Hill Heat

From the Wonk Room.

Obama’s climate scientists are collateral damage in an unrelated fight over Cuba policy with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). Menendez is responsible for an anonymous hold on the nominations of Dr. John Holdren and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, both world-renowned experts on climate change and the physical sciences. Holdren and Lubchenco “sailed through” their confirmation hearing on February 12. But as the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin reports, Menendez has anonymously blocked their full Senate confirmation “as leverage to get Senate leaders’ attention for a matter related to Cuba rather than questioning the nominees’ credentials.” Menendez, a Cuban American, took to the Senate floor last night “to deliver a withering denunciation” of proposed changes to U.S.-Cuban relations included in the budget omnibus:

We should evaluate how to encourage the regime to allow a legitimate opening – not in terms of cell phones and hotel rooms that Cubans can’t afford, but in terms of the right to organize, the right to think and speak what they believe. However, what we are doing with this Omnibus bill, Mr. President, is far from evaluation, and the process by which these changes have been forced upon this body is so deeply offensive to me, and so deeply undemocratic, that it puts the Omnibus appropriations package in jeopardy, in spite of all the other tremendously important funding that this bill would provide.

Menendez points to a memo prepared by the staff of Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) as recommending a policy change that Menendez worries could “rescue the regime by improving its economic fortunes,” namely giving Cuba “financial credit to purchase agricultural products from the U.S.”

These picks have in fact languished for months, having been put forward by President Obama on December 20. Lubchenco’s nomination to be administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has been stalled in part by the turmoil over finding a Secretary of Commerce, whose department includes NOAA. NOAA career staff are gamely working to draft a spending plan for the $830 million in the recently passed recovery act, and energy adviser Carol Browner is managing climate policy from the White House with a skeleton staff. But the Office of Science and Technology Policy is a key White House office, and its director Holdren is meant to be the top science adviser to the president. The “wise counsel” of Holdren and Lubchenco is irreplaceable, especially given the scope of the challenges our nation faces.

Menendez spokesman Afshin Mohamadi declined to comment on the putatively anonymous hold. “He takes a back seat to no one on the environment,” Mohamadi discussed by telephone, saying the senator’s “record best reflects his feelings on the urgency of combatting climate change.” When asked if Sen. Menendez hopes to have climate legislation on President Obama’s desk before the end of 2009, Mohamadi explained that Sen. Menendez believes it “would be helpful to have it in place going into the December international climate change conference in Copenhagen.”

From the Wonk Room.

The first satellite designed exclusively to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide from space failed to reach orbit during this morning’s launch, NASA reported. The Orbital Carbon Observatory (O-C-O, an acronym that matches the chemical diagram for carbon dioxide) “did not achieve orbit successfully in a way that we could have a mission,” Nasa launch commentator George Diller announced following the early-morning liftoff. “I am bitterly disappointed about the loss of OCO,” Dr. Paul Palmer, a scientist collaborating on the mission, told BBC News. “My thoughts go out to the science team that have dedicated the past seven years to building and testing the instrument.” NASA’s announcement explains the loss in dry terms:

When OCO launched Feb. 24, the payload fairing did not separate as it was supposed to and the mission ended.

The OCO would have complemented the Japanese satellite Gosat, designed to measure carbon dioxide and methane emissions with an infrared spectrometer and a cloud and aerosol imager. Gosat successfully launched on Friday. The two satellites were designed to work together and cross-check each other’s measurements, with “a common ground validation network to help combine data from the missions.”

Satellite measurement of CO2 emissions is needed to complete scientists’ understanding of the carbon cycle. Scientific American’s David Biello explained the mystery of the missing carbon before OCO’s launch:

Human activity—from coal-fired power plants to car tailpipes—is responsible for nearly 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide wafting into the atmosphere yearly. We know that roughly 15 billion metric tons remains in the atmosphere for a century or more. A portion of the rest ends up in the ocean—acidifying saltwater and making life tough for corals—and another chunk appears to be helping tropical trees grow thicker. We don’t know, however, where the rest of humanity’s CO₂ is disappearing to.

