Biofuels
Remember that ‘EB’ is short for http://www.energybulletin.net. Eb published a 01/24/07 piece from the ‘Oil Drum’, a British web publication which, if this were a rating service, would get lots of stars. It’s a beautiful piece of work on biofuel, the very best overview I’ve ever seen, and worth looking at by anyone looking for future relief from the twin crises of peak oil and climate change.

It clearly supports my lukewarm attitude toward ethanol. The author give an Energy Profit Ratio of 1.1, which is to say that using corn syrup as the basis for ethanol production requires one unit of petroleum to produce 1.1 units of ethanol. Since ethanol has a substantially lower entropy (mpg) it becomes deeply questionable, particularly when it is introducing hunger into third world households.(The U.S. Department of Energy anticipates using a hundred percent of the world’s maize production for ethanol production – hey, that’s real really going to polish our international image). The Oil Drum article is much more upbeat about ethanol from sugar cane, largely on the basis of substantially lower resource consumption. Price of sugar is already rising because of ethanol production. Going to be tough on sweets lovers.

They are really quite upbeat about biodiesel from an energy, economic and agricultural perspective

Community Citizen Involvement
In Eugene, a new group called the “Lane County Energy Roundup” held its first public meeting on January 23rd. The organizers were startled by the public response – I don’t think everybody that wanted in got in, even though the meeting was held in County Hall where the Commissioners hold their public meetings. From where I was sitting – I got there early enough to find a place to sit – it looked like every bit of floor space had an occupant. Were it not the County building I’d expect the organizers would worry about what the Fire Marshall might have to say about this tight crowding in the hall.

Something like ten speakers were introduced, some legislators (State, not Congressional), some public utility people, and some Ph.Ds from the college and university. Quite informative, really. While I was already aware of much of the material presented, some was new and of considerable interest. The group has scheduled a second meeting in which attendees will form smaller groups and present their own recommendations on responding to the energy and climate crises to the organizers.

Changing Forestry Practices in the Bureau of Land Management
Also heard at that 01/23 energy meeting, is a new determination by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The BLM until now has “Forest Reserves,” in which old-growth forests are protected. BLM means to change that, permitting the clear cutting of BLM forest reserves. When I was an active environmentalist back in the early 80s a fellow named James Watt was the head of the Interior Department and an administrator from hell. His protege is presently in that position. Public commentary is invited. If you’ve seen Oregon forests from the air, how do you feel about scalping these last bits and pieces? Don’t tell me, tell the BLM. Strong language will be acceptable – I would even encourage it. But not at the local BLM guys – I think you’d find them related to the angels, as I always have. This is a directive from Washington. And remember this in November of next year.

Assessment Report Four
I suppose there are people who are not aware that on 2/2/07 the IPCC released from Paris the ‘Summary for Policymakers” portion of Assessment Report Four. Every few years – about six – IPCC looks at where we are and where we seem to be headed in terms of climate. The last AR, in 2001, was rather certain climate change was occurring and that human activity might be possible. In this report they state climate change as absolutely in progress and that it is overwhelmingly certain that human activity (the emission of greenhouse gases and changes in land use patterns — destruction of forests) were responsible.

The truly chilling factor is that there is no stopping the process. The world will continue to warm throughout the lives of our children and our grandchildren, and our grandchildren’s grandchildren even if mankind stopped completely using fossil fuels immediately. How bad will it get? They don’t attempt to answer that question. They have a range of estimates about conditions in 2099, expressed in temperatures and sea levels – they are only charged with establishing likely prospects for this century. To do that, they have developed forty scenarios for use n computer modeling – changing population rates, income rates and so on, to see what effect these independent parameters might have.

I have the full report – it is available online in .pdf form at 22 printable pages, and found at www.ipcc.ch, click on ‘Other Links’, choose Work Group I, and it will be available there. You will probably want to also copy out a Special Report, which will tell you all about the forty scenarios used to generate the results – without that you won’t quite know what they’re talking about. It’s under ‘IPCC Data’, the publication ‘IPCC SRES’

The “Summary for Policymakers” is just that – suitable reading material for even our Commander-in-Chief. In a word, not tough reading at all. The tough stuff comes later in the year, as each of the four work groups publish the material that went into the formulation of the summary. In my next column I shall address some major concerns I have with the summary of AR4.

Be it known that the summary is a profoundly conservative document, representing the writing efforts of six hundred internationally prominent scientists, six hundred more scientists reviewing the first draft, and in the case of the summary, the representatives of 131 governments given the opportunity to challenge the wording of the summary report.

An Apology
This is Saturday, 2/3/07. This morning in my e-mail there was notice of a comment on this blog. I absently deleted the original message and came into the blog. WHAAA! The comment wasn’t there! That never happened before.

The chap wanted to know if just anybody had access to these columns. For a comment on a pre-existing column, absolutely. To author columns….. I was recruited a year ago as a reporter on energy. So there is some sort of selection process, with which I am absolutely not involved. I believe the question should be addressed to J.D. Adams, whom I suspect is in a much better position to respond to the question.

Science for Sale
You have a degree in science? Like to make a little money on it? The American Enterprise Institute, according to EB an affiliate of ExxonMobile, is offering up to $10,000 to anyone with scientific credentials who will attack the IPCC report in the media. Attacks are in full progress as of this writing, though few are the work of scientists. I trust the GOP central command network, headquartered in the offices of the Grover Norquist empire in Washington, host of the weekly meeting of groups like the American Enterprise Institute, talk show hosts, the Christian Right, and representatives of both the President and Vice-President, have been issuing field orders to the troops. Settle back and enjoy the media blitz, folks.

As of 2/5/07 Senator Vicki Walker of Oregon has experienced in her hometown newspaper the attacks of two pseudo-scientists, one from back east and the other in Sacramento, CA. Her electoral victory last November must have stung the Reds very badly indeed – the theme of the attacks, of course, stem from her stand on climate change. She, like IPCC, are aware of the fact of global warming. ExxonMobile, and the present administration, with whom they are closely associated, prefer you ignorant.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 8:36 am and is filed under Energy Future, Environment, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.