Truly embarrassing congressional testimony (2006 Wegman Report)

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Monday September 27, 2010 · 12:31 PM PDT

2010/09/27 · 12:31

Here at DKos we're used to stories of congressional Republicans behaving badly. Sometimes it's on things that shouldn't matter to anybody else (sex scandals - other than the hypocrisy angle). Sometimes it's procedural mischief to prevent Democrats from getting anything done (the entire Senate these last 2 years). And sometimes it's outright evidence of their being in bed with wealthy special interests (Joe Barton's "apology" to BP).

Read on below for the story of an earlier escapade orchestrated by Joe Barton, only just now being uncovered. A supposedly scientific report to congress involved:

page after page of plagiarized text
a distorted graph
ignored reviewers
much much more

Will Barton, or anybody else involved in this egregious case, ever pay a price? The delay in climate action this fostered is already exacting a price on the rest of the world's people.

apsmith

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Thursday July 29, 2010 · 8:51 PM PDT

2010/07/29 · 20:51

I've had a number of responses to my last post on changing the US Senate, in particular pointing out that yes, it would be very difficult to make such a change given the constraint in Article V of the constitution:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

apsmith

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Saturday July 24, 2010 · 9:14 AM PDT

2010/07/24 · 09:14

The recently announced death of the climate bill in the US Senate has been cause for much anguish in the last few days among those of us who understand the implications of inaction for our future. Nevertheless, it is hardly the first instance in recent times where the structure of the US Senate has proved an obstacle to necessary legislative action. The drama associated with the recent much-delayed passage of a standard unemployment benefits extension is only the latest example in a very long list.

Having an upper house that runs at a somewhat slower pace to act as a deliberative body on proposals for changes in laws seems to have proved a good idea over time among many different nations, and the US is fortunate to have an upper house that acts as much more than a rubber stamp. Nevertheless, the structure of the US Senate as it works now is fundamentally flawed to the extent that what is necessary regarding actual reality often simply cannot be addressed at all these days, "for political reasons".

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Cogeneration: only a small part of the solution

apsmith

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Wednesday March 03, 2010 · 9:35 AM PST

2010/03/03 · 09:35

"Combined Heat and Power" (CHP) or "cogeneration" systems for producing both heat and electric power are generally mature and really can reduce emissions of CO2 compared to other fossil-fuel technologies. But there are two problems with typical discussion of CHP:

(1) Fossil-fuel-based CHP cannot be a long-term solution on climate or energy because they still burn fossil fuels, and therefore still emit a lot of CO2. Reducing that by 20% or even 50% is not enough; we need to take steps that over the next 30-40 years will bring fossil CO2 emissions close to 0.

(2) Efficiency claims for CHP systems are frequently greatly overstated. Heat is lower-quality energy than electricity, and only at high temperatures does it become close to comparable. Efficiency claims for CHP systems that use high-temperature heat are not so far off, but CHP systems that make use of low-temperature waste heat have much lower thermodynamic efficiencies than usually claimed.

apsmith

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Friday February 12, 2010 · 9:46 AM PST

2010/02/12 · 09:46

My criticism of various claims about "Combined Heat and Power" (CHP) or cogeneration systems was something I had thought I could keep brief, since the issue was intuitively clear to me. But explaining my understanding of the subject in straightforward non-scientific language has proven trickier than I'd expected. This post constitutes part 2, and will cover problems with many claims of "efficiency" in heating systems; part 3 will be more specifically focused on the several different types of CHP, what is good about them, and what is frequently over-hyped.

Part 1 in this series reviewed the basic thermodynamic principles regarding energy and entropy. In particular, not all energy is "useful" in the thermodynamic sense of being available to perform real work. The way in which useful energy is "used up" is through conversion to low-temperature heat, primarily through inefficiencies that bring irreversibility to exchanges of energy between different useful forms. Energy in the form of heat at the temperature of your surroundings has a useful-energy fraction of zero - it is all waste at that point.

apsmith

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Thursday December 24, 2009 · 5:42 AM PST

2009/12/24 · 05:42

I was prompted to write the following essay after reading a "tweet" from David Roberts of Grist (@drgrist) touting "Combined Heat and Power":

RT @RecycledEnergy: Combined heat and power (CHP) can generate 1M new jobs and avoid 60% of projected CO2 emissions: http://bit.ly/...

