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A lifelong conservative questions his hatred of hippies

Via Glenn Greenwald, conservative and National Review contributor Rod Dreher's commentary on NPR is a must-hear (oral essay) on his disillusionment under the Bush Administration. Regarding Dave's hippie-bashing bashing lately, this part is especially relevant:

It’s all about oil, baby

DR: You say pretty openly that Iraq and a good chunk of our defense spending — about half total federal expenditures now — is about oil. Not very long ago that was written off as a hysterical lefty conspiracy theory. TT: Certainly with respect to Iraq, as the excuses get peeled away one by one, […]

It’s … medium

The big news today is that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has joined with McCain and Lieberman to re-introduce a bill to cap carbon dioxide emissions. The targets aren’t all that ambitious — it would slow the rise of CO2 emissions, cutting them two-thirds from present levels by 2050 — but the bill is nonetheless expected […]

With new energy-focused bills, Stevens delights enviros and Obama disappoints

Among the barrage of energy-related bills already unleashed by the 110th Congress, one of the most progressive comes not from the newly empowered Democrats, but from Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, a zealous proponent of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Just as peculiar, one of the bills that most rankles environmentalists comes […]

Readers write in about coal’s villainy, eating locally, sexy eco-geeks, and more

  Re: One Nation, Under Terry Dear Editor: I read Terry Tamminen’s book, and overall I think it’s a very credible effort by a very good guy. He does a bang-up job laying out the case against petroleum. But he’s guilty of a serious (possibly fatal, given his position and influence) error in saying that […]

The meme all the kids are talking about!

I got to thinking (again) about an elevator pitch for greens — the "What Greens Want" that can be explained in a short elevator ride. Ideally the message would be simple enough to communicate, but meaty enough to imply some real choices and policies. The second part of my Tom Paine piece is an attempt […]

You listen

Our food/ag writer and all-around smart guy Tom Philpott recently did a short interview with PBS’s Now. I think it shows an almost mustachian ability to distill large, complex messages down to their memorable essence. For instance: Frankly, our addiction to cheap and easy energy explains why so much of the current political discussion of […]

Everybody loves lists!

Way back at the beginning of the year (is that already two weeks ago?), I meant to do a bit of a round-up of year-end lists appearing on other sites. The moment has probably passed, but what the hell, I still have all the tabs open in Firefox, so for nostalgia if nothing else, here […]

Wonder Twin powers, activate!

Interesting. I interviewed famed biologist E.O. Wilson, who talked about the need for scientists to reach out to religious leaders, to ask them to lend their moral credibility to the fight against biodiversity loss and other environmental ills. And I interviewed evangelical mega-church pastor Joel Hunter, who talked about the need to reach out to […]

Bait and switchgrass, again

I've only just seen this study by Tiffany A. Groode, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, and not looked at it in detail, but several statements in the press release stand out:

Now a new MIT analysis shows that the energy balance is actually so close that several factors can easily change whether ethanol ends up a net energy winner or loser.

Regardless of the energy balance, replacing gasoline with corn-based ethanol does significantly reduce oil consumption because the biomass production and conversion process requires little petroleum.

Groode incorporated into her analysis the uncertainty associated with the values of many of the inputs. Using a methodology developed by a recent MIT graduate, she used not just one value for each key variable (such as the amount of fertilizer required), but rather a range of values along with the probability that each of those values would occur.

Based on her "most likely" outcomes, she concluded that traveling a kilometer using ethanol does indeed consume more energy than traveling the same distance using gasoline.

So why does the press release proclaim, "MIT ethanol analysis confirms benefits of biofuels"? Because cornstarch ethanol forms part of a continuum, you see: