Kicking The Gasoline & Petro-Diesel Habit - 
A Business Manager's Blueprint For Action

Reviewed by Robert Pritchett

Author: Charles Cresson Wood InfoSecurity Infrastructure, Inc. Post-Petroleum Transportation Post Office Box 1219 Sausalito California 94966 USA Voice: 415-289-0800 Fax: 415-289-0808 info@kickingthegasoline.com http://www.kickingthegasoline.com/ Pages: 776 eBook Released: March 2008 Online Order only - $1,999 Electronic copy, $2,499 both hard and electronic copies. 5.4 MB download. ISBN: 9780979991400

Strengths: Provides business managers templates for transitioning transportation to non-petroleum-based alternatives. Excellent pro/con lists and service resources.   Weaknesses: A compilation of publicly available resources for nearly $2,000 USD? Highly dependent on the current global–warming craze™ and Peak Oil scare tactics. Much of the material is based on supposition and second-guessing, instead of being based on scientific facts and proven knowledge. The password-encrypted PDF version needs to be formatted for Table of Contents links to pages, and for Reference hyperlinks. A whole chapter dedicated to disavowing any responsibility for content? And you want to know why the government organizations are so screwed up? Case in point.

Introduction

 

All the information contained in this report originates from publicly available sources.

• 30 specific reasons why organizations must now transition away from petroleum 

• 36 internal political impediments to moving ahead with this transition 

• 17 specific methods to conserve petroleum fuels 

• 32 new technologies that boost the efficiency of vehicles still using petroleum fuels 

• 12 practical and now-available alternative transportation fuels
• The report also offers a wealth of practical management advice including: 


• 34 action steps to guide a successful transition away from oil 

• 30 suggested criteria for making business-related transition decisions 

• 95 criteria with which to evaluate alternative transportation fuels 

• 50 different management strategies for engineering a successful transition

The report also includes a wealth of Internet links: 


• 1400+ references that help readers quickly obtain more information 

• 500+ vendors that can assist with this transition

 

What I Found

 

The premise of this book is to coerce business managers into eliminating dino-juice dependence (gasoline and petro-diesel) in transportation from their businesses and enterprises as soon as possible.

 

Charles Cresson Wood does a great job with cost/benefit analysis regarding various possible scenarios in running away from petroleum dependence for early adopters or for those who arrive late for the game. After all, his expertise is in technology risk management and so his approach is from that discipline.

 

Chapter 2 discusses Peak Oil and Global Warming™ as intended cattle-prods, however off the mark they might be. He correctly assesses that easy oil from the ground is slowing down, but incorrectly follows the Global Warming environmental religionist mantra that mankind is responsible for the increased warming effects, instead of the naturally occurring 11-year Sun cycles and sunspot activities for our weather.

 

Be that as it may, he then offers a litany of well-thought-out reasons to transition away from gasoline and petroleum-based diesel in Chapter 3, while in Chapter 4 he lists all the excuses one can come up with (I’m sure he must have heard them all) for not looking at economical solutions to increased costs for doing business.

 

In Chapter 5, the rubber meets the road regarding ways to conserve fuel using various modes of transportation. Each subsection also lists pros and cons, things to look for and suppliers for services.

 

Chapter 6 discusses various ways and means for increasing vehicle efficiency with only one reference to Hypermiling – which is essentially rethinking how to drive with getting the most mileage out of existing vehicles and technologies.

 

In Chapter 7, Charles Wood looks at various alternative energy vehicle substitutions and conversions following the same format in the book with pros, cons and vehicle suppliers. Many of the vehicles are still “in the future”.

 

Chapter 8 looks at various strategies that could be considered blueprints in moving businesses away from dino-juices to alternative transportation and fuels, some of which follow the “do more with less” thinking. One thing that stands out for me is “Utilizing the new calculus of Net energy” or “The way to calculate net energy is to create a ratio of the usable energy returned divided by the energy invested to get it” known as EROEI.

 

Chapter 9 gets into the Step-by-Step action plans focusing on scare tactics based on Peak Oil and Global Warming. In my mind, I feel this is just simply wrong headed, but hey, “Global Warming” gets attention, no matter how off-based it may be.

 

I personally feel that things should be done for the right reasons, such as economical soundness and intelligent use of existing resources, rather than peer pressure and abuse of force (Awareness Training and Crisis Management).

 

Chapter 10 is something that the author should have put up front of the book. This is his 2-page legal disclaimer section (Author Independence) not holding him responsible in any way, shape or form, regarding use of his suggestions.

