Alcoholics Unanimous Newsletter ~ November 2005

Our Trip to Brazil
Our Plans to Distribute Fuel in Northern California
Car Conversions
Chainsaw Experiments
Gas Prices
Oil Companies Boycott Alcohol
Walking the Talk and Matching Grant!
Call For Volunteers
Layout and Printing of the Book
Permaculture Land Consulting
Closing Our Newsletter

Editing has become a big job and Mike Winks, a professional editor, I’ve known for 20 years has been jointly hired by New Society Press and ourselves to refine and let’s say distill my tale spinning 325,000 words down to a svelte 250,000+ words. The book is going to be roughly twice as long as the original book, have over 500 illustrations, ending up at about 528 pages 8 x 10 inches. More than a revision, it has become a complete rewrite of most of the sections. So much has happened in the 25 years since it was first written.

One of the things that changed early this year was to go from a grassroots format to a peer-reviewed format, which required a lot of documentation and footnotes on our part, as if this was a Ph.D. thesis. This will permit those who want to delve deeper into the subjects we cover to have a good roadmap in order to start their investigations. Imagine writing a thesis 25 years ago and have to revisit it all over again, find out what everyone has been doing in the interim and document it. It was agonizing at times but now I feel it was totally worth it. We cite hundreds of sources for the facts in our book.

Peer review also means sending out the book to professionals in their fields, peers, who can go through the text and spot things that are not up to date and catch the inevitable minor error or three. Peer review has turned into a wonderful experience for me developing relationships with fellow scientists around the globe who have graciously offered their time to review sections of the book. For instance, Easter Trabulse a local fermentation expert, volunteered to review our section on fermentation and fermentation preparation. Although this process added many months to the project it has unquestionably been worth it.

In a couple of months when the editing is done there will be a need to proofread the book for typographical and other errors. I would like to put out a call for volunteers to be willing to proofread about 3 chapters each. I figure that if we have two or three proofreaders looking over each section of the book, we have a pretty good chance of keeping the error rate to near zero. It will also help speed the book to layout and to print sooner. We could use as many as 15 volunteers since we have 15 chapters, which we'd like to have reviewed by several sets of eyes.

Our Trip to Brazil
In January, we went to Brazil for 18 days as sort of a pilgrimage to Mecca for fuelaholics. We had a crushing schedule of constant meetings and interviews with farmers, officials in the energy, environment, foreign trade, and agriculture departments, alcohol aircraft manufacturers, people waiting in line to buy fuel, and much much more. We ended up with 17 hours of videotape, hundreds of photos, and reams of notes. We could write a whole book just on Brazil but we are trying to show some self-restraint and keep that section in perspective. We’ll probably feature various parts of that trip in each newsletter for a while.

 

Bob Fitch Photo

Probably the biggest revelation we found in Brazil is that when gasoline prices skyrocketed a year ago, average people in their gasoline cars started experimenting with adding more alcohol to their tanks. The cost of alcohol was about half the cost of gasoline. About 40% of the cars in Brazil run on 96% alcohol and 4% water. All gasoline in Brazil contains 25% alcohol already. If the US matched Brazil’s 25% content for all our gasoline, we would not have to import a single drop of oil from the Middle East!

Since the gasoline in Brazil has a higher octane rating than our gasoline due to the alcohol, cars there typically operate on higher compression ratios than here. So when people started adding alcohol to their gas they were finding that their cars ran much better on 50-60% added alcohol without any modifications to their engines. The higher compression meant they lost little mileage. The auto companies in Brazil took immediate notice and within a year started producing flexible fuel vehicles (vehicles that have advanced software and a few other minor changes to permit them to run on both gasoline and alcohol). Amazingly enough, although the US has had flexible fuel vehicles for more than 10 years, they were a new item in Brazil.

Bob Fitch Photo

But since Brazilian fuel isn’t the E-85 swill they make here but E-96 with 4 percent water in it, the automakers there really upped the compression ratios and put simple coldstart systems like this one in the photograph, by GM in their new cars. By the second year 30% of all car sales were flex fuel and this year the percentage is over 62% of all new car sales. The projection is that all cars sold in Brazil will be flex fuel within a couple of years. The public there has spoken.

