An All-encompassing Policy Towards Climate/Environmental Change

I hope you had a chance to read my Global Warming story. One statement I made was this: “Politicians are supposed to represent the people, but they don’t know how to guide their constituency to unpopular, but healthier choices. This is not leadership but an abdication of responsibility. All solutions in society require industry, government, and the public who uses the goods and services. All three need to have a role and work together. It is not a popularity contest; it is about changing our lives for the better.”

I am adding a very critical fourth party to this because they are at the core. I am adding the energy companies because they are at the core to change and “industry” I am modifying to business and industry. They are independent users of energy, separating them from energy producers. Similar, but they have very different parts of energy and environmental solution.

All the solutions to our concerns about climate change, environmental & energy responsibility, and conservation of natural resources converge at the cross roads of these four groups. The solution must have each of the four groups involved. Today the group that I think is most missing, least committed, and the largest part of the solution is the general public. This is not to say there are not 100’s of thousands of strong supporters of environmental responsibility, but most do, what comes easiest, least expensive, most convenient as an alternative. I hope you also read about my JEDI Fund which is a way to change the economics that drives most of us common consumer’s behaviors around gasoline. The same kind of contribution could be made over coal, natural gas, and even oil used to generate energy (electricity). Doing this makes the other alternatives more attractive which give them a chance of being desired and wanted because the economics drive it.

Energy consumption by Sector breaks down this way. Total energy consumption in 2005 was 99.9 Trillion BTU’s (for reference 1 gallon of gas = 115,000 BTU’s). Residential was 22%, Commercial was 18%, Industrial was 32%, and Transportation was 28%. The private consumer is residential plus a good portion of the transportation market for energy. The public consumer also indirectly drives a lot of business and commercial activities with their associated energy use. I would estimate that the private consumer drives nearly 50% of our energy consumption. How can you have a solution without involving the consumer directly in the purchase decisions?

It is so easy for the politicians to say let’s increase CAFE on cars and trucks to solve the petroleum issue. Or to mandate more bio-fuels be used. Or set targets for use of more alternative energy. Who are they forgetting? Just about everyone who votes! It is all talk with total abdication of responsibility for the results or lack of results. The consumer will not pay more for anything where a lower cost option is available. All that is required is public policy that resets the cost balance. That takes courage and leadership to do. Do we have any of those people?

Since I am an automotive person, let’s look at CAFÉ or Corporate Average Fuel Economy. In 2001 the Federal Highway Administration reported that there were 230,428,326 vehicles registered for road operation in US. Passenger cars averaged 22.1 mpg and light trucks, vans, SUV averaged 17.6 mpg. In 2004, cars were at 22.4 mpg and trucks were at 16.2 mpg. In 2001 average vehicle age was 9 years old. The data also shows that the number of vehicles is rising continuously and so are the miles of travel per vehicle and fuel consumption per vehicle. Those 230M vehicles (2001) have grown to about 250M in 2006 and the average fuel economy for that fleet is now about 20 mpg. What does increasing fuel economy by 4% per year on just 17M new cars and trucks do to overall consumption of gasoline. NOT MUCH! Will it reverse the trends in driving behavior? ABSOLUTELY NOT! The politicians talk about how many millions of gallons of gas they will save but did you know that every man, women, and child consumes a 1 ¼ gallons of gas per day! We consumed in 2005, 140 billion gallons of gasoline! How do you stop this and make a significant reduction.

This is why we must pursue a 4-way discussion with the government, energy producers, business/industry, and the PUBLIC private consumer! What is needed is leadership and not an abdication of responsibility.

Ethanol Sham & Alternative Fuel Vehicles

The Truth about Ethanol Alternative Fuel Vehicles

The Chicken and The Egg
The OEM’s are pushing ethanol with a vengeance. They started doing this when there were almost zero E85 pumps in existence. Is this a chicken and egg problem or is there more to it? The OEM’s lobbied that this was a problem. If there was no fuel available, why should they build vehicles that would use it, and similarly if there were no vehicles to use the fuel why would fuel providers want to put capacity in place?

