Morning News Roundup (04 July)

• Murray Waas over at the National Journal once again does a bang-up reporting job on the never-ending Plamegate saga:
  

  President Bush told the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case that he directed Vice President Dick Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter allegations made by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV that his administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with the president's statement.
  [...]
  One senior government official familiar with the discussions between Bush and Cheney -- but who does not have firsthand knowledge of Bush's interview with prosecutors -- said that Bush told the vice president to "Get it out," or "Let's get this out," regarding information that administration officials believed would rebut Wilson's allegations and would discredit him.

  
  
• Hopeful news on the biofuels front from the Boston Globe:
  

  A new federal report concludes that the ability to make fuel efficiently from virtually any kind of plant is within reach, offering the promise of a technology that could dramatically benefit the environment, slash dependence on foreign oil, and one day even reorder the global balance of power.
  
  The Department of Energy report, to be released soon, offers a road map for moving from today's technology that makes the fuel ethanol from cornstarch to a new approach using cellulose, the main ingredient in most plants. That would greatly increase the country's ability to produce ethanol, which can easily be used in most automobiles, and create unexpected sources of energy from the rice paddies of California to the paper mills of northern New England.
  
  

  Of course, the biggest hurdle is the distribution network...
  
  
• ...which brings us to this Treehugger post about Ford's turn to flex-fuel vehicles (i.e., those that can handle both traditional petrol as well as E85 ethanol), which seems to be overturning their recent excitement over hybrid vehicles in order to game the system. It seems that the Alternative Motor Fuels Act of 1988 (renewed as the Alternative Fueled Vehicles Rule of 2004) provides auto manufacturers a credit for each vehicle they produce that is capable of running on ethanol or a similar bio-fuel.
  

  According to the US Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center, these laws create an incentive for auto makers to build cars capable of using alternative fuels by "[giving] a credit of up to 1.2 mpg toward an automobile manufacturer's average fuel economy which helps it avoid penalties of the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards." The Union of Concerned Scientists calculates that this results in a "...roughly a 65 percent bonus in credited fuel economy" (see their table for exact figures). While Ford denies this credit played a role in its decision, it is clear that cars running on biofuels automatically raise the company's corporate average fuel economy. While hybrids would help here, too, almost any car in Ford's fleet can be made a flex-fuel model with relatively simple modifications, while hybrids would require major new investment in the manufacturer's infrastructure.

  
  Taking the more hopeful stance, this kind of across-the-board ethanol compatibility for new cars could help to spark acceptance of the fuel and create more of a market for establishing a larger distribution network. Cos it certainly can't get too much worse than it already is:
  

  UCS notes "More than a decade after the program was introduced, government data showed that dual-fuel vehicles used an alternative fuel less than one percent of the time."

  
  The post goes on to note that Toyota is taking a different tack: incorporating flex-fuel capability into their hybrid cars, which they're planning to double.
  
  
• Confused about the differences between ethanol and biodiesel? Check out this short-but-sweet post also at Treehugger.
  
  
• Faster development of Canadian oil is another way the United States can lessen its reliance on energy sources from Middle Eastern or Latin American countries now deemed unfriendly to the U.S., according to a new congressional study.
  [...]
  Strong economic incentives would exist, even with oil prices at half the current level, to ramp up oil sands production and more than double output in 10 years, eroding the power of the 11-member Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
  [...]
  However, the environmental costs are steep. For every barrel of oil produced, more than 80 kilogrammes of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere and between two and four barrels of waste water are dumped into tailing ponds that have flooded about 50 square kilometres of forest and bogs.
  
  Currently, Alberta oil sands production is just more than one million barrels per day (b/d), an amount that would place Canada 21st among the world's oil-producing nations. [IPS]
  
  
• My Mom, who is an Episcopal priest, was on hand at the recent Episcopal Church General Convention and was very excited by the election of the first woman to be elected presiding bishop: Katharine Jefferts Schori. However, not everyone is so excited (via the WaPo):
  

  Although she will not take up her new role until November, six U.S. dioceses already have rejected her authority, and that number is rising. Many church leaders expect that by the time she takes office, about five more, for a total of 10 percent of the nation's 111 Episcopal dioceses, will have joined the rejectionist camp.
  
  Moreover, conservative Anglicans overseas have made no secret of their hope that the archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, will not invite Jefferts Schori to the next gathering of the heads of the 38 constituent churches in 2008.
  
  Gender is only part of the reason that some conservatives in the church are unhappy about her election. Jefferts Schori, 52, is also firmly planted in the U.S. church's dominant liberal wing. Three years ago, she voted with the majority of Episcopal bishops to approve the New Hampshire Diocese's election of V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion. She has allowed the blessing of same-sex couples in her Nevada diocese.
  [...]
  Pittsburgh was among the first dioceses to reject Jefferts Schori's authority, along with South Carolina; central Florida; San Joaquin, Calif.; Fort Worth; and Springfield, Ill.
  
  Her election may also hasten the departure of individual congregations. Two large congregations in Northern Virginia, the Falls Church and Truro Church, announced last week that they will go through "40 days of discernment" this fall to consider their status.

  
  
  
• Conservative presidential candidate Felipe Calderon held a slim but apparently insurmountable lead Monday over leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who alleged widespread fraud and said he would not concede defeat.
  
  With 98% of polling stations reporting, Calderon led Lopez Obrador by 402,000 votes, or about 1 percentage point. Lopez Obrador would need to win three-quarters of the remaining 800,000 uncounted ballots to surpass his rival. [LATimes]
  
  
• Iran won't suspend its uranium-enrichment program, senior officials said Monday, casting doubt that U.S. and Iranian diplomats will hold their first direct talks in three decades, as the Bush administration had offered to do if Tehran cooperated.
  [...]
  In Washington, a Western diplomat said Solana would inform Larijani that Iran must accept the offer of incentives to cooperate by July 12, when foreign ministers from the permanent U.N. Security Council members - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - are to meet in Paris, along with Germany, to discuss the Iranian nuclear program.
  
  If Iran fails to respond by the deadline, efforts will resume at the United Nations on drafting a Security Council resolution authorizing economic and political sanctions against Iran, said the Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity. [Knight Ridder]