From the Wonk Room.

In his first interview as Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu “offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama’s cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration’s plans to combat it.” Secretary Chu told the Los Angeles Times that the nation is like a family buying an old house and being told by an inspector that it must pay a hefty sum to rewire it or risk an electrical fire that could burn everything down>

I’m hoping that the American people will wake up.

Chu also worried the nation doesn’t yet recognize how great a threat global warming represents:

I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen.

One danger Chu highlighted in the interview was rising drought throughout the West, with major declines in the snowpack that waters California. In the worst case, Chu said:

We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California. I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going.

Chu described “public education as a key part of the administration’s strategy to fight global warming” – in addition to clean energy research, infrastructure, a national renewable electricity standard, and a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system.

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) and the Working Group for Investment in Reliable and Economic Electric Systems (WIRES) invite you to the first of two briefings designed to explore key issues associated with the planning, construction, operation, and regulation of the nation’s high voltage interstate electric transmission network. Transmission issues have emerged as a major concern to policymakers and a broad variety of stakeholders over the past few years. As the new Congress and Administration prepare to take action on matters involving clean energy development, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, energy independence, and the reliability and security of electricity supplies, the investment in the “grid” has become an increasingly important matter of national energy policy. The physics and evolution of modern transmission systems are complex. An understanding of grid operations, planning, facilities siting, finance, and regulation nevertheless starts with these basics.

The first session (January 15) will provide a basic explanation of how the high-voltage “grid” actually works, what it accomplishes, and how it is regulated. A panel of experts on electric transmission operations and regulation will address the history and basic components of the grid, how electric power flows are controlled, the basics of grid interconnection and operations, the limitations of the system, and how operators address those limitations. This briefing also will survey the fundamentals of rate regulation and cost allocation, organized (Regional Transmission Organizations, or RTO) and bilateral (non-RTO) markets, regional transmission planning, siting, and reliability concerns. Although this briefing is for the uninitiated, the panel will invite questions at any technical level.

Speakers for this event include:

• James Hoecker, former Chairman, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and Counsel to WIRES
• Kevin Kelly, Director, Policy Analysis and Rulemaking, FERC
• Wayne Galli, PhD, Director, Transmission Development, NextEra Energy Resources (formerly FP&L Energy)
• Gregory Ioanidis, Vice President, Business Strategy, ITC Holdings

This briefing is free and open to the public. No RSVP required. For more information, contact Laura Parsons at (202) 662-1884 or [email protected].

A second session will follow in February, with details posted at www.eesi.org as they become available. This briefing will tackle the major high-visibility policy challenges facing policy makers as they balance the need for investment in transmission with other energy-related objectives.

President-elect Barack Obama has reportedly selected Dr. Jane Lubchenco, “an environmental scientist and marine ecologist who is actively engaged in teaching, research, synthesis and communication of scientific knowledge,” as the next director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Lubchenco, like Obama’s science adviser John Holdren, is a MacArthur Fellowship winner and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 1998, Lubchenco founded the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program at the Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environment, the “first formal effort in North America to train mid-career academic environmental scientists to communicate effectively to non-scientific audiences.”

In an interview with the New York Times, Lubchenco strongly advocated holistic efforts to limit human impacts on marine ecosystems:

Networks of no-take marine reserves, for example, can protect habitat, biodiversity, the BOFFS (big old fat female fish) that provide the bulk of the reproductive potential for future generations, and they can provide insurance against mis-management and environmental change. Networks of no-take areas may well provide the most resilience to climate change by protecting as much genetic and biological diversity as possible and allowing adaptation to occur.

As first reported by Science Magazine’s ScienceInsider, “President-elect Barack Obama has picked physicist John Holdren to be the president’s science adviser.”