Why isn’t it happening here? In Brazil, the fuel stations are government owned so in the 80’s when the mandate came down to provide straight alcohol at the pump it happened virtually overnight. Here the oil companies own most of the distribution system and aren’t going to give up pump space to farmer/activist competitors. In the Midwest where E-85 alcohol is running about a 50 cents to a dollar a gallon cheaper than gasoline in some places, the same realization that Brazilians experienced is happening there. But most of the stations are at places like Cenex, a farmer’s cooperative fuel station. People are discovering that their cars can run on 50% or more of E-85 without modification. The oil companies have done everything possible to prevent proliferation of distribution of ethanol and we at the IIEA feel that’s our next big project.

However, since Hurricane Katrina, MegaOilron is buying up all the alcohol they can lay their hands on since they are now short of gasoline to sell people. This has led to alcohol producers raising their prices to cash in, and I suppose, punish, the oil companies for their earlier boycott. Alcohol is now selling for about $2.45 a gallon, when only a few months ago it was selling for $1.30. On the one hand, I am glad farmers are getting well paid for their investment in alcohol fuel plants. But I think they could have made a much bigger statement to the nation by keeping the cost of E-85 fuel at less than $2 and really show up MegaOilron. Prices are projected to go back down to normal in about 6 months.

What would happen to emissions if gasoline cars started running on 50% alcohol? We decided to find out and had people volunteer their cars for a test. We did a before smog test on gasoline and then filled their car up so that they had at least 50% alcohol in the tank. Then we had them go on a drive to see if they had any problems and return for a smog test. We go into more detail in the book but the bottom line was no one had any problems and the emissions in general dropped dramatically. See the chart and caption following. The point being is that if we even went to 50% alcohol we would be cleaning up the air and no one would really have to do any conversion. A conversion might improve emissions and mileage but it wouldn’t be necessary. This is a fact that is being withheld from the American people. Have a look at the data for yourself.

Our Plans to Distribute Fuel in Northern California
Being the ambitious sorts of trouble makers that we are, we would like to set up 25 stations across Northern California over the next two years. This is going to take some serious capital but there are now some very, very nice tax credit incentives for establishing stations, which somehow miraculously survived the Republican attempts to cut them out of the otherwise disastrous Energy Bill.

In our time-honed fashion we have done our homework and framed open some large loopholes in the law that will allow us to start putting in these stations and legally passing the 51cent per gallon tax credit through to the buyers of the fuel. We are now looking for sites in Santa Cruz, first where we can try out the ideas and get the bugs out of our proposed system and then spread it all over.

Copyright Grimmy Inc. Distributed by King Features Syndicate

Although we are awaiting clarification from the IRS on some of the fine points, we should be able to offer investors putting $100,000 into this venture a $30,000 tax credit right up front in the first year for establishing each station in our distribution system. Investors don’t have to put in $100,000 though, as we will be able to take investors of most sizes and pass the proportionate amount of tax credits and deductions through to them.

Our near term goal is to establish the first station in Santa Cruz for $100,000. I’ve been working with a manufacturer of gas stations to design a custom above ground alcohol station to my specifications that we can put in almost any county with few permitting hassles. Of course we’ll also deliver to home tanks as well (which also qualify for some tax credits and deductions in many cases) and are looking at a number of innovative inexpensive ways to legally have tanks at home in many areas. We’d like to be distributing 5 million gallons of ethanol a year by the end of the second year. We will sell alcohol for a lower price than gasoline and pass the 51 cent per gallon tax credit on to the driver/members of each cooperative station. If you want to be one of the investors in the first station please call me at the office.

When people have the choice to buy the less expensive cheaper fuel, made by American Farmers, and legally screw the government out of income tax, the days of being under the militaristic rule of MegaOilron are numbered. Northern California is the place to lead the way to demonstrating that people can take back control of our fuel supply and therefore our government.