 

He states that he “has not been indoctrinated in any particular point of view regarding gasoline and/or petro-diesel”. Well, based on his presumptions regarding Abiotic Oil (he denigrates it), and falling hook line and sinker for the “Global Warming religion”, I think he has been unknowingly swayed by so-called Environmentalist doctrine and is being used as a tool and does have an axe to grind, so I think that “Author Independence” chapter is an attempt to protect himself from any possible backlash by business entities.

 

Nits

 

All the way through the book there are these (Rxxx) things within sentences and at the end of paragraphs that are designed to be Reference notes. I found that they got in the way. I would have used footnotes or endnotes instead. Anyway, Chapter 11 is around 200 pages of annotated text interspersed with hyperlinks. It should have been published as an Index or Annotated Appendix instead of as a chapter.

 

I would have made the Table of Contents and the Rxxx Adobe-based anchors as internal document hyperlinks, since Charles Wood used InDesign CS2 and Adobe Acrobat to make the eBook version into a password-encrypted file. Instead he expects us to use the Adobe Acrobat search function as described in Appendix 6, “Navigation Guide To This Book” which I think also should have been at the beginning of the book.

 

And where would you like to see an “Executive Summary”? Not as the last thing in the book, right? It is in this book.

 

I would suggest that in future editions, that Charles Wood look at Lindsay Williams’ videos on PESWiki on capped wells in the Prudhoe Bay region and elsewhere and Lindsay’s essay on the “Energy Non-Crisis” as a reference.

 

And he really ought to take a look at the Progressive X Prize $10 million challenge, based on Alternative Energy vehicles for 2008 also posted on our PESWiki website. With all his references, that one is glaringly missing.

 

I think that the “Net Energy Ratios For Alternative Fuels” (Appendix 4) is a nice try. It points out the known costs associated with producing alternative fuels, but it is weasel-worded such that much of it is based on assumptions, presumptions and estimates, rather than on scientific studies. I would like to see solid studies.

 

Kudos

 

Appendix 1: Suggested Criteria For Evaluating New Energy Technologies has no less than 97 things to consider in evaluating new technologies.

 

Appendix 2: Suggested Criteria For Making Transition-Related Business Decisions provides no less than 31 options to look at when making transition-related business decisions. It wouldn’t take much to put these into a decision tree or “What-If” spreadsheet format.

 

Appendix 3: Gallon Of Gasoline Equivalent Cost For Alternative Fuels offers cost-comparative numerical scoring based on existing fuel pricing (which continues to escalate daily) at the time of publication. Instead of price fluctuations affecting these numbers, Charles Wood has based them on energy content as British Thermal Units (BTUs).

 

There are 6 caveats regarding the numbering process, however due to volatility, assumptions based on delivery technologies, annual driven fuel costs, where fuel is sold, possible government subsidies and locomotive efficiency. With so many variables, it is nice to at least get a ballpark figure going for alternative fuels for comparisons.

 

Appendix 5: Alternative Fuels At A Glance is a 2-page chart showing comparisons between 12 known alternative fuels, whether they are renewable, are currently available, relative price, use in existing vehicles, ease of distribution and suitability for long-term storage.

 

Appendix 7: Exemplary Transition Scenarios offers 4 hypothetical scenarios, however again not constituted as recommendations, but only as possibilities regarding fleet trucks, service vans, luxury cars and self-commuting with cars, SUVs and Pickups.

 

Conclusion

 

Note: I’m attempting to find out if the original price for the book ($2,000 for the electronic copy and $2,500 for the hard copy) is real or a misprint. If the price is correct, this is way overpriced for the content.

 

Feedback

 

“Hello Robert -

Thanks for your interest in the report. The book is not for individuals. It is for government agencies, corporations, and non-profit organizations. The pricing is in keeping with market research reports, and other specialized reports for this audience, which have a narrowly-defined market. You will note that many other market research reports sell for $1,000-10,000.”

Best wishes,

/s/ Charles

 

The book is a nice attempt at providing management ways and means to come to decisions regarding lowering transportation costs associated with the current petroleum-based issues. However, while the information gathering is good, much of the information is presumptive and assumptive, instead of being based on empirical evidence and scientific knowledge. That is an “Inconvenient Truth”!

 

I look forward to the next revision of this book in transition, in the hopes that the proper evidence can be gathered sufficiently enough to overcome the flaws found. Perhaps then we can see something beyond “hypothetical”, “caveats”, etc. and the author can stand behind his findings, instead of covering his tracks.

 

I asked Charles Wood to lower the price, since it is a book and not a report and that he post it on lulu.com. But hey, if you can get that kind of money for publishing something, you don’t have to sell very many… I’m jealous.