Some Knowledge

A California company is planning on marketing a home system for generating pure ethanol from sugar.  The e fuel corporation is planning on marketing a device that looks like a gas station fuel pump, runs on electricity from your home, and uses a feedstock of inedible Mexican sugar supposedly available for 2.5 cents a pound.

My question is:  If you have a distillery in your home, why bother going anywhere?  Sure, you will need to buy sugar for the still, or filter, or whatever it is they use to separate the water from the alcohol.  It’s pretty strange to me, this idea of filtering water out of the fermentation liquid.  In general, you need a still for that process.  What’s more, the maximum percentage you can get of alcohol by distillation is 196 proof, which explains why this is the proof of Everclear.  To get the last four percent of water out of the juice, you need a complicated chemical process involving bromine.  In any case, this company claims they have a process to make 100% ethanol suitable for motor fuel from something the size of a washer-dryer.

If this ten thousand dollar system actually makes fuel-grade ethanol, why wouldn’t they just scale up the operation and sell the ethanol at a profit like any respectable energy corporation?  E fuel claims their system will make alcohol for a dollar a gallon.  Surely if it works like this the availability of a fuel they can mark up and sell for a three hundred percent profit must have them thinking.  What does the IRS have to say about their home still?  I’m sure the revenuers would be interested in any gas pump that spits out high-octane white lightning.

There seems to be a trend these days to want to make motor fuel at home.  Yes, the stuff is expensive.  it’s expensive for a reason.  It costs a lot.  Sugar is more expensive than gasoline.  From what I recall about fermentation, it takes two pounds of sugar to make one pound of ethanol.  The yeast consumes some of the energy in the process.  This is pretty wasteful.  Maybe instead of selling these things to motorists they should think of selling them to bars.  There is a higher markup on beverage alcohol than on motor fuel.

I don’t know what the world is coming to with the high price of oil.  Things keep getting more expensive every day.  There is just no way I am going to pay anyone ten grand for a lousy still I could make myself, if I were that desperate.  It would be cheaper and less hassle just to pay for gas and not drive so much.  If a home still is such a good idea, why does the government keep busting moonshiners?  If this system makes pure ethanol you would have to pay the liquour tax on any fuel you make, because it would be drinkable.

A home still is just a bad idea.  If people really wanted to save money they could ride a bike.  I don’t see anyone marketing enclosed pedalcars for transporting people.  There’s no practical way to drive a pedalcar on the roads the way they are now.  If there weren’t so many cars on the road I could get a rickshaw and start a taxi business.  If I spent ten grand on a still I wouldn’t burn the booze it made in a car.

I’ve just seem more nonsense for supposedly increasing fuel economy in vehicles.  Various companies are selling products that are supposed to increase fuel economy or convert your car into running on water.  These things all work the same way.  They take water, pass electricity through it from the car’s electrical system, break the water down into hydrogen and oxygen, and burn the resulting gasses in the cylinders of the car.

These systems sell for from hundreds to thousands of dollars.  Some even claim they will run your car on nothing but water.  This is all a load of nonsense.  It takes energy to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen.  It takes more energy than you get from burning the resulting hydrogen and oxygen.  Water is not a source of chemical energy.  Water is a product of combustion.  You can not run your car on water as an energy source.

There is a lot of talk these days about a hydrogen economy and use of hydrogen as a fuel source.  Hydrogen is not available in its elemental state on earth.  It is bound with oxygen in water, or bound to carbon in methane and petroleum.  Hydrogen in fossil fuels combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to release chemical energy and combine into water.  If you want to use hydrogen as a fuel, you will have to supply energy to generate the free hydrogen in the first place.  In a car engine system, using electrical energy from the alternator to generate hydrogen from water will not supply net energy to your engine.  You will lose more energy to heat and inefficiencies of electrolysis than you will gain from burning the resulting hydrogen in an inefficient engine.

Do not waste your time or money trying to get something for nothing.  You will only lose whatever money you spend on this system.  You can not improve your gas mileage by recycling mechanical energy from the engine to generate fuel gasses.  I can’t believe people get away with selling such ridiculous systems.  This is a ripoff.  Your car can not run on water as fuel.  You will only decrease your mileage and compromise your engine by installing any such hydrogen generator in your car.