Car Conversions
One of the relationships we cultivated during our time in Brazil was with the company that makes the most widely used alcohol conversion kit in Brazil. We’ve collaborated with them on development of kits for America and will be distributing them by the time you receive this newsletter. At the flip of a switch you’ll be able to use either alcohol or gasoline. The kits will be pretty inexpensive too.

We’ve done a lot of work in car conversion this past year before and after we went to Brazil. That part of the book has more than doubled with all that we have been gathering from our own experience and that of the experts in Brazil. I have built excellent relationships with engineers in several countries and it’s been bearing fruit.

One of the book lenders, Paul Robbins, really got into the auto thing and made his Acura Integra one of our test platforms. He installed an AEM aftermarket programmable engine computer. It allowed us to precisely control all aspects of his engine from fuel/air mix to spark advance, to mixture control at idle, you name it. As a preview here are excerpts of some of the high points of what we wrote about his car for the book (not yet edited):

Acura Integra Conversion
Paul’s goal was to have a three-part conversion system. One version for gasoline, one version for high performance (read: goes really fast) and a fuel efficiency mode. One of our goals in doing this was to try and do this with all stock fuel injectors unlike Michaels’s Tundra conversion, which required new fuel injectors. Without getting into the gory details, it went amazingly well, meeting our first goal of high performance. The four of us tore up and down a quiet suburban street like teenagers with their new hot toy, making adjustments, while Paul got his jollies redlining his Japanese car like he was a NASCAR driver. This programming computer also allowed us to use special air fuel ratio settings during coldstart and warmup, when we finished playing around with it. It ran really cool as Paul confirmed by feeling the exhaust pipe, which would have blistered a couple of layers of skin right off. Later he installed an exhaust gas temperature gauge and confirmed that exhaust temperature dropped from 1450 degrees F to around 1200 degrees F.

At this point, we took it out on the open road with Tom the cameraman and I in the back seat, while Paul drove his car and Henry operated the laptop connected to the computer. We did test drives up to 7000 rpm (redline), smoothing out acceleration curves and making the car perform at a high level. This is much harder driving than 99% of the public would expect from their four cylinder engine. The power output was impressive and at no time in any of the various acceleration phases did we find the fuel output of the injectors inadequate to the somewhat extreme requests we were electronically making. I went homeearly so I missed the last part of the work since Paul and Henry, the mechanic worked together to tweak the vehicle timing at the high end. Paul told me that he had a white knuckled grip roaring down a rural back road at 115 mph, while the mechanic calmly tootledwith this setting and that setting to get even more power out of it on his laptop connected to the vehicle computer. Remember this Integra only has four cylinders!

The first conversion did use quite a bit more alcohol than gasoline, but as Paul pointed out to us, it was so powerful that he couldn’t tell any difference in acceleration between it being empty and all four of us guys full of Mexican food and margaritas, during his tests. He’s also pleased with the low end torque he gets as soon as he touches the pedal. Now that we know we can get enough alcohol through the original injectors for even high performance, we knew it would do the job for normal hi-mileage performance. We just used a couple of tricks I knew that will be in the book on how to magically make this happen.

Following the go-fast programming Paul did for his first “engine map” or program, he worked with Henry to tune the computer for economy. The mileage went up dramatically as he worked towards the lean limit of alcohol’s air fuel ratio.

As you can see in the photo we made a quick and dirty heat exchanger to use hot engine water to dramatically heat the fuel and get much better mileage. This is not something you can do on gasoline. Unlike alcohol, gasoline is the dumping ground for refineries’ toxic waste after making the valuable things from a fraction of the oil. Over 400 different chemicals with boiling points from 80-450 degrees reside in this witches brew. Alcohol on the other hand has a single fixed boiling point. We cover the implications of fuel heating in detail in the upcoming book.

This new ability to heat fuel to much higher temperatures in fuel injection systems is key to getting good mileage. On the highway Paul’s initial tests show him to be getting 35 mpg, the same as he got on gasoline. Of course this is supposed to be impossible according to the anti-alcohol pundits. But since Paul likes sporty acceleration he did program his car to give him good kick when he accelerates, even in the economy mode, so around town he loses some mileage overall in comparison to gasoline.

