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Whale Oil Revisited

Liposuction for Cetaceans?
  (+2, -10)(+2, -10)
(+2, -10)
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against]

The search for renewable fuels has missed a previously exploited source - whales! Why not use hollow harpoons, and liposuck out blubber? The whales would survive to be routinely 'harvested', like sheep shearing. It would be in everyone's interest to ensure the proliferation of whales and other oil-rich critters that could be used as a renewable supply of alternative fuel.
MacGuyver, Jun 27 2007

Stealth lipo-fracking Stealth_20lipo-frac...0Body_20Fat_20Fairy
[not_morrison_rm, Nov 05 2017]

[link]






       Whales rely on the blubber to maintain their body temperature, and even if you could find enough whales to tap for fuelmaking purposes, any loss of blubber could very adversely effect their chances for long-term survival. Also, blubber isn't anything like typical fat: it's very firm, almost like a rubbery soap. Liposucking that would be very difficult.   

       Better to go whaling at the Golden Corral.
elhigh, Jun 28 2007
  

       I've participated in the harpooning of this idea, but the poster gets credit for sheer chutzpah. That would be some grumpy whale wrestling going on.
normzone, Jun 28 2007
  

       Whale liposuction not only engenders harmony with nature's beauty, but enhances it, as overwieght whales can hardly enjoy advances such as Pilates and Jazzercise due to the lack of opposable thumbs.
spalpeen, Nov 02 2011
  

       I'm often thought that this method should be applied to livestock. Through minor surgery their muscles/bloodflow could be rerouted to create a large lump of "meat" on one side; this would be periodically removed (surgically) and sold, but then it would regrow. It could be done relatively painlessly for the animal and there would be no need to kill the animal and raise a new one from scratch. Less energy input needed.
phundug, Nov 02 2011
  

       You could do this to overweight humans.   

       More easy than whales.
Health benefits to the humans concerned.
Efficiency benefits (overweight humans metabolise more energy than thin ones)
Probably a higher yield, too.
Loris, Nov 02 2011
  

       .... sponsored by Coca-Cola and McDonalds ...
8th of 7, Nov 02 2011
  

       If you start suckin the fat of overweight people that drive health care and insurance costs up with their gluttony, then I'll get behind this one.
MrExergy, Nov 04 2017
  

       Surely the whales would go all squeaky, if all the whale oil is extracted?   

       It'll play merry hell with sonar, I can tell you.   

       ^Ahem..."suckin the fat of overweight people" see stealth lipo-fracking link
not_morrison_rm, Nov 05 2017
  

       Whale oil.
Beef hooked.
  

       Jacinda would not frack this fat,
Not with her teeth or tooth,
We'll have to wait three years for that,
Or six maybe, forsooth!
mylodon, Nov 05 2017
  

       // whales would go all squeaky //   

       That's obviously what happens to dolphins. They diet to reach the "perfect" body shape, but without all those lipids, they start squeaking.   

       Terrible thing, social pressure ... we blame the media.
8th of 7, Nov 06 2017
  

       What [2fries] said.
pertinax, Nov 07 2017
  

       [mylodon] are you, by any chance, directly related to William McGonagall?
MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 07 2017
  

       I'm flattered you think
My skills are so scottish
But like him I'm nothing
My efforts mere frottage
mylodon, Nov 07 2017
  

       When [Mydolon] penned his first verse
His themes were just downright perverse
His critics all said
That he should be shot dead
And then taken away in a hearse.
8th of 7, Nov 07 2017
  

       There's a bad oder here.
MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 07 2017
  

       If you can't stanza it, you'll just have to put a clip on your prose ...
8th of 7, Nov 07 2017
  

       it sonnet odeology,
And no high falooting' pentamerals,
but hardly worth a eulogy,
ya couplet' doggerels,
mylodon, Nov 08 2017
  
      
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