As an advocate of the rapid expansion of nuclear capacity who has often been taken to task for the doublespeak claim that "Dick Cheney endorses nuclear power," I am somewhat amused by this window-dressing tidbit from George Bush, who today endorsed the biofuels industry.
Of course, I do understand the need of my anti-nuclear antagonists to use logical fallacies to advance their arguments. They need to do so. They cannot actually produce a person who has been injured by what they call "dangerous nuclear waste," nor can they prove, as much as they might like to do so, that everyone in Kiev, the Ukraine and Belarus will end up being killed by Chernobyl, nor can they show one gigawatt of the solar PV power they so endlessly hype as a solution to global climate change, even though there is no actual significant systems being built on earth. If I were bereft of intellectual self-respect, I might also be inclined to engage in practices like evoking "guilt by association," the logical fallacy that runs like this: 1. Dick Cheney is a beast. 2. Dick Cheney supports nuclear power. 3. Therefore nuclear power is bad.
Of course statement #1 is true. Statement number #2 is widely believed, much like the statement that "The invasion of Iraq is a part of the war on terror." Statement #2 is actually Bushian doublespeak however and is rather like calling the plan to clear cut old growth forests "the healthy forests initiative." Actually the Bush Cheney nuclear policy, unlike the Clinton-Gore nuclear policy, has been anything but kind to nuclear power. It is in the Bush era we often hear of "going 'nuclear', and evocations of "nuclear terrorism," and Saddam Hussein's "nuclear threat," and of course, that precious bit in the UN where the internationally known liar and fraud Colin Powell prattled on about the Iraqi uranium purchases in defiance of even the most obvious reality, egged on by the official State media. And then of course, there's that extra special anti-nuclear appeal, the claim that global warming is not real or that it can be easily managed by blithe appeals to specious tripe like "the hydrogen economy."
(However even if both 1 and 2 were true, #3 would not necessarily follow from them. For instance, it is true that Adolf Hitler liked dogs, but it does not follow that dogs are therefore uniformly bad animals. This is the essence of this particular logical fallacy "Guilt by Association."
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/guiltbya.html)
Contrast the Bush nuclear policy if you will, with the Clinton Gore policy which called for the destruction of weapons grade plutonium in CANDU reactors and US pressurized reactors, which proposed funding the thorium "radkowsky" PWR program now underway in Russia, a critical step to the development of extraordinarily safe and proliferation resistant thermal breeding capacity. Also, some failings aside, Clinton-Gore led the world in bringing to the forefront a discussion of global climate change. In fact the Clinton-Gore program, which included enthusiastic support for the non-proliferation treaty, embracing the meme of "beating swords into plowshares," and the use of weapons material
I will not engage in the fallacy of "guilt by association" in addressing Mr. Bush's new biofuels "initiative." First of all, I know Bush is lying, simply because there is no experience of him telling the truth. He will do nothing for biological fuels or any other energy sources beyond fossil fuels. Also, this is a chance for him (and the Republicans) to shore up their support in the farm states and of course to reward corporate contributors like ADM.
My own feeling about biofuels is ambivalent. I am suspicious of biofuels derived by distillation and fermentation while I am growing in appreciation for fuels obtained by extraction (that would be biodiesel). One thing is clear, the best carbon fixation catalyst on the planet right now is chlorophyll, and it works by diffusion via driving the equilibrium in the direction of hydrogenated carbon dioxide. This is a very neat trick, and one that is difficult to imagine doing under industrial circumstances without significant energy input. (The energy input for chlorophyll is of course, solar energy.)
I still think that ethanol from corn as a fuel is mostly hype. Despite years and years of endless promotion and subsidies, going back to the Carter years, the industry isn't a very prominent source of energy in most places. I think the environmental risks associated with ethanol, soil depletion, the necessity for huge irrigation demands, heavily mechanized harvesting, oil intensive fertilizers, pesticides, agricultural run-off, etc, outweigh the advantages, especially when, after all this, one has to ferment the corn, dispose of the fines, and then, worst of all, distill the stuff to get the fuel. The highly subsidized ethanol industry in most places would die the minute its subsidy was cut off. (This is not true in Brazil; in Brazil a thriving ethanol industry exists, mostly because of the sugar crop. However, when one considers the environmental costs of Brazilian agriculture, including slash and burning of rain forests, one sees that that the Brazilian agricultural industry should not inspire environmentalists to break their arms with enthusiastic backslapping.)
However, after much skepticism (even bashing) on my part, I have a much higher opinion of biodiesel now that I have been educated by some DUers, including, notably, CPrise, with whom I disagree on many other things. Although the process for the production of biodiesel (transesterification) has some environmental problems (and suffers from being a batch process with significant processing times), and although biodiesel involves pollution when burned (although it is usually not as bad as petroleum diesel), it is true that the only way to have a 100% solar powered car in these times is to burn B100. I have looked into the biodiesel processes in some detail, and have even contemplated entering the business. There are many biodiesel sources that are convenient by-products of existing businesses (including making potato chips) and although some plant oil agribusiness (in particular soybean growing) are environmentally dubious, the fact is that biodiesel is a viable industry and it is available NOW using EXISTING industrial scale equipment. It is certainly one element of a toolbox for confronting the problem of the carbon dioxide waste that now confronts humanity and all other living things. Many improvements in biodiesel processing seem possible. (I regularly post here accounts of the latest scientific research on this type of fuel.)
For my money though, the most attractive use for biological materials is as a feedstock for the manufacture of water gas (hydrogen CO mixtures). Much work is now underway in civilized countries (that would not include the United States) on this subject, and I believe that these high temperature processing schemes, many of which are already well understood and viable at the right price, offer considerable promise.
And now for some Bush doublespeak:
"...Bush flew here, about 30 miles from Richmond, to visit a production facility for biodiesel, an alternative fuel made from soybeans that is cleaner-burning and American-made, but carries a higher price tag that regular diesel fuel. It is often blended with conventional transportation fuels as an extender.
Before his speech, the president got a demonstration of how biodiesel is made -- and how cleanly it burns in an engine. Bush was given a white handkerchief that had been held on an exhaust pipe of a revved-up 18-wheeler, and deemed it clean enough to hold up to his nose.
"Biodiesel is one of our nation's most promising alternative fuel sources and by developing biodiesel you're making this country less dependent on foreign sources of oil," he said..."
Yeah right, George.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/16/bush.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest
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