STOP Pickens Lying to Congress, Dumb Rule or Dumb Reporting, Jatropha Conference
Stafford Williamson
May 11, 2009
As martial arts go, ju jitsu is among the gentler of them in my observations. Judo, as it is also known is predicated on the idea that it is not necessary for you to be the stronger individual to prevail in a contest because one can best apply oneīs efforts to turning the opponents strengths to your advantage. You will notice that I didnīt make any analogies to war or to enemies because in this case, my "opponent" is not an enemy, just a friend, who, I think, is misguided and behaving badly.
Truly, I would rather have T. Boone Pickens as a friend than an opponent, but I feel obligated to correct his mis-information about natural gas being the "only" viable fuel for heavy trucks and machinery (because we havenīt got battery storage methods that would pack enough power to replace their internal combustion engines with electric ones for long hauls and heavy loads). Frankly, that is nothing short of a LIE.
Make Pickens Stop Lying to Congress
Indeed Booneīs website has attracted a lot of "followers" that he calls his "army", and I would be foolish to take on an army of millions of people. While Booneīs "heart" may be in the right place, he seems to be following a "You can fool all of the people some of the time," strategy. Terry Neese (of Peace Through Business Program) introduced Boone to a "Women Presidents" luncheon in San Diego recently with a quote from Booneīs own book, The First Billion is the Hardest in which he claims his father told him, " A fool with a plan beats a genius with no plan." But despite the fact that Pickens claims his main motivation is to benefit the country, to stop the massive transfer of wealth to foreign petroleum producing nations, it directly benefits his own organization that owns the largest network of natural gas fueling stations for vehicles, and expects us to overlook the fact that he has already invested some US$2 Billion in wind turbine farms.
But this is a battle of fact and science, and, unfortunately, as usual, emotional appeals that try to look beyond the facts to peopleīs dreams. There is no shortage of xenophobia in Texas, and Pickens is fanning an ember of a new version of the "better dead than red" sentiment. The facts of the case are that T. Boone Pickens has become as "reformed" oil patch denizen, now touting wind turbines as the means to supply electricity to the nation, alleviating the "burden" on the petroleum industry of supplying the electric power industry. That is a phony premise to begin with. The majority of the nations electric generating facilities are still burning coal. The ones that are burning something from the petroleum industry are burning natural gas if at all possible (although some use the really grungy stuff from literally the bottom of the barrel, but thatīs a side argument I donīt want to get into right now). Gas has gotten cheap, not because it is actually cheaper to recover, but because of the inflation in the rest of the economy, and could keep getting cheaper. Thereīs a huge excess of it that has never been brought online because it was uneconomic to do so, and now that demand and prices are higher than those costs, it is "cheap". (Not really, but it looks cheap.) And it is a domestic source we control, unlike imported petroleum from the other side of the globe. (The same is true of coal, but letīs leave that one for another day.)
For that matter, I have no objection to his desire to build vast wind farms, even though it will (he admits) probably cost more than a trillion (yes, thatīs "TRILLION" with a capital "T", and that standīs for BOONE. Oh we got trouble, right here in sorry, I got carried away there for a minute). Government (and we, the taxpayers) will likely have to contribute something to that, maybe may billions, but private industry can afford it if the demand for electricity continues to grow as it appears it will, and especially if we really start getting those plug-in hybrids and all electric vehicles in serious quantities.
Right now the Pickensī Plan website is urging its "New Energy Army" to email, tweet or use legislatorsī facebook pages to urge support of the "Natural Gas Act of 2009" (H.R. 1835), which he says is designed to "incent industry to replace older diesel trucks with newer natural gas vehicles" and further goes on to claim, "A battery also won't push an 18-wheeler. The only fuel which is available to reduce our dependence on foreign oil is domestic natural gas."
The main "LIE" is that natural gas is the cleanest available fuel for heavy trucks. It is far cleaner than gasoline, and burns cleaner than diesel. But the fact remains that it comes from deep within the earth where it was "FOSSIL CARBON" (which is not to argue that fossils created it, but rather (like fossils) it was entombed in rock by some natural geologic process millions if not billions of years ago). It is not a matter of the amount of carbon in the living beings (plants and animals) on earth which is being used (and in particular, burned) by humans that is believed to play a role in climate change. It is the fact that we are constantly adding to the amount of atmospheric carbon (as carbon dioxide, the heat trapping "greenhouse gas") from FOSSIL CARBON sources like natural gas and petroleum (and coal).
