It is usually true that, "Where there's smoke, there's fire," but not everything that someone with all the sophistication of a two year old thinks is smoke, is, in fact, smoke at all. I remember when I was quite young coming across the ancient Greek idea that all things were composed of the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. I fixed that idea in my mind so firmly that I had a lot of trouble conceiving of anything liquid without containing, "water" to make it liquid. My limited concept of "liquid" always said to me that it could only be a liquid if it contained water. "Water" became synonymous with "liquid" in my mind.

Now it remains true that many liquids contain water. The water content, however, is not what makes them a liquid.

So why am I ranting on about misconceptions about water? Well, I know from my own experiences (as a child, which is to say as a person with little or no sophistication of understanding even fairly elementary concepts, like liquid) that it is easy to get a notion fixed in your head that something "just IS" a certain way, when that is not the reality of it at all. What brings this to mind is a long dissertation I read this week on the accomplishments of an organization that considers itself to be concern citizens who are interested in preserving "the environment" and of saving humanity from itself.

I have to be honest and admit that by the time I was in the latter portions of their report, I was skimming more than reading because I had come to realize what the report was saying. Its main point was, "Look at us! We saved the world from these terrible things." Its main problem was that they had, in essence, defined these things as "bad", and then conducted a smear campaign of fear and doubt in opposition to them, without ever establishing that the problems were unsolvable, only that they had killed these terrible, dragons … which is to say, Municipal Solid Waste disposal solution projects. These folks call themselves, the Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). They presented a "report" entitled, Incinerators in Disguise Case Studies of Gasification, Pyrolysis, and Plasma in Europe, Asia, and the United States which was reportedly first presented to the California Integrated Waste Management Board in 2004. To give them credit their "hearts" and intentions are in the right place when they say their goals are: "Our ultimate vision is a just, toxic-free world without incineration. Our goal is the implementation of clean production, and the creation of a closed-loop, materials-efficient economy where all products are reused, repaired or recycled back into the marketplace or nature." Sadly they chose as their goals that, "We oppose incinerators, landfills, and other end-of-pipe interventions."

How can I oppose what these people are doing, especially in light of my recent statement that since my days in university, decades ago, my friends and I suggested that a new law be put into effect preventing any new substance from being introduced without a "reversal" process being available to decompose and recycle it? That's the goal of these organizations too. So where's the beef?

My beef is that they have fixed on the notion that just about every waste recycling technology in existence is what they consider to be a form of "incineration" and that as such it is absolutely guaranteed to produce DIOXINS and other known carcinogens. Having recharacterized all sorts of gasification, pyrolysis, and plasma arc molecular destruction as mere "incineration in disguise" they had stopped a number of projects from happening. But their attacks appear to be nothing more than F.U.D. That's a term made famous by Bill Gates (of Microsoft fame) for "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt". It was a very effective tool in the hands of Microsoft to postpone or suppress both public and corporate buying decisions which might favor any competitors.

It seems pretty obvious to me that Greenaction for Environmental Health and Justice,as well as their buddies, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, are using a …okay, I won't call it a "smear campaign", but a strategy that resembles environmental McCarthyism, demanding that any company that wants to turn Municipal Solid Wastes into electricity or fuel for producing electricity, PROVE that they DON'T PRODUCE DIOXINS. The basic problem with that is that it closely resembles a challenge to "prove there are no pink elephants." Even if you could gather all the elephants of the world into one place to show that none of them were pink, they would argue that you can't be sure then next elephant to be born MIGHT be pink, or that you haven't overlooked the pink elephants of the world, just to prove your case. These organizations have, mistakenly, decided that pyrolysis, gasification and plasma arc technologies are "really" just sophisticated versions of "incineration." They cannot seem to conceive that, for instance, once you have used extreme heat to break chemical (organic or not) bonds to the elemental levels of Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, (as happens in gasification) that burning these products is not the same as burning trash directly.

Now, admittedly, dioxins form rather easily. One of the ways you get dioxin is by smoking it. (Did he really say that? Yup, he did.) If you smoke something with bleached cigarette paper, the combination of burning organic material (leaves) in the presence of chlorine (the bleach left in the paper) this produces dioxin. Now it may or may not be important that dioxins have been declared to be cancer causing. After all, you can't have charbroiled meat without creating them. Cancer causing agents are present in bacon. Indeed one of the most significant sources of dioxin is from burning pine wood, so virtually every forest fire in the Northern Hemisphere is a major source of cancer causing chemicals in the air. Good luck on banning lightning so we won't have any spontaneous and natural forest fires.

As I said, these folks who opposed various advanced technologies for waste disposal have their hearts in the right place, though too. For instance some of the most significant polluters that create dioxins are coal fired electric generating plants, metal smelting, burning of treated wood, backyard trash burning barrels, and the spreading of sewage on land (i.e. as fertilizer for farm fields). Of course, regular readers of this column will know that this warmed my heart, since our company is a strong advocate of Thermal De-polymerization for sewage sludge to produce electricity and non-ester renewable diesel fuels. This is likely a factor in Kern County's decision to no longer allow sewage sludge from Los Angeles County to be spread on the fields there. The part that didn't thrill me about this report on dioxin in Wikipedia was the listing of diesel vehicles as another major dioxin source according to US EPA estimates. Actually they specifically named diesel trucks, as opposed to all vehicles, but I am still looking for why diesel, and why trucks.

On the other hand, this calls into question the validity of the concerns about dioxin "leakage" from MSW treatment plants that are not incineration based.

Even if there was some small risk that dioxins might be incidentally produced, in spite of the waste treatment plant operators being consciously aware of these concerns, shouldn't these folks be more worried about the millions of diesel engines passing their neighborhoods every year, producing dioxins next to their homes and schoolyards?

