Let The Whining Begin - Farm-State Pols Pitch A Fit At EPA Use Of Science - Grist

[hatrack]

EDIT

As I reported last week—echoed by Time’s Michael Grunwald—the agency made extremely generous assumptions regarding the GHG footprint of crop-based fuel. What’s more, the proposed rules actually enshrine the titanic biofuel mandates farm-state pols worked into the 2007 Energy Act. Sure, corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel emerge as net GHG emitters under the proposed EPA rules; but those “first-generation” fuels are grandfathered in under the Act. And cellulosic ethanol gets a big thumbs up (even though it remains, as ever, five years away from commercial viability). In other words, the proposed rules have no direct effect on the biofuel industry. So why don’t these guys shut up? Why for example, is Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) trading pointed letters with the EPA and denouncing the agency’s use of science? Why did House ag committee chair Collin Peterson (D.-Minn.) just introduce legislation that would prevent the EPA from applying life-cycle GHG analysis to biofuels? Why go to such lengths to reverse rules that don’t harm the industry you’re trying to protect?

In a remarkable rant delivered at a House committee meeting this week (MP3 here via FarmPolicy blog), Peterson delivered some insight into his rage.

First, he vented a bit. “I’ve had it,” he said with an air of angry resignation. “You are going to kill off the biofuel industry before it gets started.” At points, he aired Nixonian suspicions of ethanol critics’ motivations: “I don’t trust anybody anymore! ... Why are we being picked on? Because some people don’t like corn ethanol.” Eventually, he got to the point: “What I’m upset about is not so much what’s going on today, but the interaction of this with the climate change bill.” He added that discussion of the GHG performance of biofuels should essentially be taboo: “You’re putting us in a position to talk about something that we shouldn’t be even be talking about.”

EDIT

I think the deal is this: Peterson is worried that if a cap-and-trade scheme comes into place, and the EPA is on record calculating that corn ethanol is a net emitter of greenhouse gas, then down the road the industry could be penalized or even shut down. That’s why farm-state pols are shrieking like banshees about proposed EPA rules that don’t have any immediate effect on the industry they’ve spent years supporting. One more thing: This fight is absolutely about keeping the government goodies coming to com ethanol. Just last year, Peterson himself bluntly expressed doubt about whether cellulosic “would ever get off the ground,” and declared it at least 10 years away from viability. No one can deny that Peterson is a good soldier for agribiz interests, from whom he soaks up prodigious amounts of campaign cash.

EDIT

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-05-15-pols-rage-EPA/

[pscot]

1. Eeeuw, Science!

Get that ugly thing away from me.

[JohnWxy]

2. That's what the Calif Air Resource Board said. Link to letter signed by over 100 PHDs urging

CARB to base any decisions on scientific research.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=194946

[JohnWxy]

3. Criticism of Serachinger et al ILUC "study" - which influenced CARB

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x195713


A report published this week severely criticizes a study published by Science magazine last year that opened the ongoing debate over indirect land use changes (ILUC) resulting from biofuels production. John A. Mathews and Hao Tan, of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, take issue with the methodology and assumptions used by Tim Searchinger and others in the study, Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases through Emissions from Land Use Change, which was published in February, 2008.
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The final concluding paragraph is most damning, not only of the Searchinger "study" but also of the journal Science for even publishing it:

"Indeed if you wished to put US ethanol production in the worst possible light, assuming the worst possible set of production conditions guaranteed to give the worst possible ILUC effects, then the assumptions chosen would not be far from those actually presented (without argument or discussion of alternatives) in the Searchinger et al. paper. This, together with the fact that the paper is not replicable, since the models and parameters used are not accessible, places a question mark over the refereeing procedures used for this paper by the journal Science. A paper that seeks to place a procedure in the worst possible light, and refrains from allowing others to check its results, is perhaps better described as ideology than as science."
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Actually, I think the better term here is not "ideology" but ..religion. This product was certainly not science it was just a relentless repitition of dogma. Anybody who publishes a "study" but doesn't make the models they used available so that their results cannot be tested by legitimate researchers is not engaging in scientific research but is merely promulgating propaganda.__JW

[JohnWxy]

4. Searchnger "study" overstated land needed for substitution by 100% -

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x195719



(uh-oh, the old cheating on accounting for the Co-Products trick:


AEA report to Renewable Fuels Agency
(Renewable Fuels Agency - Department for Transport, UK)

A couple excerpts (emphases all my own.__JW)

~~

Feedstock conversion and displacement

6. There have been no criticisms of ethanol conversion rates assumed by
Searchinger, however, Searchinger’s ‘pound for pound’ substitution of feed corn for
corn diverted to bioethanol appears to be an overestimate (ES15, Wang & Haq,
ECCM). It should be recognised that the co-product, dried distillers grains
(DDGS), has ~30% protein and ~5% fibre. If heat damage is avoided, maximum
inclusion in diets can be ~400 g/kg for cattle, 200 g/kg for sheep, and 100-250 g/kg
for non-ruminants (Cottrill et al. 2007). Thus the displacement value of DDGS is at
least 23% higher than that assumed by Searchinger et al. (Klopfenstein et al.
2008).

~~
~~


"A fundamental problem raised by several respondents arises from Searchinger’s
inaccurate assumption (see 6 above) of ‘pound for pound’ displacement of corn.
Allowing for the higher protein of DDGS, and also for land to replace the oil
foregone (we assumed oil palm); we calculate that Searchinger’s assumption about
DOUBLES the land required to substitute for US corn-ethanol."
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Just a little bit of error there.__JW

[kristopher]

5. So I guess the choice in arguments boils down to

1) We can accept the judgment of the INDEPENDENT scientists who wrote the land use analysis, the INDEPENDENT reviewers of the articles for publication, the INDEPENDENT UC scientists who worked for the Cal Resource Board, the INDEPENDENT Cal Resource Board staff scientists and associated INDEPENDENT scientists from state agencies that contributed to the CA regs, AND all the INDEPENDENT involved scientists at the federal level working to craft EPA policy.

2) We can accept the critique of the above parties by agribusiness, the ethanol industry and its standard standby cadre of scientists that they trot out every time there is a threat to their hoggish feeding on tax dollars. A feeding which costs us not only in the direct tax dollars, but also in desperately needed government services that could otherwise be purchased with those tax dollars.