GROW YOUR FUEL
The REAL solution to FOSSIL CARBON based diesel fuel can be available even faster than Mr. Pickens can get his natural gas out of the ground and into his (necessarily much expanded) network of natural gas refueling stations is BIODIESEL from ALGAE. Algae grows at a rate that is unbelievable if you havenīt seen it for yourself. It DOUBLES in size, weight and volume OVERNIGHT. No, I donīt mean just "really fast," I mean LITERALLY OVER A 24 HOUR PERIOD. And it gets even better.
Instead of releasing fossil carbon into the atmosphere, for every ounce of weight gain the algae makes as it grows, it ABSORBS TWO OUNCES of COē. Thatīs right. It takes 2 oz. of carbon dioxide to make one ounce of algae.
Now donīt allow "them" (in Pickensī Army or anywhere else) to confuse the issue by saying, "But when you burn the algae fuel, the carbon goes right back to being carbon dioxide." SO how is it better? It is better because it is simply re-cycling all the same carbon from the living carbon cycle that is necessary for life. GROW your fuel, Mr. Pickens, and Iīll get behind your plan too.
And one of the real beauties of the plan to "grow" your future fuel is that it can be used to absorb the "pollution" of the carbon dioxide from the smoke stacks of the electric generating facilities. Just because fuel from algae is "greener" (and thus "cleaner") than other fuels, doesnīt mean those other fuel industries are going to go away overnight. The Coal mining industry if far too well entrenched, wealthy and influential to think that they are going to give up without a fight. Their "clean coal" strategy may be far cleaner than burning raw coal, but it is nothing like carbon dioxide free. Their Carbon Capture and Sequestration plans have yet to be proven, and at best reflect a perpetuation of the attitude that we can still "create garbage" and then "just bury it somewhere". We have to treat our planet better than that. There is no "garbage chute" into outer space, and for that matter, even if it were possible to take all our garbage to Saturn, it would be at least equally irresponsible to assume that it was "okay" to just "dump" it there.
Algae could be used to capture carbon dioxide from coal burning electric generation facilities in the short term, but could also become the fuel used in the future. In a way, algae as fuel is a kind of "solar energy" because like all plants its energy comes from the sunlight it absorbs and then stores as chemical energy. When we release that chemical energy by burning the fuel, we can still use more algae to |
capture the carbon dioxide that is created by that combustion.
Off course, such a process of growing algae to burn (or burn parts of it) and then using the algae to absorb the carbon dioxide from the combustion is far less than 100% efficient. We are not proposing to create some impossible perpetual motion machine here. The algae is constantly absorbing the energy of sunlight to keep the process going, but the chemicals involved are, in effect, being re-cycled, over and over again.
Arizona Cities Apply for Biodiesel Help
Glendale, Arizona, and five more nearby suburbs of Phoenix including Peoria, Avondale, Goodyear, Buckeye and Surprise have joined in an application for funding to buy hybrid vehicles (garbage trucks), pollution filters for diesel vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of gallons of biodiesel fuels. Actually the nearly $730,000 in federal funding is from the EPAīs portion of the federal stimulus package, and will be used to cover the additional cost of using the biodiesel instead of 450,000 gallons in Glendale and over 160,000 gallons in Peoria.
Peoria is also planning on spending $1.35 million of its own budget with a request for an additional $450,000 from the EPA for the purchase of six new hybrid garbage trucks.
The grant applications that it could produce as many as 600 related jobs with the more than $2 million in additional spending this injection of cash would provide to the local economy according to the coverage of the story in the website azcentral.com. That number certainly stretches credulity somewhat, for me at least, but I am pleased that my local area is trying to do their part to lessen the carbon footprint of their civic activities.
Biodiesel Conference
I received a note about a Biodiesel Conference from some people with very ambitious plans. The group behind this is calling itself "Biodiesel Farming Inc.", because they really are attempting to establish a fairly major farm that is not just energy self-sufficient, but by combining wind power, solar (PV, I gather), and cultivating jatropha intercropped with vegetables (they claim 75 acres of vegetable for every 100 acres of jatropha). The say they hope to be the first viable commercial jatropha farm in America. Somewhere I think I read that they are (or at least they claimed to be) the "only" jatropha farm registered with the USDA.
The conference seems to be in Indio, and they are recommending accommodations at both of the casinos there, with bus tour out to Desert Center to "tour" the farm. The farm tour takes 6 hours and it is being organized on "luxury" tour buses. If I recall correctly, traveling at the speed limit it is about 1 hour each way from Indio so they seem to be proposing to waltz you around the desert for 4 hours. Thatīs a long trip to fit into their 3 day conference schedule.
