Astroturfing Here at DU: "Green" SUVs and "Clean" Fuels

[leveymg]

Has anyone noticed all the posts here over the last few months touting ethanol and E-85 as a "green renewable" fuel, and panacea for everything from air pollution to reliance on Middle East oil? Some of this appeared in the Chevy truck make your own commercial thread started by EarlG. That post was an all-time greatest, so it attracted the corporate shills among us touting 2007 Chevy Trucks as "flexible-fuel" vehicles that can burn a gasoline-ethanol fuel mixture, known as E-85.

Postings at progressive issues sites by industry reps masquerading as activists is part of a comprehensive "new media" strategy. It is the corporate version of FBI political dirty tricks operations that plant agents provocatuer to steer and manipulate groups. This can have very unhappy results for the groups that are infiltrated. In the campaign to push acceptance of ethanol and F-85, huge agribusiness corporations are calling the shots.

Another aspect of new media pushing acceptance of ethanol is the fake news stories that some TV news producers run. See, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x855558

Here's more of PR Watch expose on fake news: http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/vnr16

A Planted Story on Ethanol Plants
Five stations run an optimistic news feature that's secretly fueled by profit

Client(s): Siemens AG

Released: January 2006

Aired By: 5 stations

Disclosed By: No stations
If you thought your job was tough, try being Kate Brookes, a local ABC news reporter in Nevada, a CBS reporter in Texas, a Fox reporter in Missouri, and an ABC reporter (again) in Louisiana.

Actually, Brookes isn't a reporter at all. She just plays one on TV. In reality, she's a publicist for Medialink, the world's first and largest provider of video news releases (VNRs). And yet, many TV stations have no problem adopting her into their newscasts as if she were one of their own.

In January 2006, Medialink sent Brookes to Iowa to shoot a VNR on the "Ethanol boom," the growing trend of using corn-based fuel as an alternative energy source. The two-minute feature included all-positive testimony from two industry experts, an ethanol plant builder, and a local corn farmer.

One can assume that Medialink didn't hold Brookes to any standards of journalistic objectivity, considering that the VNR was funded by Siemens AG, a worldwide engineering corporation who supplies process automation systems to two-thirds of the ethanol plants in the United States.

BTW: E-85 motor fuels retail at the same pump price as gasoline. But, here's the catch. Your car or truck burns 25-40% more of it. It thus costs the consumer 25-40% more, and increases the revenues of energy companies by an equal amount. Also, some of the new ethanol plants being built are coal-powered. So, whatever advantage E-85 might otherwise have for reduced hydrocarbon emissions are eliminated by added pollution in the production of ethanol-based fuels. Not a panacea, but very good for the bottom-line of agribusiness and energy companies.

______________________________________________
2006, Mark G. Levey

[meegbear]

1. NPR had a report on VNRs this morning ...

surprising how far the media has allowed these to become part of the news cycle.

[acmejack]

2. There is a not insubstantial amount of astroturfing going on here now days

IMHO. The perpetrators are farly obvious in most cases as are the organizations they represent. If these posters are not paid shills they should be.

[papau]

3. Other than the con job - why isn't the Brazil solution a good one?

????

[leveymg]

4. Coal-fired plants, higher cost to consumers, negligible gains

The ethanol industry touts F-85 on three bases: 1) lower hydrocarbon emissions; 2) renewable fuel; 3) domestic production. All of these sound good, but the industry is taking shortcuts to increase the bottom-line that undermine all these laudible goals.

Just a handful of coal-fired plants spew enough CO2 to offset the advantage of lower tailpipe emissions. Unless renewables are used in the production process, the fuel isn't renewable. Corn requires enormous amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, which is produced from --you got it, imported oil or dirty domestic coal. So, corn-based ethanol uses only negligibly less petrochemicals to produce, and is only neglibly cleaner. There are other ways of making ethanol that are far better, but it's more costly to make, which would cut into the profit margin for producers and retailers if gasoline and F-85 continue to be sold at the same price.

I think enthanol is potentially a great transitional motor fuel, but it's the way it's being produced and marketed that bothers me.