Holdren is well known for his work on energy, climate change, and nuclear proliferation. Trained in fluid dynamics and plasma physics, Holdren branched out into policy early in his career. He has led the Woods Hole Research Center for the past 3 years and served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2006.

At ClimateProgress, Joseph Romm argues Holden has “more combined expertise on both climate science and clean energy technology than any other person who could plausibly have been named science adviser,” and that this means “Obama is dead serious about the strongest possible action on global warming.”

SolveClimate has a long bibliography of Holdren’s speeches, interviews, and reports online.

One such speech, which lays out how he believes the United States can meet the climate challenge, was given September 13, 2007 in San Francisco:

From the Wonk Room.

President-elect Barack Obama’s reported selection of Dr. Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy is a bold stroke to set the nation on the path to a clean energy economy. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, is the sixth director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a Department of Energy-funded basic science research institution managed by the University of California. After moving to Berkeley Lab from Stanford University in 2004, Chu “has emerged internationally to champion science as society’s best defense against climate catastrophe.” As director, Chu has steered the direction of Berkeley Lab to addressing the climate crisis, pushing for breakthrough research in energy efficiency, solar energy, and biofuels technology.

At Berkeley Lab, Chu has won broad praise as an effective and inspirational leader. “When he was first here, he started giving talks about energy and production of energy,” Bob Jacobsen, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007. “He didn’t just present a problem. He told us what we could do. It was an energizing thing to see. He’s not a manager, he’s a leader.” In an interview with the Wonk Room, David Roland-Holst, an economist at the Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability at UC Berkeley, described Chu as a “very distinguished researcher” and “an extremely effective manager of cutting edge technology initiatives.” Roland-Holst praised Chu’s work at Lawrence Berkeley, saying “he has succeeded in reconfiguring it for a new generation of sustainable technology R&D, combining world class mainstream science with the latest initiatives in renewable energy and climate adaptation.”

Under Chu’s leadership, Berkeley Lab and other research institutions have founded the Energy Biosciences Institute with $500 million, ten-year grant from energy giant BP, and the Joint BioEnergy Institute with a $125 million grant from the Department of Energy. The BP deal has raised questions and protests about private corporations benefiting from public research. At the dedication of JBEI last Wednesday, Chu “recalled how the nation’s top scientists had rallied in the past to meet critical national needs, citing the development of radar and the atomic bomb during World War II”:

The reality of past threats was apparent to everyone whereas the threat of global climate change is not so immediately apparent. Nonetheless, this threat has just got to be solved. We can’t fail. The fact that we have so many brilliant people working on the problem gives me great hope.

Chu’s leadership extends beyond this nation’s boundaries. As one of the 30 members of the Copenhagen Climate Council, Chu is part of an effort to spur the international community to have the “urgency to establish a global treaty by 2012 which is fit for the purpose of limiting global warming to 2ºC,” whose elements “must be agreed” at the Copenhagen summit in December, 2009.

Last year, Dr. Chu co-chaired a report on “the scientific consensus framework for directing global energy development” for the United Nations’ InterAcademy Council. Lighting the Way describes how developing nations can “‘leapfrog’ past the wasteful energy trajectory followed by today’s industrialized nations” by emphasizing energy efficiency and renewable energy.

It’s hard to decide if the selection of Dr. Chu is more remarkable for who he is – a Nobel laureate physicist and experienced public-sector administrator – or for who is not. Unlike previous secretaries of energy, he is neither a politician, oil man, military officer, lawyer, nor utility executive. His corporate ties are not to major industrial polluters but to advanced technology corporations like AT&T (where he began his Nobel-winning research) and Silicon Valley innovator Nvidia (where he sits on the board of directors). Chu is a man for the moment, and will be a singular addition to Obama’s Cabinet.

From the Wonk Room.

The Washington Post’s Al Kamen reports that there’s “buzz” that the Obama transition is “looking hard at some scientific types” to lead the Energy Department. Dr. Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is reportedly a dark horse candidate.