I have seen some pictures of really bedraggled jatropha bushes at Desert Center (which like many desert areas actually has a reputed nearly limitless supply of underground brackish water) and the most prominent feature of the area viewable from the highway (Interstate 10) is a few stands of lonely old palm trees. However I have see some video of palm oil harvesting there, too, though I donīt know if that will be on the agenda or not, during the "tour". They are also selling jatropha nursery plants.
Apparently these guys just got themselves a new set of publicists recently because they are also to be featured in a 30 minute segment on an upcoming PBS series called Worldview Program. according to their own press release of May 8, 2009, filming to start during the Biodiesel Conference, May 15 17, 2009.
Stupid Rule
(or just "stupid news")
In California, the State Water Resources Control Board, has ruled that there is no such thing as a "safe" underground tank in which you can (currently) store biodiesel fuel if the concentration of biodiesel is more than 20%, even if it is a double walled tank.
Still running scared by previous mini-catastrophes where leaking tanks contaminated ground water (a couple of which became EPA superfund cleanup sites) they ruled that there has not been sufficient testing done on higher concentrations of biodiesel, even though the biodiesel itself would be biodegradable. Some claims have been made that biodiesel would act as a solvent, dissolving certain tank seals or other elements, and thus allow the petrol diesel fuel to leak into the surrounding water table.
Okay, I just picked on this one because I resent that news items like this are designed to infuriate and inflame the public (and to "sell newspapers"). Ultimately the ruling merely means that B20 can be stored in existing underground tanks (not a lot of folks sell B99 or B100, or at least not in quantities that are very significant yet, compared to B5 and B20 compounds), while B21 and high must be stored in above ground tanks for the present time. A inconvenience, yes, perhaps an additional expense, maybe even a boondoggle to boost short term tank rentals for a distant cousin. But hardly a crisis, and unlikely to have any serious repercussions for the long term future of biodiesel.
Happy Thought
Okay, to bring back the ju jitsu (judo) idea, I want to ask you to use one of T. Boone Pickens "weapons" against him. I want you to contact your federal senator or congressman (or woman) or, preferably both using the charts here.
Twitter and Facebook Pages of Elected Representatives in Washington
And please TELL YOUR SENATOR or CONGRESSPERSON that T. Boone Pickens is LYING to them, and that they need to look for a BETTER PLAN than his, one that DOESNīT compromise our future to benefit Booneīs bottom line. Get us to GROW our BIODIESEL from non-food crops, especially algae.
And since you were kind enough to read through my plea for allies, hereīs a chart you might find useful.
http://daochienergy.com/LISTINGVENDORSBIODIESEL2009.html
Love and warm wishes,
Sincerely,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
http://daochienergy.com
Truly, I would rather have T. Boone Pickens as a friend than an opponent, but I feel obligated to correct his mis-information about natural gas being the "only" viable fuel for heavy trucks and machinery (because we havenīt got battery storage methods that would pack enough power to replace their internal combustion engines with electric ones for long hauls and heavy loads). Frankly, that is nothing short of a LIE.
Make Pickens Stop Lying to Congress
Indeed Booneīs website has attracted a lot of "followers" that he calls his "army", and I would be foolish to take on an army of millions of people. While Booneīs "heart" may be in the right place, he seems to be following a "You can fool all of the people some of the time," strategy. Terry Neese (of Peace Through Business Program) introduced Boone to a "Women Presidents" luncheon in San Diego recently with a quote from Booneīs own book, The First Billion is the Hardest in which he claims his father told him, " A fool with a plan beats a genius with no plan." But despite the fact that Pickens claims his main motivation is to benefit the country, to stop the massive transfer of wealth to foreign petroleum producing nations, it directly benefits his own organization that owns the largest network of natural gas fueling stations for vehicles, and expects us to overlook the fact that he has already invested some US$2 Billion in wind turbine farms.
But this is a battle of fact and science, and, unfortunately, as usual, emotional appeals that try to look beyond the facts to peopleīs dreams. There is no shortage of xenophobia in Texas, and Pickens is fanning an ember of a new version of the "better dead than red" sentiment. The facts of the case are that T. Boone Pickens has become as "reformed" oil patch denizen, now touting wind turbines as the means to supply electricity to the nation, alleviating the "burden" on the petroleum industry of supplying the electric power industry. That is a phony premise to begin with. The majority of the nations electric generating facilities are still burning coal. The ones that are burning something from the petroleum industry are burning natural gas if at all possible (although some use the really grungy stuff from literally the bottom of the barrel, but thatīs a side argument I donīt want to get into right now). Gas has gotten cheap, not because it is actually cheaper to recover, but because of the inflation in the rest of the economy, and could keep getting cheaper. Thereīs a huge excess of it that has never been brought online because it was uneconomic to do so, and now that demand and prices are higher than those costs, it is "cheap". (Not really, but it looks cheap.) And it is a domestic source we control, unlike imported petroleum from the other side of the globe. (The same is true of coal, but letīs leave that one for another day.)