[greenman3610]

7. I think ethanol may be worthwhile

not as the solution but as part of the mix.

What I'd like to see is a network of "flexfuel" stations, that
start out with E85 and/or biodiesel. Truckstops would be a natural
for biodiesel, and some big players are looking at this
strategy already. Truckers are a built in market that
could switch to biodiesel on a dime with no transition
costs- if the price of diesel fuel makes it worthwhile.

Piggybacking ethanol on to these stations would start a network
of fillup areas where drivers of existing flexfuel vehicles could
keep filled up. (such as envisioned here
--------
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/03/northern_plains.html
The Upper Midwest Hydrogen Initiative (UMHI)—an industry-led, US-Canadian, public-private venture of the non-profit Great Plains Institute—is seeking partners and funding for the construction of a multi-fuel Clean Fuels Network to support the development of a renewable hydrogen infrastructure across the Northern Plains of the US and Canada.

---------------------
We are looking to support the early adopter in
the auto world here, many of whom are driving flex fuel
vehicles now without knowing it.
Brazil has been successful with the ethanol strategy, but I am
not aware if they are producing their ethanol with optimal environmental means,
aside from the fact that sugarcane is many times more efficient than
corn as a feedstock.
I would hope that over time the market would find the
most efficient US/Midwest grown feedstock for ethanol,
and that some government encouragement, from a
new Gore administration, could push a switch to
greenhouse friendly forms of ethanol production.
Flexfuel plugin hybrids could be the next step in the cycle,
-----------
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/04/dodge_introduce.html#more
Dodge introduced the new, redesigned 2007 Durango at the Dallas Auto Show. The 2007 Durango, which offers HEMI MDS and E85 options, will be configured to be Chrysler Group’s first production hybrid system: the Dodge Durango Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV).
--------------
which should get us to all electric or hydrogen vehicles when
that becomes technologically feasible.
I am looking to be educated on this issue by some of the knowlegeable
people on this list. If you have some serious info on this
topic, that I can take to my local repub congressman, I would
like to see it.

[leveymg]

9. Great example of astroturf .

Wow. I couldn't have asked for a better illustration of the problem. Look at your sources: an "industry-led . . . venture" and Daimler-Chrysler Corp.

Thank you for being so prompt to step out of the closet.:evilgrin: :eyes: :spray:

[blondeatlast]

11. Methinks the poster forgat the sarcasm tag--

or did he/she?

[leveymg]

12. Forget me nots

;) :sarcasm:

[papau]

13. LOL - Like DU is really against the Plug-in Hybrid Initiative

:-)

[leveymg]

14. My question is, why do we have to transition through HEMIs burning E-85?

The technology is available to go directly to plug-in hybrids. Congress should allocate $100 billion a year to jumpstart the transition. Take it out of government subsidies to the oil industry. Windfall tax the owners of energy multinational stock to pay for some of it.

[papau]

22. I agree - power plant energy is cheaper than gas so plug in now is better

:-)

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. So anyone who disagrees with your viewpoint is a fake?

That's pretty insulting. You're accusing them of being a direct part of an industry conspiracy - not that they've been convinced by the industry PR, but that they are dishonestly posting here to fool other people. You're calling them a liar. That is, in fact, against DU rules.

[leveymg]

18. I've already apologized.

I was too quick to jump to a conclusion and when I re-read the response, I realized it was unfair to assume that it was astroturf.

See, "Some of the specific approaches . . .", below. I also sent him a note of apology.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Oops, I hadn't refreshed to see that post before I replied

Fair enough, I can see you are being respectful about this.

[leveymg]

15. Some of the specific approaches you mention are steps in the right

direction, and there is a constructive role that existing industry can play. Expanding production and outlets for biodiesel looks like a win-win. In the short-run, diesel IC engines are a good approach, particularly as particulate emissions are reduced. Ethanol is another promising transitional technology, but the devil is in the details, as I indicated.

Bottom line, if the political system stopped subsidizing current industry, this country has the resources to make a rapid transition to plug-in hybrids and fuel cells. It would benefit the majority, even if the money to finance that transition has to come out of the pockets of multinational energy corporation shareholders.

