Public Comment

The UC infatuation with the BP con game grant goes on despite many comments, letters and op-ed articles in papers and magazines pointing out that fermentation of biofuel crops releases much carbon dioxide needlessly before getting the fuel and leaves much unused biomass in cellulose and lignin. This money would be much better used to find how to get solar energy combined with a catalyst to split water getting hydrogen, the clean fuel. Also the money could be doing much more in maximizing a pyrolysis process to make charcoal from our already harvested biofuel crops, our organic wastes. Their disposal costs many billions a year, while allowing, especially in composting, the recycling of trapped carbon back to the environment as carbon dioxide. Now in Naples, Italy, a major problem of no more disposal space for wastes is making a major ugly mess, which other cities may soon be snarled in, if we do not recognize those wastes can be utilized to get energy and some carbon removal. 

The pyrolysis process such as used by Kingsford can be set up to distill out a fuel mixture for refining as well as charcoal, which comes out very hot to pass through a heat exchanger to generate steam for power as it cools. The charcoal would buried in old mines doing what nature did eons ago with dead biota getting converted to the coal that we now burn, or the charcoal could be spread as a soil amendment. Besides the carbon dioxide problem of burning coal, its mining costs many lives a year and leaves environmental messes of mining wastes covering hundreds of square miles. Some of the charcoal and fuel might be burned to heat the pyrolysis, but research efforts should be put into getting hydrogen or solar furnace heat to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Another way to heat the process could be electricity generated by windmills, such as the new setup reported recently as being put into operation in the Rio Vista area. If a major expansion of windmill power can be achieved, we would be converting to useable power some of the energy overload causing nastier, windier weather created by our fossil fuelishness. With a lot of extra windmill electricity available, it could be used to generate hydrogen by electrolysis of water. 

If we are going to beat global warming, we have to 1) get hydrogen while forgetting bioethanol, we have to 2) get fuel and energy from our out-of-control organic waste mess and we have to 3) get up windmills to collect the free clean energy from the increasing winds caused by our fossil fuelishness. I urge your readers to get these gets going with their elected officials. Tell Gov. Schwarzenegger that the emission programs and other “actions” the state is proposing still keep some of that gas adding to its already poisoning excess to aggravate the symptoms of global warming. To relieve those symptoms and to cut the size of our carbon footprint. We have to actually remove carbon from circulation, which is what the pyrolysis process can do. The BP grant has no concern for such removal. 

Fremont resident James A. Singmaster is a retired environmental toxicologist.