Recently evidence has surfaced that the Bush administration, in particular Dick Cheney, pressured the EPA into lying about the extent of the harm low level ozone causes the environment, human health, and how it affects global warming. California made a similar request to the EPA as Perry that would allow them to require stricter air quality rules than federal standards. It’s reported they were turned down for the same reason, because the President wants to preserve a legacy of weaning us off foreign oil with ethanol even as ethanol contributes greatly to low level ozone formation.

If Perry had attacked the EPA from the perspective that California did in the wake of recent evidence that the administration tampered with the EPA’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act, it would have compounded the political pressure already on the administration for having chosen to pollute our nation’s air, make us sick, and cause our climate to change all because Bush is more interested in his personal legacy than our future. But if Perry had gone this route, the state of Texas would be opening up its own can of worms to debate over regulating low level ozone causing pollutants there coming from their refineries.

Really the more obvious direction for him to have gone was to use his own Department of Energy and EPA to run tests on miles per gallon lost when ethanol is added to gasoline. The EPA claims it’s 3 percent but reports from consumers puts the number higher at around 10 to 30 percent. We already know the EPA is predisposed to lie for the administration to protect ethanol as the Presidents favorite horse in the energy race so who are we to believe when the American people say they’re getting much less mileage than  the EPA claims, so much so that it negates the contribution that ethanol added to gasoline at 10 percent is supposed to offer.

Let’s make sure you understand what I am saying. If a vehicle loses 10 % or more mileage from adding 10 % ethanol to gasoline, then it would be better for the energy consumed to have not added the ethanol at all. That would have been be an indisputable argument for why we shouldn’t be wasting our grain resources to produce ethanol that could be feeding farm stocks. Then Perry could have gotten rid of ethanol altogether and still allowed the oil companies to pollute his state with their refineries.

But even with all that bad news about ethanol, getting rid of it would have been the wrong way to go. Something most Americans don’t seem to know is that ethanol is an oxygenate. It’s supposed to contribute to better quality air but it actually makes it worse. It gets rid of smog from diesel and coal burning because its emissions acetaldehyde which are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) mix with smog to dissolve it so it can’t be seen. But the resulting low level ozone is worse than the smog for human health, plants and wild animals, as well as directly effecting weather patterns to cause drought and flooding in the regions it’s used.

This is why the request by Governor Perry went to the EPA instead of the Energy Department, because ethanol was not designed as a fuel to make us less dependent on foreign oil, it was designed purposely to lessen mileage to create emission that would get rid of smog at a time when gasoline was cheap and plentiful. When the state of California first tried to get rid of it in 2006 when it replaced another oxygenate called MTBE that polluted groundwater nationwide, the request was turned down even though they proved that it was actually bad for air quality. That was when Bush decided that he was going to use the Clean Air Act as a mechanism to introduce ethanol as a way to relieve our dependence on foreign oil.

But what no one questioned was the fact that it causes such a loss of mileage that it costs us more dependence on imported gasoline while very little follow up attention has been given to how dangerous its emissions are. So even in the circles of the political leaders who are debating this issue, there is very little awareness of what the truth about ethanol is and that there is another way to refine it so that it doesn’t cause the problems that it does while having less of an impact on corn prices. The ethanol we use now is anhydrous ethanol, which is an oxygenate. It has to be distilled three times to get the water content out of it so it can be added to gasoline.

Hydrous ethanol is what comes from distilling corn mash one time to make moonshine. It can be run directly in engines fitted with special flex fuel sensors or after market converters without a loss of mileage nor pollution problems while there is far less damage to the engines than with anhydrous ethanol. Anhydrous ethanol boosts octane in gasoline beyond what most engines are designed to use, which among other problems, causes them to run hotter increasing emissions of nitrous oxide (Nox) which is 300 times more potent a greenhouse has than carbon dioxide (CO2).

So 100% hydrous ethanol would actually give us some power for all the resources we invest in producing it but there’s a lot of problems with adding it to our existing fleets of vehicles without engine modifications while it can’t be added to gasoline because of the water content, until recently. New discoveries in Europe and China have lead to finding ways to reformulate hydrous ethanol so it can be added to gasoline without losing mileage, causing pollution problems, or harming engines. In fact the gasoline it’s added to can be transported through existing pipelines unlike anhydrous ethanol which has to be trucked to fuel depots to be added as it heads out to filling stations which is a cumbersome and expensive logistics nightmare we’re struggling with now to meet the EPA’s requirements.

So heading in the direction of hydrous ethanol would solve all the problems associated with ethanol even as it’s being made from corn because of the higher yields of fuel come from not having to remove the water content. This would also save money and energy in producing it while freeing up distilleries to produce more of it that are currently processing it three times instead of once. Anhydrous ethanol is the real problem with ethanol but no one in the ethanol business wants to talk about it, just like no one in the big oil state of Texas wants to talk about adding Viscon to gasoline and diesel fuel to reduce emissions and increase mileage.

Before ethanol, there was MTBE. That was the brainchild of Ken Lay, Phil Gramm, and the first George Bush president. When the dream of oxygenates was born as a way to dissolve smog to stop consumers from complaining about it, the Midwest and Texas battled over who got to provide their oxygenate. Texas won. But there was another additive on the table that everyone turned their noses up at, polyisobutylene (PIB) which is a polymer that’s added to just about everything we use, even bubble gum.

