Terrorists Don't Drive Cadillacs, PetroSun Starts Tomorrow, Biodiesel vs Renewable Diesel
Stafford Williamson
March 30, 2008
Law enforcement agencies have come to have more and more sinister sounding names over the last few decades, names that obfuscate their function as enforcers of public policy, with what now amounts to the power to imprison a person (citizen or not) for the rest of their natural life without trial, without counsel, without even any requirement to inform them of what offense or suspected offense they are accused. Wouldn´t you think that the Arizona Department of Public Safety would be a bunch of guys wearing pocket protectors in rumpled shirts inspecting your gas company connections. I would. But who they really are is the Highway Patrol, known in some places as the "State Troopers" and the "secret police" of the State of Arizona. It is not that I object to this branch of law enforcement existing, it is the "propaganda" style of naming convention that worries me.
Why have we, as Americans adopted the style of totalitarian states like the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany by invoking terms that emphasize fidelity to the state. Mother Russia, or the German Fatherland, came before loyalty, even to members of your own family. When that sort of attitude began to pervade American thinking is was ridiculed in the popular song by the Kingston Trio (a top40 group of the time) in a song called "The John Birch Society" that admonished, "If your mommy is a commie, they you´ve got to turn her in." No, I am not saying that if Uncle Freddy is selling nuclear weapon secrets to foreign governments and exporting missile parts to terrorists that you shouldn´t turn him in for actually committing crimes, but BEING a "commie" was, in itself, not a crime.
Let me share a little more of my sentiments from 2002 (which have not changed since them, by the way). In the interest of full disclosure, I have no evidence that I ever sent the following to Senator McCain, I found it in my "drafts" folder, so it either may never have been sent (not like me, since I tend to speak my mind as you can well see) or that it was submitted via a form on the U.S. Senate website. In any case, I feel this may have some relevance at this time in the "election cycle".
"Dear Senator McCain:
I have given some thought to the proposal, to the extent that I can understand it from the brief media coverage thus far, and I hope that you will oppose this move. It may not be popular to take such a position, but I believe that it is necessary and the right thing to do in this case. Protecting people from those who would do us harm is unquestionably one of the most important functions of government.
To that end, I stand up and cheer over the recent arms reduction agreements. I am in favor of more adequate funding for the intelligence agencies, and better coordination and cooperation among them. But the creation of a department that has province over all of these functions, and consolidates budgetary control creates several situations which are both potentially dangerous, and undesirable.
The diversity of oversight and responsibility in the intelligence community is a strength. All answering to one master is a bad idea. Too much focus, too much policy direction uniformly applied will weaken the diversity that has been a strength to so much of American activity throughout history, in virutally every field. The danger, too, is that when intelligence gathering goes out of fashion, the budgets available for it may dwindle to a level that cannot support any reasonable level of intelligence gathering accomplishments. The diversty is a strength because when the NSA fumbles, the CIA is not painted with the same brush. The NRO is not limited by cutbacks in the FBI, nor do the expansions of the NRO force DIA contractions. With a single departmental budget proscribing the expenditures, the shrinking of funding affects them all.
I also believe that while we presently seem to see that terrorists are a significant threat, there is an unhealthy feeling that all of this is externally motivated by "foreign" people. Clearly the Islamist movement has a key role in the al Qaeda threat, but blaming it all on foreign influence and ignoring domestic aspects is a convenient fiction that will not serve well in the longer term. The high profile in the media of a couple of American born persons' involvement in the Taliban forces seems to miss the point. The point might be more obvious when one considers that some of those responsible for the World Trade Center tragedy were actually US residents for over a decade, according to the press I have heard. We don't ask people to check their ideologies or religious beliefs at the border. We don't have import restrictions on ideas. And as the Oklahoma City bombing can be inferred to imply, some of the home grown ideologies and values are just as much a threat to the peace and quiet enjoyment of life in America as [any] single external threat.
We must keep a clear vision that people who are content and happy are less likely to oppose the established order of society. Their origins in terms of geography is less significant than their social and cultural orientation. "
It ended with the comment about Cadillac shoppers. I added the editorial "[any]" in the second to last paragraph to make it clearer for you. I accidentally left that out in the original.
Now, why am I bringing all this up at this time? It is because Senator McCain and senator McCain´s surrogates (Senator Joe Lieberman, who appeared on This Week with George Stephanopolous this morning) are claiming that Iran is training and equipping "Sunni extremists" to kill Americans in Iraq. Senator McCain himself is so invested in the idea that all our enemies are "al-Qaeda" that he THREE TIMES conflated the two groups in his statements while touring the Middle East last week, until Senator Lieberman whispered the correction in his ear (on camera during a news conference).
I believe I have made the point before, but I feel I need to repeat, that Iranian youth are more like American youth than Pakistani young people, Iraqi young people, or even Israeli youngsters in many instances. The way to "win a war" with the Iranian government and the religious extremists currently behind it, is to prevent (as best we can) the poisoning of the minds of the youth of Iran with anti-American rhetoric. The average university student in Iran would rather see a Hollywood made movie than one originally shot in Farsi. The upscale girls who will become the wives of the next generation of political, commercial and industrial leaders of the country would rather be wearing Cherokee pumps than some clunky industrial grade sandals from the Bata factory in Kenya.
In contrast, of course the poor people living in the desert on the border of Iraq (whichever side of the border) would rather be fed by Hamas or the Iranian Imperial Guards than starve and watch their children die of disease and malnutrition. This is not rocket science, though a certain amount of tact and diplomacy needs to be applied, not a "victory at all costs" kind of attitude that Senator McCain and his party exemplify.
