Current ethanol policy is a scam, but here’s how to fix it

Less than a year ago, ethanol was hailed as a miracle fuel. For example, in Time’s 2007 Global Warming Survival Guide they exhorted us to “Turn Food Into Fuel” to help us survive global warming. But in 2008, they call ethanol a scam because of the environmental costs (ethanol results in using more land for crop production and the latest studies show that ethanol production results in greater greenhouse gas emissions than merely using petroleum).

But that’s not all. There are other environmental problems associated with today’s biofuel production. Environmental Defense is concerned that ethanol plants use too much groundwater. Another new study argues that corn-based ethanol production increases nitrogen pollution levels in the rivers and the Gulf of Mexico. And the biofuel plants in Iowa, the epicenter of biofuel production in the United States, have violated environmental regulations a whopping 394 over the last six years.

The current state of affairs for ethanol production does not look good. So what should we do about the massive downsides to current ethanol policy? Here are 5 steps to move forward ethanol policy that will help the environment.

1. End the ethanol subsidies and mandates. When we thought ethanol was a miracle fuel (as late as last year), Congress enacted a number of subsidies and mandates to force ethanol use. This was premature. Ethanol is not an environmentally-friendly fuel and we should stop subsidizing and forcing people to use it.
2. Be humble. Before we rush off to crown a new energy champion, let’s admit that we can’t foresee future energy markets. Let’s let technologies develop without mandating and subsidizing a champion prematurely.
3. Promote cellulosic ethanol, but not through subsidies and mandates. It is possible that cellulosic ethanol (ethanol from the cellulose of plants, not just the sugars and starches) is in our energy future. If we want to promote it, then enact tax breaks for it’s production instead of using mandates. If cellulosic ethanol truly produces 540 percent more energy than used to produce it, it will be cost competitive with petroleum.
4. Remember there are other possible sources of biofuel than just corn. This is related to #3, but there are a number of possible sources of ethanol. Usually when people talk about cellulosic ethanol they talk about switchgrass. Maybe switchgrass is an answer, but there’s also biofuel from algae and biofuel from waste, among other possibilities.
5. Don’t worry, there are incredible incentives to develop next-generation energy technologies. Currently oil is at $102 a barrel and oil companies are is making a killing. For example, ExxonMobil made $86 billion in profit in 2007 on $405 billion in revenue while Chevron made $59 billion in profit in 2007 on $221 billion in revenue. When energy is this expensive, and literally trillions of dollars are at stake, smart people have incentives to figure out next-generation energy technologies so they can cut into the hundreds of billions of revenue oil companies make.

John Scalzi Answers My Question

One of my favorite science fiction authors, John Scalzi, is answering questions from readers this week on his blog. Today he answered my question:

You are the the Great God Scalzi, but sadly you are not quite omnipotent. In fact you only have the ability to create five new technologies. Which 5 technologies will you bestow upon humanity in 2008?

Here’s the beginning of his answer:

Five seems a little much; if you choose the right five, humans won’t have to do a damn thing for themselves between now and when the race finally implodes from ennui. So, Daniel, allow me to limit myself even further and give humanity only a single technological advance, not just in 2008 but ever. That advance: Fusion.

His answer is the same as mine. If I were to give humanity one technological gift it would be inexpensive, plentiful, and clean energy.

Dith Pran, hero of “The Killing Fields” has passed away

Here’s a good reason to watch the movie, The Killing Fields again. From the Washington Post:

Dith Pran, 65, a journalist and human rights advocate who became a public face of the horrors in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and whose life was portrayed in the influential movie “The Killing Fields,” died March 30 of pancreatic cancer at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. He was a resident of Woodbridge, N.J.

For much of the early 1970s, Mr. Dith was a resourceful guide and interpreter in Cambodia for Sydney H. Schanberg of the New York Times, whose reporting on the country’s civil war and the rise of the Khmer Rouge won a Pulitzer Prize. Schanberg accepted the award on behalf of himself and Mr. Dith, whom he credited with saving his life.

Schanberg’s partnership with Mr. Dith became the basis for “The Killing Fields” (1984), which conveyed in personal terms the brutality of the Khmer Rouge under the despot Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979. Nearly 2 million Cambodians died during those years.