Chainsaw Experiments
Another one of our lenders, Gray Shaw, who is an arborist by trade, helped us out by working with a chainsaw running on alcohol and biodiesel instead of two stroke oil. Although the saw ran pretty well on a ratio of alcohol to biodiesel (40:1), similar to gasoline and two stroke oil, Gray found the odor of partially burned biodiesel unbearable after some hours of use. But the biodiesel did perform well as a lubricant. We took over using the saw and the alcohol was great at clearing out all the carbon in the usually soot coated cylinder. Using a more diluted mixture of biodiesel, the saw continued to run well and the smell went away. Eventually we reduced the ratio to 150 parts fuel to one part biodiesel and started to get some engine wear. We did have a vacuum leak however, so we aren’t sure if the excess air from the leak caused the wear or the lower level of lubricant. We will be repeating the experiment after the saw is rebuilt.

Gray isn’t our only book supporter who uses chainsaws. Shawn Maloney uses them in his work at Point Reyes National Seashore. His saw started off great running on alcohol with Bio-lube, a two stroke lubricant, which is not made of petroleum products. He didn’t have any problems with the smell or wear but found the saw start to overspeed over time. That’s an indicator of lean burning or too much air for the amount of fuel in a two stroke. He figures the removal of the carbon was substantial enough to make the total volume of the cylinder enough greater, that even with the carburetor adjusted to its maximum fuel setting, he couldn’t quite get enough fuel to match the greater amount of air being sucked into the new “larger” cylinder. Very interesting.

More experiments are in order to nail down just what the best overall strategy will be on chainsaws. It probably will involve increasing the fuel flow by drilling out the jets (the passage that controls how much fuel can flow through) on the carburetor to permit more adjustability of the air fuel mixture. I have recently connected with a company in Brazil that makes a special two stroke mix for wet alcohol and will be testing it this winter. If it's really good we will start importing it.

Gas Prices
I don’t have to tell you that gas prices are big news. What you don’t know is that the price increase we are now seeing was actually planned for December but the Hurricanes gave the oil companies a green light to gouge us early. Why December? It turns out that the world is using so much oil right now that the International Energy Agency flat out predicted a two million barrel a day shortfall in heating oil this winter. You might cut down on extra driving if the price goes up but you’ll pay anything to stay warm. Folks from the Midwest through the East Coast commonly heat their homes with a diesel like fluid known as heating oil.

Copyright 1992-2002, Andrew B. Singer

Why was there going to be a projected shortfall? It's because there is currently a temporary worldwide refinery shortage (even before the hurricanes.) Oil companies, totally aware of when oil would peak, stopped building refineries and tankers 25 years ago. After all, why spend a few extra billion dollars on a plant when there won’t be enough oil to refine to keep it busy? Over the last 25 years we have progressively used up all the surplus refinery capacity around the globe and temporarily there is a shortage of facilities. Even if there was a way to pump more oil out of the ground, and there isn’t, there is no way to refine any more oil. Building a refinery is usually a 10 year project, even without the usual massive public opposition. Even starting now there couldn’t be more capacity on line to make any difference even if there was more oil, which there isn’t.

The Republican stealth energy bill rammed through Congress on October 7th. HR. 3893 granted big money to oil companies to build new refineries away from the Gulf. Called the Gasoline for American Security Act, Republicans included in the Bill that oil refineries could open on former military bases. This means that if you are unfortunate to live near one of these, you will not have any rights to oppose it since it is on Federal land.

The speaker of the House had to hold the vote open 45 minutes instead of the usual 15 minutes to armtwist enough Republicans to sign on to this stinker. When the vote was announced the Democrats took up the chant Shame, Shame Shame. Of course none of this made the news. So far the Senate has not taken the bill up so it couldn't hurt to tell your Senator to
kill this turkey in committe if at all possible.

