However, MIT must save face in an effort to retain some degree of scientific integrity and credibility. They must still fight the never-ending battle for funding, so to be crude, they must "suck up". Although they admit the U.S. (and of course the world) will be dependent upon fossil fuels at least through the middle of this century because alternatives (e.g. wind, solar and geothermal can not suffice) they claim natural gas can be used to power our economy and replace that "dirty" coal. This they claim will reduce "greenhouse gases". Hogwash!
Burning natural gas (methane) produces nearly as much CO2 as coal or gasoline and oil. The net effect would be minimal. They also forget to mention that most natural gas is a "fossil fuel", found and produced in nearly the exact same way as is crude oil. This esteemed panel of "experts" at MIT should know better, and I'm sure they do, but they're playing the politically correct game, walking the middle of the road, trying to pacify the environmentalists and their idealistic dreams of a "carbon-free" world, while at the same time trying to maintain some degree of scientific and economic realism and integrity. They end up just looking like fools.
Peter
MITEI-led study offers comprehensive look at the future of natural gas
Photo - Graphic: Christine Daniloff
Researchers find significant potential for gas to displace coal, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions as a transition to a low-carbon future.
Natural gas will play a leading role in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions over the next several decades, largely by replacing older, inefficient coal plants with highly efficient combined-cycle gas generation. That’s the conclusion reached by a comprehensive study of the future of natural gas conducted by an MIT study group comprised of 30 MIT faculty members, researchers, and graduate students . The findings, summarized in an 83-page report, were presented to lawmakers and senior administration officials this week in Washington.
The two-year study, managed by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), examined the scale of U.S.natural gas reserves and the potential of this fuel to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Based on the work of the multidisciplinary team, with advice from a board of 16 leaders from industry, government and environmental groups, the report examines the future of natural gas through 2050 from the perspectives of technology, economics, politics, national security and the environment.
The report includes a set of specific proposals for legislative and regulatory policies, as well as recommendations for actions that the energy industry can pursue on its own, to maximize the fuel’s impact on mitigating greenhouse gas. The study also examined ways to control the environmental impacts that could result from a significant expansion in the production and use of natural gas — especially in electric power production.
“Much has been said about natural gas as a bridge to a low-carbon future, with little underlying analysis to back up this contention. The analysis in this study provides the confirmation — natural gas truly is a bridge to a low-carbon future,” said MITEI Director Ernest J. Moniz in introducing the report.
Read the full report
Read a press release about the report
The two-year study, managed by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), examined the scale of U.S.
The report includes a set of specific proposals for legislative and regulatory policies, as well as recommendations for actions that the energy industry can pursue on its own, to maximize the fuel’s impact on mitigating greenhouse gas. The study also examined ways to control the environmental impacts that could result from a significant expansion in the production and use of natural gas — especially in electric power production.
“Much has been said about natural gas as a bridge to a low-carbon future, with little underlying analysis to back up this contention. The analysis in this study provides the confirmation — natural gas truly is a bridge to a low-carbon future,” said MITEI Director Ernest J. Moniz in introducing the report.
Read the full report
Read a press release about the report
12 comments:
Peter,
Are you aware that Susan Hockfield, president of MIT and the person responsible for creating MITEI, is a member of the Board of Directors at GE?
JSG,
I'm not surprised at the connections between MIT and GE. This helps explain the nonsensical, political use of the term "greenhouse gases".
It alsow explains GE's intense lobbying in Washington,DC since GE is a large manufacturor of wind turbines, solar panel, flourescent light bulbs and other popular "green" products. They are also heavy donors to the Obama campaign. GE owns NBC, MSNBC and Newsweek Magazine. Some call GE Obama's propagranda center. The scientific and intellectual hypocrisy coming from MIT is nauseating. I just know Al Gore has got his nose in there somewhere also.
Pete, why are you so concerned with the political and industrial connections with people who maybe worked with GE but not the scientists, specifically who deny climate change, who work for Big Oil?
Why are you only suspicious of one set of scientists?
Anonymous,
Please show me and prove some scientists working for "Big Oil" who actively lobby Congress. What little "Big Oil" contributes to research available to the public pales in comparison to the tens of Billions of dollars of government money doled out in the form of "research" grants. Get your facts right bubba.
Does "Big Oil" have the equivalent propaganda arms (NBC, MSNBC and Newsweek) owned by General Electric? Read the one-sided environmental Bull$hit these mainstream media sources spew out on a regular and predictable basis. It is no wonder that people like yourself are ill-informed. You're being spoon fed a bowl of lies and you don't know reality from fiction. Worst of all you question nothing, and just blindly follow the herd.
Nobody is denying climate change, just the idea that it is dominantly caused by man's activities or the production of "greenhouse gases".
It is lies and stupidity I oppose, not someones political party or any other convenient label. Lies, supidity, and incompetence like that demonstrated on a daily basis by the current Obama Administration endanger everyone.
