Posted on 09/26/2005 7:39:01 AM PDT by SmithL
It began benignly enough as an assignment for the 15 freshmen in Tad Patzek's UC Berkeley college seminar class. But it soon mushroomed into something much larger.
Patzek found himself in the national spotlight as his scientific paper published in June touched raw nerves throughout the nation's energy and farm industries. Gas prices were climbing higher; Congress was in the midst of drafting an energy policy; and the article criticized one possible solution -- making ethanol fuel from corn.
Hundreds of newspapers wrote about the publication. E-mails flooded Patzek's in-box. People yelled at him over the phone. He was invited to the National Press Club in Washington to debate the issue and to Chicago to speak to investors.
Patzek and David Pimentel, a Cornell scientist who had been a lone public voice against corn ethanol for more than 30 years, argued that corn ethanol did the environment more harm than good. Growing corn, fertilizing the fields, transporting it to the factories and then out to where it was needed took more energy than the resulting ethanol would ultimately generate, they said.
Detractors, including corn growers, federal government researchers and other academics, took offense at Patzek's stance. They saw ethanol as an environment-friendly way of reducing the nation's dependence on foreign fossil fuels.
Opponents pointed to Patzek's oil industry days, saying he had ulterior motives. They said he and Pimentel knew nothing about agriculture and had relied on irrelevant data. They even criticized the premise of Patzek's arguments, which were based on the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
Patzek, 52, took the criticisms in stride. He is a mostly good-humored man who possesses an unflappable, but not pretentious, confidence in his intellect. And having grown up in post-World War II Poland under the Communist regime, he already knew well the role of rebel.
Patzek's rebellious roots extend at least as far back as his grandfather, a Polish officer during World War II who spent five years in a German concentration camp. To stave off the boredom and despair that permeated the camp, Patzek's grandfather, a physicist, taught physics to anyone who would listen, and organized a theater.
In postwar Poland, Patzek's father also rebelled. He joined a student militia group when the Russian army liberated the town of Gliwice where he was studying at the university. When he fired on Russian soldiers threatening some women, he was expelled, although later allowed to return. He also refused to join the Communist party, though the choice meant he could not teach despite a doctorate in chemical engineering.
As a young boy, his father continually quizzed Patzek, giving him hypothetical situations, then asking him to decide between right and wrong.
In high school, Patzek took his education into his own hands. He liked learning on his own better than at school and began staying home three of six days to study. When his teachers got wind of his program, they agreed to it, but only if he met higher standards than the other students.
Patzek rebelled against Communism in high school and college. His views were so well-known that like his father he was forbidden to teach at Silesian Technical University after graduating with a master's degree. Communist officials told him he would "deprive the Polish youth of their innocence."
While a graduate student at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Patzek, then 26, helped organize the first Solidarity chapter at the chemical engineering center -- before it was legal to do so.
If the foundation of his defiance was laid in Poland, so too was a fierce loyalty to the environment. His family's house lay on the edge of fields and forest that stretched as far as the eye could see. Returning for a visit to Poland in 1991 after 10 years in the United States, he saw the destruction wrought by industrialization. Large homes had replaced the fields. Gone were the swamp, creeks, frogs and storks.
"It was affirmation of what I already knew," he said. "That we humans do a lot of bad things to the environment."
Patzek's life is nearly consumed by his work. "He is a workaholic, that's for sure," said his wife of 25 years, Joanna.
When not at work, he's often reading, late at night and during meals. He even reads while they watch a movie, though that doesn't stop him from commenting, she said. Typical books have titles such as "Carbon-Nitrogen-Sulfur, the Environmental Science of Dirty Water," "The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won't Run the World" and the three-part volume of "A History of Common Human Delusions."
At parties and at the dinner table, he's always teaching or prompting discussions around "what we should and shouldn't do," Joanna Patzek said. Current topics include saving water with shorter showers, dangerous chemicals in cosmetics and, of course, ethanol.
In his personal life, Patzek thinks somewhat obsessively about how to be a good citizen to the environment. During the summer, he rides his bike a few times a week to UC Berkeley from the Oakland hills. He drives his Nissan Altima, which gets 34 miles per gallon, only about 8,000 miles a year. Walks on the beach were never just that; he, his wife and their three grown children are always armed with bags to pick up trash. Insulating his house is an ongoing project, and he plans to try solar panels on the roof.
But until he joined the corn ethanol debate, Patzek's professional work didn't touch directly on environmental concerns. Instead, he focused on energy, working for seven years at Shell Development Co. His contribution to society was to help provide the fossil fuels it needed, he told himself.
By the time he left Shell, his philosophical views had changed. "I realized that society will never have enough energy," Patzek said. "We are incurable addicts. Our national policy is to satisfy the addict."
As a professor at UC Berkeley, he continued research that looked at how to efficiently extract fossil fuels. But he was bothered by the increasing environmental damage done as the oil fields became depleted. He began thinking about how he as a scientist could take a bigger, more relevant and more holistic approach to society's problems.
The ethanol corn debate may have thrust him into just that. What started almost as a whim after reading a book by Pimentel has become much larger. Patzek is now planning a center at UC Berkeley to take a careful look at all energy sources, including fossil fuels, biofuels like ethanol, solar and nuclear. He wants scientists to devise a common framework for evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of each. Such a forum is necessary to inform U.S. policy, he said.
Patzek's opponents on the other side of the corn ethanol discussion have similar concerns about the diminishing supply of fossil fuels.
