His stance on ethanol sets Cal professor apart

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.

"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."

The knee-jerk response of invoking Marx on your opponent is only worthy of liberal "racist, sexist, homophobe" type ad hominem attacks, and should be discouraged.

Give me a break. You're over reacting. Marx's analysis was taken seriously in both the 19th and 20th centuries. I can remember a time when capitalism was a dirty word. Smith's invisible hand metaphor was invoked to distinguish between socialism's central planning and the free market's dependence on the aggregate of free people making free choices. Perfect? No. But a lot better than central planning.

Not to worry; the statists have thought of that, and are planning on taxing us per mile.

I have been hearing that,don't know why they just don't make us all drive on toll roads!!

you can make cheap, clean biodiesel in your garage

The petroleum monopoly has convinced people that the internal combustion engine requires petroleum. Nothing could be further from the truth. Petroleum became popular because it was cheap. Alternative motor fuels will not be developed unless government restrictions on producers and sellers are lifted. The tax man wants you to use petroleum.
.

I actually wouldn't mind one of those (with the 3 cylinder diesel engine) for commuting.

But, I wouldn't want it forced on me by the government.

And, FWIW, I live in a rural area, and have a full size pickup. I don't drive it much...mainly to the feed store, to pick up hay and feed. You might not be able to see the stuff in the bed from a car, but it's in there.

I'm sure all the true costs are included in what we pay for gasoline

The latest energy bill was like Christmas for the oil industry. Of course, it was full of cash for ethanol too.

I don't know where you live, but here in calif you have to drive to go any where, and people do like of travel! just check out a hwy/fwy at 3:00 in the afternoon, Sorry but you are wrong!

Would the University of Chicago's Argonne National Laboratory be OK with you?

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/349.pdf

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?

Well, it's unsafe to tow anything of size (like a boat) with a front-wheel-drive vehicle or a light vehicle. Where, in the Camry or Accord, do you put the garbage our gummint makes us carry to the landfill and recycling center? Where in the car do you put the ten bales of landscape pinestraw you bought at Home Depot? SUV's middle name is "utility" -- one vehicle that can do many things unlike a single-function car.

249 posted on 09/26/2005 10:34:22 AM PDT by BlueMondaySkipper (The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. - George Orwell)

My son most likely would have been born in the front seat of a camry if I had not had four wheel drive (a 4Runner).

I questioned whether having a SUV was justified until that day.

the US was actually founded on the ideals of SOCIETAL freedom, not individual freedom.

Have I stumbled onto the wrong website? Is this not Free Republic?

I'm not a minarchist by any stretch of the imagination, but this claim is bizarre.

Electrical generation is an insignificant use of the US oil demand.

I assume the present amounts are fairly comparable to the 2002 chart amounts? (Even so, 2% is 2% - every little bit helps...) Just curious, do you you have info at hand re: the natural gas breakout? what would be the NG savings from all-nuke (or coal) power plants? (Just curious.)

Good points. My concern is that we will need to raise the rate to incorporate the more accurate costs, and doing it linearly (based on strict $/gallon tax) impacts those with less incremental income marginally more. But, you're spot on when it comes to car pooling and other behavior changes.

"---when ethanol is used in the ~~machinery~~ people growing the corn and in the burners of the distillation plants manufacturing it, it will have become economically feasible"
Sorry, it would never do. Ethanol is for drinking, aka internal combustion, and is sacred to Bacchus. Every other use is a sacrilege.

Yes, yes, as I stated--"It has always been government policy to keep food cheap, hence the prime reason for subsidies in a vary volatile industry. Abscent controls and subsidies, think about food prices doubling and shortages occurring. Not a pleasant prospect."

I don't want to go overboard with pessimism, because during harvest time it is very rewarding to fill semis with food for a hungry world. It provides a real sense of accomplishment.

Yeah, great. I love this line:

"Energy balance value for a given energy product alone is not meaningful in evaluating its benefit"

That's a classic liberal logic line: "Don't look at the results, look at our intentions!"

BTW, you know there's a big corn lobby in illinois too?

And the the department of energy, Which funds them, has what kind of bias on ethanol?

You can not claim bias on the part of one researcher and then ignore the bias of another - especially where it is so obvious.

257 posted on 09/26/2005 10:43:08 AM PDT by flashbunny (Do you believe in the Constitution only until it keeps the government from doing what you want?)

No, my screen name has everything to do with liberty, which must incorporate responsibility. Your version is "I can do whatever I want, without paying the consequences." You may want to log into DU and give it a try. There, ain't ad hominem jibes oh so fun?

Responsibity is something you make yourself do.

Having the govenrment force another person to do something is not 'responsibility', it is simply FORCE.

Of course, you don't seem to care about that.

259 posted on 09/26/2005 10:48:06 AM PDT by flashbunny (Do you believe in the Constitution only until it keeps the government from doing what you want?)

I actually wouldn't mind one of those (with the 3 cylinder diesel engine) for commuting.

I was seriously considering buying one in Germany when gas was $5/gal, as it would have bought itself with the difference in fuel costs, and my other car got 29 mpg actual. They're actually kind of fun to drive, and parking is a breeze.

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