It was discovered that it increased mileage 20 percent along with lessening emissions by 70% because it turns the pollution into energy while it’s still in the engine. It was patented and considered to be mandated by the EPA to be added to gasoline. But since it’s a product of refining crude oil just like gasoline, the oil companies refused to agree to buy something to add to gasoline that they could simply refine as a component of gasoline. So MTBE was chosen as the additive of choice and PIB was forgotten about, but not by the state of Texas.

The company that originally held the patent on PIB as a fossil fuel additive was GTAtech in Virginia. After years of soft selling their product not wanting to awaken their niche market to the fact that oil companies can simply refine fuel with the same properties, which would make their product obsolete because adding any more than the exact amount neutralizes it positive effects, they opened a new office in California under the name of Viscon. They’re currently selling it to the state of Texas to bring municipality air quality standards into compliance with federal regulations while consulting to them on how to refine diesel fuel to meet the same fuel quality standards as adding Viscon to it produces.

So the truth is, there are solutions to all our biggest problems, energy prices and environmental fears of global warming as well as the effects pollution has on our health. In fact, the solutions are cheaper than the problems they’re creating pretending to solve them now, unless you’re invested in making money from the status quo, which a few people are, the ones who have our leaders by the purse strings.

Slowly but surely the truth will resolve what ails us. And as surely as the sun rises and sets every day, our leaders will find new ways to make mistakes. I suppose the reason is because if there is a simple way to get something done right, then we don’t need a political machine to support it. Perhaps when things get too quiet in Washington and our state capitols, much like in Hollywood where if all is well, we can count on one of them will do something really stupid to get us all looking at them again.

It’s true that if our leaders did everything right, we wouldn’t pay them much mind. We would just expect them to go to work and give us the best they can like we do. But politics is supposed to be glamorous and our leaders are just like the rest of the leaders everywhere else in the world, like with little children, if they can’t get attention being good, they will get it being bad.

So I guess if we want better results from them, we need to take some parenting skill classes to become citizens who are better able to manage our leaders so they don’t make so many mistakes. Kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the word leadership but that is they way it is these days.

I believe the problem is in politics being surrounded by wealth. Rich people traditionally have been expected to maintain low profiles and not draw attention to the money they have made on the backs of working people. But political public life has always been deemed respectable for them because it can lend to supporting the industries their families make money from. However the entertainment business is frowned upon. So spirited young minds who come from our elite classes who want the eyes of the world to shine on them often get off the train in Washington rather than Hollywood, young wide eyed wannabe stars and starlets who just want the world to love them for who they are. But the pimps waiting at the bus station come in limousines showering the nightlife of Washington DC at their feet where everyone appears to be out to save the world so signing a deal with the devil to make air quality better or lessen our dependence of foreign oil seems like the perfect way to get the kind of validation these poor rich saps have been seeking since childhood.

Now it’s up to us to let our economy and environment sink to an irrecoverable state to uphold the daydreams and delusions of the children we elect as our leaders because the truth about the mistakes they make everyday is too much for them to bare. That sounds pretty ridiculous doesn’t it. Yeah, to me too.
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Do we really have to wait until one of them wants attention bad enough to take it from the rest of them?  That’s what it’s all about, them covering for each other’s lies because the truth would take attention away from all of them. I think they are so lost in their abstract perception of reality that they would be insulted by the notion that what they are doing is criminal. But then they are who we hired to persecute themselves so they’re never likely to be shown what the meaning of crime is in a language they would never forget.

Maybe Paris Hilton has gotten it right. She’s rich and got off the bus in Hollywood. But now she’s been dragged into the Presidential race as a candidate by McCain who is rich and is calling Obama who is from the other side of the tracks a Hollywood celebrity. I think they’re all dancing with a possible solution to our ills in the backs of their minds, opening up Hollywood to blue bloods to give them a place to go for attention instead of coming to Washington. Maybe we need to reopen Lorton prison just outside of Washington to remind them of what happens to people who make mistakes, even rich people. But they would only fill it back up with DC residents because in Washington, everything is a federal crime, even parking tickets.

I don’t know what it will take to get it right but I’m not rich and I would just like to have fuel that doesn’t pollute and actually burns in my engine to give me all the mileage that it can, especially if I have to pay 4 dollar a gallon for it. Is that too much to ask from people who already have everything, except this confounded attention they are so addicted to. I don’t think it is. I think they should all get together and lie to us telling us that they just discovered news ways to refine gasoline and ethanol that will fix all the worlds problems. And if they will do that, I will promise to make them all my heroes and never point out how we had to come this close to the bottom of the barrel to get them to do something right.

So what do you think, would you walk that route with me, give them a free pass on being celebrity saviors of the world if they will start to do things right. I think it’s fair trade given that we seem to have no other options. In fact we don’t have this one either because they will never do it. Being rich and powerful means being able to do things wrong and get away with it. But it is a nice thought about something the world has never truly had, leadership that doesn’t come with a lot of baggage, that just does its job correctly and leaves fiction to be part of the entertainment industry.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.

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