There are a lot of people in the world.  Many of these people can not afford food.  Some 50,000 people die each day from malnutrition.  30,000 of these people are children.  The situation is deplorable.  What can be done to feed all these humans?

There is at this time no shortage of food in the world.  Farmers produce a surplus every year.  What is in short supply is money for the poor.  It is a financial problem that causes people to starve to death.  It’s not that food is not available, it’s that people can not afford to buy this food.  The price of food has been going up recently.  This means that more people will not be able to afford this food.

There is only a limited amount of money available to people.  This is because there are only so many jobs.  A job does not create money.  A job apportions money from one person to another.  The fact is that there are a lot of rich people and corporations.  These people make money by selling stuff to workers.  The workers make their money by working for some factory or other operation.  It is a closed loop.  If you want money, you have to get in the loop.  This is where the system fails.  There are not enough jobs for all the people.  Some people are unemployed and can not afford to buy necessary things.

So, what can be done to end this mess?  If governments were responsible they would create work programs for people to earn money.  Governments print the money, so there should be no shortage.  In a worst case scenario, governments could even give away money to the poor.  This already happens in the welfare system.  The government isn’t losing anything but a bit of inflation on the value of their currency.  The alternative is that more people will die.

The world is basically run on a free market economy.  This means that the corporations rule the earth.  If you have money you control things, like commodities and companies and other resources.  The problem with this system is greed.  People are naturally inclined to amass large fortunes.  One person having a thousand times as much money as the average person means that a thousand average persons have nothing.  It is a simple equation.

Perhaps the solution is to supply free food.  Free food cuts into the profitability of local farmers, who then can not produce food to feed local people.  Still, if all food were free, it would solve the problem of starvation.  We do not live in a world where you can just go off into the forest and spear a deer.  We live in a world that has concentrated populations.  If you lose your job, you might die of hunger.  Maybe what is needed is a program that guarantees jobs to everyone.  It’s just an idea.

It’s disgraceful for children to be starving to death while corporations turn perfectly good corn into motor fuel.  There has to be a solution to this problem.  Perhaps the governments of the world could forget their paranoid militaries and spend that money on coming up with a plan to feed the hungry.  Even in the united states there are many homeless people who have no food.  Instead of relying on the darwinian forces of the free market economy to solve problems they have no incentive to solve, we should tell our governments to find a solution to the problems of poverty and hunger.  It makes no sense that so many people should have to die while there is so much food in the world to feed them, if they only had money.

Fishing is an enjoyable sport that does not take a lot of gear to participate in.  A person can go to almost any department store and buy a simple fishing rod and reel for a little cash.  Some Mr. Twister plastic lures is all the bait you will need to catch as many fish as you want.  Be sure to buy a fishing license, which only costs a few dollars.

It is important to look for clean water if you are going to eat the fish you catch.  Muddy water or polluted water will affect the taste and healthiness of the fish you catch.  If you are going to go to the trouble of getting all the gear and going fishing, you may as well eat what you catch.  Look for clean lakes and ponds and rivers that are not downstream from any factories or sewage treatment plants.  Dams are a good place to look for a fishing site.  If you are lost for a place to catch fish, there are books that are published that list different fishing sites in your area.

A spincasting reel is one of the easiest to use.  There is a button on the reel that holds the line when you press it.  You swing the rod, then release the button and the line pays out as your lure is cast.  You will need either lead-head jigs or a sinker on your line to allow the lure to travel a good distance when you cast.  A spinning reel is a bit more complicated, but is still easy to use.  You flip the bail and hold the line with your finger.  When you cast, you release the line and let your lure fly out over the water.  You will want to reel in your lure with a good steady motion, so it’s action is good and it attracts the attention of any fish.

When you are fishing, look for underwater structures that the fish may be hiding in.  This means rocks and fallen logs.  Also look for weeds that may harbor insects.  Fish over and along these areas and you will be more likely to catch something.  When a fish takes your lure, set the hook by pulling back on the rod and then reel it in.  You will want either a bucket or some kind of creel or a stringer to keep your fish alive in the water as you continue to fish.

Fishing is an enjoyable sport even if you do not catch anything.  You will be out on the shore of a lake or river, looking at the scenery.  You will be part of nature, and play out a scenario of man that goes far back in history, even before writing was invented.  If you go out in a boat you will have the waves to rock you and the boat to float you anywhere you want to go.  However you go fishing, it is a time to relax and enjoy yourself.  You will learn about nature and what it means to catch your own food.

