ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY JUNE 17, 2009
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Do we need a technological breakthrough to avert the climate crisis?
In the winter of 1984, a young scientist named Steven Chu was working as the new head of the quantum electronics division at AT&T's Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. For months, he'd been struggling to find ways to trap atoms with light so that he could hold them in place and study them better. It was an idea he'd picked up from an older colleague, Arthur Ashkin, who had wrangled with the problem all through the 1970s before finally being told to shut the project down--which he did, until Chu came along. ("I was this new, young person who he could corrupt," Chu later joked.) Now Chu, too, had hit an impasse until, one night, a fierce snowstorm swirled through New Jersey. Everyone at Bell had left early except for Chu, who lived nearby and decided to stay a bit longer. As he watched the snow drift outside, he realized they'd been approaching the problem incorrectly: He first needed to cool the atoms, so that they were moving only as fast as ants, rather than fighter jets; only then could he predict their movements and trap them with lasers. It was a key insight, and Chu's subsequent work on cooling atoms eventually earned him a share of the Nobel Prize in physics.
While it may sound inevitable in retrospect, big breakthroughs like that don't come along too often. Nowadays, though, Chu is betting that they will-- and must. As the U.S. energy secretary, Chu has been tasked with reshaping the country's trillion-dollar energy economy, to reduce America's reliance on fossil fuels and cut greenhouse-gas emissions 80 percent or more by mid-century- -essential to avoiding catastrophic climate change. It's an enormous goal, and Chu believes the only way to achieve it is with multiple Nobel-caliber leaps in energy technology. "I mean technology that is game-changing, as opposed to merely incremental," he told Congress in March--technology that, as a recent Department of Energy (DOE) task force described it, will require an understanding of basic physics and chemistry "beyond our present reach."
Not everyone agrees that the fate of the planet hinges on such far-reaching advances. Given the increasingly dire revelations of climate science-- greenhouse-gas emissions are rising more quickly than projected, Arctic sea ice is melting faster than once thought possible--many analysts believe we need to act with all due haste, before the planet hits a tipping point. And much of the green movement tends to follow Al Gore's oft-stated assurance that, "to save the future, we have everything we need except the political will." Chu's view also sits uneasily alongside that of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc), which, in 2007, declared that stabilizing carbon in the atmosphere below safe levels could be done with a mix of technologies that were either currently available (like wind power) or just around the bend (plug-in hybrids, for instance). This camp argues that, while existing clean-energy gadgets may have flaws, they'll get steadily better and cheaper as they're deployed, and, in any case, the immense urgency of the climate problem leaves us little alternative.
Chu, for his part, acknowledges that the threat posed by global warming requires a wide array of practical and immediate responses, including a cap on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels less competitive. Still, according to those familiar with his thinking, Chu sees the challenge of spurring breakthroughs in energy research as an even larger priority than setting a carbon price and promoting existing clean-energy sources. "I think science and technology can generate much better choices," he told The New York Times in February. "It has, consistently, over hundreds and hundreds of years."
It's an attractive vision. There's no question, after all, that investments in energy R&D have become dangerously anemic over the years, and that better technology would make the task of curbing emissions far less arduous. But Chu's stance raises plenty of knotty questions. What's the best way to promote innovation? And can these vast leaps in scientific understanding arrive in time to fend off rising global temperatures? And, most importantly, what happens if they don't? As it turns out, there's reason to worry that counting on radical breakthroughs to save the planet may be a fraught and uncertain venture.
Talk to chemists and physicists toiling on the frontiers of clean energy research and it's easy to be dazzled by the possibilities. Take solar power. The sun radiates more energy down to Earth in an hour than humans use in a year. It's just that, right now, even the best solar photovoltaic panels are relatively inefficient at harvesting that resource--and storing the energy for when the sun isn't shining remains tricky. So, some scientists have gone back to the drawing board and tried to pursue artificial photosynthesis, mimicking the deft process that plants use to turn sunlight and water into fuel.
Progress has been slow, but, in 2008, Daniel Nocera, a chemist at MIT, made headlines for a breakthrough in one small piece of this project. He created a cheap chemical catalyst that could use solar energy to break down water into oxygen and hydrogen, which could then be stored or run through a fuel cell to generate electricity. "In theory, if you could use the sun's energy to convert just one-third of the amount of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool into hydrogen and oxygen per second, you could take care of the world's energy needs, " Nocera explains. At the time it was announced, one researcher called it "probably the most important single discovery of the century" for solar power, and the news conjured up shiny visions of leaf-like catalysts creating hydrogen fuel to power homes and cars--provided, of course, that a flurry of follow-up problems could be resolved: how to absorb sunlight more efficiently, how to build the fuel cells, how to store the hydrogen cheaply, and so on. Those hurdles are formidable, and Nocera has his fair share of doubters, but the broad concept is undeniably appealing.