Why Does EcoV Care?
We are a company that is dedicated to electricity as an alternative fuel for transportation. Electric vehicles struggle to gain a foothold in the market. Again General Motors has come out and said it will electrify its entire fleet in the future (read our other blog on this.) Sure the technology is not quite ready or affordable for “prime time” with advanced battery technology but there are choices today for limited EV capability, like EcoV, which are real, reasonable, environmentally and budget friendly alternatives. These products are important because they help “prime the pump” to higher sales in electric vehicles. The biggest reason for lack of active development is that the technology is very disruptive to current big OEM thinking. This means the technology does not fit the OEM’s standard ways of thinking or building automobiles. They are afraid of it. They can not even see it because they have lived their entire lives in a world of gasoline. “A worm in horseradish thinks the world is horseradish.” We and EcoV care because we can provide an environmental transportation solution that can have virtually zero impact on our world. EcoV has no emissions, odors, noise, never stops at a gas station, releases no CO2 in its operation, can be “fueled” by wind, sun, water power or nuclear. It is also virtually maintenance free and easy to own and operate. On energy equivalent basis EcoV gets between 200 and 300 miles per gallon and on a cost basis with gas at $2.50 gallon and electricity at 10¢ kWh, EcoV is equivalent to 125-200 miles per gallon.
What EcoV cares about is that while LSV are street legal vehicles, they are not considered as AFV’s in fleet applications by EPAct. They were perceived as “golf carts” and not real replacement vehicles. This is wrong and needs to be changed. One half of our market, the commercial fleets will be buying EcoV’s to replace more expensive to operate gas cars.

So What Is Going On With Ethanol or E85?
By the AMFA (Alternative Motor Fuel Act of 1988) Congress provided that motor vehicles subject to corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standard are accorded special consideration if they are capable of running either flexibly (dual fuel) or exclusively (dedicated) on fuel other than petroleum. AMFA encourages the production of these vehicles by providing a specified credit towards the calculation of CAFE. From 1993 through 2004, the maximum credit was 1.2 mpg per manufacturer on CAFE. In 2005, it was extended through 2008 with maximum allowed credit of 0.9 mpg. The number of flex-fuel ethanol vehicles on the road today is about 5,000,000. Many people do not even know their vehicles can run E85. And those that do either can not find it or have tried it and found it too expensive when considering they need to fill up 25% more often.
The automakers have been building flex-fuel vehicles since 1998. Why? Because it helps them meet CAFE that they would otherwise have not met and paid huge fines. They have started pushing ethanol only recently when dependency on foreign oil and environmental issues became important in the public’s list of buying issues. GM has a major campaign that promotes their flex fuel vehicles and as “live green go yellow” (reference to corn from which ethanol is currently made). That GM is “yellow” is another story in lack of courage and deception. GM, Ford, Chrysler, and Nissan all took advantage of this ability to improve their CAFE’s in 2006 and reduce their fines to EPA.

There is a lot more to it. Not well publicize but the Federal Government thru Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency grants the auto companies a significant boost in fuel economy calculations when alternative fuels are used (AMFA 1988). An AFV that uses E85 gets its fuel economy boosted by dividing by 0.15 (or multiplying by 6.67). So an AFV that gets real world 20 mpg is calculated at 133 mpg. But the Government recognizes that E85 would only be used about 50% of the time (actually it is less than 1% of the time), so they average gasoline fuel economy with alternative motor fuel, fuel economy to get an average. Engines burning E85 do emit about 20% less CO2 per mile but have the same emission air pollution rating. E85 is also higher octane which allows it to be used where premium fuel would be required. See http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byfueltype.htm for 2007 models and fuel economy.
Here is an example. GM sold about 636,000 Chevrolet Silverado pickup trucks in 2006. The standard Silverado is rated at 17 mpg city and 21 mpg highway with standard gas. With E85 the numbers are about 25% worse since ethanol does not contain as much energy as gasoline per gallon. However, when the real E85 fuel economy is divided by 0.15 the alternative fuel economy for CAFE calculations is 85 mpg/105 mpg. In the final calculation for half and half use, the composite fuel economy comes out as 31 mpg versus 18.6 mpg for a straight gasoline truck. Did you know this? Well now you do.
So this allows GM and others to use this higher fuel economy to avoid huge penalties and build and sell more big gas guzzling trucks & SUV’s. In 2006 GM built enough high volume cars and trucks with flex fuel to meet CAFE. Assuming they did this perfectly will they avoided a 0.9 mpg CAFE penalty? This calculates out at $5/0.1 mpg missed in CAFE x 9 missed tenths mpg gallon x 4,860,000 cars and trucks sold = $212M. Is that the environmental and energy security issue the original law had intended? We don’t think so.
Bottom-line has the absolute opposite. Gas consumption has not gone down. Alternative fuel consumption has risen slowly. In Federal Fleet Report – 2006 http://www.gsa.gov/gsa/cm_attachments/GSA_DOCUMENT/FFR2006_030707_R2K-g6_0Z5RDZ-i34K-pR.pdf
In 2006:
E85 accounted for 3,205,693 gallons (GGE) versus 286,922,862 gallons of gasoline – 1.1%. While total world fuel consumption dropped in 2006 by 4.7% from 2005, the trend line for petroleum based fuels – gasoline since 2002 has grown upward at something less than 1% per year. Diesel fuel has dropped about 8% per year. Petroleum fuels have not dropped the 20% between 1999 and 2005, required under Executive Order 13149. Also required by 2005 was that alternative fuels were to be the majority of fuel used. Alternative fuels in total accounted for only 4% of all fuels used. Also by 2005, the Federal Fleet was to be buying 75% AFV. In 2006, of the 62,978 acquisitions made, only 18,411 were AFV’s or 29%. The Federal Government is not meeting the law! Not even close!
The chicken and egg story has never materialized and it is time to enforce the EPAct of 1992. AFV’s using E85, should carry their own weight and the Government should put in places policies to make the objectives of EPAct happen. AFV vehicles should get credits based on the amount of E85 fuel a fleet uses. When they start paying for it, they will stop because it does not make economic sense. This needs to be fixed, too.

