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The Energy Spectator
Bio-Fools
President Obama drew rave reviews for his unorthodox selection of Dr. Sanjay Gupta as the nation's surgeon general. Not only is Dr. Gupta an accomplished neurosurgeon, but as CNN's in-house doc he has also proven himself a bona fide celebrity. People magazine tagged him as one of 2003's "Sexiest Men Alive," and the swooning that met Obama's announcement suggests the Love Doctor can still raise pulse rates. In a culture that prizes the newsgathering skills of Page Six and TMZ when the New York Times must mortgage its Manhattan headquarters, Dr. Gupta stands out as a splendidly obvious choice. It's just a matter of time before Associate Justices Judith Sheindlin and Joe Brown take their rightful places on the high court.
As good as the Gupta pick was, however, President Obama missed an opportunity to truly tap into the nation's cultural zeitgeist when he passed over Craig Alan Bittner, M.D., to be the nation's top medicine man. The founder and chief practitioner of Beverly Hills LipoSculpture™, Dr. Bittner successfully melded our national body-image consciousness with the eco-faddishness that dominates the campaign to wean Americans off oil.
In Southern California, a land where plastic surgeons are as common a feature as palm trees, Dr. Bittner stood out from his industry brethren by his heartfelt commitment to the environment. It turns out that Dr. Bittner was turning the fat he removed from his patients into biodiesel and using it to fuel his and his girlfriend's SUVs.
"The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel—and I have more fat than I can use," explained Bittner on his website (since removed). "Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly but they get to take part in saving the Earth." A win-win by any definition.
Not that the good green doctor could avoid controversy. According to several complaints lodged against him, Bittner and his unlicensed assistants often took too much fat from patients' bellies, thighs, and buttocks, allegedly disfiguring them. A benign way to view it is like siphoning gas from a neighbor's car. A more jaundiced description is medical malpractice. Rather than cooperate with investigators and trust his fate to the courts, Bittner decamped in late 2008 to South America, where he is presently on the lam. A Roman Polanski for the tummy-tuck set, Dr. Bittner gives us something profound to think about when it comes to addressing our nation's energy challenges.
AT A TIME WHEN sky-high gasoline prices are still a sharp memory, and politicians of all stripes think we need to end our supposed addiction to oil, alternative energy advocates are casting about for something—anything—to use instead of petroleum products, and much of the focus has turned to biofuels.
Corn and cellulosic-based ethanol are most frequently mentioned, and the federal government is spending a lot of money trying to find economical ways to derive this fuel from corncobs and switchgrass stalks. Whatever its merits, ethanol is unquestionably boring. A far more exciting biofuel candidate, as Dr. Bittner demonstrated, is biodiesel. Animal and vegetable fat contains triglycerides that, with minimal effort, can be turned into diesel. And conventional diesel engines can be converted to run on a variety of biodiesel products. Unsurprisingly, the most enthusiastic biodiesel advocates come from the environmental movement.
As William Tucker notes in his excellent new book, Terrestrial Energy, greens have proposed tapping all kinds of sources—cooking grease, food scraps, crop wastes, anything organic—to promote the promise of biodiesel. Dr. Bittner was merely pushing the envelope of what has been a common practice on the fringes of the green movement. Writes Tucker, "Typically, someone will design a car that runs on some organic waste—turkey droppings, hayseed, coconut oil—and drive it around until it attracts press attention. Then they will announce they have solved the world's energy problems."
It's the ultimate in recycling. Who hasn't seen a local news report about the enterprising driver who has converted the engine in his car to run on cooking grease he takes off the hands of the local fast-food joint? Sure, the car may smell faintly like fries or Chinese food or whatever the grease was used to cook. The upside to that odor is it will usually mask the scent of patchouli.
For those who think turkey droppings or French fry grease are the path to energy independence, a whole industry has sprung up to help patriotic and environmentally minded drivers make the switch.
Massachusetts-based Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems, Inc. is among the leaders in the car conversion field. Greasecar offers a network of about 40 locations nationwide where installers will retrofit your diesel engine to handle biodiesel. The cost ranges from about $2,000–$3,000 for the kit and installation. Whether this was worth the effort last year, when a gallon of diesel fetched nearly five dollars, isn't clear; it would have taken driving a lot of miles to recoup the investment. Now that the price of diesel is half what it was last summer, the halfbaked idea seems to make half as much sense.
Still, it's not just the half-baked crowd that's been showing interest in fueling up on McDonald's discarded fry grease. Switching the old VW bus to run on waste vegetable oil used to be the strict preserve of hippies living off the grid and under the radar. But with the spike in pump prices in recent years, a somewhat more respectable clientele—like celebrated Beverly Hills liposuctionists—has emerged as a potential market for diesel engine conversions.
