The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 415
you're referring to David Pimentel and Tad Patzek's studies (whether you know
it or not) - Bryce doesn't cite any other work.
If Robert Bryce is the kahuna of knuckleheads, Pimentel and Bryce are little
better than village idiots. Almost as soon as their study was completed and
published in 2006, their findings were rendered incorrect and irrelevant. The
counter studies were conducted far and wide by different individuals and institutions, including Patzek's home facility, UC Berkeley. If you had taken the time
to read my 60+ page report you would have learned the following:
The Pimentel-Patzek studies were hatchet jobs because they calculated in extraneous materials, they under-estimated crop yields, they over-estimated other
aspects of farming (either intentionally or because the information they used
was out-of-date), they exaggerated possible worst case agricultural scenarios,
they created deceptive algorithms to calculate and compare statistics, and they
purposely ignored certain other aspects of oil refining and gasoline production
that make gasoline EROEI horribly negative.
Perhaps the most shocking item that Pimentel and Patzek left out in their gasoline EROEI calculations are the hundreds of thousands of American military
personnel (past and future) who were killed or wounded to protect and defend
the oil industry’s status quo. I’m sure they never calculated in the cost of continually treating those service personnel who sustained long-term and life-long
injuries. Then there are the accidental deaths of oil industry workers (past and
future). Then there’s the destruction of beaches, and the loss of employment
for those non-oil industry workers who live near the oil disasters, and then – as
in the case of the Gulf of Mexico fiasco – the destruction of millions(?) of birds
and fish.
Then you’d have to figure in all the energy expended in making every bullet,
every gun, every tank and cannon and jet and ship and pair of shoes worn by
our men and women who are being used to protect the oil industry. These are
all a part of the cost of doing business oil-style.
Okay, okay, I’m not playing fair; I’m using tragically true but typically side-line
aspects of oil EROEI. Of course, I don’t know how you can overlook the deaths
of thousands of Americans, but the oil industry does. I should be comparing
apples with apples, even though Pimentel and Patzek used bad information and
irrelevant factors, such as farming equipment that is un-necessary.
See, one of the things that Pimentel and Patzek did was to try and reinvent the
wheel, so to speak, even though the wheel has been with us for thousands of