But to hear them debate one can't help but wonder whether either hears anything the other says. Each accuses the other of misrepresenting, misusing and excluding data, as well as not understanding the full scope of the problem. And while supporters argue corn ethanol can be part of the energy solution, Patzek argues vehemently that it cannot.
"However you look at it, this is a rather inefficient way of concentrating solar energy into fuel," he said. It takes more energy to make ethanol than what is produced, he said.
In addition, he argues that ultimately, ethanol can contribute only a single-digit portion of the nation's fuel. Yet it causes environmental damage with pesticides and fertilizers, and co-opts land that could otherwise be dedicated to food.
There is no magic bullet to replace fossil fuels, Patzek said. He says the United States drastically needs to reduce its energy use. Fuel efficiency standards need to rise. People must commute less by living closer to work. Food should be produced locally, instead of shipped and trucked from far-away places.
Patzek's harshest critics in the corn ethanol debate say he is ignorant and arrogant.
"I think he needs to do his homework, spend some time actually learning things before he talks about them," said Bruce Dale, a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University.
Friendlier opponents, like Rick Tolman, CEO of the National Corn Growers Association, say Patzek has no practical knowledge of farms or a typical ethanol production plant. Nonetheless, Patzek earned Tolman's respect at the National Press Club debate when he remained composed and friendly even when eight people consecutively stood up to shoot his logic down.
Then there are those who say they want to continue the conversation.
"Patzek's point is the same as ours," said John Sheehan, a senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. "The size of the energy problem is huge."
For the sake of the country, the differences between the two sides should be worked out, Sheehan said.
"It has to be worked out," he said. "Because this country has to make rational choices."
Reach Judy Silber at 925-977-8507 or jsilber@cctimes.com.
My family is safer in SUVs than in smaller vehicles.
My SUV is driven about 6 miles per day.
The price of gas is a small price to pay for the increased safety of a larger vehicle.
Anyone who wants to trade their family's safety for the extra price of fuel, is free to do so.
We already regulate cars too much. For example, making it difficult to import highly energy-efficient cars. I know one example where our regulations required a light foreign car to become about 14% heavier just to be able to sell it here, and you know what weight does to fuel economy.
The point that you're missing is that what may not make sense to you makes perfect sense to other people. Since you have no way of knowing the details of someone else's personal life, priorities, cash flow, and transportation needs, you can't know whether a vehicle that gets 10mpg is or isn't the most economical solution to that individual's problems.
The communists thought they could know all that information, and make central decisions about issues such as fuel, heating, etc. In fact, to this day Russian apartment buildings don't have thermostats or valves on their radiators, and are heated via steam from a central plant.
The advantage of the free market is that the problem of 10mpg vehicles in a climate of $3 gasoline is self-correcting - prices of large SUVs and Hummers are falling through the floor as people rush to unload them, and people keeping them aren't driving them as much.
Perthaps you could describe your understanding of how "the government" subsidizes the production of corn.
Not when the government gets involved. Think subsidies.
Those are mid size cars. A full size is a Lincoln...ect. What can you haul in these cars? Where does the wheel barrow and tools go? How many sheets of plywood can you fit? Can you get a 1/2 to 1 ton in your midsize?
I should have inserted a parenthetical after "Walmart" that said "insert retailer of choice." My point is that there are no free lunches and almost every activity uses energy. To blame one product or activity for the so-called energy crisis to the exclusion of others is stupid. Each person has to look at their aggregate energy consumption.
Typical fuzzy left-wing thinking. If ethanol takes more energy to produce than it yields, then there is no middle ground. It's like saying we need to compromise on the value of Planck's constant or asking an engineer to be a more flexible by yielding just a little on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Let me get this straight, Are you saying that because the government in the past overregulated our lives they should have every right to continue?
" I would argue that it seems that you would rather use ad hominem attacks rather than any logical arguments."
Uh, you started with the illogical, factless, and ridiculous statement in post #8 "We could cut our consumption in half by raising fuel efficiency standards. That is a good place to start."
No, we couldn't. That is a false claim. You have nothing to base that on other than your hopes.
In fact, even a hybrid advocate said that if were replaced the vehicles on the road with hybrids, we could reduce usage by 15% Not 50. And that assumes that hybrids get the mileage they claim, which most times, they do not.
Other studies have shown that if every SUV was replaced with a hybrid,the savings would last no more than a couple of years, before increased demand raised usage to above the previous levels.
Again, when you argue for government control of standards, you are NOT a conservative. So don't even bother to put yourself off as one. People will chose their cars according to their needs,and they will adjust their usage accordingly.
BTW, in your quuest for feeling good about yourself, you apparently don't give a damn that raising CAFE Standards cost lives:
"You want logical arguments? Here's a hint: They start with the use of facts, not feelings. All you've provided is feelings. I've got enough facts to prove you wrong all day long."
More smoke but no arguments. SUVs use twice the fuel and put out twice the pollution as an ordinary car. Those are not facts? Those are "feelings"?
"Why should people be driving big trucks and SUVs that get 10 mpg when they could be driving full sized cars (like a camry or accord) that gets 30 mpg?"
Um, because they want to! What other choices do you want to regulate at the federal level?
As I understand it, any more than 10% ethanol in U.S. cars
would ruin the engine. There are some cars that can switch
from gas to alcohol, but the majority cannot.
They can't make it on the 'free market'. Can you say subsidy??
You can only draw that conclusion by igoring everything except the last line of his post.
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