The letter follows a similar letter sent to Chu on July 13 by 109 community and environmental organizations that also criticized the one-sided composition of the panel. Both letters point out six of the seven members of the Energy Advisory Board Natural Gas Subcommittee have current financial ties to the natural gas industry.

“In our work, we believe in reducing individual biases in evaluating the merits of scientific or technological ideas,” the scientists wrote to Secretary Chu. “The current panel does not meet this standard.”

The chairman of the panel, John Deutch, was paid more than $1.4 million by two leading natural gas companies, Schlumberger Ltd. and Cheniere Energy, from 2006 to 2009 alone. Deutch serves on the board of directors of Cheniere Energy.

The DOE panel is expected to release a draft of its recommendations on hydrofracking sometime today.

In November 2010, Chu addressed (PDF) a gathering of journalists at the National Press Club, and put forward his vision for U.S.-led innovation in clean technology. Chu described the creation of a new innovation race with the same urgency as President Eisenhower called on the U.S. to get a satellite into orbit after Soviet Union’s successful launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957.

“When it comes to innovation, Americans don’t take a back seat to anyone – and we certainly won’t start now,” said Secretary Chu. “From wind power to nuclear reactors to high speed rail, China and other countries are moving aggressively to capture the lead. Given that challenge, and given the enormous economic opportunities in clean energy, it’s time for America to do what we do best: innovate. As President Obama has said, we should not, cannot, and will not play for second place.”

Though aptly named the ‘Sputnik race’ for the urgency with which the U.S. needs to address its lagging position as a world innovator in the clean energy field, Chu was careful to point out that this innovation requires bilateral agreements between the U.S., China and other developing nations who are currently leading a global clean tech revolution, including India and Brazil.

Past meeting between the U.S. and China on energy matters have ended in deadlock. In the nail-bitingly tense closing meetings at the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009, China and the U.S. refused to compromise on who should take the responsibility for the bulk of emissions: China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and an emerging economy, or, the U.S., historically the world’s largest emitter and the largest emitter on a per capita basis. Continued reluctance to address key responsibilities for carbon emissions left the 2010 Climate Change meeting in Cancun, Mexico, also without a binding treaty.

On its home turf, China’s dominance in the global solar industry is causing contention in the U.S. The Obama administration is currently reviewing a complaint (PDF) from the United States Steelworkers union that China has violated free trade rules with its subsidization of renewable energy companies. And the market dominance by Chinese companies in California following the passage of the California Solar Initiative (CSI) in 2007 –- which offers subsidized solar panels to homes and businesses -– is also raising questions about how the current administration plans to marry the two central principles of its energy policy — energy independence and domestic job creation.

Chu’s Soviet-era rhetoric seems to be a thinly-veiled call for the U.S. to step up its clean tech innovation game. And it will be interesting to see how it plays in to the next four days of meetings between the two leaders.

The letter is addressed to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

Markey asks whether the administration has determined whether China is in fact blocking rare earth mineral exports to the United States (China has denied the reports) and what implications a a shortage of the minerals would have on national security and clean energy technology. Rare earth minerals are used in key military communications and smart bomb technology as well as in wind turbines and hybrid vehicles.

Markey also said he was planning on having a hearing on the issue.

For background on the rare earth mineral issue, see the following posts:
Obama Administration Says It Will Investigate China’s Green Tech Trade Policies
China Dismisses U.S. Investigation of Its Green Tech Trade Policies as Midterm Politicking
Report: China Blocking Rare Earth Mineral Shipments to U.S.
DOD Near Completion of Report on Military’s Use of Rare Earth Minerals

Here’s the letter, via The Hill.

Obama said he wanted to pass a bill that “deals with” climate change and noted the importance of capping carbon, but he was careful not to specifically commit to passing a cap-and-trade bill, as he is fully aware of the significant opposition to the proposal in the Senate.

He said that one of his top priorities next year is to “have an energy policy that begins to address all facets of our overreliance on fossil fuels.” He continued, “We may end up having to do it in chunks, as opposed to some sort of comprehensive omnibus legislation. But we’re going to stay on this because it is good for our economy, it’s good for our national security, and, ultimately, it’s good for our environment.”

Obama then goes on to tout efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to tighten fuel economy standards, arguing that his administration can take action without Congress. Obama said, though, that it’s not enough, while adding that all of the administration’s current efforts will result in a 17 percent reduction in the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“But we’re going to have to do a lot more than that,” Obama said, noting that Energy Secretary Steven Chu says the best way to solve the climate change problem “internationally” is to focus on energy efficiency, clean energy technology and a cap on carbon. “Am I satisfied with what we’ve gotten done? Absolutely not,” Obama said.

Asked by Rolling Stone if he would “throw the whole weight of the presidency” behind passing energy legislation, Obama said, “Yes. Not only can I foresee it, but I am committed to making sure that we get an energy policy that makes sense for the country and that helps us grow at the same time as it deals with climate change in a serious way.”