Copyright 1992-2002, Andrew B. Singer

Nice huh? Of course MegaOilron wouldn’t use any of their own obscene profits knowing that we are at Peak Oil, but they sure would take a handout to upgrade their equipment for free while avoiding all environmental laws and liability since will be on our Federal land. Our Congressman, Sam Farr, voted against this. The bill was strictly partisan passing the House 212 for and 210 against. It also has several sneaky provisions that could be used to allow oil companies to avoid using alcohol in their gas. To see if your Congresscritter is on the take from MegaOilron go to http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll519.xml

 

But even by Exxon Mobil’s estimate, oil production will peak in 5 years and then the current refinery capacity will be more than enough. We are actually already over the Peak and sliding down the other side of peak oil. ExxonMobil’s estimate is dithered by including natural gas condensates as part of petroleum. This essentially means they changed the definition of petroleum from crude oil to also include stuff that used to be considered too toxic to leave in natural gas. The additives now put it in gasoline include stuff like cyclohexane, cyclobenzene and cyclopentane. These volatiles are toxic but by hiding them in our autofuel MegaOilron can pretend we haven’t already peaked in petroleum, which would cause people to demand changes to alternatives to be made right now. Can’t have that now, can we?

Since these cyclic volatiles react with alcohol, when alcohol is between 2-20% of the mixture, to cause an increase in evaporation of the volatiles, MegaOilron slipped a provision into the earlier big Energy Bill that stops any federal agency from insisting that the offending chemicals be removed from gasoline when alcohol is added. This of course will lead to more stories about how adding alcohol to gasoline increases pollution, a complete propaganda ploy, which has now been enshrined into law. The solution of course, apart from banning the use of the toxic waste, is to use more than 20% alcohol in gasoline and the evaporative emissions go down.

Oil Companies Boycott Alcohol
This last spring, oil companies refused to buy alcohol that wasn’t needed for them to comply with the Clean Air Act, even though the alcohol was a cheaper octane booster than the foul witches brew of BTX. The conservative magazine, the Economist (May 12, 2005), raked the oil companies over the coals for violating the basic principles of the free market, which should have dictated that they bought the lower cost alcohol. Never heard of BTX? You aren’t supposed to. Normal gasoline comes out of a refinery at about 66 octane. To raise the octane up, until the 1970’s, MegaOilron used tetraethyl lead, a hideous neurotoxin for which there is no known safe dose. At the lowest level we can measure, parts per quadrillion, negative neurological effects are observable in children. After 75 years of battling, MegaOilron was finally forced to switch to unleaded (for you youngsters that means without lead) in the seventies.

Now the logical octane booster was ethanol. Ten percent ethanol raises octane level at least 11 points. But BTX, Benzene, Toluene, and Xylene, only raise octane 2 points per 10% of the mix. Premium unleaded today contains about 40% BTX and other scary octane boosters. These are fiercely carcinogenic , estrogenic, and more. They are made by what’s known as “severe reforming” of oil. What we have done in replacing lead with BTX is kill our kids with cancer instead of causing lead based brain damage.

To partially offset the toxic load of BTX, which did little to reduce carbon monoxide, another toxic emission of fossil fuel burning, MegaOilron used the water soluble, MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether). This allowed the oil companies to dodge the ethanol bullet for more than a decade. Now that MTBE has been proven to be almost as dangerous as BTX it is being banned, albeit quite late in the game. 90 million Americans now drink MTBE laced water from the documented 385,000 Large Underground Fuel Tank leaks (LUFT’s) across the nation. Ethanol has now replaced it in New York, California, and Connecticut and soon in other states that are banning MTBE.

Tom Delay held out until the very last minute in the 2005 Energy Bill trying to get an exemption from liability for MTBE to benefit his MegaOilron buddies. Luckily the Democrats showed a small amount of backbone in refusing to go along with this. If MegaOilron was actually made to clean up the MTBE in the hundreds of thousands of sites they would go bankrupt. Of course if they can delay cleanup long enough you will filter it all out of the water by drinking it. So do your part to clean up America and preserve corporate profits; drink up, and show some personal responsibility. On the other hand if alcohol leaked into the ground water, as Senator Charles Grassley pointed out, all you’d have to do is add tonic and ice to it.

