So 60 Minutes had a serious piece on cold fusion, which has been long ignored and rightfully so.  As a physicist, the story was intriguing because there might be some interesting tabletop nuclear physics going on, although nobody really knows what that might be.

As an energy technologist, however, I didn’t see anything that would suggest we’re going to see some big game changer anytime soon — and the featured scientist/advocate was guilty of some particularly unconvincing and counterproductive hype.  I’d say cold fusion may have moved from junk science to the realm of hydrogen or fusion — decades away, at best, but possibly never very useful.

Wikipedia has a good entry if you want some unhyped background on cold fusion, which came to public attention “on March 23, 1989 when Fleischmann and Pons reported producing nuclear fusion in a tabletop experiment involving electrolysis of heavy water on a palladium (Pd) electrode. They reported anomalous heat production (“excess heat”) of a magnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes.”  Needless to say, this was a shock, since until then physicists thought you needed multi-million degree temperatures to fuse nuclei and generate energy.

Many major physics laboratories failed to reproduce the results and scientific theories explaining how it might be possible were lacking (as they pretty much are still today).

In 1989, the majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) had found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. A second DOE review, convened in 2004 to look at new research, reached conclusions that were similar to those of the 1989 panel.

The 2004 DOE report is here.  A 2005 Scientific American summary of the findings was titled “Back to Square One.”  Some on the panel thought “the evidence for excess power was compelling” but “When it came to whether nuclear reactions took place in the experiments, the report noted that two thirds of reviewers found the evidence unconvincing, one person found it compelling, and the remainder were somewhat convinced.”

It is incredibly tricky to measure all of the energy inputs and outputs, which is why 60 Minutes had an independent expert come in and examine the one company’s claims.  He ended up convinced excess heat was being generated.  Richard Garwin, one of the country’s foremost authorities on nuclear physics and “the author of the actual design used in the first hydrogen bomb,” remains unconvinced.

I was very unconvinced by the over-the-top hype from the main expert on the show:

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The mayor of a failing Pennsylvania steel town will join Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Vice President Al Gore in testifying on behalf of a clean energy economy this week. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has announced an ambitious week of hearings on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, comprehensive legislation intended to answer President Obama’s mandate for green economic reform. Braddock, PA mayor John Fetterman will testify on Wednesday how his town needs a change from the pollution-based status quo:

After opening statements by members of the committee on Tuesday, the rest of the week will feature three different sessions each day. The hearings begin on Wednesday with the testimony of Cabinet officials Lisa Jackson, Steven Chu, and Ray La Hood, followed by a panel of representatives of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, and concluding with Fetterman and other green jobs advocates. Thursday’s hearings discuss questions of carbon revenue allocation, international competitiveness, and smarter and cleaner energy. Vice President Al Gore and former senator John Warner (R-VA) will begin Friday’s hearing, followed by policy experts on transportation, energy efficiency, market regulation, and adaptation to the ravages of global warming.

Full schedule of the hearings, which will take place at 2123 Rayburn House Office Building: Read more

House Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA) are holding hearings the rest of this week on “The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009″ — A solid “B+” bill that boosts the economy, creates green jobs, and puts the country on a path to preserve a livable climate.

They have announced all of the witness lists (see here and below), so you can decide who, if anyone, you want to watch at their website (here).

I’d say that if you were going to tune in to any of these, the top priority would be Friday morning, where Gore and Former senator John Warner testify.  The next most interesting is probably the second panel Tuesday, just to hear fellow members of USCAP — Jim Rogers of Duke Energy and Frances Beinecke, NRDC — and look at their body language (see How does Duke CEO Jim Rogers sleep at night, generating so much coal-fired CO2: “Lunesta” and “NRDC and EDF endorse the weak, coal-friendly, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan“).

Here is the full set of hearings:

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Everyone knows that Ohio and the industrial Midwest have been hit especially hard by this recession. What many people don’t understand is that climate change legislation can make our region and our country stronger.

So writes Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown in an article in today’s Roll Call, “Clean Energy Can Bolster Industry.”