In a presentation at this summer’s National Clean Energy Summit convened by the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Dr. Chu described why he has moved from his background in experimental quantum physics to tackling global warming:

Consider this. There’s about a 50 percent chance, the climate experts tell us, that in this century we will go up in temperature by three degrees Centigrade. Now, three degrees Centigrade doesn’t seem a lot to you, that’s 11° F. Chicago changes by 30° F in half a day. But 5° C means that … it’s the difference between where we are today and where we were in the last ice age. What did that mean? Canada, the United States down to Ohio and Pennsylvania, was covered in ice year round.

Five degrees Centigrade.

So think about what 5° C will mean going the other way. A very different world. So if you’d want that for your kids and grandkids, we can continue what we’re doing. Climate change of that scale will cause enormous resource wars, over water, arable land, and massive population displacements. We’re not talking about ten thousand people. We’re not talking about ten million people, we’re talking about hundreds of millions to billions of people being flooded out, permanently.

As Dr. Chu explains in the above video, the optimal way to reduce greenhouse emissions is to waste less energy, by investing in energy efficiency. He demolished the myth that we can’t reduce our use of energy without reducing our wealth by offering numerous counterexamples, or, in his scientist’s jargon, “existence proofs.” Applause broke out when he described how companies, after claiming efficiency gains and lowered costs were impossible, “miraculously” achieved them once they “had to assign the jobs from the lobbyists to the engineers.”

Chu continued by discussing what he has done to develop “new technologies to transform the landscape.” He discussed the Helios Project, the research initiative Berkeley Lab launched for breakthrough renewable energy and efficiency technology. In addition to research into energy conservation, Berkeley Lab researchers are pursuing nanotech photovoltaics, microbial and cellulosic biofuels, and chemical photosynthesis.

Dr. Chu concluded his address with a reminder why this challenge is so important:

I will leave you with this final image. This is – I was an undergraduate when this picture was taken by Apollo 8 – and it shows the moon and the Earth’s rise. A beautiful planet, a desolate moon. And focus on the fact that there’s nowhere else to go.

Biodiversity in a Rapidly Changing World

Since the biodiversity issue burst on the scene with the 1986 National Forum on Biodiversity, there has been a burgeoning of conservation efforts, organizations, research, education and related activities. Despite many successes, the overall situation is much more precarious today. The driving forces of increased human population, consumption, habitat destruction and degradation, contaminants, and invasive species have been joined by dangerous global climate disruption, globalization, poverty, political instability and other rapid environmental and social changes. Paradoxically, the biodiversity issue has largely fallen off the public agenda, pushed in part by the increased attention to climate change.

There is an urgent need for scientists, conservationists and policymakers to re-examine the biodiversity issue. We must both look retrospectively at a quarter-century of “modern” conservation efforts – what has worked well and what hasn’t, but also prospectively at the greater challenges of the next quarter-century. We need to look broadly at the many scientific discoveries and the many issues involving the use, abuse and conservation of biodiversity including cultivated as well as wild species and ecosystems.

The NCSE conference will bring together some 1000 scientists, conservationists and policymakers to develop a strategy to guide a new US Administration and others working to conserve biodiversity around the world. It will develop an approach for biodiversity management and conservation in a 21st century context, including

• Strategies for Biodiversity, Conservation and Sustainable Utilization
• Scientific Needs for Understanding Biodiversity Values, Losses and Consequences
• Expanding Understanding: Information, Education and Communication

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC Metro: Federal Triangle (orange/blue line)

According to a new release from the Energy Information Administration, “U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2007 were 1.4 percent above the 2006 total.” This increase erases the 1% drop in emissions in 2006, for which Bush claimed credit (even though the decrease was due to an unusually warm winter and high fuel prices). U.S. annual emissions are now 17% greater than they were in 1990. To avoid catastrophic climate change, the International Panel on Climate Change projects that “industrialized countries would need to reduce emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.”