Over the past few years, the DOE's Office of Basic Energy Sciences has released a series of reports that have taken such "if only..." notions quite seriously. The premise of these reports is that existing clean-energy technologies--from batteries to nuclear power--have hit ceilings that can't be surpassed by engineering alone or by the tinkering that private companies are now doing at the margins. In many cases, cracking these limits will require dramatic strides in scientific understanding. "Companies are doing great work, but it's all been based on an existing set of basic concepts and understandings to which we need to continue to add," says Mark Ratner, a chemist at Northwestern University who contributed to the DOE reports.
These next-level breakthroughs may, in effect, require a whole new type of science. Ratner explains that, during the twentieth century, scientists became increasingly sophisticated at studying quantum effects and examining matter at an ever-smaller scale--leading to the discovery of key materials such as superconductors and carbon nanotubes. Now, he says, the big challenge is to step beyond observation and figure out how to actually control and direct matter and energy at the atomic level. "We still don't really know how to control chemical reactions at that level, for instance," he says. "Something like that could really deepen what we could do."
Last December, the office released an "energy challenges" report that offered a lavish vision of what a new "control science" could accomplish. If, for instance, the steel used to make nuclear reactors was built by manipulating atoms at the nanoscale, rather than through traditional bulk processes, we could have materials that self-heal and better resist chemical corrosion and intense radiation, allowing the construction of nuclear reactors that operate at much higher temperatures and efficiencies--meaning more power and less waste. Or ultra-light materials could be used to build cars that require far less energy to propel. Or batteries built on chemistry yet unknown could allow electric vehicles to vastly surpass their currently limited range. Or solid- state lighting that used just a fraction of the power that incandescent light bulbs use, and without the glare of compact fluorescent lights, could drop the percentage of electricity the nation needs for lighting from 22 to 2 percent.
While the DOE reports were drafted during the Bush years--conservatives have often touted technological upheaval as the solution to climate change, but mainly as an excuse to put off carbon regulations--the findings have particularly resonated with Chu, who has long agreed that deep research and disruptive new technologies are necessary for solving our energy woes. With funds pouring in from the Obama administration, the DOE's labs are beginning to channel their basic research efforts toward specific energy problems, both big and small. "There's always a question of how much you focus on engineering and how much on targeted, basic research," says George Crabtree, a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory who helped oversee the DOE reports. "It's dangerous to say this, because I love engineering-- the plug-in hybrid, that was engineering. But we need to shift back a bit to the basic sciences side."
As alluring as this scientific vision may be, we may not have time to wait for radical advances to emerge. Global warming is happening now, and many of the changes needed to slow or stop it will have to be made in the next few decades. According to the ipcc, wealthy countries need to cut their carbon- dioxide emissions by up to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050, in order to have a shot at stabilizing atmospheric carbon levels below 450 parts per million. Skate past that number and we run a high risk of triggering carbon-cycle feedbacks beyond our control, putting the world on course for massive sea-level rises, widespread drought, and other assorted horrors.
"We need to replace the entire energy system in three or four decades," says Joseph Romm, a Clinton-era Energy Department official and one of the fiercest critics of those banking on major technological breakthroughs. "The notion that technology that doesn't even exist yet could be invented, demonstrated, and then commercialized in that time frame--it's absurd."
Indeed, the question of timing turns out to be utterly central. Chu is mindful of this: In addition to his longer-term vision, he has put an emphasis on intermediate advances that can scale up in just five to ten years with proper support--from improved batteries to sensor-based technology to cut energy use in buildings. Yet many of the truly sweeping breakthroughs envisioned by the DOE task force could take far longer, and the energy industry tends to evolve at a sluggish pace, with major new discoveries often taking decades to filter into the marketplace.
Consider, for instance, the high-temperature superconductor. In 1986, two researchers at IBM's labs in Zurich, Alex Muller and Georg Bednorz, announced that they had discovered a new brittle ceramic compound that could conduct electricity with little resistance at relatively high temperatures (previous superconductors needed to be cooled with expensive liquid helium, making them impractical for most uses except boutique applications, such as MRIs and particle accelerators). Condensed-matter physicists everywhere swooned over the news. The press giddied itself over a "Jetsons"-esque future replete with magnetically levitated trains, ultrafast computers, and new transmission lines that could carry five times as much electricity as normal lines over long distances with low losses--a true game-changer for electricity markets. "That summer, I made a lot of money as a consultant," chuckles Bruce Strauss, a high- energy physicist who now works for DOE. "You saw venture capitalists running around with open checkbooks, asking, 'Where should I invest?' I kept telling them you're not going to see real applications for twenty or thirty years--they looked at me like I was a doomsayer." Sure enough, more than 20 years later, those transmission lines are still in the embryonic stage. The superconductors perform admirably in demonstration projects, but no one has mastered a way to bring production costs down to halfway reasonable levels.