Speaking at a meeting on deepwater oil drilling blowout containment today, Salazar said, according to his prepared remarks:

To achieve our objective of safer offshore energy production, we must eliminate the gap between the technology and knowledge that allows oil and gas companies to tap reserves beneath 5,000 feet of water – and the technologies and strategies that allow us to deal with emergencies at those depths.

Salazar also said the meeting would help shape upcoming Interior Department regulations on offshore drilling.

Here’s the guest list:

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu

Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes

Retired Admiral and National Incident Commander, Thad Allen

Dr. Marcia McNutt, Director, United States Geological Survey

Dr. Thomas Hunter, former Director, Sandia National Laboratories

Michael R. Bromwich, Director, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement

Rear Admiral Brian M. Salerno, Deputy Commandant for Operations, United States Coast Guard

Andrew Inglis, Chief Executive of Exploration & Production, BP

Rex W. Tillerson, Chairman& CEO, ExxonMobil

Hon. Don Winter, PhD, National Academy of Engineering

Elgie Holstein, Environmental Defense Fund

Vice President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu released the report, “The Recovery Act: Transforming the American Economy through Innovation,” which lays out the potential energy advancements.

They include, according to the Energy Department:

“Cutting the cost of solar power in half by 2015, putting it on par with the cost of retail electricity from the grid.

“Cutting the cost of batteries for electric vehicles by 70 percent between 2009 and 2015, putting the lifetime cost of an electric vehicle on-par with that of its non-electric counterpart.

“Doubling U.S. renewable energy generation capacity and U.S. renewable manufacturing capacity by 2012, a breakthrough that would not be possible without the Recovery Act.”

If the Obama administration can accomplish these advancements, they would address a number of key energy challenges, namely the high costs of solar energy and electric vehicle batteries. In reaching these goals, the administration would be able to quiet critics who say that it doesn’t make economic sense to move away from fossil fuels.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen is saying that a saw has become stuck as it was cutting through a pipe on a busted well, stalling the latest attempt to contain the Gulf oil gusher.

Allen said Wednesday the goal is to free the saw and finish the cut later in the day. This is the second major cut in the effort to contain — not plug — the nation’s worst spill.

Allen says the first cut with giant shears was successful overnight.

“The American people should know that from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort,” he told reporters at a press conference at the White House just now. “Make no mistake: BP is operating at our direction.”

But he criticized “the oil industry’s cozy and sometimes corrupt relationship with government regulators,” referring to close ties with the Mineral Management Service, the Interior Department office responsible for overseeing oil and gas development. “This oil spill has made clear that more reforms are needed,” he continued. He highlighted the decision to split MMS, but he initially made no mention of today’s announcement that the head of the service is stepping down. In response to a reporter’s question about whether she resigned or was fired, he said, “I found out about her resignation today. … I don’t know the circumstances in which this occurred.”

Obama noted that the government gave BP approval to use a procedure called Top Kill to plug the spewing oil hole, but he chose not to discuss the move’s apparent success in halting the flow of oil. Instead, he treated the situation as a continuing crisis that requires the collaboration of the country’s top experts, including, he pointed out, the Nobel Prize-winning secretary of energy, Steven Chu.

He also took a tough line against BP, promising that the oil company will be fully responsible for compensating the affected populations along the Gulf Coast. “We will demand they pay every dime for the damage they’ve done,” he said. “We’re not going to abandon our fellow citizens.”

As a result of the spill, Obama said, the government will take several measures to clamp down on offshore drilling, including the suspension of two proposed oil exploration locations off the Alaskan coast.

Environmental advocates have long hoped that Obama wouldn’t let this crisis — in the words of Rahm Emanuel — “go to waste.” Today, he used the disaster to urge the Senate to pass energy and climate legislation. “If nothing else, this disaster should serve as a wakeup call that it’s time to move forward on this legislation,” he said.

The president will be traveling to Louisiana tomorrow for the second time since the spill began.

visibleearth.nasa.gov

The scientific consensus on geoengineering has come a long way in the past few years. As recently as 2006, it was unthinkable to many climate scientists that leaders in their field would seriously consider the idea of shooting reflective particles into the atmosphere or dumping massive quantities of iron into the oceans.

“When I first started looking into this in 2006, it was like talking to an insurance salesman about his porn habit,” said Jeff Goodell, whose book on geoengineering, “How to Cool the Planet,” was published on Thursday. “Nobody wanted to talk about it openly.”

[Environment1] These days, however, a growing number of scientists are devoting their careers to researching geoengineering, defined by the British Royal Society as “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming.” But while most scientists may agree on the need to study this worst-case approach to addressing the climate crisis, a political consensus on the issue remains a long way off, as liberals and environmentalists have been reluctant to consider this radical solution that some conservatives have been quick to embrace.