Here are some links on the coal-fired ethanol production problem:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0323/p01s01-sten.html
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060205/BUSINESS04/602050315/1033
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/3/27/105942/766

Finally, I apologize for being snarky, there. You cited some sources that looked, smelled and felt so much like astroturf. I naturally assumed . . but, that was perhaps unfair.

[MrPrax]

21. This stinks...

On the one hand, someone is decrying 'ethanol' support as some 'creepy' ethanol industry scam by citing little more than oil industry talking points.

Why would you confuse all this with coal firing plants? Separate issue

Why would you confuse ethanol with 'corn'? It can be made with anything, sugar cane is the main ingredient in the Brazillian industry (the largest user anywhere next to the US)...you can use sugar beets, switch grass, wheat, potatoes, hemp, etc etc...

Why would you point out all the 'negs' and assume that this couldn't be regulated to 'boost' the 'green' effects?

"Unless renewables are used in the production process, the fuel isn't renewable."???? this stands by itself as unintelligble, unless you are posting some proof that ethanol is NOT made from renewables...this is startling.

The only thing missing is the disingenious rap about how 'FOOD" is being wasted and therefore ethanol is immoral...yeah and tearing up tar sands, molesting the ANWR, driving holes into seabeds and fabricating foreign policy around 'war' is angelic.

Most of your rap is from a GM-industry hack David Pimentel who wrote his 'fun with numbers' BTU loss assesstment in 1998.

Here are the figures from "study was co-sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and the USDA, entitled, "Life Cycle Inventory of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel for Use in an Urban Bus."

Summary - Energy Balance/Energy Life Cycle Inventory
Fuel * Energy yield Net Energy (loss) or gain
Gasoline 0.805 (19.5 percent)
Diesel 0.843 (15.7 percent)
Ethanol 1.34 34 percent
Biodiesel 3.20 220 percent

But these figures don't include the ACTUAL energy to make either the bus or tractor that Pimental and his ilk always add to the 'production' energy requirements.

If anything, the figures prove your main contention...ethanol is not great and MORE should be done to tap more efficient methods.

This is an issue in Canada as there are over 1000 gas stations offering 'gasohol' and 'green fuels' through affliated stations (Mohawk, Husky) to vehicles.

Energy Probe and their media minions have been promoting this canard and quite HONESTLY the ONLY time I see this rap is on 'anti-kyoto' rightwing nut sites mostly sponsored by the oil industry and they not surprisingly NEVER talk about the stupid 'waste' of hydrogen coz their defender King George mumbled some shit about it in a SOTU address two years ago. (He mumbled some shit about AIDS to Africa as well...but who cares since no one with a half a brain ever believed this guy anyway)


Sure if you are claiming that the hydrogen/ethanol types are just avoiding the problems of the 'private automobiles' and ignoring the inevitable...sure, I agree. If you are saying that too many people see ethanol as some viable alternative and therefore figure the problem is solved...then Great, right on...

But then again, I am mentioning it--not you...why ???

[lonestarnot]

5. and don't forget that golf courses count as wetlands. dertader.

[leveymg]

6. And abandoned railroad tracks written off as "nature trails"

The taxpayer is underwriting railroad industry efforts to consolidate services and abandon service to low-profit routes in rural and underserved areas. So, they've convinced Congress to allow them to write off rail lines as they are abandoned, by designating them as "nature trails".

This is a nature trail?

[lonestarnot]

8. trailing nature off into desolation.

[Strelnikov_]

24. They Will Be Back. The Most Important Part, The Grades/Alignments

are still there.

My understanding is that the rails/trails program is primarily for banking.

Railbanking is the practice of preserving railroad rights-of-way by using them as multi-use trails. In the United States, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) is a nonprofit organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., which promotes railbanking.

Many railroads are not built on land that is actually owned by the railroad company, but is simply an easement. The terms of the easement often require that the land continue to be used for transportation, or it will revert to the property owner; railbanking often satisfies these conditions, keeping the corridor around if future conditions, such as depletion of oil reserves ("peak oil"), ever promote the conversion back to rails.