Nothing that Brown writes is terribly surprising coming from a progressive.  But I thought the entire piece is worth reading to help correct the misimpression created Saturday by the Washington Post‘s top climate reporter, who wrote “cap-and-trade legislation … is fiercely opposed by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats from fossil-fuel-dependent Midwestern states.”

Brown would seem to be the poster child for fossil fuel dependent Midwestern states (notwithstanding the fact that all states are fossil fuel dependent).  Yet he writes:

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California regulators, trying to assess the true environmental cost of corn ethanol, are poised to declare that the biofuel cannot help the state reduce global warming.

As they see it, corn is no better – and might be worse – than petroleum when total greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions are considered. Such a declaration, to be considered later this week by the California Air Resources Board, would be a considerable blow to the corn-ethanol industry in the United States.

So reports The Daily Climate today.  Let’s hope that California takes a leadership role here.  The country is simply awash in too much corn ethanol.  Current federal mandates would nearly double current production and consume about one third of the annual U.S. corn harvest.

Yet in fact corn ethanol almost certainly has no significant GHG benefit, may actually have higher net GHGs than oil, and has multiple other harmful impacts:

• The Fuel on the Hill “” The Corn Supremacy
• Switch to Corn Promotes Amazon Deforestation
• More corn ethanol = Bigger Gulf dead zone
• Let them eat biofuels!
• Can words describe how bad corn ethanol is?
• About those two studies dissing biofuels

Still, the corn folks won’t go down without a fight:

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Top Story

NOAA: March 2009 Tenth Warmest on Record for Global Temperatures

The combined global land and ocean surface average temperature for March 2009 was the 10th warmest since records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Even bigger news, Wunderblog reports, “La Ni±a conditions end“:

If we stay ENSO neutral as the models predict, then the rest of the year is poised to be back on the very warm side (see “NOAA: Eighth warmest winter on record, this summer may be a hot one“)  If we shift over to an El Ni±o, then all bets are off.

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Michele Bachmann, like other conservatives in the House and Senate, has stated concern for her constituents over increased energy costs but consistently opposed measures that would have helped them.

• Read details on legislation to help low-income families House and Senate conservatives voted against
• Download voting records for Senate and House conservatives (pdf)

Conservatives have suddenly painted themselves as the dedicated protectors of America’s poor in protesting global warming legislation on the House and Senate floors. After careers spent voting against measures to help low-income families, conservative legislators have abruptly rushed to attack programs that would reduce greenhouse gas pollution, falsely claiming that such cuts inherently hurt low-income households. Examining these conservatives’ voting records, however, confirms that their newfound concern for America’s poor does not extend beyond hollow rhetoric. And the programs they oppose would actually assist low-income families with energy costs and create new domestic jobs.

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House Minority Leader John Boehner is a traditional anti-science conservative.  His exchange Sunday with George Stephanopoulos (transcript here, reprinted below) is still notable for his utter lack of understanding of even the basics of the climate issue.  Boehner said:

George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide

Almost comical?  How about completely tragic?

One of the GOP’s senior leaders thinks this debate is about whether carbon dioxide is a carcinogen?  And thinks carcinogens harm the environment, rather than people?  And thinks that cows are of concern because they produce carbon dioxide, rather than methane?

It bears repeating:  Anti-science conservatives are now the cement shoes on the American people, pulling us down into the ocean hot, acidic dead zone.

Stephanopoulos deserves praise for this extended questioning on the climate issue.  Not only do we learn Boehner is utterly ignorant of climate basics.  We also see how he contradicts himself repeatedly in an effort to push out all the standard conservative disinformer talking points on global warming.  On the one hand, carbon dioxide is something we exhale, not something harmful to the environment, but on the other hand, we can only solve this “problem” as one nation, if we “work with other industrialized nations around the world.”

But if it’s not a problem caused by humans, then how could humans possibly solve it whether we work with other countries are not?  That’s the beauty of not caring about science or logic.  You can spew out all of your disinformation, and different pieces that can stick to different people.

Here is the entire exchange:

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