Hello Murdoch >A few months ago Senator Kerry, who is a likely candidate for >President in 2004 (and probably someone I'd vote for), launched an >across-the-bow campaign aimed at the Bush Administration's Energy >Policies. It was well-crafted I thought, but a few weeks later he >took a big blow (apparently) when his advocacy of increased diesel use >here in the states was criticized by environmentalists. He attempted >to discuss the high-mileage properties of diesel, the cleaner diesel >used in Europe and so forth, and he was just blasted by a lot of >folks, his enemies and allies alike. > >I saw no info on this at journeyforever.org,
Why would you expect to see info on it there? That's hardly its focus. First, it's not a newsfeed, though there are newsfeeds on the main Biofuels page, and more newsfeeds at Tim Castleman's site at fuelandfiber.com. Second, we're a Third World rural development project, doings in the industrialised countries are peripheral to us. >but I wonder where this >all stands now. He was making some really cutting remarks about Bush >Administration Energy policies, and then a lot of his momentum was >stopped by the diesel issue. We've discussed this here before, quite a few times. At various times list members have attempted to counter the anti-diesel, anti-biodiesel stance of the likes of Club Sierra, NRDC, EDF etc. I think we may have had some success in specific cases, but they keep on doing it. Have a look at this: http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?view=11451&list=BIOFUEL Then we discussed compiling a resources page where people could find ammunition to use against diesel-bashers, and, worse, people like Club Sierra who bash biodiesel because it commits the cardinal sin of having something to do with beyond-the-pale diesels. I said I'd try to do that, though I'd need some help, and indeed I did get a bit of input, though not much. Especially it needed solid scientific studies, and not just references but summaries, well-presented and compiled for easy use by such as reporters. In other words it needed lots of work. Lots. This, for instance, was compiled by DieselNet, dated a few weeks after we discussed this stuff here: http://www.dieselnet.com/papers/0203watts/ Diesel Emissions Reference List: Health Effects, Measurement and Control Very useful, no doubt, but it's a 13,500-word compilation of literature citations, 545 of them, just the bare citations. "It is not a comprehensive list, but it may assist those who are beginning a literature search." In other words, useless for reporters. Now who's going to sort them out, seek them out, assess them, summarise the useful ones, and render this magnum opus in an accessible form? And get it 100% right, guaranteed,because it'll be open to attack. That's the best DieselNet can do, who I'd say are not underfunded, and it remains for a small, under-resourced Third World NGO 12,000 miles away with no direct interest in US affairs to do the real work? For no direct benefit, and at the expense of its real interests? I have a folder full of such references, 10 Mb of it. That's for starters, it's not exhaustive. I'd say it's at least a two-week full-time job for an experienced editor. I'd charge $50+ an hour for that kind of work, only Journey to Forever does not allow me to take on commissions unless they're directly within Journey to Forever's sphere of interests and will further them. That's not the case here, so this project is on the back-burner and is likely to stay there. I keep feeding new material into it as I come across it, but I don't seek it out, and the folder just sits there. Here's a summary though. The diesel-bashers don't have a real case, but "know your enemy": "Many so-called public-interest organizations have become big businesses, multinational nonprofit corporations... in the eighties and nineties, environmentalism became a big business, and organizations like the Audubon Society, the Wilderness Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council [and Club Sierra!] became competing multi-million-dollar bureaucracies. These organizations... seem much more interested in "the business of greening" than in fighting for fundamental social change. "Another problem is that big green groups have virtually no accountability to the many thousands of individuals who provide them with money. Meanwhile, the grass-roots environmental groups are starved of the hundreds of millions of dollars that are raised every year by these massive bureaucracies. Over the past two decades, they've turned the environmental movement's grass-roots base of support into little more than a list of donors they hustle for money via direct-mail appeals and telemarketing... It's getting even worse, because now corporations are directly funding groups like the Audubon Society, the Wilderness Society, and the National Wildlife Federation. Corporate executives now sit on the boards of some of these groups." That's from here: http://home.earthlink.net/~dbjensen1/stauber.html An Interview with John Stauber There's plenty more such info to be had. Their CEOs (yes) earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They're big-budget spin-artists, just like, say, Big Oil, or Monsanto. In effect, you're taking on a clutch of powerful, well-connected corporate interests. So it's not just a debate, you can win every debate going but still lose the game. The reason I say they don't have a real case is that the real problem isn't the diesels, it's the fuel - US diesel fuel is very poor-quality. With maximum possible foot-dragging by Big Oil USA, it might be improved by 2007, which will put the US 17 years behind Europe. This is the big barrier to clean-diesel technology in the US. Solve that problem, and all the other problems associated with diesels simply vanish. In the meantime, use biodiesel, use also the various technologies available to reduce NOx way below dino-diesel levels, use catalytic converters that you can use with biodiesel but not with high-sulfur dinodiesel, and all the other problems vanish. So, no problem. NOx is also a non-issue. Take this, eg: "NOX and VOCs in combination with sunlight form ozone. Urban airshed modeling studies of the Baton Rouge nonattainment area show that reductions in VOCs are more effective in reducing ozone levels than reductions in NOX. In some cases, reductions in NOX have actually been shown to have a negative benefit in the control of ozone levels. For this reason, DEQ's current ozone reduction strategy calls for more VOC reductions rather than further reductions in NOX." - Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality http://www.deq.state.la.us/evaluation/air_indicators/no_2_.htm I contacted the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality about this asking for further details of the study, but they didn't reply. I'm not in a good position to follow it up. So? Any takers? regards Keith ------------------------ Yahoo! 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