While counterexamples exist, some analysts warn that the superconductor case is all too illustrative. Romm cites a 2001 study by Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which found that, historically, "it has taken 25 years after commercial introduction for a primary energy form to obtain a 1 percent share of the global market." Silicon solar photovoltaic cells, for instance, ranked as a major advance when they were developed more than half a century ago, yet they still provide less than 0.1 percent of America's electricity today. How much longer might it take for even more complex inventions--artificial photosynthesis, say--to journey from the laboratory out into widespread use? (Even Chu recognizes that some inventions may not emerge in a reasonable time frame: He recently cut federal support for hydrogen-powered cars, arguing that widely deploying these vehicles in the next few decades would require "four significant technological breakthroughs"--too improbable for even the most fervent believers in science.)
There may be an even more basic problem, too: Science has to continue rapidly advancing--or even speed up--for many of these big breakthroughs to occur in the first place. Last year's DOE report argued that achieving its futuristic vision would require significantly increasing the rate of scientific discovery, in part because, as the materials and phenomena under study get more complex, entirely new scientific laws often need to be grasped at each step of the way. "Look at superconductivity," explains Graham Fleming, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley who contributed to the DOE reports. "It's got what's called an emergent property--just knowing the properties of the parts doesn't help a lot. Having a better theoretical understanding of those emergent systems is something we need. Right now there's an awful lot of trial and error in making materials that are much more efficient and effective."
So what are the odds that the pace of scientific discovery can accelerate? This is a hotly debated topic, with a wide spectrum of answers. In 2005, Jonathan Huebner, a physicist working at Pentagon's Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California, published a controversial paper looking at the rate of U.S. patents awarded over time. He argued that the rate of technological innovation has actually been slowing since around 1873--the age of Edison--and that the world could be entering a new Dark Age of innovation by the 2020s. Huebner's paper came under heavy fire from a number of innovation scholars, including Ray Kurzweil, a futurist who is inordinately bullish on the rate of technological progress and who, to his credit, has made a number of bang-on forecasts. (He famously predicted that a computer would be able to beat a grandmaster in chess by the late 1990s.) Kurzweil has suggested that technological change will continue zooming forward until artificial- intelligence machines start replicating themselves. At that point--in or around 2045--the pace of innovation will happen so blindingly fast as to be inconceivable. Presumably the answer to our carbon troubles would materialize, as if by magic, at this point.
Most scientists, though, tend to sit in the middle: optimistic that science and technology will continue to push ahead, but not gambling on any particular game-changer. "You can't make those predictions," says Jae Edmonds, a scientist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Maryland. "What I do know is that you increase the likelihood of getting breakthroughs if you both invest in the underlying science and have policies that signal a limit on emissions. If you do that, it's reasonable to expect the technology to come."
That brings up another big question mark: Is there anything the government can do to quicken the pace of innovation, and convert those laboratory insights into commercial reality more swiftly? It's easy to point to the Manhattan Project or Apollo Program as examples where the government faced a seemingly intractable scientific problem, opened its checkbook, unleashed the nation's brightest minds, and watched the obstacles melt away. But that analogy is inapt. Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton, has pointed out that the Manhattan Project was set up to create a unique product for a single customer-- the U.S. government--for whom money was no object. The government can't pursue the same strategy with energy, because price is a pivotal concern.
On this score, the government's record is murkier. Regulations like the Clean Air Act and fuel-economy standards have helped prod private companies to innovate, but shepherding major scientific advances from birth to commercial readiness is another matter entirely, and a difficult task. "It's a complicated, messy, recursive process," says Robert Fri, a former Environmental Protection Agency official who now works at the think tank Resources for the Future. "That's not always the way the government goes about doing stuff." Fri points to the Energy Department's synthetic fuels program in the 1970s, which struggled to invent a viable alternative to oil and fell apart when the price of crude sank back down. To be sure, Chu is aggressively pursuing new ways for the Energy Department to bridge this gap between basic science and the marketplace. He has read, among other things, a recent Brookings report arguing for closer collaboration among DOE's national labs, universities, and private industry, and he is trying to retool the Energy Department along similar lines. Those efforts are promising, but the results remain to be seen.
That doesn't mean it's time to despair. It may be difficult to translate Nobel-caliber insights into everyday household gadgets. But there's another job that the government has been fairly good at doing over the years: supporting technologies that are already viable but, for whatever reason, face barriers to gaining a toehold in the real world. "Historically, when the government has thought through what those barriers were, and targeted that barrier quite precisely, it could have a terrific positive impact," says Fri. In the 1970s, he notes, Energy Department labs realized that using electronic ballasts in fluorescent light bulbs could make the bulbs vastly more energy-efficient. The big roadblock was that, at the time, two ballast manufacturers dominated the market, and neither had any incentive to adopt the new technology, since if one did, the other would quickly follow, and no one would gain any market advantage- -they'd just have spent a bit more money. So the Energy Department seeded a few small start-up firms that demonstrated the ballasts and prompted the bigger companies to follow suit, leading to large savings for the public.
