Recently in Energy Category

December 20, 2009   Representative John Culberson, 7th District514 Longworth Building Washington DC 20515-4307   10000 Memorial Drive, Suite 620 Houston, TX  77024-3490   Dear Representative Culberson:   Thank you for your response to my letter expressing my opinion on health care reform with another of your empty, partisan, form letters written by someone on your staff. I truly appreciate the time it took one of your minions to add me to the distribution...

The Copenhagen climate talks continue, while everyone waits for world leaders, including President Obama, to arrive on Friday.  The last week at the COP 15 has not marked much progress in extending or modifying the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the UN leadership is even having trouble keeping everyone in the boat.  African nations staged a brief walkout yesterday after demonstrations on Sunday complaining that the developed nations won't pay enough...

With the Copenhagen conference and "Climategate," the Internet and the media are abuzz with climate change.  I think more rational voices are being drowned out, though, by the bickering between those that have become polarized in the political debate.  (Gee, does that sound familiar?)  The lines between good science, good problem solving, and good policy have been blurred to everyone's detriment.  Let's try to unravel this Gordian knot a bit.First, the science.I was a climate...

I thought I would take the next week or so to talk more about energy, energy supply, and climate change.  We'll also talk about the politics surrounding these issues in the United States.COP15 is opening in Copenhagen on December 7.  COP doesn't stand for Copenhagen; it stands for Conference of Parties, annual meetings that grew out of an international treaty, called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), entered into by 192 countries...

A senior official is reporting that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has been intentionally underplaying the rate of decline of existing oil fields and overstating the chances of finding new reserves.  The Guardian UK broke the story yesterday, quoted its source as saying that the agency bowed to pressure from the US to overstate deliverability to avoid panic buying in the markets.The IEA reports on worldwide energy supplies and publishes long term forecasts of production. ...

I learn something new every day, usually from people who are younger than I am and who haven't developed the jaded or cynical or hard-headed perspective that I have as an adult. This one comes from a couple of young folks I know. We'll start with my 23-y-o highly intelligent, Georgetown graduated, extremely idealistic, somewhat pretentious, annoyingly talented, raconteur nephew who writes regularly (lately at http://www.echoditto.com/blogs/bryn-bellomy) and introduced me to a new term. See wiki definition below...

Rather than just look to our country's past accomplishments as justification for continuing the space program, I'd like to take some time to explain why I think our future depends on it.  Science & EngineeringIn the present day and more immediate future, scientific research on the International Space Station is greatly expanding now that assembly is largely complete.  On the ground, we can only escape the pervasive acceleration of gravity for very brief periods of...

Given the uncertainty surrounding the direction of the human space exploration program these days, a group of young professionals here at JSC assembled with the guidance and support of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership and local aerospace executives to begin an advocacy campaign and get the word out on why we think human spaceflight is important. The Young Professionals branch of the Citizens for Space Exploration now has a website that I must highly...

I am an avid sci-fi buff.  Science fiction films and anime comprise a significant portion of my DVD and Blu-Ray collection.  If I'm reading fiction, chances are that I'm reading something by Arthur C. Clarke, Ben Bova, Kim Stanley Robinson, or something in that mold.  I guess I like that material because it helps give me a vision of the world to come, an ideal of what I am working to build as an engineer...