The September Scientific American, not yet available on line, is devoted to a comprehensive look at Energy's Future. The subheading is "Beyond Carbon." The Editors cannot help themselves from some scoring some political points. For example, the opening editorial is "Cooling Our Heels" and includes this (page 8):
From Christmas Day in 1991, when the white, blue, and red Russian flag rose over the Kremlin, symbolizing the end of the Soviet Union, the U.S. assumed a dominant presence in world affairs the likes of which has not been witnessed since the Imperium Romanum. Yet the nation that endorsed the idea of preemptive military action has acted with remarkable passivity when it comes to an energy policy that deals with climate change.
The Editors make clear that Global Warming is an established fact and that human generated rises in Carbon Dioxide are the cause. This is, of course the conventional wisdom among environmentalists, the media, and their allies predominantly on the left.
Whatever one's position on Global Warming and the role of CO2, and I think there are a lot of unanswered questions about the climate, there are a couple of important points on which everyone ought to be able to agree, and Scientific American indirectly delineates some of them. The table of contents includes:
INTRODUCTION: A Climate Repair Manual
STRATEGY: A Plan to Keep Carbon in Check
AUTOMOTIVE ANSWERS: Fueling Our Transportation Future
ENERGY EFFICIENCY: An Efficient Solution
CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE: What to Do about Coal
ROLE FOR FISSION: The Nuclear Option
CLEAN POWER: The Rise of Renewable Energy
FUEL CELLS AND MORE: High Hopes fro Hydrogen
SPECULATIVE TECHNOLOGY: Plan B for Energy
What should be clear from even a cursory overview of the topics addressed in the Scientific American issue is that there is no single "magic bullet" solution to CO2 and Global Warming, now re-named "Climate Change". There is really nothing to object to in the topics covered. Even the most aggressive neo-con and the most rabid anti-war liberal could agree that our nation would be well served by decreasing our reliance on foreign oil. With the price of gas over $3.00 a gallon, most Americans would be delighted to drive more energy efficient cars.
[Conversation overheard in the parking lot at the local supermarket:
Wealthy Man to his friend climbing into a Hummer: How do you like driving that tank?
Wealthy Man in the Hummer: Its great; you're on top of the world ... but its pretty expensive. The lease is up next month and I'm going to get something that gets more than 10 miles to the gallon.]
The articles make the point without any excessive polemics that we need to be looking at various different approaches to increasing energy efficiency and finding cleaner and better sources of energy. Gary Stix, in the INTRODUCTION, implicitly agrees (page 46):
Global warming is a reality. Innovation in energy technology and policy are sorely needed if we are to cope. [Emphasis mine-SW]
Ned Lamont, representing the left side of the Democratic caucus, was on Fox News Sunday today with Chris Wallace, and suggested that $75 a barrel oil will make many new extraction techniques and energy sources feasible. Most free market Conservatives would agree.
The technology is likely to surprise. On page 20 is an article on the next generation of superconducting wires, that if widely used to replace conventional electric wires will make our electric grid much more efficient.
In reality, the impact of human behavior and technology on climate is certainly much more complex than the environmentalists and those who pine for Kyoto would imagine. In the same issue of Scientific American is a small article by Christina Reed on the difficult, complex and surprising effects of jet contrails on climate (page 28):
Scientists have long known that airplane condensation trails act to both cool and heat the atmosphere.... During the day, the effect of blocked incoming radiation tends to outweigh that of trapped heat, thereby cooling the atmosphere. Indeed, after the events of 9/11 grounded all commercial U.S. flights for three days, daytime temperatures across the country rose slightly, whereas nighttime temperatures dropped. This evidence supported the hypothesis that contrails reduce the temperature range by cooling the atmosphere during the day and heating it at night.
....
Scientists are only beginning to study the contribution of jet exhaust to global warming, but so far, like red eyes, contrails don't look so good.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I think this suggests that there is so much complexity in the human-environmental effects on climate, that believing there is one primary effect (CO2) that works in predictable ways seems to be quite a stretch and making policy based on such a conclusion seems unwise and possibly quite risky.
If our politics were not so polarized, it would be possible to come up with a smorgasbord of policy suggestions that would optimize the chances of the markets arriving at technological "cures" for what ails us. Offering incentives for more efficient energy use along with increased opportunities for energy extraction would seem pretty obvious and in our nation's best interest. Unfortunately, the current rabid partisanship in Washington makes such an outcome a hostage to the most base political considerations. If the Democrats truly believed Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was a factual depiction of the near future danger of Climate Change, they would certainly put partisanship aside in order to enact whatever legislation they could craft with their Republican colleagues that would help deal with the problem. Unfortunately, the behavior of the Environmental lobby, as exemplified in Gore's movie, suggest that its political value significantly out weighs its scientific "truth".
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