Thank you to<a href="http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/images/BarbaraKruger-Your-manias-become-science-1981.jpg"> Barbara Kruger</a> for the headline. Barbara Kruger is an artist that deals in combining striking images with the short bits of copy to produce something provocative. I saw this image over 20 years ago in an art history class and I haven&rsquo;t forgotten it. Occasionally I&rsquo;ll read something that brings this image, and this phrase back to my mind. It happened to me again this morning.
In today&rsquo;s Star Tribune, &nbsp;the headline &ldquo;<a href="http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/285860511.html">If your all-electric car gets its power from coal, new study says it is dirtier than gasoline</a>&rdquo; got my attention. &nbsp;Sometimes it seems as though the mainstream media takes a certain glee in dismantling the clean/renewable energy value proposition. The headline made me suspicious this story would fall into that category. I wasn&rsquo;t prepared for to what extent, however.
Exactly 32 words into the story that lays out how connecting an electric car to a grid driven portion of the grid was akin to driving a coal-powered car, the author decides to bring ethanol into the fray. &ldquo;Ethanol isn't so green, either,&rdquo; Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press asserts. The next line, attributed to the study&rsquo;s co-author Julian Marshall, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota, just knocked me out. &ldquo;It's kind of hard to beat gasoline" for public and environmental health,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;ve railed in this forum before about context, and I realize I&rsquo;m quoting someone here without context. Marshall concludes saying, &ldquo;A lot of the technologies we think of as being clean&hellip;are not better than gasoline.
The struggle for me here is I have no doubt that Marshall&rsquo;s study supports that assertion. I also have no doubt that countless readers added another into their foundation of skepticism for clean energy upon finishing reading that sentence.&nbsp;
The problem, of course, is that there are studies available that refute that assertion, studies based on emissions tracking programs commissioned by the Department of Energy.
The Renwable Fuels Assocation has compiled a <a href="http://www.ethanolrfa.org/pages/ethanol-facts-environment">large handful of scientifically supported facts</a> that challenge this assertion head on, including this one:
FACT: Using ethanol in place of gasoline helps to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by an average of 34% compared to gasoline.
Because ethanol is made from renewable, plant-based feedstocks, the CO2 released during a vehicle's fuel combustion is "recycled" during the growth of ethanol feedstocks. According to the Department of Energy's GREET model, average corn ethanol reduces GHG emissions by 34% compared to gasoline - even when hypothetical land use emissions are considered. &nbsp;Without indirect emissions, average corn ethanol decreases GHG emissions by 44%.
So where do we go from here? The study that just came out of the University of Minnesota says one thing. The DOE&rsquo;s GREET model says nearly the opposite.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;m less interested in the scientific back and forth about assumptions, flawed assumptions, carbon dioxide vs. particulates, or carbon accounting and am more interested in how the story is framed up for the general public. The hard science stuff escapes me. The social science stuff fascinates me.
We live in the 140 character era. As a people we work to form our beliefs about complex issues with tiny sound bites and then defend them in the same way. I know I&rsquo;m certainly guilty of that.&nbsp;
Science can be a great instrument for illumination. More and more though, I see that around the subject of clean energy, &ldquo;science&rdquo; is used to obscure. Each side has its own science, or at the very least co-opts and archives a collection of studies. This is simply more of the same.
This sentence can be found near the end of the article:
&ldquo;The study finds all-electric vehicles cause 86 percent more deaths from air pollution than do cars powered by regular gasoline.&rdquo;
Really?&nbsp;
We&rsquo;re able to determine that with confidence?&nbsp;
Science has become THAT exacting?
I don&rsquo;t believe it.Models operate on human assumptions. These assumptions are what drive the model. If someone disagrees with a study&rsquo;s results, they attack the assumptions and offer a different fact, supported by a different model just like I did about 200 words ago. Back and forth it goes and most people get exhausted and return to their previously held positions.
We have a mania for knowing everything, definitively, right now. And it has become our science.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

Executive Editor Tim Portz reacts to the way in which science, and scientific study are handled and mishandled by both mainstream and trade media. 

Your Manias Become Science

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