These deployment strategies, it turns out, can spur another type of innovation--marketplace learning--which can sometimes be just as crucial as cutting-edge scientific research. "There are three ways of lowering the cost of something," explains Romm. "There's a major technological advance; there are economies of scale; and then there's what's called the experience learning curve. The third one is arguably the most important--as you deploy stuff, you realize what needs to be improved. Where the stress fractures in a wind turbine are. How the mirrors [of a solar thermal plant] perform in a desert after a few months. Or in manufacturing--how you use silicon more efficiently, or make it thinner, or recycle it. None of this is Nobel-caliber." As existing technologies like wind turbines become more widely used, performance steadily improves, incremental research gets adopted, and the costs start falling--a process that can be more reliable than waiting for breathtaking new scientific advances. Studies of wind turbines, for example, have found that costs come down by as much as 17 percent each time production doubles, as a result of learning-by-doing.
That's a good thing, because it's this sort of incremental innovation that the planet may need to lean on most heavily, at least in the near term. A substantial body of evidence suggests that the world can make huge emission cuts in the next few decades without needing to wait for grandiose new technologies to arrive. In 2004, two Princeton scientists, Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, published a much-discussed paper in Science laying out 15 carbon-cutting strategies that have already been field-tested, which they dubbed "wedges." Solar power constituted one wedge, nuclear another, stricter fuel-economy standards for cars a third, reversing deforestation a fourth, and so on. The world, Pacala and Socolow showed, could cut emissions dramatically and still satisfy growing energy demand by deploying just seven of those wedges on a grand scale. (That's no mean task: One "wedge" of nuclear power, say, would mean building 21 new plants each year between now and 2050.) While some experts now believe we need even more wedges to meet the ipcc targets, several research efforts have reached similar conclusions: By combining everything we now have on hand, we can tackle a sizeable chunk of the problem at a reasonable cost. A 2008 McKinsey Global Institute analysis pegged the investments needed by 2030 at around 0.6 to 1.4 percent of global GDP and noted that the impact on the world's economic growth rate would be minimal, "even with currently known technologies."
The IPCC lists a wide array of technologies either available now or very likely to surface in the near future that could help reduce emissions. The former category includes (among other things) nuclear power, hydropower, wind power, geothermal, fuel-efficient vehicles, hybrids, biofuels, public transit, reforestation, and landfill methane recovery. The list of just-around-the- corner strategies includes carbon sequestration for coal-fired plants, advanced nuclear plants, tidal and wave power, cellulosic biofuels, and advanced electric vehicles. While no single solution will make more than a modest dent in the world's emissions--none of those items has the vast potential of, say, artificial photosynthesis--when combined together, they should steadily chip away at carbon emissions.
One particularly promising example is solar thermal power, in which large arrays of mirrors heat a liquid that can either generate electricity or be stored for when it's cloudy or dark. Such plants are being built now, and, if Congress passed a carbon price that made them more competitive with coal and natural-gas plants, they'd become even more prevalent and the price would continue nudging downward: The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has already estimated that these plants will be able to compete with existing natural-gas plants by 2015, and solar-power expert Ken Zweibel has estimated that they could, in theory, supply up to 69 percent of America's electricity by 2050. It would require a fair amount of government support and infrastructure investments, as well as further R&D, but not a whole new level of science. In the short term, meanwhile, one of the biggest reductions in emissions will come from making buildings and homes more energy-efficient, which typically requires no fancy new technology at all--just smarter regulations.
It's true that, eventually, existing technologies will hit a wall. If electric cars powered by lithium-ion batteries become widespread, for instance, then world lithium supplies could conceivably dwindle. Or, at a certain point, the need for cost-effective electrical-power storage could become a serious issue. (Right now, Denmark gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind, but can only "store" that power by exporting the excess to Sweden and Norway, which send back hydropower when the wind isn't blowing-- a clever workaround that will prove less feasible as renewables spread.) "There are a bunch of things we know how to do now, and we want to use all the incentives we can to get those things out there," says Argonne's George Crabtree. "But, eventually, their impact will saturate, as soon as they're fully deployed--and that's where you'll need serious innovation."
By mid-century or so, we really may need the sorts of artificial leaves and futuristic batteries we can barely begin to imagine right now. And it is far less outlandish to expect that, by that time, science will be able to deliver such breakthroughs. But all of those sci-fi technologies decades from now won't mean much if we've long since blown past our carbon budget. That means doing as much as we can now--and fast.
