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.
Yeah, well, nothing like loving a fine machine. I had a similar experience with a BMW tail-gater, and I was driving a 285 HP Z-28, 135 mph in a 70 zone and he could not get around me, but it was close. I gotta tell ya, it did get the adrenaline flowing. I too am too old too, but I am still young enough to not let that stop me. Now I ride motorcycles, but no crotch rockets, except for dirtbikes on the farm.
I did no such thing. I made another example using the same idea of "I can do what I want." And I did not say you espoused that position, either. It is meant to illustrate that the "freedom from responsibility" position infringes on other peoples' freedoms.
He wants scientists to devise a common framework for evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of each.
The vast majority of people do not need an SUV--they buy them because they are in style.
You use more gas, you pay more gas taxes.
But the existing taxes per gallon of fuel do not capture all of the economic costs of securing that fuel. Once that happens, then you're point would be true, and the discussion would be over from my end.
And you want to cloak yourself as a person who cares about freedom, yet you don't know the difference between 'individual responsiblity' and 'government coercion'.
Again, you assume facts not in evidence - I fully understand the difference, which is why I am not arguing for increasing CAFE standards. I am arguing to push the true cost of individual choices onto those individuals making the choices, rather than forcing everyone else to pay for it. Is this not a conservative position? Is this not liberty, meaning I am free not to pay for the consequences of other peoples' behaviors?
No, it is not liberty, nor is it conservative. It is the essence of socialistic and nanny state behavior.
But you're too wrapped up in your other biases to see it.
OK, so you want to force me to pay for other peoples' behavior, and I am the socialist nanny-stater? And you're trying to paint me as the troll?
The only practical way to save gas is cutting speed. Cutting the speed from 70 to 55 saves 33 to 35% in fuel. If the US Government is sincere about saving fuel they will cut the speed limit on all Interstate Highways to 55 MPH. If the State Governments are sincere they will cut the speed on all highways to 55 in their state. This will never happen. Political money will talk. The oil industry will fight it, the trucking industry will fight it and many people who just can't slow down. So it is up to each individual. If you want to save fuel slow down. Otherwise pay up at the pump.
well, you're doing the painting yourself.
Want people to pay the 'real costs' of energy consumption, as you call it?
Then get govenrment out of energy policy. Leave it to the free market.
That is the conservative and free market position. But not yours.
Instead, you argue for more government control and call it 'liberty'. It is not. Not by any definition of the word except "I want the government to have liberty to take away money from people who aren't behaving as I want".
See my tag line. It seems to apply to you. Freedom only until it gets in your way.
Only if you can get away with the logic assumption of "everything else remaining constant", which is not true here. If you cut the cost per mile of travel, people will travel more miles.
He also just rips into the Sierra Club types and all the "Alternative Energy" enthusiasts that continually call in to try to challenge him.
There are a miniscule few commonsense people that have survived UC Berkely... including a former County Supervisor/Commissioner from a neighboring County. His daddy composed the fabulous Proposition 75 that Arnold S. finally gathered up the intestinal fortitude to endorse last week, very belatedlys!!!
I'm sure happy to hear the damage to your area is not quite as bad as expected, if the reports we're hearing are correct. Can you confirm that?
For your position to come to fruition, the US will have to completely pull out of the Mid-East and let whoever takes over do so, and then deal with them. Then one large externality will have been eliminated from the market. Of course, who knows what that will actually mean to the price of oil, which is why that position is REALLY DANGEROUS. And when there is that kind of danger, I'd rather fully allocate ALL COSTS and let the MARKET do it's work. That is a conservative, free-market approach.
The US is not short of Natural Gas, just production and delivery of the gas they have. Of course I'm biased, because I hope to work on the Alaskan Natural Gas Pipeline.
Couldn't they use something other than corn? Something more along the lines of a weed that could be sewn and ignored?
Production of ethanol is expensive. "Denaturing it", making it poisonous to all living things, is simply to make it poisonous so we won't drink it, aka vodka, without paying the dollars of tax on every pint, or glass. This poisonous alcohol shall be spilled and it mixes with ground water forever, por until more million$ are spent on our drinking water treatments. Remember MtBE ruining some California's aquifers for generations, costing tens of million$ to "remediate"? Most aquifers have been poisoned by that mandated fuel additive. A foolish mistake ordered upon us and our children. Per gallon, ethanol has a fraction of the energy of gas, therefore less gas mileage per tankful. Ethanol also make relatively more toxic byproducts than pure gas, aka smog; look it up, my research is boxed awaiting a move. Car engines must be detuned to burn this blended fuel; some years ago, my car nearly quit running after filling up in Nebraska, sputtering into Oklahoma.
You're suggesting that ethanol is environmentally deleterious because it contains a small percentage of gasoline, but that gasoline is environmentally benign?
To be fair, I don't think anyone would say that Alaskans fit into the category of "frivolous SUV drivers." :)
You're right. You did no such thing.
My apologies.
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