But What Do I Know?

Al Gore and the sometimes rabid environmentalist movement might have you think differently, and it might well be that their scare tactics are appropriate in the face of some evidence that global warming is screwing up our tiny planet.

The last bit of that sentence actually pushes me toward a discussion about the extreme dangers of human pride and the odd notion that we’re alone in the universe, but that’s another chat altogether. Best left to a free evening with bright minds and a bottle or two of Armagnac.

Getting back on track, I’m beginning to fear that the whole global warming thing might just be a ‘swindle’, to quote a documentary aired on England’s Channel 4 television network earlier this year. It opened up the idea that the earth’s history is one long story of climate change and that global warming is a natural process, not one caused by man.

In the process, it noted that there was a mini ice age in the17th century and an even warmer period than we’re seeing today way back in medieval times. In both cases, long before we started making carbon dioxide, which is said to be the chief greenhouse gas and the root of global warming.

For that matter, the fact is that we’re not even close to being the biggest cause of carbon dioxide emissions — it’s made in far larger quantities by things like volcanic emissions, animals, bacteria, decaying vegetation and the ocean.

The point is that I’m in doubting gear. This represents a shift, I admit, because about a year ago I started to buy in to enviro-worry and said so on this page. I had nearly hopped on the bandwagon. My old friend Dave Brennan, who used to head Fontaine Fifth Wheel in this country, made me look more carefully at things. He’s a professional sceptic, he knows a ton about all this stuff, and he doesn’t buy any of the David Suzuki shtick for a second. Says the environmental movement is really about money — a self-perpetuating industry of its own.

In any event, since then I’ve scoured the web and read all manner of articles and reports and yet more opinions on the subject. And the more I read, the less sure I become that our ‘crisis’ is painted accurately.

That’s all by way of introduction, because I want to talk about fuels again. This space in our September issue had me writing, and not in an altogether complimentary way, about biofuels (‘Biofuel Follies). In my Product Watch e-newsletter I’ve been doing the same exploration, and in each case I’ve generated quite a lot of reader comment. Not all of it kindly.

To recap, I said that the rush toward biofuel did not seem to be based on uniformly good science and in many cases showed clear evidence of misguided public policy. In the process I also said, with tongue partly in cheek, that farmers and the agribiz conglomerates were about to become the new oil barons. And that raised the ire of several westerners. A few phone chats later, I find I know more about western agriculture — like the fact that a bushel of wheat now brings in more than $6.50, which hasn’t been the case for 30 years, whereas farmers were lucky to get $2.00 a year ago.

The truth is, I’m glad to see farmers — and the truckers who haul their product — making a decent buck for a change. I could hardly think otherwise. Just to set the record straight.

Now, getting back to biofuels, I’ve written a story in our recent November issue (‘Long Live Diesel), that explores the stuff that you’re likely to be pouring into your saddle tanks in years to come.

The original object with this article was to explore the fuels that might power our trucks if and when diesel becomes too scarce or too expensive to be viable. Secondary objects were to pin down just how long diesel is likely to last and to isolate the truth about biofuels amidst an awful lot of hyperbole. As always, I first scoured the available information and collected an enormous digital pile of facts and studies and arguments and opinions and… ,well, BS.

I found supposed expert websites that didn’t agree on the fuel that was first intended to run Rudolf Diesel’s amazing engine peanut oil or powdered coal? I found apparent lies. I found wildly divergent projections about this fuel and that. I also found that biofuel enthusiasts are part of what almost seems to be a religious cult.

They’re downright evangelical.

In short order, my head was spinning. But, editorial trooper that I am, I soldiered on. And do let me know what you think — by way of rlockwood@newcom.ca.