Man lived the life of the hunter-gatherer for millions of years.  Human beings survived and spread over the earth even during such harsh climatic times as ice ages.  It has been argued that human society as a hunter-gatherer was far more beneficial to the individual than our modern life.  These hunting societies were so successful that they managed to drive many prey species to extinction using only stone spears as weapons.

When agriculture came on the scene, it allowed people to give up the nomadic life and settle in one location.  People often congregated around a reliable source of food, such as a river with spawning salmon.  These areas were some of the first that were cultivated.  It takes a lot of work to prepare the soil for planting and tend crops.  Along with the extra work comes a surplus of food that can provide for larger populations.  Cities developed which relied on the growing of various foods to supply them with energy.  Labor was done by hand, and there developed a class system with people stratifying into leaders and followers.

Hunter-gatherer societies still survive in isolated regions of the earth inhabited by tribal peoples.  These people often live in forest regions that are rich in game and forageable foods.  Hunter-gatherers do not live in high concentrations in these areas.  It takes a large area of land to support a human being.  Often, these people engage in tribal wars for territory or other necessities of life.  People lived this way for millions of years.  Language was developed in such societies.  Primitive peoples also engaged in artistic activities like cave painting and singing and dancing.

Agriculture allowed a ruling class to develop.  Agricultural societies were some of the first to employ slaves to do the backbreaking work of planting and harvesting.  These societies developed permanent structures, water distribution systems, governments, and armies.  Modern society is the result of ten thousand years of agriculture.  Farming is the bedrock on which our modern world is built.

Farmers did not just grow plants for sustenance.  Agricultural societies developed domesticated animals as a ready source of meat.  Land that was in grass could be used to grow sheep for wool and meat.  People were no longer reliant on an unsteady supply of game from disappearing wild stocks for high-quality food.  Animals also provided milk and eggs, good sources of protein.  The animal wastes from the farms were applied to the fields as fertilizer to increase yields long before people understood the scientific reasons behind the use of fertilizer.

Some people think it is the organization of people into states and the construction of cities that led to civilization.  None of this would have been possible without the farmers to feed all these people.  It is agriculture that allowed some people to lead lives of leisure and develop writing and science.  Society was built on the work of the poor people, often held in slavery.  Human beings developed a heirarchical society in which a privileged upper class controlled the lower classes that were doing the actual work.  Even animals were pressed into service as a source of mechanical energy for the plowing of fields and the threshing of grain.

Today, modern society does not rely on slave labor.  People have become intelligent enough to devise machines to do the hard labor of plowing and planting.  Our machines run on energy derived from petroleum, coal, nuclear, or hydro power.  The earth is home to over six billion people now.  We need the power of machines to plant and harvest our crops.  We live in buildings with water supplied by pumps and convenient toilet facilities.  Our words can be published for the world to read at the click of a virtual button.  There are many advantages to living in the modern world.  We have health care that goes far beyond what our ancestors could have imagined.  We can travel great distances in comfort.  All of this is made possible by agriculture, which supplies food for the billions of people on earth.

The price for food is increasing worldwide.  People have been killed in food riots in many countries triggered by the higher cost of food.  There are many factors involved in the higher prices.  The cost of energy necessary to grow and transport food has gone up.  There are diminished supplies of some grains due to bad weather.  Stockpiles of wheat are diminishing.  Even in developed countries like Italy, people have protested the higher prices.

Protests and riots will do nothing to lower the cost of food.  What is needed is more supply of grains and other staples.  To increase production, the world will have to focus more on growing food.  The diversion of food products to the production of biofuels is one of the causes of higher prices.  Any way you look at it, higher energy prices mean higher prices for food.

The market is what determines prices.  People speculate on food commodities.  This is like large scale hoarding, hoping that the price will increase, all to make money.  Speculation is just one of the things that drives market prices.  With supplies diminishing, prices will naturally increase.  This is why diamonds are so expensive.  If there were a lot of diamonds everywhere, they would be worthless.  The same principle applies to food.  The thing is, there is less food available.  The answer to this problem is to grow more food.  The problem with growing more food is that it costs more to grow the food.  The weather is also a factor.  Droughts drive up the price of food because there is less that survives.