First Game at Nationals Park

Nationals Park, originally uploaded by dr5.

Tonight I attend the first game held in Nationals Park–the last spring training game of the season. The Nats beat the Orioles 3-0.

“Earth Hour” is the Perfect Example of Environmentalism

In case you missed it, environmental groups told us that we should turn off all lights for one hour tonight. This is the perfect example of what environmentalism is all about–all spectacle and no benefit for the environment.

Earthhour.org explains that “On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour. If the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.”

That sounds pretty impressive–the equivalent of taking 49,000 cars off the road for a year by just turning off the lights for one hour.

The problem is that in reality, Earth Hours don’t achieve any real greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Turning off the lights would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions if that means this caused less coal or natural gas to be burned at a power plant. But turning off the lights for one hour will not achieve this. Coal and natural gas-fired power plants have to be kept “at temperature” and ready to produce electricity. Often these types of plants keep their boilers at 700 degrees F or higher. It can take days to heat up a boiler to these temperatures.

Reducing electricity consumption for one hour, as called for with Earth Hour will not cause the plant owner to burn any less fuel because the boilers have to be hot and ready to produce electricity at the end of the hour. The power plants might burn slightly less fuel because they aren’t producing as much electricity, but it is a very, very slight difference.

While the promoters of Earth Hour claimed in 2007 they achieved the same result as taking 49,000 cars off the road for a year, in reality it is closer to taking 49 cars off the road for a year. But this is what environmentalism is all about–creating a nice-looking spectacle instead of actually working on something that benefits the environment.

What’s the evidence that the breakup of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was caused by global warming?

Numerous news sources, such as the BBC, are reporting the breakup of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica and blaming it (naturally) on global warming. That is simplistic and misleading. Consider these facts:

1. September-October 2007 set a record for the most sea ice ever recorded in the southern hemisphere (accurate satellite records go back to 1979). Did you read a story blaming this on global cooling?

2. Currently there are 1.25 million square kilometers of sea ice more than normal in the southern hemisphere. This was somehow not mentioned in the stories about the Wilkins Ice Shelf.

3. Ice shelves are on the ocean, but according to the latest data, globally the oceans aren’t warming.

4. Antarctica as a whole is not warming. There has been warming along the Antarctic Peninsula, where the Wilkins Ice Shelf is, but not on the continent as a whole. As a whole, over the last 50 years Antarctica has slightly cooled.

Somehow almost none of the stories I have read about the breakup of the ice shelf, such as the BBC’s, Bloomberg’s, Wired’s, the AP’s, the Washington Post’s, or CNN’s. The only news sources where I found the any mention of these facts is from Andy Revkin of the NY Times.

So what’s the evidence that this breakup is caused by global warming? If it’s global warming, then why is there more sea ice than normal? If It’s global warming, why aren’t the oceans warming? If it’s global warming, why isn’t Antarctica warming?

Thank You Microsoft for Prematurely Killing Windows XP

Unless Microsoft can develop a worthy successor to Windows XP, Microsoft’s continuing efforts to kill off XP will only hasten Microsoft’s downfall.

Windows XP is the most popular operating system on the planet, and for some reason Microsoft has decided that it is time everyone to “upgrade” to Vista. I have yet to hear someone praise Vista as being ready for a corporate environment or better than XP. Even Microsoft’s execs have complained internally about Vista’s many shortcomings. Yet, Microsoft seems bent on killing XP. Here’s Microsoft’s XP timetable from ComputerWorld:

June 30, 2008
PC manufacturers stop selling computers with XP installed.

Jan. 31, 2009
Microsoft stops selling XP altogether.

April 14, 2009
Mainstream support (free live support and warranty support) ends. Free maintenance is limited to security fixes.

April 8, 2014
All support for XP ends.

What sense does this make? None because of how bad Vista is. It will only get more people to try Apple or Linux. Is that what Microsoft really wants?

For more than a decade I have pretty much kept up with Microsoft’s operating systems. It was an easy decision to switch from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. Windows 98 was far better than 95, so it was a non-brainer to upgrade. Windows Me was an abortion, but that was rectified with Windows XP.