Global Warming - Are We, Humans, Responsible?

Yes, the Earth is warming. That is about all we can completely agree on. It is not opinon based, because we can measure it. Over and over again. But when it comes to why and who is responsible for this, the experts and scientists seem to be somewhat at odds. Let me also say this up front that science is not a democratic process. It is based on facts, observations, measurements and data collected. It makes no difference whether one scientist believes one thing and all the rest believe something else. Read about Galileo below. The politicans of the World have clearly made up their minds based on political agendas, and follow the statement, “Don’t confuse me with facts, I have already made up my mind.” But watch the wording carefully of those who are pushing their doctrines. They put in enough weasel words that you really can’t trap them. Some of them, at least. Those who are politicans without science training (and some who do) who have an agenda, have attempted to make the issue black or white. Science is about discovery, learning, running experiements, collecting data, observing, and presenting all the facts including those that seem in conflict with your hypothesis. We are far from that today. Why?

The big issue that continues to cause world-wide concern is, are we humans repsonsible for the warming? If we are, is the Earth on a path that can not tolerate our desire to improve life through our habitual desire to use fossil fuels for everything that requires energy? Have we, as humans, put the Earth, which has “fixed it self” over millions of years, in jepordy of survival as we know it? I don’t know but let’s explore some of the observations.

Galileo Model
I do not think the jury is out, to say absolutely yes or no. But another fact to consider in science is how can so many be so right, yet so wrong. Galileo was the father of astronomy in 1600’s and he defended heliocentrism which was the belief that the Sun was fixed and the Earth revolved around it. The masses, mostly the politically centered Catholic Church believed this was not possible and claimed it was contrary to the Scripture passages. As a result Galileo was sentenced to prison, which he was commuted from but remained under house arrest for the remainder of his life. He was condemned as "formally heretical." Is “correct” always correct? Not when politics gets into it, whether it is at the UN or in the Church. But the scientific method is what must be applied and that is for scientific researchers to propose specific hypotheses as explanations of natural phenomena, and design experimental studies that test these predictions for accuracy. They do it over and over to be sure it captures all the possible outcomes. I feel we may have lost sight of science in the name of political causes. Can political and “business” political processes and agendas influence the direction science moves? It was estimated (again I don’t have real data) that $50B has been spent in global climate warming research since 1990. Some to prove it is not caused by humans (blamed on the oil industry money) but more to prove it is (blamed on liberal politicans and environmentalists.) How do scientist, who are not politicians react to someone offering money to prove something. Sounds like a good research job to me. Then there is the media. Do you sell your news by printing everything is ok, keep up the good work, or do you sell more saying there is an apocalypse about to occur. They hound the scientists who can almost be lead down any path the reporter wants to lead them and the scientist gets recognition for doing good work (something most scientist don’t get, just ask Galileo.) What a nightmare to figure out.

What I want to do. I want to show some data that has been presented that in objective terms does not satisfy the hypothesis. I am looking at issues I believe the average person needs to understand.