Another factor driving up the price of food is the devaluation of currency.  Money tends to lose value over time.  Inflation is a factor in every economy.  It’s not just the dollar that’s losing purchasing power, it’s money in general.  Prices tend to increase over time.  An economic theory for why prices increase might be that they keep making more money, so the supply of money increases, so it has less value.

People need to eat to survive.  In any shortage or price increase, it is the poor people who will suffer first.  Possession of money has a survival value associated with it.  If you are wealthy you can afford the higher prices for things.  If you are broke, you could starve to death.  Whether this is fair or not is a question for philosophers.  The fact is that some people are more privileged than others because they have more money.  You don’t see people rioting over the high price of lobster.  Lobster has been very expensive for years.  You don’t see people protesting the high price of caviar.  Caviar is a luxury food.  If you can afford expensive foods, you are in no danger of starvation when the price of grain doubles, as it has.

What is the answer to the increasing cost of food?  I don’t necessarily think there is an answer.  People will probably have to work harder to survive.  Persons with access to land might want to plant gardens to grow some of their own food.  Even food you grow yourself costs some money.  It might be better to rely on grains and vegetables for your food, as these tend to cost less than meat, both in terms of price and cost of production.  People too poor to afford food will either have to find better lines of work, or will have to rely on government aid or humanitarian programs.  The age of abundance is coming to a close.  Unless some new, cheap energy source is found to drive our society, prices will continue to go up and more people will suffer.

First, send Dad to the store to get a new faucet.  A week later, when you start thinking about installing the faucet, notice that the flange is too wide and the faucet will overhang the sink.  Then, send Dad back to Home Depot to get a properly-sized faucet.  A week later, when you get around to installing the faucet, put on your plumbing hat and then look for tools.  Of course, you have misplaced the basin wrench.  Spend almost an hour looking everywhere for the danged wrench.  Give up and send Dad to Home Depot to buy a wrench and some new plumber’s putty, because the old putty has hardened in the can.

Clean out everything on top of and under the sink.  Crawl under the sink and shut off the water supply.  Notice that the valves drip when you’re turning them off.  Disconnect the water lines from the sink and almost get soaked when water pours out of the lines.  Disconnect all the levers that go to the drain.  Remove the drain, noticing how clogged it happens to be.  Throw the old drain in the trash.  By this time Dad is home with the basin wrench.  Loosen the plastic nuts that hold the old faucet in the sink with the basin wrench and remove the old faucet.  Get a scrubbing pad from the kitchen and clean off the crud that was under the old faucet.

Now, look at the holes for the faucet in the sink.  Notice that the center hole is smaller than the two holes for the water supply.  Think to yourself how the new faucet has a rotary cable gimmick that has a thick connector that is supposed to go through the small center hole in the sink.  Get the new faucet.  Notice how the cable gimmick is too large to go through the hole.  Send Dad to Home Depot to take back the second faucet and get one that fits.  Drink coffee and watch TV while Dad is gone to the store.

When Dad returns with the new faucet, make sure it will fit.  Install the new faucet and the water lines.  Install the new drain with some new plumber’s putty.  Notice how the new drain will not reach the trap, because it is too short.  Go down in the basement and look through the box of plumbing supplies for a drain extension.  Find the basin wrench in the box of plumbing stuff.  Shrug and get a drain extension from the box.  Check the drain extension to see if it fits.  Notice that it is the wrong diameter.  Put the drain extension back in the box and go back upstairs.

Dad has spent too much time on the road.  Get in the truck and go to Home Depot and get a drain extension.  Be sure to take the old trap with you so that you get the right size drain extension.  Pay six more dollars and drive home.  Sock up the new drain in the sink so that it seats well.  Fit the new drain extension into the line and mark it for cutting to the right length.  Cut the new drain extension to size with a hacksaw and deburr it with an old file.  Put the drain together and tighten it good with a stillson wrench.

Hook up the stopper mechanism with the rods included in the faucet set.  Make sure everything operates properly.  Turn on the water supply and check for leaks.  Tighten the packing nut on the cold water valve so it doesn’t leak.  Pull the drain rod and fill the sink with water.  Check under the sink for leaks.  Notice that water is pouring out around the drain.  Drain the sink and mop up the water with a towel.  Loosen the drain packing nut and tighten it back down all nice and centered with both hands.  Fill the sink again and notice that it doesn’t leak.  Spend the next ten minutes being sure the drain doesn’t leak.

