Smith, a Republican, represents the 21st District of Texas, which includes his hometown of San Antonio, and chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. I met him a few weeks ago at a hearing on climate held by the Subcommittee on the Environment. He was the consummate gentleman. Despite the fact that I was testifying as a witness for the Democratic Party, he was cordial and gentle in his questions. I thought, Now there’s a reasonable man.

That impression of reasonableness was soon undercut when I learned that Smith is leading the charge in new legislation that would mandate a new layer of political review at the National Science Foundation (NSF) before granting funding for research projects. This is a bad and radical idea for any number of reasons, including its violation of a tried-and-true conservative maxim: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The U.S. R&D program is the envy of the world. The United States receives more patents than any other country, and families from all over the globe spend huge sums of money to send their sons and daughters to American universities to study with our researchers and work in our labs. Much of that effort is grounded in the funding of grants by the NSF. Smith’s legislation would undermine all that. 

Another reason you don’t want to have politicians mucking around in the nuts and bolts of science is that they often have a shaky grasp of the science at best. A case in point, Rep. Smith’s understanding of the state of climate science. 

Lamar Smith’s Take on Climate Science

On Sunday the Washington Post published an op-ed written by Congressman Smith entitled “Overheated rhetoric on climate change doesn’t make good politics.” Can’t argue with that premise. Nor can one argue with his conclusion that we “think critically about the challenge before … [d]esigning an appropriate public policy response” to climate change.

What one can argue with is the spin he puts on climate science to justify his conclusion that there is no urgency to begin that response. How so? Here are three examples.

No Recent Warming

Rep. Smith rolls out the well-worn — but factually incorrect — meme floating out there that “global temperatures have held steady over the past 15 years.” It is true that the rate of warming in the 2000s has slowed, but concluding that global warming has halted would be a misread of the evidence. While warming in the atmosphere has slowed, the oceans continue to absorb heat, and some of that heat will undoubtedly eventually find its way into the atmosphere.

Secondly, the statement that temperatures have held steady is not strictly true. As illustrated below, a simple linear regression of average global temperatures running from 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 or 2000 to 2012 all produce a positive trend — that is, the temperatures have not held “steady” but have tended to increase over time. Depending upon whether you start the regression on a relatively warm or cool year, the trend is smaller or larger, but they are all positive.

Temperature data from the HadCRUT4 annual global dataset.

However, there is a problem. The time period used to calculate the trends is quite short (< 20 years), while the natural variability from year to year is quite large. As a result, it is not possible to establish the statistical significance of these trends. And so, we cannot statistically eliminate the possibility that there has been no temperature change. This is very different from saying there has been no temperature increase. A subtle point that a politician might miss, but significant nonetheless.

So what’s going on? A lot of the slowdown in warming is likely related to the changing cycles of La Ninas and El Ninos. For a nice explanation of this, check out this Skeptical Science post.

U.S. Emissions Irrelevant

Then there’s the argument that the United States is simply not a player in the global carbon emissions game and thus doesn’t need to be a contributor to lowering global emissions. Hard to swallow given that the United States is one) the second largest emitter of carbon, accounting for about 17 percent of global emissions, and two) the largest contributor to the current stock of global warming carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

How hard to swallow? Well, open wide — here’s how Smith makes the argument. U.S. emissions in the coming decade are projected to be relatively flat while emissions from developing countries, and especially China, are projected to increase significantly. It’s those other countries, the argument goes, that will be responsible for most of the future global warming, and so there’s no need for countries like the United States to do anything.

To bolster such an argument, Rep. Smith refers to a white paper [pdf] published by Paul Knappenberger of the Science and Public Policy Institute, a nonprofit that discounts the role of humans in and challenges the scientific consensus on climate change.

Using model simulations (which Smith himself discounts as unreliable), Knappenberger concludes that “If the U.S. as a whole stopped emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions immediately, the ultimate impact on projected global temperature rise would be … approximately 0.08°C by the year 2050.” Yikes, only 0.08 degrees Celsius! That’s tiny! Great news, Americans, the United States is off the hook, right? Well, that’s what Smith would have you believe.