Bob Fitch Photo

Tetraethyl lead is not actually gone though. There is one place that lead is still used in the United States and that is in aircraft fuel. Although fuel engineer, Jim Behnken went through the tortuous process to get the FAA to recognize AGE-85 or 85% ethanol hi-octane aviation fuel. The FAA is still dragging its feet and insists that lead continue to be used in aircraft fuel. Jim was a big help in advising me on some of the intricacies of figuring out car conversion and fuel emission measurements for the book.

Ominously, lead is still used in most of the developing countries in the world to raise octane instead of ethanol in auto fuel. This of course means it contaminates the air, then the soil, then the food grown in that soil, which is then shipped back to us, causing developmental and neurological damage to our kids. Local Monterey County teachers have noted that families that have come from the mountain valley of Oaxaca , Mexico exhibit all the signs of lead poisoning.

Bob Fitch Photo

Brazil is not one of the countries using tetraethyl lead, and at least one aircraft manufacturer there, Embraer, has phased out making gasoline engines for its agricultural planes. It only offers ag planes with dedicated alcohol engines. I must tell you that I felt like I was watching a historic moment when I stood on the assembly line as the first four straight alcohol planes were being assembled right before our eyes. As the manager pointed out, “There is no longer a market for gasoline based agricultural planes.” Farm Out!

One of the worst parts of the hurricanes is that more than 4 million gallons of oil products have now coated virtually every surface in New Orleans. The EPA honestly doesn’t know how it will be possible to clean up the horrible toxins enough to permit rehabitation in good conscience. The carcinogenic toxicity coating all of New Orleans will be ignored or covered up.

Since the Hurricanes were made deadly by high temperature water at the surface of the Gulf, my book actually proposed a solution to this weeks before the events occurred.

Reprinted with permission from SCIENCE NEWS, the weekly newsmagazine, copyright 2004

It turns out all the nitrogen fertilizer and sewage that finds its way into the Mississippi causes a 22,000 square kilometer Dead Zone centered right at New Orleans due to the amount of fertilizer in the water. In that zone there is no oxygen, so all sea life either flees or is killed. In the book, I had written that if we established kelp farms along the Gulf coast

Laminaria saccharina, Louis Dreuhl's kelp farm at Bamfield, Vancouver Island, Canda. Copyright M.D. Guiry

we would soak up the fertilizers, oxygenate the water, (kelp breathes in carbon dioxide and breathes out oxygen like any plant) and provide enough alcohol to replace about 20% of our transportation fuel. The kelp, growing on surface nets would also absorb the sunlight that otherwise would heat the Gulf water turning that energy into carbohydrates, and provide cooling shade to the water below. There would be a cool water, highly oxygenated, buffer between the land and the path of hurricanes. Heck, if we had a government with some vision, we’d eminent domain the oil platforms to operate the kelp to alcohol factories while protecting our coast and clean up the aquatic environment all in one fell swoop.

Walking the Talk and Matching Grant!
One of the major new sections of the book is an outline of a model farm based on a micro distillery producing only 9000 gallons per year. What we did is focus on all the products that would come from the small distillery. Such a still would use around 100 tons a year of corn, since this was a Midwest example. Running once every four days and producing 100 gallons of fuel per run was all it took. We then considered the grain by-product (Dried Distillers Grain) and first used it for three things. One third direct feed for Tilapia, a productive fish, one third to mushroom production, and one third to earthworm production. After growing the mushrooms, we take the by-product from that process, the mass of cottony fungus that has grown though DDG, and feed half of it to the fish and half to the worms. We then have fresh fish, fish emulsion from culled fish, earthworm castings and mushrooms as primary by-products.