But this time I’m done with Microsoft. Instead of switching to Vista, I’m trying out Linux. I’m writing this on a computer running Ubuntu. For almost all of my computing tasks Linux works great. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but for most task it works well (and there are a number of important benefits–security and ease of upgrading programs and the operating to name two).

In the end, I hope Microsoft prematurely kills XP. It will create more competition that will lead to improved operating systems. And Increased competition is always a good thing.

Who knows, maybe Microsoft will actually feel enough pressure and develop an operating system that makes upgrading a non-brainer. But at this point, I doubt it.

Mandating Biofuel Use Could be “Totally Insane”

The former head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the British government’s top environment scientist, Robert Watson, is very concerned about biofuel. He told BBC radio that, “It would obviously be totally insane if we had a policy to try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the use of biofuels that’s actually leading to an increase in the greenhouse gases from biofuels.”

But way things look right now biofuels “actually emit more greenhouse gases than the fossil fuels they aim to replace.” According to a study published in Nature:

According to the study, co-authored by Joe Fargione, a regional scientist for the [Nature] Conservancy, “converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a ‘biofuel carbon debt’ by releasing 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide than the fossil fuels they replace.”

Seventeen to 420 times more carbon dioxide isn’t even close to being a good fuel in term of greenhouse gas emissions. Couple that with the subsidies Americans and Europeans are paying for biofuels and biofuels are even more. To this add the fact that biofuels are driving up the prices of staple grains, making it more difficult for the poorest people in the world to afford food and biofuels make oil look positively benign.

Obama’s Description of His Grandmother Turns Me Off

I recently read Obama’s recent speech on race and it further turned me off to his candidacy. Overall, it was a good speech. Obama is truly a gifted orator. I agree with a lot of it, but his depiction of his grandmother in the speech was completely off-putting and offensive. Here’s what Obama said about this grandmother in the speech:

I can no more disown him [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

According to the Barack Obama in 2008, his grandmother “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street.” But that’s not how the the Obama in 1995 apparently described the same incident. In Dreams from My Father a teenage Obama woke up to an argument between grandparents. At the time, he was being raised by his white grandparents. While going to work his grandmother had been accosted by a black man while she waited for the bus. Obama writes:

“Her lips pursed with irritation. ‘He was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn’t come, I think he might have hit me over the head.”

…

“He turned around and I saw that he was shaking. ‘It is a big deal. It’s a big deal to me. She’s been bothered by men before. You know why she’s so scared this time. I’ll tell you why. Before you came in, she told me the fella was black.‘ He whispered the word. ‘That’s the real reason why she’s bothered. And I just don’t think that right.’

“The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure. In my steadiest voice, I told him that such an attitude bothered me, too, but reassured him that Toot’s fears would pass and that we should give her a ride in the meantime. Gramps slumped into a chair in the living room and said he was sorry he had told me. Before my eyes, he grew small and old and very sad. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him that it was all right, I understood.

“We remained like that for several minutes, in painful silence. Finally he insisted that he drive Toot after all, and I thought about my grandparents. They had sacrificed again and again for me. They had poured all their lingering hopes into my success. Never had they given me reason to doubt their love; I doubted if they ever would. And yet I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fear.” [page 88-91]

Maybe the 2008 Barack Obama is talking about something different entirely, I don’t know. But it sounds like the same. If it is the same incident, Obama has little respect for his grandmother. In the 1995 version, his Grandmother was accosted by a bum. In the 2008 version, she had a general fear of blacks. If she had been accosted, it is understandable why she would be afraid of blacks.

I don’t think highly of people who disrespect their grandmother or mothers and compare them to the likes of Rev. Wright. Especially when, like Obama, they are doing it for political gain.

I could be wrong, so please comment if you disagree with my take on this situation. Even before I knew about Obama’s description of the event in his book, comparing his grandma to Rev. Wright didn’t sit well with me.

Here’s where I got the quotes from Obama’s book.

Battlestar GalacticaSimpsons

The merging of Battlestar Galactica and the Simpsons. Enjoy.