22 comments
Hydrogen for Hamilton, Biofuels for Jefferson I applaud this excellent review of the role of reason in addressing climate change with sound and aggressive technology policies. There is certainly justification for hope in this arena with the arrival of the Obama administration. This being said, we should remain wary of the influence of chaotic and subsuming “animal spirits” that often transform technologies into either tools or victims of political agendas. This influence would surely have overwhelmed the debate about green fuels for cars if it had occurred in the time of Hamilton and Jefferson. Hamilton had the support of the merchants and manufacturers, and he favored a strong federal government that would not shy away from market interventions. Jefferson favored states rights and reduced federal power, and was backed by artisans and rural farmers. If the debate about low-carbon alternatives to petroleum had taken place around 1800, surely Hamilton would have sided with hydrogen and Jefferson with biofuels. With his faith in large government interventions and financial backing for business interests, Hamilton would have taken the Bush Administration’s top-down approach to simply claiming hydrogen as the winner and rolling out a large federal program to bring the technology to market. Jefferson, in contrast, would surely have sided with the rural heartland farmers that would be producing the biofuels, condemning hydrogen as elitist and spurring a grassroots revival of homegrown fuel within the agricultural states. If only technology and climate change policy were as straightforward as the apple pie issues of 18th century oppositional politics. In truth, there is virtually no alignment between the social or institutional benefits of hydrogen and biofuels and the political agendas of the former Bush and current Obama administrations. At one time it did appear that large petroleum companies were going to inherit the advanced hydrogen production and delivery infrastructure technologies that would provide hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles. But today oil companies have gotten cold feet, and it appears that other yet to be identified companies will have to play this role. Similarly, rather than small self-sufficient farmers benefiting from a growing market for biofuels, it is large corporations profiting from massive federal subsidies. Given the high costs of transporting hydrogen long distances, it is unlikely that hydrogen fuel will be shipped internationally like crude oil is today. In contrast, a global future dependent on biofuels will probably rely on imports from equatorial regions where the easily shipped fuels can be produced most economically. Hydrogen production is unlikely to occur at the scale of the small farmer cooperative, but tomorrow’s large-scale and advanced biofuel production processes will be no less out of reach from non-expert and small business communities than is hydrogen. Similar observations could be made for electric utilities, which operate through their own governing systems that are no more populist than they are industrial elitist. The recent decision by Secretary Chu to zero out funding for hydrogen vehicles has all the markings of a technology policy decision based upon political disposition rather than scientific evidence. The justification that the technology is “too far off” has been wielded arbitrarily; is apparently does not to apply to many other long-term technologies that continue to be supported with Federal R&D funds. Too many studies have validated the long-term carbon reduction potential of hydrogen as being on par and on scale with potential benefits from biofuels or battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. Taking hydrogen off the table because it is long-term contradicts the Obama administration’s stated 2050 goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent. Secretary Chu and President Obama are surrounded by technical expertise, and it is unfortunate that they have painted themselves into a corner on this issue by failing to hear out all sides. America’s political foundations were strengthened by the diverse political views of the Founding Fathers. Let’s hope that America’s future is similarly strengthened by federal and state support for a diversity of promising climate change solutions.
- Tritium Publius
May 31, 2009 at 10:42am
There is certainly much more hope today that science will have a greater influence on climate change policy. But Secretary Chu’s recent decision to eliminate funding for hydrogen vehicles demonstrates that even a Nobel Laureate cannot fully separate politics from science. There is overwhelming evidence that hydrogen vehicles could play a huge role in the long-term effort to battle climate change. Even Romm, of all people, acknowledged this in his book on hydrogen. High performance vehicles are on the road today, and there are multiple promising methods of producing hydrogen from low-carbon, non-fossil energy resources. Unfortunately, hydrogen vehicles are burdened by the brand of a prominent Bush administration policy. But this does not justify political retaliation. Many less promising long-term technologies continue to be supported, some lavishly, within the new Department of Energy budget. Hydrogen vehicles should be judged by their potential to delivery benefits to future generations. They should not be judged on the shortsighted legacy of a President who was never serious about climate change.
- Tritium Publius
May 31, 2009 at 4:29pm
Read George Friedman's new book about the next hundred years on our fair planet. He writes about solar mirror stations in outer space which will collect and beam back to earth intense laser beams, which will supply us with all the electricity we could ever need. All by a mere 2050. The U.S. will dominate this technology. Kindness of the Defense Department, as usual. Sort of a beam me back down, Scotty approach. No problem.
- SunKing
June 1, 2009 at 9:09pm
One other issue is the effect that intellectual property, patents and privatization can have on the pace of scientific and technological innovation. The effects can be positive or negative, but need to be managed so they don't impede progress. How do we ensure that publicly funded R&D benefits the public?
- bobskis
June 6, 2009 at 11:01pm
ummm. it's june 7, 2009, and yesterday the high in chicago was about 57. it's been that way all year. rainy and cold. i haven't even put away the winter fleece outerwear yet. i suppose i believe in global warming. all the brains say it's true, although i do remember my father decades ago teaching me that he learned in college (phi beta kappa) that he learned a new ice age was on the way. i know that's a right-wing refrain today, but it was accepted as true back then. but, since we have computer models today, for the present, i'll side with global warming predictions. could somebody just please send summer to chicago? keevan d. morgan, esq.