Geoengineering takes two principal forms. One involves increasing the planet’s reflectivity in some way, so that less sunlight warms the earth and temperatures drop. This approach can be as simple as Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s proposal to paint roofs white (although that would barely make a dent in global warming) or as complex as replicating the effects of a volcano by shooting sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere. It can be done rather inexpensively — some experts say a sulfur dioxide injection would cost under 3 cents per ton of carbon negated, compared to the $10- to $30-per-ton pricetag that comprehensive climate legislation would likely impose — but it’s only a patch: Carbon levels would continue to rise, and if geoengineering efforts stopped, temperatures would shoot up.

The other form involves sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, potentially by adding iron to the oceans to encourage carbon-absorbing algae blooms or by pulling carbon out of the air and sending it deep underground. This approach would actually reduce our carbon levels and could avoid some of the ethical issues of reflectivity engineering, but it’s likely to be much more expensive and slower to take effect, and it presents its own host of practical concerns.

In either case, nearly all climate scientists agree, geoengineering should not be regarded as a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but rather a backup plan in case other efforts fail to prevent a climate crisis. Many hope that geoengineering theories remain just theories: There are far too many unknowns, and after all it was our manipulation of the planet that led to global warming in the first place. But with temperatures continuing to rise and the prospects for cutting carbon emissions uncertain — particularly after the failure of last December’s international climate conference in Copenhagen — some argue that it would be foolish not to explore our options.

“One of the greatest misapprehensions about the climate crisis is the notion that we can fix all this simply by cutting emissions quickly,” writes Goodell. “We can’t. Even if we cut CO2 pollution to zero tomorrow, the amount of CO2 we have already pumped into the atmosphere will ensure that the climate will remain warm for centuries.”

“To be responsible, you really have to plan for the worst,” said Eli Kintisch, whose own book on geoengineering, “Hack the Planet,” is scheduled for publication on April 19.

Heading the push to explore geoengineering is what Kintisch calls the “Geoclique,” led by climate scientists Ken Caldeira of Stanford’s Carnegie Institution for Science and David Keith of the University of Calgary. Partly thanks to their efforts, geoengineering has rapidly moved into the scientific mainstream.

“The change is stunning,” said Keith in an interview. “I keep walking into meetings where I expect everyone to be opposed, and they’re not.”

But a scientific consensus has yet to translate into a political one. As many liberal environmentalists have sought to avoid debate on the issue — “for fear that talking about it would reduce the pressure for cutting emissions,” according to Keith — some Republicans have signed onto the notion of geoengineering, creating an unlikely union between climate scientists and conservatives who often put little stock in what climate scientists have to say.

“It’s definitely an alliance of strange bedfellows,” Caldeira told TWI.

For conservatives who oppose efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, geoengineering provides an opportunity to shift the debate over global warming from its causes to its effects — from carbon levels to rising temperatures. This serves multiple purposes: It allows some of them to maintain their argument that global warming is caused by changing solar patterns rather than human activity, and it creates an opportunity to control climate change without placing limits on polluting industries.

“Conservatives can use it to bolster arguments they’ve made all along,” said Kintisch, “but I don’t think in the end, we’re going to be able to study this if it’s a conservative or liberal issue. If that happens, it just won’t go anywhere.”

Still, there are signs that the political mainstream is beginning to embrace the idea of “planethacking,” as Kintisch sometimes refers to it. Energy Secretary Chu, who as a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and a member of President Obama’s cabinet has served as a link between the scientific and political communities, told Goodell that “geoengineering is certainly worth further research.” In November 2009, the House Committee on Science and Technology held the first-ever hearing on geoengineering, although committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) insisted, “My decision to hold this hearing should not in any way be misconstrued as an endorsement of any geoengineering activity.” And last month, the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy created a task force that includes leading scientists like Keith and Caldeira to make recommendations on geoengineering to Congress and the administration this summer.

But one thing that’s still lacking is funding from Congress for geoengineering research, which Keith calls “crucial.” Caldeira has also advocated a federally funded “Climate Emergency Response Program” to explore our options if we need to cool the planet in a pinch.

Of course, if and when we reach the point of climate crisis, political disagreements are likely to subside. “If there end up being widespread crop failures and famines and that kind of thing, people are going to be willing to do something dramatic,” said Caldeira.

Still, even most advocates of geoengineering research would prefer not to see their ideas put into action. “I hope that we never launch particles into the stratosphere, dump iron into the oceans, or brighten clouds,” Goodell writes in his book. “I hope that the whole notion of geoengineering looks in retrospect exactly how it looks at first glance: like a bad sci-fi novel writ large.”

But while Keith and Kintisch both think there’s a chance we can avert a major climate crisis without resorting to geoengineering, Goodell disagrees.

“I think that it’s inevitable,” said Goodell, “and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. What I think is really important is the idea of us, meaning Western civilization, having a discussion about the kind of world we want to live in. Geoengineering forces that discussion.”