Also from this morning´s This Week with George Stephanopolous Senator Obama´s campaign came off looking the stronger through the well chosen surrogacy of Senator John Kerry. Kerry carried on the Obama Campaign tradition of "high minded" and "above the fray" style that well suited him to be a spokesman for them. But as George Stephanopolous said, "Isn´t choosing the candidate what conventions are for?" Calls for Senator Clinton to withdraw are clearly premature wishful thinking. Just because "momentum" has swung once again in this seesaw campaign to favor Senator Obama, does not mean the race is over. And, yes, the so-called "Super Delegates" were given a voice in the form of a vote for the specific reason to exercise "oversight" and should NOT be guided, as House Speaker Pelosi has indicated, strictly by either the popular vote or the delegate count from the caucuses and primary election results.
On the other hand, Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, the Senator Clinton surrogate present today, eagerly endorsed George Stephanopolous´ suggestion that the two candidates could end the wrangling by promising to be running mates regardless of which of them obtained the final nomination for the top office. Senator Kerry, in one of his less statesmanlike moments, danced his way through a long spiel of political positioning before reluctantly accepting that committing both candidates to the "Dream Team Ticket" that so many of us would like to see would be in the best interest of the party at least.
Now, having just given myself a congratulatory pat on the back for standing by my principles over the last 6 years with respect to politics, and my understanding of the roots of terrorism, I find myself wavering on a point of technology. It is the way of science to allow older theories (including those that have fallen into the abyss of becoming "beliefs") fall by the wayside when a better and more plausible explanation comes to light and proves to be capable of withstanding appropriate scrutiny. It is generally the way that engineering operates as well, and in this case, a company that recently received a US$ 1 million grant to fund research into converting wastes to energy may have a better way that casts some doubt on the superiority of the type of conversion that I have come to favor over the last several years.
The difference is that when I discovered that the Fisher-Tropsch process had been in use for nearly three quarters of a century making diesel fuel from coal and other sources of carbon and hydrogen, I had little time and nearly no money, and very little personal emotional investment in what is known as thermal depolymerization. I was all over this F-T like white on a snowman. I was actually excited about what I had learned. Immediately I began exploring if and how this might be used, even to the point of replacing the thermal depolymerization process.
The response I got was that Fisher-Tropsch was only viable on a very large scale and had to be that way because it was so expensive to implement (because, in part, it required such a large scale set of apparatus and equipment). What I learned this week has turned that notion into a quaint but outmoded set of rules. I discovered a company that can scale down the Fisher-Tropsch process to operate on board an off-shore platform, and have specifically proposed that it can therefore be used instead of compressing natural gas into a highly pressurized liquid, they can, instead, turn it into relatively easy to handle renewable diesel. Not only can this company do this for a mobile platform based on board a ship, but they claim they can modularize it to use for "stranded" natural gas reserves ("stranded" because they are not large enough to justify an extension of a pipeline to take the gas to market). They believe that this conversion of renewable diesel not only makes the transportation more economical, it can actually be operated cheaper than if the production company complied with regulations that would call for them to re-inject the natural gas into the earth´s strata so that it does not become free climate altering greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
As if all that cleverness of shrinking both the economics and the engineering for Fisher-Tropsch wasn´t enough to endear them to me, they also displayed market savvy because, like my own company´s business model, they recognized the premium pricing advantage of military grade jet fuel (JP-8) as their end product. I have heard from their CEO, in a courteous email reply, and I am looking forward to further discussions with them, which is why I am not going to reveal who they are at this time. On the other hand, I did give them a pointer to another company that has been in the news recently (and in my column in particular), and I am hoping to arrange some kind of meeting of mutual benefit for all concerned.
PetroSun, the folks I mentioned recently who have 1100 acres of algae cultivation ponds in Southern Texas, announced recently that they will be starting operations there on April 1st, 2008. Quoted in an article at "GAS 2.0" PetroSun´s CEO, Gordon LeBlanc, Jr. said, "Whether we have arrived at this point in time by a superior technological approach, sheer luck or a redneck can-do attitude, the fact remains that microalgae can outperform the current feedstocks utilized for conversion to biodiesel and ethanol, yet do not impact the consumable food markets or fresh water resources."
I want to leave you today with a recommendation for a movie we saw on DVD this week, though first I have to damn with faint praise No Reservations starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. She and her male costar, Aaron Eckhart, were charming and both lovely to look at but this re-make of the 2001 European film, Mostly Martha was just a lukewarm rehash that added little, and was much detracted from by the whining performance by the Abigail Breslin. Bob Balaban gave a more reserved performance than usual as Zeta-Jones enigmatic psychiatrist, which also was charming.
The far stronger cinematic excursion was In the Valley of Elah from the much vaunted director whose movie Crash was such a huge success, Paul Haggis. (I had forgotten that Paul is a Canadian from London, Ontario.) The movie stars Tommy Lee Jones and (one of my favorites) Charlize Theron. Both turn in excellent performances, but the heart of the movie is the story of how war corrupts the character of young men. More specifically the story reveals how the inhumanity of war can take away the humanity of young men trained to react instinctively to danger with savage outbursts that keep them alive, but also creates an escalation of their savage instincts to a point where they are virtually unrecognizable to the family and friends who knew them before the experiences of war altered them. Francis Fisher, who also had fairly memorable turns in the Saving Grace television series as "Aunt Cathy", and in Grey´s Anatomy in 2006 as "Betty Johnson" (all the way back, in fact, to 1975 when she appeared in 21 episodes of The Edge of Night), has a cute little part as a topless waitress who Tommy Lee´s character does not recognize without her wig and with her clothes on. Considering that she is just a couple of years younger than I am, she looked REMARKABLY GOOD topless for a woman her age, or any age for that matter.
Love,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
p.s. I almost forgot, there is a video out recently about Solazyme producing algae derived renewable diesel that you can probably see at http://winfotech.com/energy/
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