Just the name "recycled energy" suggested to me this was more hype than substance, and I've seen this sort of argument for combined heat and power before. The problem isn't with that particular technology, it's with people who claim it can somehow address the huge energy lost in the electric power generation process when burning conventional fuels. CHP has nothing to do with that process, and cannot help. Read on for why.

apsmith

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Tuesday October 13, 2009 · 9:32 AM PDT

2009/10/13 · 09:32

The council of the American Physical Society is considering revising its 2007 statement on climate change. If you are an APS member with an opinion on the issue, write immediately to one of the councillors; they need your input before the November 8th council meeting.

How did this idea of revising that short, strong, and accurate statement get into the picture at all? Read on for my take...

apsmith

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Friday October 02, 2009 · 6:33 AM PDT

2009/10/02 · 06:33

10% of all US energy use is consumed in residential buildings, and over 60% of that goes to heating. If we are to ever reduce our dependence on oil and our greenhouse gas emissions, addressing home and business heating needs is essential.

Most buildings are leaky; warm air rises up wherever it can and escapes outside, wasting all that energy put into heating it. Heat can also escape by conduction through walls and ceilings so both blocking leaks and adding insulation are needed. That's why you've been hearing so much about home weatherization around here - and there are plenty of studies showing it pays for itself. Read on for my personal experiences - and details of my fight with our recessed lights...

apsmith

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Thursday October 01, 2009 · 5:14 AM PDT

2009/10/01 · 05:14

gmoke here on DailyKos (among others) has been promoting home and building weatherization for some time, for example this call to tackle the White House itself. A recent report from the American Physical Society touted building efficiency as an area particularly ripe for major improvement - something that McKinsey has also analyzed, finding that improved building insulation, for instance, more than pays for itself, while significantly reducing our greenhouse gas emissions at the same time.

Read on for my own experience trying to improve insulation in our house. The primary stumbling block proved to be our recessed lights, so details on how I replaced them about a year back in the diary entry below. [NOTE: images are missing for some reason. Going back to reading DKos FAQ on images to see what I did wrong...? - ok, now some of them are showing up - a weird webshots thing?]

apsmith

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Monday June 22, 2009 · 11:38 AM PDT

2009/06/22 · 11:38

I recently corresponded with a colleague who has acquired a degree of "skepticism" regarding global warming. I've noticed a number of recent posts on DailyKos that seemed to be heading in this direction as well. As with all such discussions the first problem seemed to be one of epistemology - how we know those things that we think we know to be true. Since it's impossible to investigate every claim for yourself, people depend on others who they trust - now we all know here that we can't trust a thing on Fox News, but tracking down trustworthy sources on science can be tricky with the vast amount of disinformation out there on the intertubes. Below I've collected some links that I believe are either worthy of considerable trust in themselves, or provide some indication of trustworthiness of others.

apsmith

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Wednesday May 06, 2009 · 8:50 PM PDT

2009/05/06 · 20:50

Thanks to Michael Tobis I discovered a new report this week from the Congressional Budget Office that has the most dramatic illustration I've seen of projections of temperature for the remainder of this century (see immediately below - figure 1 in the report). The PDF of the 33-page report is available for download from CBO, and well worth reading.

Note the Celsius scale to the left, and Fahrenheit to the right. When it comes to warming, we ain't seen nothin' yet.

apsmith

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Friday March 20, 2009 · 9:03 PM PDT

2009/03/20 · 21:03

In testimony to congress this past week, new energy secretary Steven Chu made the case for the administration's energy plans which include considerable increases in spending in a number of areas, and several new programs. Among the things they appear to be really trying to push is getting ARPA-E off the ground - there's $415 million allocated, but apparently a lot of resistance within the department to actually making it happen. In a companion handout for the hearing, the case for and priority areas for ARPA-E were highlighted. The handout perhaps explains why DOE bureaucrats may be resisting:

It will bring together the best and the brightest from all sectors—national labs, academia, the private sector, individual inventors—in a way that has never been done in energy research. It will give them the resources and the autonomy they need, and it will get bureaucracy of their way.

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Truly embarrassing congressional testimony (2006 Wegman Report)

Forget the filibuster, let's have a representative Senate

A proposal for fixing the Senate

Cogeneration: only a small part of the solution

Why heating "efficiency" numbers are wrong

Useful energy can only be used once

Climate change: arrogant physicists embarrass themselves

Against recessed lights: weatherizing our home (fixed)

Against recessed lights: weatherizing our home

Basic Climate References

CBO report on climate change

Energy news: DOE, ARPA-E, solar growth, feed-in tariffs