And Al Gore, the patron saint of the global warming hoax,and representative of all global warming alarmists can't even tell the truth about a late night massage. The guy is as slimy as they get, always has been and always will be. Just ask Tipper.
Now Pete, last time you asked me to show you anything you became increasingly irritated until you were actually enraged. Do don't do well with actually looking at the issues - you'd rather make insipid little commentaries on media sources than actually deal with AGW.
Do you really not think Big Oil has a mountain of cash involved with AGW?
You are a very tribal man, Pete.
Anonymous,
Tribal? That's a new one. I assume coming from you that it is somehow deragatory.
As far as the science is concerned, AGW, (man-caused global warming) is a dead issue. All that remains is political haggling, subterfuge, and desperate name-calling from the leftist alarmists.....a sure sign they've lost the battle for public sympathy. Let Al Gore go down as their symbolic buffoon and pervert. Maybe he can share a prison cell with Bernie Madoff. They would make a fitting pair.
And yes, I am quite certain that "Big Oil" does not have a "mountain of cash" involved in fighting against the myth of man-caused global warming. Anything of the sort is impossible to disguise and exists only in the paranoid minds of global warming alarmists and their lackeys such as the cowardly "anoymous" who persists at making a fool of himself/herself here.
Hey Pete, you do known that several of the leading media critics of AGW have now retracted their claims.
No?
Well here:
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/06/25/newspapers-retract-climategate-claims-but-damage-still-done.html
Or here, just read it:
Newspapers Retract ‘Climategate’ Claims, but Damage Still Done
Greg Rico / AP
Vindicated too late? Penn State climatologist Michael Mann
A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on, as Mark Twain said (or “before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on,” in Winston Churchill’s version), and nowhere has that been more true than in “climategate.” In that highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal, e-mails hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia’s climate-research group were spread around the Web by activists who deny that human activity is altering the world’s climate in a dangerous way, and spun so as to suggest that the scientists had been lying, cheating, and generally cooking the books.
But not only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn State cleared PSU climatologist Michael Mann of “falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information” in February. In perhaps the biggest backpedaling, The Sunday Times of London, which led the media pack in charging that IPCC reports were full of egregious (and probably intentional) errors, retracted its central claim—namely, that the IPCC statement that up to 40 percent of the Amazonian rainforest could be vulnerable to climate change was “unsubstantiated.” The Times also admitted that it had totally twisted the remarks of one forest expert to make it sound as if he agreed that the IPCC had screwed up, when he said no such thing.
It’s worth quoting the retraction at some length:
The article “UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim” (News, Jan 31) stated that the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had included an “unsubstantiated claim” that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be sensitive to future changes in rainfall. The IPCC had referenced the claim to a report prepared for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) by Andrew Rowell and Peter Moore, whom the article described as “green campaigners” with “little scientific expertise.” The article also stated that the authors’ research had been based on a scientific paper that dealt with the impact of human activity rather than climate change.
In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence. In the case of the WWF report, the figure . . . was based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) which did relate to the impact of climate change. We also understand and accept that . . . Dr Moore is an expert in forest management, and apologise for any suggestion to the contrary.
The article also quoted criticism of the IPCC’s use of the WWF report by Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds and leading specialist in tropical forest ecology. We accept that, in his quoted remarks, Dr Lewis was making the general point that both the IPCC and WWF should have cited the appropriate peer-reviewed scientific research literature. As he made clear to us at the time, including by sending us some of the research literature, Dr Lewis does not dispute the scientific basis for both the IPCC and the WWF reports’ statements on the potential vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest to droughts caused by climate change. . . . A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.
In another retraction you never heard of, a paper in Frankfurt took back (apologies; the article is available only in German) its reporting that the IPCC had erred in its assessment of climate impacts in Africa.
The Times’s criticism of the IPCC—look, its reports are full of mistakes and shoddy scholarship!—was widely picked up at the time it ran, and has been an important factor in turning British public opinion sharply against the established science of climate change. Don’t expect the recent retractions and exonerations to change that. One of the strongest, most-repeated findings in the psychology of belief is that once people have been told X, especially if X is shocking, if they are later told, “No, we were wrong about X,” most people still believe X. As Twain and Churchill knew, sometimes the truth never catches up with the lie, let alone overtakes it. As I wrote last summer in a story about why people believe lies even when they’re later told the truth, sometimes people’s mental processes simply go off the rails.
See that, my brother?
Whose house of cards is falling down?
Anonymous,
Nothing published in Newsweek can be trusted since they are owned and controlled by General Electric, which hopes to make billions off the alternative energy hoax and fiasco,and they are suck ups to the Obama Administration. They are on board a sinking ship. Get off while you can.
The myth of man-caused global warming is on artificial life support and should be unplugged for the good of everyone. Let it die and rot along with Al GORE.
The sinking ship just got two retractions, Pete. The best you can do is assert some sort of paranoid conspiracy fantasy? That's true desperation, Pete, global warming worries are going nowhere.
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