What are PPM?
As of January 2007, the earth's atomspheric CO2 concentration is about 383 ppm. Does this sound freightening? How about comparing it to 280 ppm in 1750, the pre-industrial average? That’s a 35.7% increase. More frightening? But on a total GHG standpoint, it is very, very small increase. What does this mean? Little or zero explanation has been given. It means about 0.0383% by volume or 0.0582% by weight of the total green house gases (GHG) are CO2. Note: while we are not widely informed, ppm is parts per million. In this case it is CO2 parts(molucules) per million green house gas parts (molucules). This represents about 2.996×10E12 tons. To non-scientists, 3×10E12 is 3 million tons times a millons times, pretty large number but still small to total GHG weight. My question is can something that small in quantity be so responsible for something as large as global warming. Reporting one number without explanation of its relevance is not to increase understanding but rather mislead others to one’s premise.

It was suggested to me to run out immediately and buy Joseph Romm's book, “Hell and High Water.” I read most of it but gave up on his hypocrisy. Wow what a crazy angry man! Why is he so angry at this world! His first part was supposed to be science but it was not at all. He says if you want facts go to www.realclimate.org. Which I did and was not impressed with their interpretation of science even though they tried. I am skeptical about everyone in this arena, on both sides and only want to understand the facts. Romm is so prejudice, he does not even begin to understand the scientific method. He confuses global warming, which is almost unilaterally agreed to, that it is happening because of us humans. The total argument is based on the fact that Artic core samples show a “correlation” of increases in CO2 with increases in temperature. Although the data he sights states that the CO2 rise is after the temperature rise by 400 +/- 200 years (these numbers come from his source realclimate.org) His total argument is destroyed by the vary facts he shows. But he has a strong political agenda to pitch so he drops certain facts.

How can something so small cause something so large?
The other issue I have a personal problem with and I am still researching for an answer is nowhere do the people that are spreading this fear ever, ever explain in scientific terms why CO2, which is being measured in ppm or particles per million and is quoted as 380 ppm or 0.038% of total green house gas, is so significant. This is a very, very small amount that is never mentioned, all that is mentioned is the giga-tons of CO2 we are adding (remember giga is 10E9 and current CO2 is measured in tera-tons a 1000x larger, but the percentage is what matters not the delta we are adding. Put a cup of salt into a pitcher of water and it seems extremely salty, but if that cup is added to a three 55 gal drums of water it is hardly noticeable (same as 380 ppm). I don't see scientifically how this CO2 concentration can influence anything. There is data about CO2’s ability to reflectivity of infrared light back to Earth To add to that, CO2 is basically a non reactive gas that occurs naturally in nature. How does increasing this small percentage of gas cause major chemical changes to the atmosphere which results directly in more insulating value to the atmosphere and global warming? CO2 will dissolve into the atmospheric water vapor and what does that do? There appears to be more going on than Romm and others want to admit or understand. His basic claim is that we are approaching levels of CO2 never seen before. That is inaccurate; all they really say is that it is higher than any previous levels “that can be reliably measured” in the last 450,000 years. Scientists have never made measurements in ice cores that estimate CO2 levels higher. The process of measuring in ice cores is the "best we have" but is subject to so many, many variations going on over 100's of thousands of years. The assumptions are huge and the potential error is high. You certainly can not pick up short term variations on a year by year basis. CO2 gas is known to migrate in ice for thousands of years until the snow is compacted into ice by all the snow above it. Al Gore's little elevator trip to his slide is so over done, but he is a great politician telling a “story”. If he plotted CO2 as an actual percentage of the total green house gases and not ppm’s, he would be crawling on the floor with a magnifying glass. By expressing CO2 in ppm’s he is actually multiplying the amount by a 1,000,000 times. But that would not have fed the fears they were trying to create. Is this the proper use of science or is it people with a political agenda to accomplish?

