How Brian Schweitzer and two Nazis will conquer the House of Saud

[jmowreader]

http://www.billingsgazette.com/newdex.php?display=rednews/2005/05/21/build/state/35-coal-oil.inc

Brian Schweitzer is governor of Montana, a state rich in coal reserves--second only to West Virginia. He's also no fan of the assorted dictators and criminals who run the oil business.

The two Nazis are Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch. In the 1920s, Fischer and Tropsch invented a process by which motor fuel could be made from either natural gas or coal. By juggling the process some by using different catalysts and mixtures of feedstocks, you can make anything from coal that you can make from crude oil--gasoline, diesel, fertilizer, anything.

Here's where the twain shall meet: This process, which is commercially-viable Right Now--the Nazis ran the Wehrmacht on Fischer-Tropsch diesel, some of which was captured by Patton's Third Army and used to run the Nazis off, and the South Africans made it through the apartheid era on it and still use it--turns a ton of coal, that most unloved of flammables, into four 42-gallon barrels of fuel...usually diesel. The diesel in question is completely free of either sulfur or nitrogen, which means this diesel's exhaust is completely free from NOx and SO2 emissions--the major pollutants a diesel engine produces.

Fischer-Tropsch diesel has a breakeven point, as all commercial processes do: when the price of oil sinks below $35 per barrel, Fischer-Tropsch isn't economic. Right now, oil is about twice that.

The Fischer-Tropsch process generates five basic byproducts: carbon dioxide, nitrogen, sulfur, mercury and electricity. All are marketable, so all are recovered.

This is the beauty of Fischer-Tropsch diesel: it's just diesel. Every other alternative fuel I can think of requires changes to your equipment. Biodiesel is the least worst solution, but it's not perfect: the product has a solvent effect and will eat your fuel lines if they're made from nitrile rubber; it also has a higher gel point than petroleum diesel, so it gets thick faster in the winter, and it gives five to ten percent lower performance than does petroleum diesel. Waste vegetable oil requires a preheater and you have to start the engine on regular diesel or biodiesel. Alcohol is exceptionally corrosive. Propane requires many changes to your vehicle as does hydrogen, and hydrogen also requires massive investments in infrastructure. This is diesel. You buy it, put it in your car and drive down the road. The only real change you'll see is positive--because there's no nitrogen and no sulfur in it, the big black cloud of smoke you get on startup on a diesel doesn't happen.

Biodiesel has one other minor problem: a finite supply of farmland. Schweitzer says that if all available acreage is devoted to fuel production, it will replace 15 percent of America's diesel appetite. As Brian Schweitzer is a farmer by trade, biodiesel production could be lucrative to him; when a farmer says "this won't work" I tend to listen.

I better edit this to explain exactly how Governor Schweitzer plans to conquer the House of Saud, who he likes to refer to as "sheiks, rats, crooks and dictators": he is currently trying to find someone--there's a company in Oklahoma that already makes synfuel using Fischer-Tropsch who is interested in building this plant--to drop about $2.5 billion on building a Fischer-Tropsch plant in the middle of the Montana coal belt. The governor says there's a very long line of people who want to be first to build the second plant. Big Oil is all over this: ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and Shell are all building Fischer-Tropsch plants in very remote areas. There is a phenomenon called "stranded gas"--natural gas deposits, which are almost always found atop oil deposits, that are too small to justify building a pipeline to ship. By converting the natural gas to diesel via Fischer-Tropsch, it can be handled as a liquid.So assume someone actually builds the coal-fed Fischer-Tropsch plant. Every oil company in America will want one--the diesel fraction in crude oil is also used to make jet fuel and heating oil. So far we know Fischer-Tropsch fuel makes good jet fuel--according to the Air Force (http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123027415), on September 19, 2006, Fischer-Tropsch fuel was mixed 50/50 with military-standard JP-8 aviation diesel and used to run two of the plane's eight engines. The Air Force reports that the two test engines ran as well as the six running on straight JP-8. He figures that if he can get 10 plants up in Montana, he can replace all of America's diesel needs just from his own coal.

[fudge stripe cookays]

1. I"d just like to say again...

how much I dig Schweitzer. Everytime I hear him speak so much common sense, I like him even more.

[havocmom]

2. And he is pushing for wind generation of energy too.

He realizes we have to make changes NOW for short term and put the pieces into place for long term solutions too. He knows we have to survive the now to make it to the time of even cleaner energy in the future.