The problem is that such calculations focusing on a single country are misleading. Global warming is a global problem requiring participation of all major emitters. No single country can do it alone. And from the opposite point of view, any country can justify not participating by looking only at its contribution to global warming. For example, take the big bad carbon emitter China. Extrapolating from Knappenberger‘s calculations and emissions projections for China from a report [pdf] by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, I estimate that if China completely stopped its emissions in 2050, global warming would decrease in 2050 by about 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius depending on the emissions scenario.*

That’s larger than the U.S. contribution but not by all that much. One could imagine a Chinese official, perhaps even one who chairs the Politburo’s version of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, using this argument to similarly argue that there is no need for China to lower its emissions.

As I have previously written:

“As long as individual countries focus on their own little contribution, nothing will ever happen. It’s sort of like this:

You’re at a party with 29 other revelers. The beer just ran out and $30 is needed to get more beer. The hat is passed around for contributions, but each person thinks, ‘If I put in a dollar all it will add is 1/30th or 3 percent of what is needed. That’s a tiny amount, too small to worry about … I think I’ll just pass.’ And no one adds to the hat, and no beer gets bought.”

IPCC Says No Severe Weather Effect?

Finally there’s Rep. Smith’s statement that “last year’s IPCC report stat[es] that there is ‘high agreement’ among leading experts that trends in weather disasters, floods, tornados and storms cannot be attributed to climate change.” I presume by last year’s IPCC report, Smith is referring to: “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.”

While it’s true that the report discusses a number of weather-related trends in which scientists have yet to see a global warming signature — such as hail, tornadoes and river flooding — there are others — including temperature and extreme precipitation — where they noted high or medium confidence that the impact of global warming was already visible. Looks like Rep. Smith got that one wrong as well.

In summary I’m all for avoiding “overheated rhetoric,” but how about we include misstatements about and misrepresentations of science in that category? And oh yeah, leave NSF out of politics.

_______________

End Note

* China’s avoided contribution was calculated to a first approximation by using the maximum and minimum emissions scenarios in the Lawrence Berkeley Lab report [pdf] between 2015 and 2050. The avoided temperature rise stemming from eliminating that estimate of cumulative CO2 emissions was calculated using a metric developed in a paper by H. Damon Matthews and co-authors discussed here.

“It didn’t look like a car,” explained Nantes student Frederic Calvez.

So the students designed Cityjoule, a super-compact, but street-legal electric blue coupe powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. This weekend in Rotterdam, Polytech Nantes left all other competitors in the dust by clocking a result of 145.7 kilometers (90.5 miles) per kilowatt-hour, the energy equivalent of traveling 1,296.7 kilometers on a liter of gasoline, or 3,049.9 miles per gallon. Not only did Polytech Nantes take first prize in the hydrogen-powered urban concept (street-legal) category, it bested its nearest competitor, Bulgaria’s University of Sofia, by more than 75 percent and achieved nearly double the mileage of last year’s winner. (Related Quiz: “What You Don’t Know About Cars And Fuel“)

For good measure, Nantes’ partner school La Joliverie from Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire showed that the team’s traditional aerodynamic styling still is effective. Team Microjoule, as it is called, sailed to victory in the gasoline prototype vehicle category for the third consecutive year, with a result of 2,980.3 km/liter (8,420.4 mpg)—enough, race organizers noted, to drive from Rotterdam to Athens on a single liter of fuel. (Related: “French Teams From Loire Valley Grab Top Prizes in Shell Eco-marathon Europe 2012“)

Microjoule’s result fell short of the competition record it set for its category in 2011: 3,688 km/l  (8,674.7 mpg.) But that previous record was set on a race track in France, before the competition moved last year to the 10-mile (16.3-kilometer) street circuit in Rotterdam, a course that includes five 90-degree turns. It makes the achievement even more impressive for the Cityjoule car, with a result marked a 40-percent improvement over the Shell Eco-marathon Europe record for urban concept hydrogen vehicles, set on the more forgiving track.

“Winning has blown our minds!” said team member Maxime Cheval after the race.

The French students prevailed among more than 180 college and high school teams from 24 countries. Each year, students vie to design, build, and race the most fuel efficient vehicle in Shell Eco-marathon, a 29-year-old race that now encompasses three separate annual events on three continents. The Americas edition took place in Houston in April, while the Asia competition is scheduled for July in Kuala Lumpur. (Related: “Super-Efficient Cars Cruise to New Victories at Shell Eco-marathon Americas 2013“)

In an interview before the race, Polytech Nantes students Frederic Calvez and Stéphane Aubert explained why the team opted to retire their winning prototype vehicle and take on the greater challenge of building and racing an urban concept car.

