Findings

Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission, didn't go to many sessions at this year's AAAS conference, but his vision seemed to be everywhere in the meeting's focus on efficiency. During a plenary talk a few nights ago, Berkeley Lab director Steven Chu mentioned Rosenfeld's work, even interrupting himself to say, "Hi Art," cheerfully upon seeing the senior citizen in the audience. (After the talk, the crowd mobbed the stage to pose for photos, including one local undergraduate who had asked Chu for a job over the microphone during the question session: "I hope you need an ecologist.")

Rosenfeld, spry as ever, followed AAAS then-president John Holdren as the pair raced through the exiting throng. They changed quickly into tuxedos and zoomed up to the Fairmont Hotel, where they hobnobbed with the black-tied scientific glitterati. It was a mix of business and pleasure for Rosenfeld, who's considered a kind of energy Yoda for local residents.

Social worker Barbara Budnitz, for one, wanted advice on whether the Berkeley, California, senior center on whose board she serves should install solar panels. "They're all former red-diaper babies," she joked. "I'm a big fan of solar energy," Rosenfeld answered. "For middle class families and for young people. But for seniors--not worth it." He went on to explain to a few party-goers, beaming, how California regulations encourage developers to first ensure that buildings are energy-efficient before installing solar panels.

We don’t need more fossil fuels to power the future, says Chuck Kutscher. His report, on how massive deployment of efficiency measures and renewables could cut U.S. carbon emissions by at least 60% by 2030, was well received this morning by an audience here eager for good news.

The bottom line? All we need is a hefty pricetag on carbon emissions–-Kutscher estimates about $35 per ton of carbon dioxide–-and a surfeit of political will to force people to use public transportation, build greener buildings, and pressure fossil fuel plants to become more efficient. Kutscher envisions the great plains blanketed with windmills, the Southwest bustling with concentrated solar power plants, and photovoltaic cells and biofuel plants all over. He says the yearlong study he presented, sponsored by the American Solar Energy Society, was “reasonable” in its assumptions, which included manufacturing limits on solar panels and market competition with fossil fuels in the wind power estimates.

Physicist Art Hobson of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville thought the session “really ended [the AAAS conference] on a positive note … I’ve been asking myself for years, 'Can we do it with renewables and efficiency?' ” But he said that “we might need some help” to meet energy demands in the future at a feasible cost, and he figures fossil fuels could fit the bill.

Kutscher, an engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, says Americans must be willing to pay more for the alternatives. “Does it become an entirely economic argument if you say the polar icecaps are melting?”

Chemist Jim Hutchison of University of Oregon in Eugene this morning wanted to emphasize how research on green chemistry, while taking up time and money in the short turn, can yield cheaper techniques that won't foul the soil, air, or water.

So he showed the following two pictures to, ahem, drive the point home.

"I used this one for a company in Oregon, and they didn't get it," he said of the figure of the left. The golf analogy applies, he explained, because Tiger Woods decided in early 2004 to overhaul his swing--and he lost the following 10 majors as he readjusted. "For the whole time he is doing, that he sucks," said Hutchinson. In April 2005, though, Tiger returned with a vengeance, winning the Masters, and the rest is history.

Hutchinson's analogous big win? Gold nanoparticles ...

An elevator packed with tired conventioneers was heading up to an MIT mixer--the group drawn more likely by the possibility of cold drinks rather than uncovering new research results--when a gentlemen in a beige jacket struck up a conversation with another. The first man's name? Jerry McNerney, freshly elected California Congressman and Democrat. "You're the one who beat Pombo, right?" asked a press officer from a physics lab. He was speaking of Richard Pombo, long the Republican chair of the House Resources Committee and an enemy of environmental groups, who embraced McNerney during the election. Is McNerney finding that energy issues are resonating in Congress? He's optimistic. "A lot of open minds there," said the former wind engineer. "You want my elevator speech?" he joked as the group finally filed out.

Geologist Kerry Sieh introduced a new unit of measure yesterday during a widely talked-about speech on earthquake preparedness.

One rumsfeld, he explained, equals $100 billion per year, roughly what the U.S. has spent on average per year during the 4-year Iraq war.

