This blog discussion requires a rather long introduction to put the rest into perspective. Sorry about that. The part that I am most interested in has to do with how the news media is being misused to “brain wash” many of those on the “weird right” (believers in obviously fake news). I happened to chase the story of DEF down the rabbit hole, but the same approach to falsifying news without adding lies is being widely used for a great many topics. I hope that if you hang in there you will find this as interesting as I do.
A couple of nights ago I was having dinner at a Northern California bar and grill style restaurant when I got into a discussion with a guy who was complaining that the high price of diesel was putting him out of business. It turned out that he is in the tow truck business (he sounded like an owner of a tow truck business, but might have just been a driver). He said that his fuel costs when from about $600 a month to $1100 a month during the past few months because of the sharp increase in the cost of diesel. Similar stories are common, so I accepted his story as true and hoped he would continue – which he did. He told me that he friends that owned and operated logging trucks who already quit because of fuel costs, as that many long-haul truckers are going out of business as well.
That sounded true, and was a sad situation. Then he opened up and “explained” why the prices were increasing so dramatically – it is because the government forced the shippers to stop shipping sufficient DEF for their trucks. His idea is that this created a shortage of DEF, which resulted in truckers not being able to obtain this for their trucks, meaning they couldn’t purchase enough diesel, resulting in sky-high fuel prices. He said that there is actually plenty of diesel and DEF, but that Biden’s regulations on the shipment of DEF created an artificial shortage and hence the increase fuel prices. He pointed out that without DEF and without some specific chemicals used in engine oil the trucking industry would grind to a halt (as if there was some sort of concern that this might happen). He then pointed out that all of this is caused by unnecessary regulations to protect the environment. None of this made much sense to me, so I told him that it sounded like “fake news” to me, and that thanked him for the information, promising to “check it out” further. His parting comment was to not use “Google” to do my research because the truth can’t be found there.
A bit of background might help here. DEF (sometimes sold under the name of AdBlue) is a mixture of 1/3 urea and 2/3 water (with a bit of blue coloring) that creates a catalytic reactions when sprayed into the exhaust diesel engines. It reduces the amount of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in emitted by the vehicle – resulting in less air pollution. In 2007 the EPA required a significant reduction in emissions from diesel engines. Many diesel engine manufacturers met the new regulations by adding a requirement for the use of DEF in the exhaust system. Prior to the introduction of DEF they met the EPA requirements by adjusting the fuel-air mixtures to the engines, which lowered fuel mileage. The use of DEF allowed them to re-adjust the engines, getting even better fuel mileage than before the introduction of the EPA requirements.
In order to meet the EPA requirements, truck manufacturers added “features” that limit the speed of the truck to 5 MPH when the DEF tank is empty, and shut off the engine entirely after a short distance. Basically, while the trucks run fine without DEF (because it is just added to the exhaust), they don’t run at all without it. (I don’t know what keeps truckers from adding water to their DEF tanks and heading down the road – perhaps nothing except “good will” keeps them from doing that?)
It takes about 2 gallons of DEF to treat 100 gallons of diesel, and costs about $10.00 per gallon, thus adding about $0.20 per gallon for diesel fuel – but saves more than that in increased mileage. The resent increase in the price of DEF has increased the price from about $9/gallon to about $13/gallon adding an additional $0.08 to the price of fuel. This is a long ways from the tow truck driver’s claim of doubling the price of diesel – and probably isn’t putting anyone out of business.
It turns out that the tow truck driver was correct, there is no shortage of DEF at the supply end (sort of), but there is a restriction to shipping urea from the manufacturing plant to the plants that turn the urea into fertilizer and DEF (along with a few other products). However, the restriction isn’t caused by the government, it was created by Union Pacific (railroad) limiting the number of privately owned rail cars they are willing to haul because they found themselves under staffed and short of locomotives due to the impacts of covid. In order to meet their contracts they decided to limit the number of private rails cars they would haul – a reduction to 80% of what they were doing. The urea companies use their own rail tankers, so found themselves with a 20% reduction in supply. This did not result in a reduction in the production of DEF, but did result in a reduction in the production of fertilizer – impacting farmers across the the country. So yes, there is a short term reduction in urea availability while the rail situation gets straightened out, and no there is not a shortage of DEF resulting in anyone not being able to run their trucks.
So now I can finally get to what I consider the interesting part of the story.
I searched online for topics about DEF shortages and found an interesting selection of items. I first found a lot about diesel engines, the EPA requirements, and urea sources and uses. Just standard “facts” with nothing specific about shortages. An item that I didn’t mention above is that Russia is the world’s biggest exporter of urea, followed closely by China. The USA is a big importer of urea. It is main component of fertilizer, many explosives, DEF, and is a feedstock for wide variety of chemicals.
I then found a lot of interesting articles concerning the shipping induced shortages of urea in the United States (the main subject of the tow truck driver’s discussion). I found many articles that contained the same quoted materials, but with many different spins. I think I found the original source in a New York Times article that discussed the importance of urea for the agricultural and trucking industries, noting that urea in the form of DEF is used to control pollution and that a shortages of this or other chemicals used in diesel engine oil could cripple the users of diesel powered trucks. The article discussed the fact that Union Pacific put a limit on the number of private cars that is would haul, limiting the availability of urea to many industries, particularly the fertilizer manufactures. It didn’t say that there is a shortage for use as DEF, just pointed out that they are critical to keeping things moving. This article then went on to talk about the causes of the shortage, noting that there was an on-going union dispute that is resulting in worker shortages, short staffing because of covid, an increase in shipping demand in part caused by covid, and the fact that a reduction in train transportation during the past decade had caused them to reduce their rolling stock. All of that combined at the same time resulted in delays, bottle necks and many shipping problems. In an attempt to straighten that out Union Pacific brought 50 more locomotives on line, hired a bunch of new employees, and managed the flow of business on their lines – including limiting the number of privately owned rail cars that they accepted.
This long and seemingly true story was reproduced in part by a number of other publications, including Newsweek. However, these other publications didn’t reprint the entire article, just the part about DEF (and other chemicals) being critical for transportation, and that Union Pacific is limited shipping of urea (it is the company doing this, not the government). Some of these derivative articles included a discussion pointing out that the cost of DEF has risen by close to 150% during the past few months (without indicating that this amounts to an increase of less than 2% <about $0.10 per gallon> in the increased cost of diesel fuel).
And then the magic happened! These basically true, but incomplete, articles were picked up and reprinted by many “fact challenged” publications. While most of them accurately reprinted the entire NewsWeek version, they added a few things such as introductions implying that the “shortage” of DEF has caused the increase in fuel costs to the present $7/gallon (not true), or that the “shortage” has stopped trucks from operating (not true), or that the reduction in shipping was ordered by Biden (not true), and many more. These are introduced as just comments along the lines of “perhaps these things are happening”, not “facts.” In addition to distracting introductions, they break up the original story into many small parts interspersed with Tweets on various topics about how horrible Biden is, how wonderful Trump is, how all kinds of things spouting hate and lies – but they are clearly not part of “the article” – they are just things that perhaps somebody somewhere might have said. The real article is there, but it is quite difficult to find because you have to keep skipping over all of the injected material.
It is clear that these inserts are read by many as part of, and of the same value, as the main body of the article. I say that because the tow truck driver was very good and accurate about telling me many of these false and nasty claims, giving them as much value and “truth” as the other parts. There is no “filter” operating for these folks – nothing to sort out what they would like to hear (but is false) from what they might not like to hear (but is true). They don’t seem to know how to step back and realize that there are various sources of various quality at work in the things that they use to “study” a problem.