- keevan d. morgan
June 7, 2009 at 9:36am
Good article, fair and well-balanced!
- Neal J. King
June 7, 2009 at 10:34am
We are at the tipping point. Global Warming is a fraud and the public is about to laugh the concept out of town. The author apparently hasn't gotten the memo to call it climate change instead of global warming. This might prevent you from being run over, as will AlGore, by a freight train of public ridicule.
- jd
June 7, 2009 at 11:34am
All of these interesting facts. Steven Chu is a smart guy, he spoke at our son's graduation at Berkeley, but 1984 was 25 years ago. All of these promises. Now, which of these are promising enough for you to invest your own money rather than waste federal tax money? Green energy is just a big budget, Federal dollars, welfare program for PhDs and Nobel Prize winners. Electric cars? come on! What will the toxic waste disposal problem be for the ultra toxic batteries? Come on! THINK! The law of unintended consequences. What will happen to our floundering economy when gas gets back to $4 gallon because we will not drill here, drill now? What will happen when electricity doubles because of cap and trade? Congratulations! You have destroyed the freest, most prosperous nation in history. You must be proud!
- JoeS
June 7, 2009 at 11:38am
This is an interesting article, for what it omits, not what it states. I have forty years in engineering in the private sector, most of it assessing advanced technologies in electric generation, conditioning, and associated material application. I have engineered a score of nukes, and two score fossil plants. What popped out, screamed, at me is that no authority, quoted in the article, has any background in cost, or schedule, which is the heart of engineering and the essence of the problem. This distinguishes a scientist from an engineer. Another key aspect is personal risk, which is virtually unknown in academia and government employment. And there is the major unstated prime barrier to a new energy future, which was created by the government, the US population of technically trained people is getting older, will get smaller, and may get dumber. After the continuous regulatory and litigious pogrom of nuclear power, and fossil power, when new large plants stopped in the mid 1970s, legions of "builders", engineers and skilled craftsmen, saw their careers terminated. The US government killed off the smoke stack industries, forced them offshore. If we could run an extension cord to China, we would have no power plants is these United States. During the 1980s, some 69 engineering colleges dropped course work vital to power plant design. Becoming a Professional Engineer, rather than a stock broker, or lawyer was deemed a very foolish decision. Currently about 3/4 of the engineers graduating in the US, with advanced technical degrees (not MBAs) are citizens of foreign nations. Within the last few years, they are tending to go home in significant numbers. The most common stated reason for this brain drain is that they no longer judge the US as a good career choice, which has been mirrored in vast numbers of Americans families. The US produces circa seven lawyers for one engineer. There are many more dinosaurs in Congress and the White House pontificating on energy matters, than one Professional Engineer. Ergo, we have academic amateurs establishing the cost and schedule of uncertain technologies, predicated on employing talent that does not exist. What escapes the decision makers are some hard engineering judgments: If global warming is really bad, we, collectively, are dead. The dirt will remain; our society, as we know it, will not. This assumes no technical breakthrough(s), which, after forty years of looking, I have not found. All green energy technologies cost too much. We can sugar coat the truth by such political solutions as the smart grid, whereby the government will make people pay for telemetry which will shut off their air conditioner during August. (You will be free to run it all through January.) Basically it is a busy signal, like the old phone system, just fancier. The biggest problem, again unmentioned, that the government faces, is it (the NRC and EPA) destroyed power engineering in the private sector. The US can not build one nuclear reactor per year; John McCain's platform to bring 45 on line by 2030 shows that we have bipartisan absurdities. Yucca Mountain continues to destroy this industry, an unmentioned direct failure of Dr. Chu, Head of DOE. It is his job. By law, the DOE must accept all civilian spent fuel, since 1998. The schedule gurus of DOE have not yet accepted one gram. We have seen what happens in the private sector when CEOs fail, we saw what happened the Heisenberg, the Nazi's nuclear weapon expert, when he lost his R&D schedule. I see no one, who is risking his own neck on this national problem, except some grunts taking in-coming in oil land. They have learned hard truths that none of the quoted authorities grasp. Global warming will be resolved by two scientific laws: Thou shalt not lie, and Thou shalt not steal. We could discuss teenagers driving a car with a 10,000 psi hydrogen gas tank, or LED power consumption, silicon carbide switches, ultracapacitors, or third generation high temperature super conductor cost effectiveness, but let me focus on the central issues. No one else mentioned them.
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June 7, 2009 at 12:51pm
All this knashing of teeth about how other leaders would have managed the AGW issue. If we actually used real science not infused with politics then they would have not spent another minute on a solution that would not fix anything in the first place. The relationship between CO2 and temperature has fallen apart (well actually it is the temp that drives the CO2 to be accurate)and the politicos need to keep us in the dark so they can implement a new wealth redistribution scheme on a world-wide basis. Kill the law started under Carter to allow recycling of nuclear material and go with what already works now, just to get us closer to energy independence and then maybe the newest idea (lasers and hydrogen) will become the next version of CO2-free power when it's ready. Even the MSM has now started to publish information that shows the AGW idea to be wrong, so now you only have 'believers' left, not scientists.
