More Fawning over Political Appointments

by Ethan on December 26th, 2008

Ok, I promise this will be the last one. Probably.

Anyway, the scientific gossip mill (yes, there is one, so stop snickering) has it that Obama will appoint John Holdren as his top scientific adviser. From Wired Science:

Holdren, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School and former director of the Woods Hole Research Center, is best-known for his outspoken views on climate change, energy and government.

“The ongoing disruption of the Earth’s climate by man-made greenhouse gases is already well beyond dangerous and is careening toward completely unmanageable,” he wrote in October in Scientific American. “To achieve a better-than-even chance of not exceeding that figure, human emissions must start to decline soon, falling to about half of today’s level by 2050 and further thereafter.”

Lookin’ good. He’s all over environmental policy, and he at least says serious stuff about climate change. Plus, he should have an easier go of it that this poor bastard had under Bush. (also, what is it with presidents picking laser experts for high-level policy jobs? Is it just because lasers are badass, or is there some sort of relevence I’m missing here?

Good News and Bad News

by Ethan on December 13th, 2008

Bush is trying to tack a loophole onto the Endangered Species Act on his way out the door. Meanwhile, Obama’s (likely) picks for Secretary of Energy, head of the EPA, and the new ‘Energy Czar’ position suggest we’ll be seeing a science-and-reality-ward shift in environmental and energy policy. If anyone out there has a time machine, please go ahead and fast-forward to Jan. 20th before Bush can do any damage.

(And thanks to Rachel Maddow for dubbing the proposed HHS regulation the Amish Busdriver Rule: extending freedom of religion to protect folks who take jobs and then refuse on religious grounds to do tasks central to that job.)

Wind Power, Part One

by Ethan on May 15th, 2008

Wired Science posted Monday about a new Department of Energy report that suggests the US could get 20% of its on-grid electricity from wind power by 2030. The report suggest that as it stands now, wind power and solar thermal power* are the only zero-emission power sources ready to be scaled up in a major way.

Personally, I’m not convinced the current big-power-plant-supports-a-large-area model is worth switching to new energy sources. Demanding that any new technology be able to produce large amounts of power in one spot overshadows technologies that can provide just enough power on the spot. Wind power may be able to do both.

The problem with wind power, traditionally, has been that any turbine large enough to produce significant amounts of power was too heavy to turn at all unless the wind was very, very strong. Using lighter weigh materials for the blades has helped significantly, but I think these guys have the right idea. Basically, they’ve strung together dozens of small turbines in parallel. Each makes a small amount of power, which adds up to some pretty significant voltage. They claim that, in high wind, their rig can blow out a bank of car headlights like flashbulbs. They’ve patented their design, but the Make blog is calling for someone to come up with a homemade version, since the design is basically a bunch of model airplane propellers strung along a pole.

*as opposed to solar photovoltaic power, made with solar panels. I’ve got an upcoming post planned on those two.

Global Warming Smackdown

by Ethan on May 8th, 2008

From the Wired Science blog, a group of climate scientists recently challenged their competition to a bet. On Realclimate.org, a group of 6 global warming believers offered 2500 Euros to the authors of a recent Nature paper if, by 2010, their global cooling hypothesis pans out. There was some serious smack talking in the offer:

That this cooling would just be a temporary blip and would change nothing about global warming goes without saying and has been amply discussed elsewhere (e.g. here). But another question has been rarely discussed: will this forecast turn out to be correct? We think not – and we are prepared to bet serious money on this. We have double-checked with the authors: they say they really mean this as a serious forecast, not just as a methodological experiment. If the authors of the paper really believe that their forecast has a greater than 50% chance of being correct, then they should accept our offer of a bet; it should be easy money for them. If they do not accept our bet, then we must question how much faith they really have in their own forecast.

I hope they take ‘em up on it. If the future of the Earth isn’t enough to keep your interest, maybe a large-sum professional wager can do it.