Roughly $2 million--or 20 microrumsfelds--has been spent in recent years on preparing infrastructure to withstand earthquakes for the roughly half-billion people who reside between Iran and Sumatra and live in grave danger of earthquakes. Sieh, of Caltech, says he's being generous on that total, and just a few "fractions of a rumsfeld" spent by the U.S. each year could spread much good cheer for American foreign policy. "For heaven's sake, let's think about our priorities here," he told me today.

Science's Newsblog provides below some additional U.S. government sustainability expenditures in rumsfelds:

* Proposed 2008 U.S. spending on applied solar energy research ($148 million) = 1.48 millirumsfelds

* Proposed 2008 U.S. spending on nuclear nonproliferation ($1.67 billion) = about 2 centirumsfelds 

* Total 2004 developed nations aid to developing countries (about $25 billion) = a quarter-rumsfeld

* Amount per year, according to the United Nations, that some 1.1 billion people earn ($730) = $7.3 nanorumsfelds 

And, in case you're wondering:

The average National Science Foundation grant size ($150,000 per year) = 1.5 microrumsfelds.

Late Friday, a chemical engineer was complaining to me that the U.S. needs to spend an "order of magnitude" more on biofuels research, his field, if the country is to really tackle the energy challenge.

But, I asked, didn't BP just jumpstart the field with a half-billion-dollar, 10-year biofuels research center at UC Berkeley?

"$500 million? Drop in the bucket for them. That's just a nice goodbye present for their CEO, who just left," the engineer said of BP's Lord Browne (left), who was outspoken in his calls for alternative energy and carbon emissions limits and is set to leave the firm in the summer.  "Exxon gave their CEO that huge package, and the BP guy got the research on the way out."

ExxonMobil, which made nearly $40 billion in 2006, gave CEO Lee Raymond a $400 million retirement package when he left the firm last year.

Getting technology to solve sustainability challenges takes more than just smart ideas. It sometimes takes cajoling, patience, and sharp elbows. Take the turtle exclusion devices--called TEDs--which are specially designed metal gates that keep sea turtles out of shrimp nets. In 1985, there were only roughly 700 nests left in the Atlantic Kemp's Ridley turtle's Gulf of Mexico habitat.

To save the endangered species, the government forced fishers to use the TEDs despite much resistance; industry said the devices were unwieldy and reduced the number of shrimp they caught in nets. But in the years since, fishers have come to accept TEDs, having themselves helped improve their designs. The shrimp industry now even helps preserve beaches and support biology to preserve turtles. So how did TEDs eventually win over reticent fishermen?

"Is it too late?" a Swedish reporter asked plaintively at this afternoon's session on the world's retreating glaciers. The speakers, three of the world's experts on the problem, chuckled nervously, although some in the room couldn't hear the question. So Tim Radford, AAAS's affable British emcee for the press conferences, tried to reconvey the question. "When are we doomed" he said to big laughs.

For most in the room, western reporters who likely live thousands of kilometers from glaciers, the question might have seemed alarmist. But for the millions of people in the world who rely on alpine ecosystems for water, food, shelter, and livelihood, vanishing  glaciers have profound and uncertain impacts.

Scientist trying to measure and predict how melting glaciers will impact the world are having trouble keeping up with their disappearing subjects. But that hasn't stopped mountain climbers from launching a new effort to help those who face what in many cases is a literal flood of consequences ...

(Photo: Lonnie Thompson, Ohio State University)

Scientists should get up off their duffs and do their part to protect the planet, AAAS President John Holdren told reporters in a somewhat gloomy breakfast talk this morning. He wants researchers to "tithe 10% of their time" towards "thinking about" how their work impacts larger societal problems or devising solutions.

He identified four major challenges in a depressing litany: environmental protection, nuclear proliferation, what he calls the "energy-atmosphere-climate conundrum," and poverty. While the world is more or less booming economically, he said, "Most of the other dimensions of the human condition are in some trouble."

He said that science is in part or entirely to blame for many of Earth's woes. "We are responsible both for sins of commission and omission," he said, because researchers have developed carbon-emitting technology and nuclear weapons.

Government can be counterproductive, he added. "We have seen some tendancies toward fact-averse governance," he said in response to a question about the Bush Administration ...