What is difference between “correlation” and “cause and effect?”
There also appear to be a mixed up of the fact that what drives what. Gore and others express there is “correlation” that as CO2 levels go up so do temperatures go up. But what is not expressed is that the ice core data shows (and Gore’s slide, if he bothered to point it out) a time delay of 400 +/- 200years (see this at www.realclimate.com ) between rise in temperature and rise in CO2. In plain words, CO2 rise occurs about 400 years later than the temperature rise. The quoted scientific evidence does not support the conclusion. The issue is expressed as the difference between correlation and cause and effect. They are very different. It is like plotting the deaths of people with lung cancer (let's do it in ppm because it makes the small number of deaths look frightening large) with age. There a clear correlation with age and death from lung cancer. Can you properly draw the conclusion that as you get older your chances greatly increase of dying from lung cancer? According to what Romm has drawn, absolutely! But we know that the correlation has nothing to do with the cause and the cause is smoking and the effect which is lung cancer develops over time and effects more people as they get older. Do you understand what I am saying? This is a critical point that is missing. Climate scientists own data says temperature rise occurs first and them it is followed by CO2 increases. There is a lot more to this but the point is, were these facts presented for you to understand and reason with?
I skipped some of Romm's political sections because I could not take his distortions to attempt to prove the other side of his opinions was out to get the rest of the scientific world. I went to read something that I have knowledge of and that is the auto industry section (Chapter 8). While some of his points are valid, so much is mindless angriness over anything that is currently in place. CAFE is not the answer to anything and it has NOT reduced consumption in 30 years. Does it not make sense that as bigger cars use less fuel, people will buy even bigger cars and drive them more? What will stop them? The answer is not are we better today with CAFE, but will changes in the future amount to anything significant. I agree that a hydrogen economy is stupid, at least short-term, but I also disagree that it should be dropped completely. His argument for ethanol is also full of holes. Burning ethanol only reduces GHG by 20% and if it is only used half the time as straight gas (actually, today it is used about 1%), then it is 10%. I can get that by just driving smarter when I drive. I don't think the 20% even considers the energy spent and CO2 released in the process of getting it to your fuel tank! It is almost a total waste unless you are one of the huge corn farming conglomerates. Ethanol does one good thing and that is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Romm supports plug-in hybrids that are another step but also does not address the problem in the US...people drive too much, waste too much energy and don’t really care. That is the problem that needs to be contained. The only way to change consumer behavior is to change their cost model. Higher price fuel absolutely needs to be discussed in Congress. Read my JEDI Fund?

Can the Earth fix itself?
How can a real scientist say that the Earth is not capable of fixing itself? After 3 billion years it seems to have done a pretty remarkable job. Although, I do remember walking through the National Parks out west and telling my kids, “millions and millions of years ago this was all under water.” Who caused that and what are we to do today and tomorrow? I personally believe we and most of the Nations of the world have a problem with dependency on oil and fossil fuels. Someone told me (and I have not researched this, so don’t take it as fact, but it seems reasonable) that we are burning oil, natural gas and coal at the rate of one million years of vegetation growth per year! We as a world need to look at alternative energy forms. We are company committed to electric drive technology. Our product, EcoV has no emissions, noise, odors, releases no CO2 in operation, requires no trips to the gas station and is nearly maintenance free. It is recyclable, too. If you charge it off the Sun, it has almost zero environmental impact. We are committed to two things, dependency on foreign oil and air quality in our cities. EcoV does not require sacrifices to be made when used in the right application, it is both environmentally and budget friendly. There are no other technologies, available today that can do that. Politicians are supposed to represent the people, but they don’t know how to guide their constituency to unpopular, but healthier choices. This is not leadership but an abdication of responsibility. All solutions in society require industry, government, and the public who uses the goods and services. All three need to have a role and work together. It is not a popularity contest, it is about changing our lives for the better.
Convince me that 0.038% of the atmosphere, 380 ppm CO2 can really influence global climate change? The question more important is can we, the humans on this planet, do anything about it? I believe we can but not for global warming, but to be better stewards of Planet Earth.
As a person with a strong scientific background (Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering) I am not convinced the small amount of CO2 in our green house can scientifically cause significant change. This I need to research more. But as far as Romm and his arguments, he is a sad and angry man and that has no part in trying to help the world. As far as Al Gore is concerned, you owe yourself to read the facts yourself, not someone’s political interpretation of those facts through their glasses. Science is about facts, not opinions. Anytime someone talks about math models to predict things, if they don’t go through the assumptions made in detail, don’t believe it. If you want to, then I have this bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you! You need to think clearly about what is going on and be objective about the facts. All of us, including me can be wrong. If I am convinced, I will be the first to say thank you and admit I am wrong. What about you? One last suggestion, watch the BBC documentary “Global Warming Swindle” not as fact but as the other side of the argument. It made me look much closer at this issue which I was convinced after Gore’s movie was an absolute truth. It is not that way anymore.