The French students were so methodical about the competition that they purposefully set out to be first in line for the rigorous pre-race technical inspection, where everything from the brakes, steering, weight, dimensions,  energy system, and even the decibel level of the horn are tested for conformity to the rules. “Being first in the queue is part of our overall strategy,” said the team’s manager, Valentin Evon, at the time. “If we have a problem and don’t pass the inspection, then we have all day to create a solution.”

The Shell Eco-marathon victory was the second win this month for the Polyjoule team, as Polytech Nantes and La Joliverie call their combined super-mileage car effort. Earlier in May, the blue Cityjoule won the Educ Eco competition in Colomiers, France, with an even more impressive result of 1,402 kilometers-per-liter-equivalent, or 3,297 miles-per-gallon-equivalent. (Read their blog on their experience: “Making a Stop Before Eco-marathon“)

Here’s a list of the other winners:

Prototype Vehicles:

• Team SCS Pasquet of France’s solar car smashed previous records in the battery-electric category with its winning result of 1,224.1 km (760.6 miles) per kilowatt-hour. Based on gasoline equivalency (1 gallon delivers the same energy as 33.7 kilowatt-hours of electric power), that’s tantamount to mileage of 10,897.4 km/l (25,632.2 mpg). Under a rule change this year, solar and battery-electric cars were combined in one category, and students had to integrate the solar panels into the body of the car, rather than have large overhanging panels. Team SCS Pasquet bested the previous battery electric record by 45 percent, and marked a 60 percent leap in fuel-efficiency over last year’s solar car winner.
• Another French team, INSA from Toulouse, topped the alternative petrol (ethanol and biodiesel) category, with a result of 2,846.2 km/l (6,696 mpg).
• In the Prototype alternative diesel category, Team Roses-4-Eco from the Netherlands, running on natural gas-to-liquids fuel, won with 314.6 km/l (750.1 mpg.)
• Dutch team H2A of Hogeschool van Amsterdam took first place in the Prototype hydrogen category, with a result 342.2 km (212.6 miles) per kilowatt-hour, the equivalent of 3,046 km/l (7,164.6) mpg.
• In the diesel category, Team GMP Valenciennes won with 1,236.1 km/l (2,908.1 mpg) equivalent.

Urban Concept:

• In the battery-electric category, Team Electricar Solution of France won by beating its own 2012 record by more than 40 percent with a result of 376.2 km (233.8 miles) per kilowatt-hour, the energy equivalent of 3,349.8 km/l (7,879.1 mpg) on gasoline.
• Another record came from German Team Schluckspecht, achieving 315.4 km/l (741.9 mpg) to win the diesel category.
• The DTU Roadrunners of Denmark beat their own record from 2012 with 612.3 km/l (1,440.5 mpg) in the ethanol category.
• Team SKAP from Poland came first in the gasoline category with 334.2 km/l (786.3 mpg), edging record-holders Lycée Louis Delage of France, who achieved 425 km/l (999.6 mpg) in 2005.

The full results are available at Shell’s Eco-marathon website.

See related:

“Photos: Cool Cars Designed by Students to Sip Fuel”

“Pictures of Cars that Fired Our Love-Hate Relationship With Fuel”

“Pictures: A Rare Look Inside Carmakers’ Drive for 55 MPG”)

Speaking at the Energy Efficiency Global Forum in Washington, Moniz noted it was fortuitous that the annual event followed his swearing in just three hours before: “Efficiency is going to be a big focus as we go forward.”

The 68-year-old physicist and MIT professor was unanimously confirmed as energy secretary by the Senate last week. He succeeds Steven Chu, who resigned the post earlier this year and will return to Stanford University, where he had previously taught physics.

Moniz pointed to efficiency as a key tool in addressing climate change. “I have never seen a credible solution to the climate challenge [that can] reach the kinds of goals we need to reach without the demand side playing an important part,” Moniz said. “[Efficiency] will be critical.”

Moniz, who has long voiced support for natural gas and nuclear energy along with development of renewables, holds a viewpoint consistent with the “all of the above” energy strategy that he is now charged with implementing. (See also: “Mixed Reactions to Moniz Nomination for Energy Secretary“) The fate of natural gas development, and whether to promote exports of the nation’s vast shale gas supply, will be among the contentious issues that Moniz will face in the months ahead.

Before his tenure at MIT, he served as under secretary at the DOE from 1997 to early 2001. Implementing new efficiency standards for air conditioners, he said, was his last act before leaving that post.