Now clean up all the tools and the mess.  Put all the soap and cleaners back under the sink.  Check the sink again for leaks.  Take all the tools back downstairs to the basement and put them all away.  Wash your hands in the new sink.  Take off your plumbing hat and have lunch.

For several years my main mode of transportation was a bicycle.  It did not help the daily commute much that I lived 12 miles away from where I worked.  It took an hour to ride into the office and an hour to get home.  Sharing the road with cars and trucks was a constant source of concern.  There were, however, some benefits to all this physical activity.

I got a good deal of exercise back in those days.  Anyone who spends two to four hours a day on a bike gets a good deal of healthy exercise.  It didn’t cost me anything for gasoline.  My use of petroleum was only slight, since all I used was a few drops of lubricating oil each week.  I always seemed to have a good time on my rides into work or into town for entertainment.  Perhaps this is because I was always listening to my Walkman.  There’s only so much loud traffic noise a person can stand.

Aside from traffic, my main problems with the bike were weather, wind, and the occasional flat tire.  Because I did not carry a repair kit most times, and did not have an air pump, flat tires meant I had to walk a good long way.  Luckily, flat tires are not that common with fat mountain bike tires.  It was a different story when I rode the ten speed.  Still, I did not spend a lot of time walking when I was on the bike.

The weather was my main enemy.  A little rain means nothing to a person in a car.  On a bike, it means you get wet.  If you are on a dirt road and it starts raining, it means you get wet and muddy.  Rain is not much of a problem in winter.  In winter, the problem is the cold.  You need to have warm clothes, good gloves, warm boots, a good hat or hood, and a very warm coat.  Long underwear is a necessity.  Cold is nothing to fool around with.  Frostbite can creep up on you and do its damage and you will barely feel it.  Keep covered and stay safe.  One night I remember I went out and it was 17 below F.  I wore a full face motorcycle helmet to keep the cold off my face, and a snowmobile suit.  That ride went fairly well with no problems.

If you are using a bicycle for any kind of transportation, like getting groceries or going to school, you will need something to carry stuff in.  Saddlebags, panniers, anything that attaches to your bike is useless in my opinion.  This is because you can’t lock up a saddlebag.  You will need a good bike lock.  Bicycle theft is pretty common.  Get a backpack to carry your stuff.  This will isolate your goods from road shocks as well.  You will not be able to carry a lot of stuff on a bike anyway, so get one that you are comfortable with and keep it in good repair.  That way you can lock up your bike and carry your goods along with you wherever you go.

One thing you will not need if you commute on a bike is all those ridiculous bike clothes.  Spandex shorts will get you nowhere with your boss.  A yellow numbered jersey is not a fashion statement.  Wear some good bluejeans so that if you fall because of some junk in the road that fell off a car you will not scrape up your legs.  A pair of riding gloves also helps save your hands in a fall.  Road rash is painful and takes a long time to heal.  Cover up and you will avoid some potential problems.

One of the hazards of riding a bike is dogs.  Dogs will chase you if you ride a bike.  Usually they just run up next to you and bark.  I have no idea why anyone would let their dog run around loose in the streets, but they do.  If you run into a dog that’s actively trying to bite you you can do two things.  You can get off your bike opposite the dog, holding off the dog with your bike and yelling “NO!”, or you can boot the dog in the head with a nice steely toed boot, right under it’s lower jaw so it bites its own tongue and thinks better than to bite you.  What I usually ended up doing was just to ride fast and out-distance the dog.  I once had a greyhound run alongside me for almost a mile, but he was non-aggressive and just having fun, plus he was a good distance off to the side.  Even that dog finally gave up the chase.  Dogs do not have the endurance of a man on a bike.

If you want to save some money on gas and don’t live too far from work, and the traffic is not too bad, and the weather is nice, and you are in reasonably good health, there is no reason you can’t commute to work on a bike.  If it’s been a while since you rode, head out to the park and get some practice on the bike trails.  Who knows, if the price of fuel keeps going up, maybe more people will come to rely on this more efficient mode of transportation.  Someday, maybe the government will put in dedicated bike paths for people who like to ride.

Animal foods are part of the diet of most Americans.  In the world at large, there is an increasing use of meats and animal products.  What is the cost to the environment, the economy, and our health of eating a diet rich in animal products?