Many of the "biomass" based power plants that have been approved in other states recently have been nothing more than sawdust burners that use the heat to generate steam for their electricity generating turbines. These really are nothing more than incinerators for forestry industry wastes that happen to produce electricity. The "biomass" label makes the marketing of the concept easier for their promoters, but unless they are specifically avoiding pine sawdust, they are very likely to be producing dioxins too, and it doesn't have to be "pine" specifically either.

All of this does bring up a rather sensitive point about WHICH plastics can safely be fed into these processes. Polyvinyl Chlorides are better known as PVC's (as in the plastic pipe you buy at your favorite Lowe's or Home Depot) (My wife and I are constantly engaged in some home improvement project, so we bought stock in both companies at one time or another, and consider their stores to be our favorite weekend vacation spots.) The "burning" of chloride containing compounds along with other organic chemicals IS somewhat likely to produce dioxins. Chemical Depolymerization claims to avoid this by keeping temperatures low. Which suggests to me that there is space enough for all of the variations that have been invented thus far, with room for lots more discoveries in the future, too. But simply keeping PVC's and other chloride plastics out of the mix can be a solution too. Failure to sort and recycle those materials that can readily be recycled is a terrible waste. Yet, ironically, another source named "secondary aluminum smelting" as one of the prime creators of dioxin. Thus, recycling aluminum cans is almost guaranteed to produce more dioxin than any of these alternative waste-into-energy plans for MSW.

Wikipedia's article also cites "Gordon McKay (2002). 'Dioxin, formation and minimisation during municipal solid waste (MSW) incineration: review'. Chemical Engineering Journal 86: 343-368" in a footnote, while explaining that most incineration operations have minimized dioxin production (reduced by 90%) mainly by quenching the temperature of flue gases at the smoke stacks from 600 degrees Centigrade to below 200 degrees Centigrade. US EPA's original report on dioxins in 1987 blamed 80% of dioxin production on incinerations, which resulted in new regulations, and the results of meeting those regulations have been very successful.

The reason I am spending so much time on this is that the my friend C. Scott Miller's BIOWASTE.BLOGSPOT.COM cited concerns expressed by Coby Skye, of the LA Department of Public Works, the man tasked with choosing the "conversion technology" for Los Angeles in his speech at the recent Biocycle West conference in San Diego. Mr. Skye focused on three themes as "hurdles" to getting this accomplished: Costs, Regulatory Hurdles, and MISCONCEPTIONS. Costs are soaring for landfill, from current rates of about $25 per ton, he says. He is projecting that costs could soon rise to the $75 to $100 per ton range. Regulatory "hurdles" are a moving target. Mr. Skye says that his task force is not even sure what permits he is going to need to get, even though his task force works for the government. Finally, the "misconceptions" issue is something we can all do something about, by informing the public. Today, I am taking on my share of that responsibility in reporting all this to you.

Mr. Skye also has a pointer to Scott Miller's web sites (he has a group of 4) on the official LA DPW Conversion Technologies Task Force web page, calling the BIOCONVERSION.BLOGSPOT.COM web site, "an excellent informational resource for conversion, recycling, and energy issues."

Okay, I've avoided politics long enough for this week. I have to … all right, I want to … take a shot at the Republican Party Presidential Candidates Debate. I have been very restrained in the earlier portion of this column in avoiding characterizing these well meaning environmentalists as intellectually challenged. But I suppose that in light of not only the current office holder, but the fact that during the debate, THREE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES, of the ten serious (?) contenders present, held up their hands to indicate that they DID NOT BELIEVE in the THEORY OF EVOLUTION. Maybe they are counting on the fact that as reported on www.layman.org as of the year 2000 an un-named "recent poll" claimed that, "68% [of Americans] wanted creation taught alongside evolution in schools." Either those three hopefuls were demonstrating their own intellectually challenged condition, or the definition of, "When can you tell a politician is lying?" is no longer just, "When you see his lips moving."

Okay, aiming for a more optimistic note to end on, the Governator, yes, Arnold, issued a "Bioenergy Action Plan for California" last year that called for "Amend existing law to revise existing technology definitions and establish new ones, where needed. In particular, review the definitions of gasification, transformation, fermentation, pyrolysis, and manufacturing. Such statutory clarification would enable the utilization of biomass residues through combustion or non-combustion technology." The result of that would be that the old 1989 California legislation that made "incineration" of municipal solid wastes illegal would be revised specifically to permit alternate technologies to avoid being blocked by well meaning "environmentalists". Unfortunately, I am tougher to please than that. I am not really pleased with the idea of regressing to allowing sawdust burning as "biomass-to-energy" conversion just because they generate electricity. With all the other references in this policy document to "managed" forestry, sawdust and woodchip burning sounds very much like where this is heading, and I, for one, am not pleased.

Okay, so I missed my aim on that. How about … hmmm, let's see … Oh, yes, the Grey's Anatomy two hour episode this week was a definite winner. It was obviously a spin-off tryout for a second case of emotionally mixed up doctors in a clinic in Los Angeles, including old pals of our Seattle based MD's. Taye Diggs, Amy Brenneman, and Tim Daly all show up to give Kate Walsh a cozy little nest to build in her own time slot. Kate has the charisma to make it work, especially backed by those high TVQ veterans and perennial favorites, though reportedly the Grey's ratings for the outing were received as disappointing to the ABC network. I guess that is good news, since which ever way it goes; I'll enjoy seeing more of Kate Walsh wherever she lands.

love

Stafford "Doc" Williamson