TAKING THE IDEA mainstream has brought its share of problems, though. The Los Angeles Times profiled a mechanic last year who has converted his fleet of vehicles to be fueled by fryer grease from a local chowder house. Then Sacramento called, not to praise him for his green efforts but to bust him. Apparently he had failed to get his state "diesel fuel supplier's license" and wasn't paying the required 18-cent per gallon tax on the fuel he burned. Oh, and he faced further trouble from California's Meat and Poultry Inspection Branch for removing grease without a license. Then there was his missing permit from the Air Resources Board allowing him to burn fat, not to mention that he didn't have liability insurance to cover potential spills.
Don't just pity the poor mechanic. The state's green governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, faced a similar conundrum. Trying to set a good eco-example, the Governator has made a point of powering his Hummer on cooking oil from Costco. He wasn't paying taxes or complying with the regs either. Several states exempt small-time drivers who run on kitchen grease from paying taxes, as well as from needing to jump through the regulatory hoops that were designed to apply to large-haul handlers of fuel or animal by-products. Given California's budget fiasco (the governor has asked Washington for its own bailout), it's unlikely Sacramento will loosen its requirements anytime soon. Despite this hurdle (the largest concentration of biodiesel vehicles are thought to be in California), biodiesel advocates believe they are making significant inroads into the culture at large.
Ironically, the effort to broaden biofuel's image from hippies to a wider segment of the public has employed one of America's best-known long-haired dope smokers as its spokesman. In 2005, country music legend Willie Nelson lent his name and image to a product called BioWillie diesel fuel. The Redheaded Stranger has long toured in a biodiesel-powered bus, so his sponsorship seemed natural.
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Rebecca| 3.2.09 @ 8:08AM
Don't a lot of these endeavors remind you of high school science fair projects?
Curly Smith| 3.2.09 @ 8:48AM
Don't be so critical of biodiesel, 0.004% here, 0.004% there and pretty soon you've got 0.01%! Include the BioBelly and BioTocks and we're easily up to 0.02%!! Plus, BioBelly and BioTocks are both renewable resources!!!
stmichrick| 3.2.09 @ 8:56AM
I think the Michael Moores and Rosie O' Donells everywhere should visit their bariatric surgeons and mitigate this energy crisis.
jerryofva| 3.2.09 @ 9:02AM
I know this article is tongue in cheek and it gave few laughs but on a more serious note there are a lot drawback to using biodiesel The Minneapolis school district had some serious problems this winter as their biodiesel powered school buses ground to a stop as their fuel turned to Crisco.
Neither VW or BB recommend using fuel with a significant amount of biodiesel because the fuel contaminates the oil and will signifcantly shorten engine life. Until a biodiesel fuel that is chemically identical to dino diesel is put on the market bio will remain a fringe market.
Owner of a 2005 VW Jetta TDI
Owyheewine| 3.2.09 @ 9:10AM
Most biodiesel is produced from soybeans.(sound familiar to ethanol?) Commercial blends contain about 5%, and have been associated with more than a few cold weather problems. Engine manufacturers have tested higher concentrations, and found more problems including engine part failures, but be aware. This is the camel's nose under the tent. Mandates for inclusion are coming.
cdc| 3.2.09 @ 10:55AM
A lot of these ideas won't work out and most of them are crazy. But some might be just crazy enough to work. The biggest advances have come from garage tinkerers, from the wright brothers to Wozniak, who were thought to be nutjobs at the time.
Inventors and scientists should be lionized more than CEO's, celebrities and entertainers; but most will get no renumeration or recognition. So be kind these guys are honestly trying to help.
Bud Hammons| 3.2.09 @ 12:22PM
Those who are converting turkey waste or used vegetable oil to fuel are welcome to do that if it suits them - it should be neither discouraged nor encouraged. Some of those folks probably enjoy thinking well of themselves because they can presume some level of environmental piety. Whatever floats their boat ..
However, the engineering and business considerations that stand between boutique energy solutions and true industrial scale energy production are more formidable than the environmental lobby will concede. The only energy solutions known to scale to mass utilization involve fossil fuels or nuclear power, which are considered 'evil'.
There is no free lunch, and the level of civilization is proportional to the amount of energy one can harness.
v/r,
--- Bud
Tyler Durden| 3.2.09 @ 12:57PM
What a waste! Just think of all the soap he could have made!