To help deliver on the goal of doubling energy efficiency by 2030, Moniz said his department would focus on better technology; improvements in the manufacturing sector; working more directly with states and regions, particularly via the “race to the top” program for the nation’s grid; continued support of building improvements and fuel economy; and getting a backlog of appliance standards approved. (See also: “If It’s Good for Schools, Will It Be Good for Energy?“)

He also signaled support for the efficiency bill sponsored by Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and awaiting a vote. “This is the kind of initiative that I think has a real chance to move forward,” he said.

As he stepped into his new post, Moniz inaugurated a new presence on social networks as well. His first Tweet as Energy Secretary featured a photo of him being sworn in; he also has a new Facebook account, on which he promises to “help fulfill President Obama’s plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, keep America at the forefront of the clean energy race, and invest in renewable energy.”

The week started perfectly. The Ecorunner managed to get through technical inspection without many problems. That enabled us to do some test laps on the real track at Ahoy on Wednesday. This gave us insight on the things that still needed improving in order to get the most out of the Ecorunner. We set about doing this Wednesday night, and were completely prepared to do more test laps on Thursday.

However, the weather was terrible on Thursday. Due to it raining all day, we were not able to do test laps. We were, however, able to test our electronics and fuel cell statically.

Friday, the pressure was on. We had to perform now, in our first official attempt. Everyone was focused and the attempt went very well. We set a score of 2,521 km/l (5,930 mpg), which was a team record. However, we noticed some flaws after we finished, so there was still room for improvement. Unfortunately a second attempt was impossible on Friday, because the rain had started once again.

Saturday we had some bad luck when our accessory battery got overheated and one of the cells melted down. This caused us to set no valid attempt on Saturday, but we were convinced that we could do it on Sunday.

Sunday everybody was very tense. The team from Amsterdam, H2A, had beaten our score on Saturday, so we were in second place now. This caused us to be under a lot of pressure, since we were going for first place! Our first attempt ended after little more than one round due to a light crash, when one of the vehicles had come to a stop in a corner. The second attempt on Sunday turned out to be our best. We set a score of 2,914 km/l (6,584 mpg), which turned out to be enough for second place.

All in all, we had a great week full of fantastic experiences and we learned a lot. All of this will be put into good use to set an even better score next year, hoping we’ll get first place then!

But nothing comes easy when pushing the boundaries. Almost right at the start line, the KERS system had an unexplained malfunction, but after some desperate system restarts the KERS was finely charging the super capacitor. Expectations were high, as we expected the KERS to regain energy enough for 50 extra kilometers on top of the 612km we made yesterday without KERS.

The result was delivered, a disappointing 502km. What went wrong? Immediately after leaving the track, we inspected the car and found that the 20-kilogram luggage had broken off the hinge and was resting on the KERS pinwheel. Running the car without suspension on this last run induced too much stress, and the aluminium luggage  hinge came off.

Gluing on carbon fibre has, in all, been somewhat of a challenge. Also, choosing the right resin (glue) and procedures is difficult, and requires some further testing.

So until next year, the best record in the popular Urban Concept class is still defended by DTU Roadrunners from Denmark’s from Denmark’s Technical University at 612.3 km/l.

Thanks to Pascal Mikkesen for this post: Pascal is an engineering student at the Technical University of Denmark. He’s been a part of the Danish DTU Roadrunners eco car team since summer 2012 as the official team leader.

Not all parts of the United States are the same when it comes to how much and what kind of energy is used. That makes a huge difference in how to attack our energy problems.

There’s evidence for this in the latest federal statistics on carbon emissions by state and per capita. Some regions are just pumping a lot more greenhouse gases into the atomosphere than others. Consider this chart from the Energy Information Administration of carbon emissions per state, per capita:

A pretty big spread, isn’t it? And there are several reasons why some places pump out more carbon per person than others:

Economics:  Some states have economies that produce more carbon than others. The top five per-capita states (Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska, West Virginia and Louisiana) are all big fossil-fuel producers, and you can’t produce fossil fuels without also using fossil fuels to extract and process them. By contrast, New York and Washington D.C. are dominated by office work: finance, government, media and so on. People sitting in offices use fossil fuels, but not as much as people in industry. Plus, these are places with large numbers of people who use public transit as opposed to driving, thus producing less carbon.

Climate: Some of these differences can be explained by geography. Wyoming and Alaska are cold, whereas Hawaii is, well, Hawaiian. So the heating and cooling demands in Hawaii are much less.