Then we take the water from the fish tanks, which would now be full of fish manure and used some of it to produce more fish food (algae) and the rest to fertilize high value vegetables grown in greenhouses, with the balance of the fish water going back into the field to grow the next energy crop. The greenhouses will use waste hot water from distillation for warmth and carbon dioxide from the fermenters to stimulate plant growth. The by-products are all worth much more than the alcohol itself. In fact, the alcohol was merely a by-product of all the other valuable primary products. In fact, the liquid left over from distillation will be run into a large methane digestor and provide all the heat, and electricity for the system, (as is done in India) after awhile. This model should provide several people with middle class incomes from as little as 25 acres indefinitely.

We are within days of signing a lease with a Watsonville farmer who will be raising earthworms and will be providing us with the facilities to build the model farm as we outlined in the book. We’ll have to build the greenhouses, fish ponds, distilling equipment, etc. With luck we will be able to show the model in action by the time the book comes out next year. We are looking for tax deductible donations and grants to build this common sense but very very very cool integrated farm model.

We’ve already gotten a few key items donated. And most important: We have been given a $50,000 matching grant. If you can help with a tax deductible donation, or organizational grant, your gift will be matched so it’s like giving twice as much! We need to raise $50,000 by December 31st from you to receive the $50,000 matching funds. This model could save the family farm in the Midwest by making more money on only 25 acres than a 2000 acre corn farm. The farm would not need outside fertilizer, herbicides, genetically modified seed or pesticides. Take that Monsanto! If you live close enough to come and volunteer as we put it together we’d welcome your help. Please give us a call at 831-458-5141.

Call For Volunteers
We need volunteer welders, both mild and stainless steel skills would be helpful. We could use some refrigeration engineering volunteer help too. We need to figure how we can properly use donated heat pumps in the process to reduce our energy usage overall. We also are looking for some legal help in setting up an LLC. So put that law degree to some use with us. If you have a backhoe/dump truck and can come out and help with some of the excavation for the small shallow greenhouse fish ponds, and shallow cattail production ponds we sure would like to see you out there. Anyone know someone with an excavator (that’s a really big backhoe)? It would make some of these digging chores a one day cake walk. If you know an equipment rental company owner who’d donate the use of an excavator we already have skills to use it. We are also going to put together some strawbale-insulated mushroom growing facilities. So when that time comes, it's just great to have some willing hands to heft bales.

We hope to use biomass for most of the initial heating needs of the plant until the methane digestor comes on line. We have a nearly unlimited supply of Eucalyptus available to us so if you’d like to come out with your chain saw and pickup truck we can have a cutting party to drop and cut up a few medium medium sized Eucalyptus to take back to our new plant a few miles away. Anyone know someone with a logging truck so we can move some of the logs to our site?

Layout and Printing of the Book
As most of you know the research and rewriting of the book was funded by individuals who lent money to the project. We financed the project in this way to make sure that no one sponsor could pull the plug on the project like what happened with PBS in 1983. We did raise the money we needed and completed revising the book. We couldn’t have done it without your support.

Our agreement with New Society, our publisher is a good one. We are able to buy books at the cost of printing in exchange for paying for half the book editing, layout, and printing costs of the first run. Most authors count themselves lucky to be able to get books at 40% off of retail. If you wanted to help out earlier when we needed money for the book revision, but weren’t in a position to do so at that time, we could use your help now. Our share of the production costs will be $15,000 and printing the first 4000 books, (our half of the first 8000 book print run) will be $25,000 (since most of our books will be hardback). The production costs are running up a tab now, but the printing costs won’t be due for a few months. Call me about the financial details if you can take part in the financing of this last phase of the book project. Of course we would also warmly welcome grants for this phase if you are in the position to make a tax-deductible donation.

Permaculture Land Consulting
Over the last year we have been telling folks with land that we were tied up on the book and couldn’t do any permaculture land consulting in order to stay focused on the book project. Now that the book has moved on to the publisher I have time to come out and do consulting on land projects. If you have land and don’t know about the consulting I do you can find out some more at my consultation page on permaculture.com. Feel free to call me about your land design needs.

Closing Our Newsletter
Once again, thanks for all of your patience and support during our time of writing the book. We are extremely excited about the book coming out next year, and all of our upcoming projects as well. Together we can put an end to the Oilygarchy. Until next time...