He knows America is not safe so long as we have to depend on imported energy.

Jag for first dog!

[napi21]

3. Boy, I second THAT! I have only had the chance to hear himspeakabout 1/2 dz. times,

and each time, I'm more impressed than the last one. Several hosts have asked himif he ever considered running for Prez, but he keeps saying WHY? Why would I eer want to leave the best job in the world to go to Washington??? Damn!

[jmowreader]

4. Can you imagine the Schweitzer White House?

First improvement:

This is the first lady we have now:


This is Nancy Schweitzer:


Please notice the absence of upholstery fabrics in Mrs. Schweitzer's outfit. In fact, I bet there's not one outfit in Nancy Schweitzer's whole closet that we could ridicule...as opposed to Laura Bush's wardrobe...

Now let's compare the Schweitzer family with the Bushes. This is the Schweitzers' family portrait:


Please note that none of them appears drunk, hung-over or stoned. They look...well, normal, as compared to the Bushes. I am betting that, should Governor Schweitzer be dragged kicking and screaming to Washington to repair the mess George Bush made, his daughter probably will arrive at the reviewing stand for the parade in her father's honor with her makeup already done, unlike Jenna Bush.

Second: The Schweitzers are well-educated in actual science. Brian has a Bachelor's in International Agronomy and a Master's in Soil Sciences, while Nancy has a Bachelor's in Botany. George has a Bachelor's in Ethanol Studies and a Master's in Highway Robbery, it seems, while Laura holds the Bachelor of Library Science and the Master of Republican Studies (M.R.S.) Unlike the current occupant of the White House, Brian Schweitzer probably does not believe the Grand Canyon was caused by the keel of Noah's Ark scraping a ditch in the earth.

And third, Brian Schweitzer currently has an 85-percent approval rating among his constituents. George Bush currently does not have an 85-percent approval rating among the members of Free Republic.

It would be SO nice to have a non-embarrassing president.

[napi21]

6. AWE, comeon, Shrub has almost an85% DISapproval rating!

Give him anlther month or so,he'll get there!

The other thing you didn't mention was that Bian's ranch is REALLY a ranch! And he really DOES know how to work on it!

Awe shit, now you have me dreaming again!!!

[fudge stripe cookays]

8. I know!

He loves Montana. And doesn't want to leave.

I'm wondering what it would take for him to realize that he could be the best hope the Dems have to appeal to conservative Western voters AND environmentalists!

[napi21]

10. AND all those voters who said they just wanted a Prez they could feel

comfortable having as a next door neighbor, or one to sit down and have a beer with! Remember that? THAT was the reason (supposedly) they voted for Shrub!

With Brian, that would be the truth!

[blm]

9. I do, too. I see a WORKER for people and real change, and I like that in a lawmaker.

.

[jwirr]

5. Years ago I visited friends on the Cheyene Reservation in Montana.

They were talking about the coal being taken out of the mountains around there. One young man said, "Do we really want to cut down the Rocky Mountains?" He was right.

Now with this post in mind I want to modernize his question, "What kind of weather changes will result from cutting down the Rocky Mountians?"

When will we ever learn that God said, "It is good" and quit trying to change the world into our own image. How long do you think the mountains can sustain our auto fuel needs before they are gone?

[Cleita]

11. I come from a mining background and know how environmentally

destructive this extraction industry is. There are ecological ways to do it but they increase the costs immensely and mining amazingly does not have the profit margin other extraction industries have. Are we prepared to shoulder the cost of fuel that is made environmentally friendly?

[lapfog_1]

7. It still has the issue of releasing more greenhouse gases...

All fossil fuels are a false hope. Period.

And the math is just wrong about how much land is needed for biodiesel... read these two paragraphs from the UNH algae biodiesel study...

