Next to jobs and the economy, the?National Journal?reports, no?other issue?has dominated this year?s election as much as energy because it?s a proxy for many other things?(subscription). ?Energy has not been this big an issue in a presidential campaign since the tumultuous years of the 1970s,? when the Arab oil embargo raised gasoline prices and had Americans waiting in lines at the pump around the country, said Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning energy historian.?Six?major energy issues?are a focus?oil, hydraulic fracturing of natural gas, nuclear, renewable energy and coal?with their views shaping two?very different energy?industries.
In?the second?of three?presidential debates?Tuesday Barack Obama and Mitt Romney revisited several aspects of energy policy in a?night of one-liners?and?disagreements?about the issue and many others, such as taxes, measures to reduce the deficit, pay equity for women and health care.?Climate change, however, didn?t even make it off the?debate moderator?s?list of prepared questions.?Mother Jones?called climate change the ?big loser? in the debate, while?MSNBC?likened the candidates? failure to mention it in their remarks about energy to?not mentioning cancer in a discussion about smoking. Compared to their first debate Oct. 3, much more of their 90 minutes was spent on energy.
Candidates argued about who was the bigger friend to the?coal industry?and weighed how government could influence gasoline prices?though many factors other than administrative policy tend to influence prices according to the?Federal Trade Commission. Among the?more heated?energy-focused exchanges was one about oil and gas production on federal lands. Romney claimed production on these lands has decreased, while Obama maintained the assertions weren?t true. A check of the facts by?NBC indicates?these claims may have been slighted skewed. ?Oil production did fall by 14 percent on federal lands?onshore and offshore?but that was only in one year, from 2010 to 2011,? NBC writes. ?And it was mainly the result of the fallout from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. But Obama is correct, that since he took office, oil production on federal lands is up.? This wasn?t the only factoid snafu for these two candidates. Early on, Obama?misstated?the length of time oil production had risen and each took a few other things?out of context.
Supercomputer to Give New Push for Climate Research
Widespread drought has put increasing pressure on global food supplies, allowing reserves to reach their lowest?levels in nearly 40 years, which could trigger a?food crisis in 2013. A new supercomputer?capable of crunching 1.5 quadrillion calculations per second?just may be able to help scientists improve our?understanding?of everything from hurricanes and tornadoes to tsunamis, air pollution and the location of water beneath the earth?s surface.?TIME?claims it can narrow down the 60-square-mile units used in climate change modeling today to just seven-square-mile-tranches?zooming in on the movement of everything from raindrops to wind.
Researchers from the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson report that?computer modeling methods developed to predict climate change on Earth?have successfully predicted the age and location of glaciers and other climatic conditions on Mars. Their predictions have been confirmed through new satellite observations. Lead researcher William Hartmann?said, ?Some public figures imply that modeling of global climate change on Earth is ?junk science,? but if climate models can explain features observed on other planets, then the models must have at least some validity.?
Challenges to an Energy Transition
While some forecast Germany could?save billions?if it sticks to its plans of replacing nuclear with renewable energy, the plan may come at great cost to consumers. The country?s four main grid operators released estimates this week showing that households will see a nearly?50 percent increase?in the tax needed to fund the transformation to renewables, requiring a typical family of four to pay about?$324 per year?on top of their bill?renewing debate over the transition sparked by the?Fukushima disaster.
The Christian Science Monitor?calls the energy transition claims made across the world clunky, offering that history suggests it can take up to 50 years to replace an existing energy infrastructure. The problem, according to the?Monitor? ?We don?t have that long.
The Climate Post?offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday?by?Duke University?s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
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