In the first place, it takes a lot of food to grow meat.  An animal will only add a percentage to its weight of the food it consumes.  For pigs, they have to consume approximately seven pounds of grain to gain one pound of body mass.  For chickens, this is slightly less, and for cattle it is more.  Ruminants like sheep and cattle can be raised on a diet of grass and hay, but they gain weight at a slower rate and take longer to come to market.  Still, this use of grazing land can offset the reliance on grain feeds that could be used for human food directly.

Aside from the increasing costs of grains for feed, there are other problems associated with raising many animals for food.  There are health problems associated with large concentrations of food animals.  Their waste products can pollute the soil and atmosphere.  High densities of animals feeding on a plot of ground can cause loss of valuable pasture.  There are many environmental problems caused by raising animals in too crowded conditions.

Then, there are the health effects of eating a lot of animal products.  Meat, milk, eggs, all are high in saturated fats.  Aside from fats, there are high concentrations of cholesterol in some products.  Doctors tell us we should limit our intake of saturated fats and cholesterol.  Meat and animal products are good sources of protein, but the associated fats can offset any benefits of added protein to our diet.

Plant foods are much more efficient at providing food for people.  Plants can provide carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fiber.  Plant foods have more vitamins and minerals than most meats.  The only vitamin missing from plant-based foods is vitamin B-12.  This can be supplied with supplements, or by brewer’s yeast.  Feeding grains and soy products to people directly is a much more efficient use of available nutrients than cycling them through the systems of an animal.

Many people object to eating meat because they view it as being cruel to animals.  You have to kill an animal in order to eat it.  Many high-density farms house animals in cramped and crowded conditions.  Farm animals often are fed large quantities of antibiotics and hormones to increase their productivity.  There is some question as to whether this is good for human health or not.

With the cost of food rising and the supplies dwindling, it might be time to re-evaluate our use of animal-based foods.  Some meat can certainly be grown on pasture land and provide food from a resource that can not be utilized by humans.  Rising grain prices may make meat un-economical in the future.  It would be better for the environment, for health, and for the people of the world if we did not rely so much on an inefficient and possibly cruel source of food.  As a protein source, meat is a good supplement, but as a main food it is lacking in balance.  Better utilization of crops could be effected by using plant sources of food for human nutrition.

I’ve just been trying to look up how the coffee crop is doing this year.  It seems the production of coffee is up in Colombia and Brazil.  What I learned is that coffee goes in cycles.  There will be a year of short harvests, like last year, then a year of big harvests.  I did not see too many definitive reports on the harvest, though, just short blurbs.

I’m pretty certain that the consumer price of coffee is not going down with the increased yields of this crop.  There are a lot of transportation costs associated with this product, and the cost of transportation is always going up.  There is also packaging and processing costs associated with any commodity.  You have to clean and roast coffee.  You have to grind it up and put it into those cans.  Then there is the markup for the wholesaler and the retailer.  There is a whole chain of command in getting any product to your local store.

I looked at one site that was a breakdown of the commodities market in cocoa, coffee, sugar, and oranges.  This site was designed for people investing in commodities.  They did not seem happy that the price of raw material for the commodities industry was going down.  I don’t know about people who have this outlook.  It seems they would be pleased if the crops had a bad year and the prices went up.  Isn’t that the whole rationale behind investing in commodities?  You buy stocks of something in a year when the prices are low, and hold onto them waiting for a bad year when you can sell your product for a profit.  I’m surprised that people invest in food this way.

When you store food items, they do not necessarily get better with age.  Wine might be an exception to this principle.  Still, you would think there would be more trading in wine if this were the case.  You might buy wine in the year it was produced, and store it in a warehouse waiting for it to age and improve.  Then you would sell it for a profit.  Maybe the wine market is too small for people to trade heavily in it.  Maybe the wineries do this themselves and get the profits.  I don’t even know if wine improves with age.  You’d think the flavor molecules would break down after long enough on the shelf.

In any case, there will be more coffee available in the world this year.  This is probably good for the retailers.  Their costs will go down slightly.  With inflation and the weak dollar, it’s pretty certain that the price of coffee for the consumer will just go up.  What gets me is that the farmers who grow this stuff are not really making more money on their work.  The price they get for their goods is determined by the commodities markets.  When production increases, prices drop.  So, the farmer has to do more work to get basically the same amount of money.  You might think they would be better off with a bad crop and higher prices.  The market sometimes makes no sense.