's carbon in the atmosphere that's the problem. Corn ethanol does the exact same thing - carbon from the ground goes into the corn. When you burn it, that carbon ends up in the atmosphere - just like burning gasoline.

> So I'm still wondering what the regulation is meant to do, apart from limiting the number of PE's, or software engineers, that can apply for certain lucrative jobs.

I'm glad that someone more qualified than I has reviewed and safety of the bridges I drive on every day. Just like M.D. lets me know that a doctor meets qualifications, PE does the same - it indicates that the person I'm trusting to make life-safety decisions is somewhat qualified to do so. That is the purpose.

I'm a "small government" guy - my posts here show that. I don't like the new requirements in Texas for a locksmith license. (I briefly worked as a locksmith.). I do, however, see the purpose in defining who is qualified to sign off on the safety of a new stadium, or a high rise building. I'm glad they don't allow someone like me to decide if the new stadium is safe or not.

Actually what I do is more heavy wizardry than deep magic. :)

It's been done for over 100 years, millions of head of cattle fed, and not one has gotten sick. In the same time period, tens of thousands of cattle have gotten sick from grazing on the wrong type of wildflower. Technically, there is some minute risk, but it's a lot less risky than flowers.

Something tells me you are entirely unfamiliar with agriculture. Go spend 10 minutes in any kind of ag facility and then tell me what the FDA should be doing is jacking around with something that's proven safe. You might become a vegetarian for a while after you see your foods rolling around in it's own poop, but you'll definitely realize that feeding human-grade grain to cattle is NOT what anyone should be worried about.

Most engineering graduates aren't PEs - you don't need the credential to work as an engineer. It indicates a certain level of professionalism, so people can choose to hire a PE. Of course in some life-safety situations there might be a regulation saying you can't do X (build a highway bridge) until a PE signs off the design.

It's not like a union where it's illegal to hire people that have identical qualifications. It pretty much just defines the label "Professional Engineer" to mean someone who has passed the test etc. to show they are qualified. If you want to hire an untested engineer, you're free to do so, and most people do exactly that.

* I'm not currently a PE, nor an expert in the field, so I may be mistaken about something in this post and I welcome any corrections.

I called the Texas licensing board asking how this is supposed to work and the person who answered pretty much said "yeah, you're screwed, unless you've been working as some other type of engineer".

I'd really like to talk to you about just how you went about getting licensed, and under what conditions you'd sign off on someone else. If you're nearby, maybe I can buy you lunch sometime. I can be reached at deepmagicbeginshere AT gmail.

If a someone burns a gallon of 90% gas, 10% ethanol, they've only burned 0.9 gallons of gas. Yay, less gas burned! That's the win.

However, people don't drive 1 gallon to work, they drive X miles to get to work. Since the blend has lower mpg, more of it is burned on the same trip. For easy math, let's look at a 33 mile trip, in a car that gets 33 mpg on gas. Using 100% gas, that trip will burn 1 gallon of gas. That's a key number:

33 mile trip = 1 gallon of pure gas

With the blend, the mpg will be about 10% lower, or 30 mpg. Therefore, it will take 1.1 gallons of blend to make the trip.

33 mile trip = 1.1 gallon of blend

Let's divide that blend into its components:

33 mile trip = 1 gallon of gas + 0.1 gallon of ethanol

So what have we saved. In the first instance, we burned one gallon of gas. In the second instance, we burned one gallon of gas, plus .1 gallon of ethanol. We've saved nothing. We have, however, increased the cost of food by wastefully burning corn that could have been eaten.

> By your reasoning, we had been using asbestos for 4500 years, so surely if there was something inherently unsafe about it, we would have known about it 4400 years ago.

Asbestos was a curiosity until about 1900, when it started to be used a lot. Pliny wrote about the dangers of it 1800 years earlier, in 80 AD. Other people probably knew about the danger earlier, but Pliny's writings are the oldest we still have available for reading on the subject.

The FDA has in fact said there have been no problems, ie the rule is not necessary, but they felt like making some new rules just in case. GP doesn't assume anything - the FDA agrees with his assertion as to the facts. They just feel that they have nothing better to do, so they might as well come up with some new rules. GP believes that new rules need justification.

> Yeah, those CPAs auditing Enron did a bang-up job of it, didn't they?

The 100-year old firm that audited Enron was worth over nine BILLION dollars at the time. It's now worth a few thousand, because nobody will ever hire them. The market executed them.

Compare Sony and their root kit.

Arthur Anderson was a 100-year old brand worth $9.3 billion. Because they violated the public trust, they are now worth about $0. The company still exists, but noone will buy from them.

Sony, on the other hand, is still selling electronics after rooting their customers' computers wholesale. Electronics company does something unethical - they have a PR problem for a few months. CPA does something unethical - the market executed them.

Many states in the US now license software engineers because the national organization now has criteria. A problem is that you need sign-off from an existing PE who knows your work, so there is a bootstrapping problem. A new software PE has to be approved by an existing PE, but there are virtually no existing software PEs to approve the first generation.

Of course, it's always been possible to work under the same ethical guidelines voluntarily. More than once I've told a client I won't do something because it would be akin to malpractice.

Yes, it does, pretty well. I've used a PE (Professional Engineer) for exactly that reason - they "sell" trustworthiness, objectivity. The person I bought my house from and I paid the PE precisely because we know they sell the truth, rather than telling either of us what we want to hear.

That's the same thing CPAs sell - the market pays Price Waterhouse Coopers to find the truth, rather than skewing things.