<snip>

First, we need to understand exactly how much biodiesel would be needed to replace all petroleum transportation fuels. So, we need to start with how much petroleum is currently used for that purpose. Per the Department of Energy's statistics, each year the US consumes roughly 60 billion gallons of petroleum diesel and 120 billion gallons of gasoline. First, we need to realize that spark-ignition engines that run on gasoline are generally about 40% less efficient than diesel engines. So, if all spark-ignition engines are gradually replaced with compression-ignition (Diesel) engines for running biodiesel, we wouldn't need 120 billion gallons of biodiesel to replace that 120 billion gallons of gasoline. To be conservative, we will assume that the average gasoline engine is 35% less efficient, so we'd need 35% less diesel fuel to replace that gasoline. That would work out to 78 billion gallons of diesel fuel. Combine that with the 60 billion gallons of diesel already used, for a total of 138 billion gallons. Now, biodiesel is about 5-8% less energy dense than petroleum diesel, but its greater lubricity and more complete combustion offset that somewhat, leading to an overall fuel efficiency about 2% less than petroleum diesel. So, we'd need about 2% more than that 138 billion gallons, or 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel. So, this figure is based on vehicles equivalent to those in use today, but with compression-ignition (Diesel) engines running on biodiesel, rather than a mix of petroleum diesel and gasoline. Combined diesel-electric hybrids in wide use, as well as fewer people driving large SUVs when they don't need such a vehicle would of course bring this number down considerably, but for now we'll just stick with this figure. (note - my point here is not to claim that conservation is not worthwhile, rather to strictly look at the issue of replacing our current use of fuel with biodiesel - to see how achievable that is). I would like to point out though that a preferable scenario would include a shift to diesel-electric hybrid vehicles (preferably with the ability to be recharged and drive purely on electric power for a short range, perhaps 20-40 miles, to provide the option of zero emissions for in-city driving), and with far fewer people buying 6-8,000 pound SUVs merely to commute to work in by themselves. Those changes could drastically reduce the amount of fuel required for our automotive transportation, and are technologically feasibly currently (see for example Chrysler's Dodge Intrepid ESX3, built under Clinton's PNGV program - a full-size diesel electric hybrid sedan that averaged 72 mpg in mixed driving 6, 7).

.....


NREL's research showed that one quad (7.5 billion gallons) of biodiesel could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land (200,000 hectares is equivalent to 780 square miles, roughly 500,000 acres), if the remaining challenges are solved (as they will be, with several research groups and companies working towards it, including ours at UNH). In the previous section, we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 19 quads (one quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 15,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert (note for clarification - I am not advocating putting 15,000 square miles of algae ponds in the Sonora desert. This hypothetical example is used strictly for the purpose of showing the scale of land required). That 15,000 square miles works out to roughly 9.5 million acres - far less than the 450 million acres currently used for crop farming in the US, and the over 500 million acres used as grazing land for farm animals.

<snip>

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

I'd much rather deal with converting fleets to run on biodiesel than see the environmental damage that strip mining all of Montana will produce AND the huge environmental damage that is occurring NOW due to global warming.

[ftr23532]

12. There's some interesting related history involving Standard Oil of NJ and IG Farben

IG Farben was in such dire financial straights with all the money they threw into develping this process. In return for stock in Standard Oil of NJ, IG Farben gave Standard Oil of NJ the rights to sell gas using this method all over the world with the exception of Germany (this allowed standard to ward off the competitive threat of this technology...they just sat on it). It was one of the http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/51/pauwels.html">many close corporate connections between http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/07/INGPHNCLHH1.DTL">US and German companies during Nazis' reign.

Here's an interesting Dave Emory show on that Standard/IG Fargen agreement:
http://www.spitfirelist.com/f385.html">Formula for disaster Audio http://wfmu.org/listen.ram?show=5614">Here

[bleever]

13. Brian Schweitzer for Energy Secretary

at the very least!

[rockymountaindem]

14. I think we should devote our energies (pun intended) to clean alternatives

More diesel isn't going to solve all our problems. At best, we'll be cranking out just as much pollution as now, only we won't be paying Saudi Arabia to do it. Why don't we invest whatever money would be going into this into something that isn't just more gasoline?

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Carbon dioxide is 'marketable'?

Well, in tiny amounts, yes. But if you haven't noticed, it's also one of the biggest threats to the world - especially in the amounts you're talking about. You're using one ton of coal to produce about 1200lbs of diesel. Not only will that diesel then produce more carbon dioxide, there's also some carbon from the coal that you must have chucked into the air, as CO2. You would increase the amount of CO2 produced, compared to using oil.

Your plan is nuts. I can see that big business loves it, as you say - huge coal mines with lots of machinery, more processing, and then they get to keep marketing the Big Car lifestyle. Shame about the environment - both of the places the coal is mined, and the whole damn world, when the extra CO2 warms everything up. We need this like the proverbial hole in the head.

[crikkett]

16. oh, nevermind

self-delete