Then again, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are cold, too, and yet they’re near the bottom of the scale on carbon emissions. Which leads us to the third and biggest factor:

Energy choices:  Vermont hardly produces any carbon emissions at all from producing electricity, and the answer is pretty straightforward:  the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant supplies almost all the state’s needs. The other states with low per capita carbon profiles, like Oregon, Idaho, and New York, also get large shares of their electricity from nuclear plants or hydroelectric dams, which don’t produce any greenhouse gases.

This can be a trick question, however, depending on whether a state produces most of its own electricity or ends up buying it from other states. Wyoming and West Virginia not only produce their own electricity using coal, but they also export it to other states. So they produce a lot of greenhouse gases, even if the electricity itself is used elsewhere. In addition to its own hydropower, Idaho imports about half of its electricity, so the state’s carbon profile is low. The same goes for California, which consistently imports a lot of the electricity it needs.

All this means that the impact of energy policy varies significantly by state. Huge amounts of effort have been spent on “think global, act local” initiatives, but the impact of those efforts is going to vary. It’s useful when someone in Vermont or Idaho swaps out swap out light bulbs and buys energy-efficient appliances, but the energy saved was probably not produced using fossil fuels. Those same changes will have a much bigger per capita impact in places that get most of their power from coal, like West Virginia or Indiana.

By contrast, carbon emissions in California and Vermont most come from petroleum, so changes in the way people drive would have the biggest payoff there.

The fact is that most people around the nation don’t know where their electricity comes from, and don’t have that much say about it, at least on a day-to-day basis. If you live in the Pacific Northwest or New England, you probably get your electricity from hydropower or nuclear plants. If you live in the Midwest or South, you’re probably getting more of your energy from coal or natural gas.

Those are the decisions where the public needs more of a voice. Nationally, the trend is to replace coal with natural gas, which is cleaner than coal but still a fosil fuel (and controversial because of the technique of fracking).

But too many citizens don’t pay enough attention to the pivotal choices being made in their own cities and states. So the next time you glance at a headlines in the local paper about the plans for a new power plant or ideas for increasing solar and wind power locally, or changes that would reduce commuting in your area and make it easier to telecommute, remember these decisions are really where the action is in curbing fossil fuel use. Making your voice heard here could be just as good for the planet as ditching your old incandescent light bulbs—maybe more so.

There’s no category for wind-powered cars in Shell Eco-marathon, but for the past five years, the Inholland students have been competing in an annual competition called Racing Aeolus, which will take place in August in Den Helder, the Netherlands.

For Shell Eco-marathon, even though the team couldn’t use direct wind power, they sought to have as green a footprint as possible. For fuel, they used ethanol, because it can be processed from agricultural waste. Eighty-percent of the vehicle material is cork, a waste product of the wind industry. Senior Toon Gerritsen explains that the car is optimized for low carbon emissions, not necessarily low mileage. “It’s about the whole eco-footprint of the car, not only about mileage,” he explains.  Still, the car achieved 522.68 km/l (1,229.68 mpg) on the Eco-marathon track.

When the wind turbine is attached to the vehicle, it is called the Anemo, named for the Anemoi, the Greek wind gods. Seeking a similar deified name for their turbine-less vehicle, the team decided to call it Apollo, also hearkening back to the daring of the U.S. space program.

Toon and fellow senior, Thys Metz, talk about the car in the video, and the team organization, called Stitchting Rootbox (Rootbox Foundation); its goal is sustainable design through collaboration.

Students from Turkey’s Celal Bayar University’s EcoMagnesia team work on their solar electric vehicle, Tarzan II. Photo by Marianne Lavelle

Kağan Meijer of Celal Bayar University in Turkey explains the changes made to the vehicle to conform to new rules for Shell Eco-marathon Europe 2013. Celal Bayar’s car last year, Tarzan, had large over-hanging solar panels, but this year, the  solar panels needed to be smaller to be integrated into the body of the vehicle. (Related: “A Solar Car Inspired by Manisa’s Own Tarzan“)  Celal Bayar’s car is called Tarzan II, named for the first environmentalist of Turkey, “Tarzan” of Manisa,  whose real name was Ahmet Bedevi. He is legendary for his work in the first half of the last century planting thousands of trees on Mount Spil, or Mount Sipylus in Manisa. The team completed a best run of 128 miles (206.8 kilometers) per kilowatt-hour, the energy equivalent of 4,313.6 miles per gallon (1,834 km/l).