For that matter, I have no objection to his desire to build vast wind farms, even though it will (he admits) probably cost more than a trillion (yes, thatīs "TRILLION" with a capital "T", and that standīs for BOONE. Oh we got trouble, right here in sorry, I got carried away there for a minute). Government (and we, the taxpayers) will likely have to contribute something to that, maybe may billions, but private industry can afford it if the demand for electricity continues to grow as it appears it will, and especially if we really start getting those plug-in hybrids and all electric vehicles in serious quantities.
Right now the Pickensī Plan website is urging its "New Energy Army" to email, tweet or use legislatorsī facebook pages to urge support of the "Natural Gas Act of 2009" (H.R. 1835), which he says is designed to "incent industry to replace older diesel trucks with newer natural gas vehicles" and further goes on to claim, "A battery also won't push an 18-wheeler. The only fuel which is available to reduce our dependence on foreign oil is domestic natural gas."
The main "LIE" is that natural gas is the cleanest available fuel for heavy trucks. It is far cleaner than gasoline, and burns cleaner than diesel. But the fact remains that it comes from deep within the earth where it was "FOSSIL CARBON" (which is not to argue that fossils created it, but rather (like fossils) it was entombed in rock by some natural geologic process millions if not billions of years ago). It is not a matter of the amount of carbon in the living beings (plants and animals) on earth which is being used (and in particular, burned) by humans that is believed to play a role in climate change. It is the fact that we are constantly adding to the amount of atmospheric carbon (as carbon dioxide, the heat trapping "greenhouse gas") from FOSSIL CARBON sources like natural gas and petroleum (and coal).
GROW YOUR FUEL
The REAL solution to FOSSIL CARBON based diesel fuel can be available even faster than Mr. Pickens can get his natural gas out of the ground and into his (necessarily much expanded) network of natural gas refueling stations is BIODIESEL from ALGAE. Algae grows at a rate that is unbelievable if you havenīt seen it for yourself. It DOUBLES in size, weight and volume OVERNIGHT. No, I donīt mean just "really fast," I mean LITERALLY OVER A 24 HOUR PERIOD. And it gets even better.
Instead of releasing fossil carbon into the atmosphere, for every ounce of weight gain the algae makes as it grows, it ABSORBS TWO OUNCES of COē. Thatīs right. It takes 2 oz. of carbon dioxide to make one ounce of algae.
Now donīt allow "them" (in Pickensī Army or anywhere else) to confuse the issue by saying, "But when you burn the algae fuel, the carbon goes right back to being carbon dioxide." SO how is it better? It is better because it is simply re-cycling all the same carbon from the living carbon cycle that is necessary for life. GROW your fuel, Mr. Pickens, and Iīll get behind your plan too.
And one of the real beauties of the plan to "grow" your future fuel is that it can be used to absorb the "pollution" of the carbon dioxide from the smoke stacks of the electric generating facilities. Just because fuel from algae is "greener" (and thus "cleaner") than other fuels, doesnīt mean those other fuel industries are going to go away overnight. The Coal mining industry if far too well entrenched, wealthy and influential to think that they are going to give up without a fight. Their "clean coal" strategy may be far cleaner than burning raw coal, but it is nothing like carbon dioxide free. Their Carbon Capture and Sequestration plans have yet to be proven, and at best reflect a perpetuation of the attitude that we can still "create garbage" and then "just bury it somewhere". We have to treat our planet better than that. There is no "garbage chute" into outer space, and for that matter, even if it were possible to take all our garbage to Saturn, it would be at least equally irresponsible to assume that it was "okay" to just "dump" it there.
Algae could be used to capture carbon dioxide from coal burning electric generation facilities in the short term, but could also become the fuel used in the future. In a way, algae as fuel is a kind of "solar energy" because like all plants its energy comes from the sunlight it absorbs and then stores as chemical energy. When we release that chemical energy by burning the fuel, we can still use more algae to |
capture the carbon dioxide that is created by that combustion.
Off course, such a process of growing algae to burn (or burn parts of it) and then using the algae to absorb the carbon dioxide from the combustion is far less than 100% efficient. We are not proposing to create some impossible perpetual motion machine here. The algae is constantly absorbing the energy of sunlight to keep the process going, but the chemicals involved are, in effect, being re-cycled, over and over again.