RTC was founded in 1986 and has currently more than 100,000 members. The organization does not build trails, but promotes policy at the national and state levels to create the conditions that make trail building possible by local groups. RTC helps to keep the federal Transportation Enhancements program, which is the largest source of funding for trail development.

[blondeatlast]

10. They are generally very transparent, and I love when smart, savvy

DUers get their teeth into them. Makes for better entertainment than TV, generally!

Still, it's good to remind us that they are here.

[kestrel91316]

17. I won't turn my nose up at ethanol for the sole reason that it's

NOT PRODUCED IN THE MIDDLE EAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Renewability is nice, too. But no soldier has to go to the desert and die for it, and that's important to me.

[Neil Lisst]

19. I always assume anyone selling hard has an angle.

The corporations are going heavy with the green angle. BP, British Petroleum? Yeah, they're about as environmentally sensitive as the Exxon Valdez.

But I know in the long haul, renewables will prevail.

[Strelnikov_]

23. The Coal Fired Ethanol Plants Are Disheartening

One of them is being built about 6 mi. E of here.

Most studies indicate an EPR of 1 for corn ethanol from an energy standpoint, and 1.3 to 1.8 for corn ethanol once the value of coproducts are credited. Considering that 2/3rd’s of the energy consumed in corn ethanol production is in conversion (ethanol plant), this indicates opportunities for utilizing co-generation or renewables (wind) for most of this process energy. This is why I view corn ethanol more as a valuable energy carrier than an energy source. Process corn for ethanol using an energy input from renewable energy, renewable energy is converted to a valuable liquid fuel, with most of the food value of the corn remaining for consumption.

Just east of Ames, IA an ethanol processing plant is being built. In the brief for the project they advertised how the new plant will use the same coal supply delivered to the Ames, IA municipal electric plant 4 mi. to the west, thus resulting in savings. With co-generation, this plant could have been located such that waste heat from the coal fired electric plant could have been utilized by the ethanol process. In addition, the Ames power plant burns local garbage, therefore waste material from the ethanol process could be burned (resource recovered, as they call it).

Another alternate is wind. Most of the corn belt and the high plains (potential switchgrass growing region) are reasonably close to areas that have good to excellent wind energy potential, most of which is essentially stranded. A major wind farm was just completed around 40 mi. to the NW of the plant site.

Any way you look at it, though, burning coal to produce a liquid fuel with an EPR of 1 (corn ethanol) makes absolutely no sense when you could produce a liquid fuel (synthetic diesel) with an EPR of 5 from the coal directly. Not to mention the incremental environmental impact.

I think coal is being used at this plant because the accountants told the farmers at the Co-op (it is locally owned, like most corn ethanol plants), that coal would be the cheapest energy source for producing the 'product'. Once the crises arrives, ’energy balance’ will be the prime consideration in evaluating process feasibility.

Corn ethanol is not a 'solution' to the coming energy crises. But I do think, under the scenario presented above, a viable mitigation option. Wind energy and corn ethanol are proven, scalable processes. We have the corn, we have the wind, we are growing corn anyway for food, why not marry the two as a mitigation/powerdown option until cellulosic ethanol and other developmental energy options mature. To me, this makes a lot more sense than pouring energy and money into developing tar sands or pre-oil shale.


Refer to Table 6 of the following report for a breakdown of energy use for corn ethanol production.

The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update / AER-813
United States Department of Agriculture - July 2002

http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-813.pdf

[Neil Lisst]

25. solar panels remain the best alternative source, and getting better

IMHO, with energy cost surely continuing to escalate, the payback period on solar panels is dropping. I'm not going to represent I know, but based upon my readings, I'd say 2-3 year payback to break even is not out of the question.

It's getting hotter, so that means more sun, and more opportunity to store sunshine in batteries or use for heating or energy needs.

Everyone in rural America has a satellite dish, why not a solar panel running the TV?

[skids]

26. K&R and tracking your journal now.

Thanks. I like your angle/focus.