Pete| 3.2.09 @ 1:03PM
Judge Judy on the Supreme Court? Actually, sounds pretty good to me. How about Dr. Laura as White House Chief of Staff?
SoberHorseThief| 3.2.09 @ 1:18PM
Good piece. I recently edited a book on biofuels by a Ph.D. who, though being a Global Warmenist and all, explained that biofuels are very hard to turn into oil and it takes a hell of a lot of them to run a car.
One error, though: I believe Crazy Vito is from my native Staten Island, not that other, lesser island.
Michael Garjian| 3.2.09 @ 2:12PM
I agree biodiesel is nothing to get excited about, but I am very happy with my Greasecar that uses waste vegetable oils even if diesel fuel dropped to $2.00. But if Mr. Schulz thinks it won't be back to at least $5.00 when the economy comes back, Iran is attacked, or peak oil is confirmed, I think he is in for a rude awakening.
megapotamus| 3.2.09 @ 2:30PM
There is one foundational conceit that makes this claptrap appealing regardless of the efforts involved and that is global warming. And that, of course, is a lie, there is no global warming. It is not that there is warming whose cause is mysterious. No, there is no warming. There is cooling. It is precipitous, natural and quite beyond our ability to alter in either direction. The global warming hoax is a drag on all advancement of all kinds across the world that makes the trillions of entitlement debt the US labors under into little more than a hiccup. Global warming is a lie; it is an attack on modernity, on progress itself. Do not sit still for anyone who babbles on about global warming. Call them out and denounce them as the idiots they are with the simple fact that, no doof, there is NO global warming. There is global cooling. It must be said at every opportunity to your brother in law, your snotty kids and your precious grey-haired mother. Every opportunity.
Marc Jeric| 3.2.09 @ 2:34PM
In the late years of WW2 we used to see Hitler's trucks run on bio-fuels ( their refineries got bombed out by American planes). Also engines run on gas produced by boilers burning old socks and towels. That was desperation times; I remember the French joke during the first oil embargo: "Jean - c'est sur le charoit qu'il falloit mestre the gasogesne!" You see - her husband mounted the boiler on the horse.
Dave Rocket| 3.2.09 @ 5:24PM
Who says you have to limit youreslf to cooking grease? I know of a startup company that converts partially treated sewage to biodiesel. This could significantly increase the volume of raw material to convert. (Heck, make a plant in Washington DC where there is enough bull**** to run the entire economy until the capitalism engine seizes due to socialist incompatibility.)
Lyle Rudensey| 3.2.09 @ 6:10PM
You don't have to do anything to a diesel engine to "convert it to use biodiesel." Conversions can be done to allow a diesel to use SVO (straight veg oil), but bioidiesel can go right in the fuel tank without modifying anything.
Chris Long| 3.2.09 @ 7:37PM
Who ever said any of the causes that Liberals champion have to make sense -- economic, political or otherwise ?
They just want us to do what they say and live the way they tell us...and be quiet about it. Actually, the most practical fuel is hydrogen, which Iceland already has converted cars for and built solar and geothermal-powered fuel stations.
Hydrogen is unlimited and and reasonably cheap. But what we hear from the Liberals is ONLY of the fuels that have significant problems: alcohol, waste oil etc.
Like nuclear for base load electric generation, the most practical source is not even mentioned hardly in the MSM. We hear of wind farms, solar panels and such nonsense.
Again, live as they want you to and be assured of the superior wisdom of the Liberals.
Paul Nelson| 3.2.09 @ 10:00PM
Chriss Long,
Hydrogen as a fuel is only practical if you do not mind using a gas as a fuel that cannot be stored in mild steel tanks, that requires either high pressure or low temperature to liquify, a tank which would weigh approximately as much as the rest of the car. Hydrogen is a fuel that has to be manufactured by putting in more energy from some other source than is contained in the hydrogen.
Pingback| 3.5.09 @ 7:01PM
Green Blogs » Blog Archive » Rationale and Support for Biodiesel Growing links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Chris Long| 3.13.09 @ 3:36AM
@Paul Nelson
Uh, the Icelanders seem to have their hydrogen fuel infrastructure and autos working very well. Perhaps you have disproved their use of the fuel...
Bob Moffitt| 3.18.09 @ 9:19AM
jerryofva, your information is wrong. It was Bloomington, MN, school system, the problems was issolated to just a few older buses of a certain design, and the petroleum portion (98%) of the fuel was found to be the problem -- not the 2% soy biodiesel blended into every gallon of diesel sold in Minnesota.
Trackback| 5.4.09 @ 1:03AM
Handcrafted Model Ship, on Handcrafted Model Ship, links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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