Arizona Cities Apply for Biodiesel Help
Glendale, Arizona, and five more nearby suburbs of Phoenix including Peoria, Avondale, Goodyear, Buckeye and Surprise have joined in an application for funding to buy hybrid vehicles (garbage trucks), pollution filters for diesel vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of gallons of biodiesel fuels. Actually the nearly $730,000 in federal funding is from the EPAīs portion of the federal stimulus package, and will be used to cover the additional cost of using the biodiesel instead of 450,000 gallons in Glendale and over 160,000 gallons in Peoria.
Peoria is also planning on spending $1.35 million of its own budget with a request for an additional $450,000 from the EPA for the purchase of six new hybrid garbage trucks.
The grant applications that it could produce as many as 600 related jobs with the more than $2 million in additional spending this injection of cash would provide to the local economy according to the coverage of the story in the website azcentral.com. That number certainly stretches credulity somewhat, for me at least, but I am pleased that my local area is trying to do their part to lessen the carbon footprint of their civic activities.
Biodiesel Conference
I received a note about a Biodiesel Conference from some people with very ambitious plans. The group behind this is calling itself "Biodiesel Farming Inc.", because they really are attempting to establish a fairly major farm that is not just energy self-sufficient, but by combining wind power, solar (PV, I gather), and cultivating jatropha intercropped with vegetables (they claim 75 acres of vegetable for every 100 acres of jatropha). The say they hope to be the first viable commercial jatropha farm in America. Somewhere I think I read that they are (or at least they claimed to be) the "only" jatropha farm registered with the USDA.
The conference seems to be in Indio, and they are recommending accommodations at both of the casinos there, with bus tour out to Desert Center to "tour" the farm. The farm tour takes 6 hours and it is being organized on "luxury" tour buses. If I recall correctly, traveling at the speed limit it is about 1 hour each way from Indio so they seem to be proposing to waltz you around the desert for 4 hours. Thatīs a long trip to fit into their 3 day conference schedule.
I have seen some pictures of really bedraggled jatropha bushes at Desert Center (which like many desert areas actually has a reputed nearly limitless supply of underground brackish water) and the most prominent feature of the area viewable from the highway (Interstate 10) is a few stands of lonely old palm trees. However I have see some video of palm oil harvesting there, too, though I donīt know if that will be on the agenda or not, during the "tour". They are also selling jatropha nursery plants.
Apparently these guys just got themselves a new set of publicists recently because they are also to be featured in a 30 minute segment on an upcoming PBS series called Worldview Program. according to their own press release of May 8, 2009, filming to start during the Biodiesel Conference, May 15 17, 2009.
Stupid Rule
(or just "stupid news")
In California, the State Water Resources Control Board, has ruled that there is no such thing as a "safe" underground tank in which you can (currently) store biodiesel fuel if the concentration of biodiesel is more than 20%, even if it is a double walled tank.
Still running scared by previous mini-catastrophes where leaking tanks contaminated ground water (a couple of which became EPA superfund cleanup sites) they ruled that there has not been sufficient testing done on higher concentrations of biodiesel, even though the biodiesel itself would be biodegradable. Some claims have been made that biodiesel would act as a solvent, dissolving certain tank seals or other elements, and thus allow the petrol diesel fuel to leak into the surrounding water table.
Okay, I just picked on this one because I resent that news items like this are designed to infuriate and inflame the public (and to "sell newspapers"). Ultimately the ruling merely means that B20 can be stored in existing underground tanks (not a lot of folks sell B99 or B100, or at least not in quantities that are very significant yet, compared to B5 and B20 compounds), while B21 and high must be stored in above ground tanks for the present time. A inconvenience, yes, perhaps an additional expense, maybe even a boondoggle to boost short term tank rentals for a distant cousin. But hardly a crisis, and unlikely to have any serious repercussions for the long term future of biodiesel.
Happy Thought
Okay, to bring back the ju jitsu (judo) idea, I want to ask you to use one of T. Boone Pickens "weapons" against him. I want you to contact your federal senator or congressman (or woman) or, preferably both using the charts here.
Twitter and Facebook Pages of Elected Representatives in Washington
And please TELL YOUR SENATOR or CONGRESSPERSON that T. Boone Pickens is LYING to them, and that they need to look for a BETTER PLAN than his, one that DOESNīT compromise our future to benefit Booneīs bottom line. Get us to GROW our BIODIESEL from non-food crops, especially algae.
And since you were kind enough to read through my plea for allies, hereīs a chart you might find useful.
http://daochienergy.com/LISTINGVENDORSBIODIESEL2009.html
Love and warm wishes,
Sincerely,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
http://daochienergy.com
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