- Jim Thompson
June 7, 2009 at 2:04pm
We should make massive investments in all energy sources available today, such as Nuclear, Wind, Clean-Coal, Solar, and fuel - that is not derived from oil. Obviously, oil will have to be used until we develop alternatives to it (Drill Here, Drill Now!). I am also in favor of offering an incentive for an individual or group to come up with an alternative energy source so that we can stop the transfer of our wealth to OPEC. ("The total domestic economic loss in America due to oil import purchases was in the range of 4.5 TRILLION for just 2008 alone!") If we can offer someone $25 Million for the capture of Osama Bin Laden, surely we can offer that same amount to an individual to come up with the right formula for a synthetic oil to propel an engine or a machine. What is also important to know is the “Waxman-Markey Bill” currently in Congress does not provide any Blueprint of what America is specifically going to do to make our country Energy Independent and reduce CO2 emissions. So, we need to know what "Green" jobs are definitely going to be created as a result of this bill that has a title, job description, and a base salary? In addition, to make sure gas is more affordable today, I would impose restrictions on the trading of oil futures and only allow fuel stations to change their prices once a week (Like NJ). Let America Be America....Life, Liberty, & The Pursuit of Happiness! Mark Memoly Missouri Will Show The Way! Kansas City mmemoly@gmail.com Keep Memoly In Your Memory! 2010 Republican Candidate For The US Senate From Missouri
- Mark Memoly
June 7, 2009 at 3:36pm
Over 65% of CO2 emmissions come from commercial and residential use of electricity and natural gas. Nuclear Power is the only proven technology that can completely eliminate these CO2 emmisions. Wind and solar cells are not the answer. They are a joke and a tremendous waste of resources. In 1975 if Denmark had begun converting to nuclear power instead of wind power, they would now have 100% clean electrical energy instead of the current 20% generated by wind farms. The idea that electrical energy demand will be less in 2050 is rediculous. Electrical energy demand will be more, a lot more (even with conservation through the use of more energy efficient technology). We should still fund energy R&D and if we get a viable new energy technology, great. We can implement the new energy technology and stop deploying the nuclear solution. Until then , nuclear is the only current technology that can positively reduce CO2 emmisions by 65% by 2050. If man made global warming is a real problem, then the proponents of man made global warming should support the immediate implementation of the nuclear power solution. The debate is over. Cap and Trade is not the answer, unless you link it to nuclear power implementation. It is time for Al Gore, Waxman, Obama, the UN, and the rest of the man made global warming crowd to s**t of get off the pot. Transportation constitutes the remaining 35% of CO2 emmissions. The new mileage standards are a good start. We should also immediately restrict general aviation. No use of private jets or helicopters by civilians. If you want to fly from point A to point B, buy a ticket on a commercial airline. Only the military and critical high profile government officials (POTUS, etc.) should have access to military jets and helicopters. The only exception would be the use of helicopters by companies to support specific work requirements (off shore oil platforms, remote work locations, etc). The time for talk and debate is over. Implement a viable solution or shut up.
- Tony D
June 7, 2009 at 3:43pm
technology changes people's behavior when the microeconomic motive makes sense, human by human. the idea that government will create game changing technologies, to be doled out to the masses by our Dear Leader, is a joke. but what would i expect from TNR, shill of the left. the profit motive will change the game, and only the profit motive will do so. get your liberal arts heads out of the sand.....
- sub
June 7, 2009 at 3:56pm
I went through the mental exercise of alternative energy during the 1970's. The only rational conclusion was to build underground houses, and to heat those houses with wood (a renewable resource). So, I bought 40 acres of trees, built an underground house, and bought a wood stove. It has worked out extremely well for me. It was a lot of work (since nobody knew how to build underground houses). But, I am smiling. And, the trees grow back faster than I can cut them down. And, the animals love us because we have provided a safe-haven for them.
- Ron Vida
June 7, 2009 at 4:48pm
In ten years when the earth is in a mini-ice age we will be spending like crazy to get enough oil and coal and natural gas that was available for the last ten years. We will lament the wasted dollars sent down the technical rat hole with nothing to show for it. Gore started funding science to prove that global warming was a problem and boy did scientist sell out looking for the almighty dollar. Delaying oil and gas research and development is folly. Time is a wasting get enough oil and gas and coal in the bank for the temperature down turn then play these dream games. How much money have we spent trying to get fusion to work and what do we have to show for it. This is the worst planning imaginable. Given today's knowledge of what the temperature will be in ten years it is folly not to be prepared for both eventualities. SunKing report on Friedman's new book is blindly optimistic. Unless these mirrors are near the L2 point where the new space telescope is to be placed then controlling the attitude rotations of a large mirror are insurmountable. Beware the Pelosi stick with what we know that will work. Remember that ideas are easy, implementing them is hard. Harvesting fossil fuels eliminates our dependence on foreign oil, gives us enough time to develop viable alternate sources of renewable energy, and works no matter what the temperature is in 10 years. Ideas on alternate energy sources are growing exponentially--first we need to wait until the bucket if full the do the cost benefit analysis currently absent in the grab for the money and the formulate a coordinated plan for the world. Any plan that doesn't work for the world is a waste. Rember the BRICK.