If you want non-astroturfed energy stuff, I diary occasionally on kos and in E/E. I try to pick out the obscure and underrepresented alternative energy news, and am not taking a paycheck from anyone to do so. I just like energy technology.

http://skids.dailykos.com

[Generic Other]

27. And don't forget all those Chevy Tahoe ads

Yeah, they are really winning us over...

:sarcasm:

[WhiteTara]

28. also, don't forget the fuel for the machines that

grow it and truck it. Another cruel hoax on the unsuspecting sheople.

[sellitman]

29. fuel economy is 5 percent to 28 percent lower than with traditional gas.

That should attract Hummer owners but not many others.

[glitch]

30. I think it's important to have a mix of alternatives. Bio-fuels have their

place, but I don't think anyone is claiming they are the solution. I do agree the oil and agri-business industry jumping on the bandwagon is typically creepy, and corrupting. I see a lot of pro-nuclear posts as well, which IMO is just bizarre.

I always consider the source of any information, even if it's just opinion, but it's also important to evaluate the informatin objectively, on it's own merits.

[izzybeans]

31. So I suppose American farmers producing a wasted surplus

is considered astroturfing now. Is it the panacea? Nope. is there one? Nope. Will the alternative fuels initiative be driven by profit seeking interests? Yep. Short of a revolution in the means of production anyway.

What's the point? Why not criticize the business model calling for Cement Truck hybrid technology. this would make sense. But a polemic against the sheer possibility is just way too premature. A simple economic solution to the cost issue would be a drastic increase in the supply of ethanol. But that would be only 1/3 the solution. The emissions question must be solved via bio-and techno-engineering. The mechanical question must be solved with fuel efficiency technologies and a business model that sees a world market that does not emulate the movie Grease in its propensity to sing "Go Grease Lightning, go". But this is just one alternative....there are plenty others. The future is open ended, don't stop one possible track with this. We don't know where it will lead.

[motocicleta]

32. We can debate the benefits of alternative fuels forever

and the merits of each will come out. Probably through your suggested methods. But to me the real problem is one of scale, and caution.

It seems what we as a culture got wrong with the whole oil economy in the first place is taking the energy from petroleum as a given, and not considering the real effects of this fuel source. Pollution, climate change, war - these are pretty obvious unintended consequences of our fossil fuel problem. Others that are not as obvious? I think overpopulation. Oil allowed a food production bubble, as well as other bubbles (plastics production contributing to wealth and health care increases, etc), that have allowed the mortality rate in much of the world to decline significantly, thereby allowing populations to expand in the oil age at unprecedented rates.

You take this population expansion in the context of oil production, and then look at the concept of peak oil, and it can lead one to believe that we may have more people on the planet now than we can reasonably support by a system without the energy returns we get from oil. No matter what the alternatives are. Because none of those alternatives, none of them, have the return on investment that oil does.

While I am not sketching a rigorous argument by any means, this is a terrible thought to ponder, knowing that oil production will peak soon - easily within the next twenty years, if it hasn't already. Not a very long time, and population will be higher by then.

My point, so I don't end up writing a really lame book here, is that the dire consequences of having an unsustainable population shouldn't drive us into making new decisions as poor as the ones that led us to the unsustainable population in the first place. Knowing that our situation now is untenable will help us make smart societal decisions based on the precautionary principle - first do no harm - rather than repeat the mistakes of the past.

Trying to work the situation so we can get the exact same standard of living post-oil that we do now, in terms of cheap food, cheap transportation, cheap materials production, cheap everything because it is all subsidized by a product whose energy return on investment will never be seen again? IT WILL NOT WORK.

The sooner we all realize that we don't have to compromise on future environmental health issues to retain the economic standards we have now, because even those compromises will not in any way shape or form get us what we desire, the sooner we can start reordering our society in rational, post-oil terms. For our kids' sake, we need to start making those smarter decisions sooner rather than later.

So, yeah, E-85 ain't gonna get it done. But nothing else is either, if "it" is "retain our current sandards of living". We will be lucky if we can keep feeding everybody once oil really starts to drop off.

It just so happens to be our best defense against industry shills, too.