- nobozons
June 7, 2009 at 5:38pm
The alarmist assumptions in articles like this make me feel completely alienated from my own culture.
- Frank Lee
June 8, 2009 at 12:04am
We need breakthroughs on all fronts, not just on the technology side. We need to change people's attitude, create better governance, make business enterprises more socially responsible, and prepare ourselves for disaster scenarios, and etc. We can have all the cool and miraculous gadgets but still being ignorant and irresponsible. And planet-scale plan like dumping iron into the ocean might do more harm than good.
- Anonymous
June 8, 2009 at 7:56am
On global warming we’re like the shy boy at the High School homecoming dance who finally makes up his mind to ask the prettiest girl in the senior class to dance. He’s spent the better part of the evening debating with himself, “will she”, or “won’t she”. What ever the “will” or “won’t” is, he never gets that far in his contemplations. When he finally sets out to find her on the dance floor, he finds out that she’s already left the party a couple of hours earlier with the school’s star high school quarterback. We’ve been debating to maybe, maybe, start to act to lower our byproduct greenhouse gas emissions. But we’ve very probably long past the quantity of emissions which are guaranteed to be generated from our past and present global industrial infrastructure which we have had in place from Jefferson administration; and which will continue to be in place in some Jeffersonian recognizable form for at least the next 150 years; and which infrastructure, guarantees a global warming catastrophic climate change that will last at least the next 2500 years. The basic science challenge for now is the development of long range (at least fifty years) high confidence scientific analyses which forecast changes in our ecology; so that we can construct the interface adaptations that permit our continued support of a human population on this planet; at some percent increase in gross numbers per century, with a gradually improving standard of living. The basic questions I am referring to are for example: What are the cereal grains that will reliably feed 8 billion people (at the living standard on average of say, Malaysia) that will be adapted to the hydraulic precipitation model in a world of global warming in 2150? Where will the great grain and protein growing regions of the world be in 2150? What will be the technologies necessary to plant and harvest the grains and proteins for 8.5 – 9.0 billion people? What is the social model of a political economy which very quickly (and without major wars, conventional, nuclear, or unconventional) allows the movement of agricultural infrastructure around the globe to wherever the then available technology needs to be deployed to produce the food which feeds the planets population? All of these and a host of other questions need to be answered, and presently unknown questions need to be discovered and raised in order for us to survive this coming disaster with the continuity of our civilization in tact.
- ROBERT SHEPHERD
June 8, 2009 at 11:17am
It really is about time that the serious media - I assume that includes TNR - gave some credence to the facts that are being published as we read. Polar Ice is increasing NOT decreasing. Temperatures are cooling while CO2 rises at faster levels than predicted and there is no evidence of warming from the most accurate of sources while the ground sources on which warming claims are based are discredited. In the meantime the Western world sleepwalks to economic self-destruction, in the name of saving the planet, at the behest of the emerging nations through their medium of controlling the western liberal conscience - the United Nations - aided and abetted by useful idiots like Al Gore, Hansen and Chomsky all of whom are making a very fine living from it. For chrissake, WAKE UP, for all our sakes!
- Ian Campbell
June 12, 2009 at 7:48am
People are becoming delusional about peak oil and climate change if they think technology will magically save us. Drastic action is needed, unless Shell Oil's predictions were right contrary to all the other predictions in the Hirsch Report.
- Anonymous
June 17, 2009 at 11:48pm
Mr. Plumer's article--and the responses to it--reinforce my own suspicion that our energy woes--and affiliated climatic concerns--are--or should be our primary focus. It also underscores the wild improbably (though possible) of some easy, quick fix to our woes. Indeed, it may turn out, that in terms of world-historical importance, it may come to loom as large, as say, the emergence of agriculture, for example. That took us humans more than a few hundred years, because of variety of reasons, some out of our control, because changes in climate affect vegetation, etc. (Indeed, it was very clever idea to store seeds in the arctic region, who knows?, we may need them.)
- Lewis Klim
June 19, 2009 at 5:16pm
I am baffled when I read unqualified assertions like " . . . existing clean-energy technologies--from batteries to nuclear power . . . " as if we'd figured out what to do with the nuclear waste that will remain highly toxic for ten times the current span of recorded history. Nuclear power is not a clean-energy technology.
- Matthew McClure
June 25, 2009 at 3:56pm