It was a WONDERFUL event. The students and Lewis and Clark asked great questions. And the emphasis on climate change by students was fascinating to me. There really seems to be a deep and abiding concern by those students to find solutions to fighting global warming.

More on the event here (at the Campaign Trail blog). And if you're on Facebook, you can head over to the Jeff Merkley for US Senate group and see more.

(FYI--I'm the netroots organizer for the Jeff Merkley for Oregon campaign)

someday we just might have a US Senator from Oregon who actually believes that global warming is a problem.

Yes, I think it is safe to say that all of Smith's challengers share that view.

Nick,

Thanks for a highly informative post which does not seem biased to me at all at this point, given what you say about the intention to give a similar report on Steve Novick's appearance. Kudos to LC College Dems for holding these events. And kudos to you for constructive writing that may improve the tone of discussion of this race around here. (Assuming of course that your report on Steve N. is of similar quality).

It is a pity that it is harder to get this kind of information about candidate positions than it should be. Given this report, one suspects the issue may be what other reporters choose to regard as news, rather than what the candidates actually are saying.

About hybrid-electric cars -- I am somewhat skeptical of the way they are reported here.

Many years ago I had a physics professor at Reed, Jean DeLord, who was an early environmentalist with strong interests and concerns about the various environmental costs of power generation in all forms, I think including "the greenhouse effect."

Professor DeLord made several points about electricity generation. One is that electrical energy for the most part is generated by some form of kinetic energy, heat energy, or combination (e.g. water or wind motion, steam produced heat from combustion or nuclear reactions that turns generators). There is a loss of energy between the original form and its conversion to electrical energy; this loss is greater when it involves first creating heat to create the kinetic energy to turn turbines.

Secondly, a great deal of electrical energy is lost in transmission, with more lost when transmission is over longer distances.

If we turn this to running automobiles, there will be still more energy lost in turning the electricity in to kinetic energy to move the cars.

Most of those losses along the way are heat energy.

Now, to be fully comparable with the energy budget of bio-fuels (either fossilized plant carbon in petroleum or current crops or crop or cooking wastes), one would need to look at the energy it takes to extract or produce the raw fuels, the energy costs of refinement, & the energy costs of transporting it to wholesale and retail distribution points.

And, since the concern here is greenhouse gases, one would need to look at the emissions involved in the power generation, uses and losses in both systems.

Still, at the end of the day I am left wondering if the very large losses along the way before electicity gets put to use moving a vehicle mean that total emissions at the point of electrical generation may not be greater than those created by direct application of combustion energy to moving vehicles, plus whatever emissions occur in extraction/production, refining and transport.

Relatedly I wonder about the possibility that further development of emissions control technology in vehicles might be more effective than plug-in hybrid electric propulsion systems.

I'm sure more knowledgeable people than me have thought about this stuff in detail -- if anyone has pointers I'd be interested.

"steam produce by heat ... "

Thanks Chris, I'm glad someone liked the post. As for the plug ins, a few notes. First, of course, is that I am only giving my take on the event, so don't give it too much weight, my understanding is that we'll be seeing a lot more details on Merkley's site in the near future.

That said, I think Merkley was focused on plug-ins (and I agree with him on this) as a solution in the short-term that we can make some progress very quickly. Like Merkley said, plug-ins make financial sense for consumers, which is why they are so attractive. Meanwhile, they run much cleaner than straight gas-powered cars, and you can ensure that the power source is renewable and clean. He specified wind as a good source, and mentioned that he would like to see more micro wind-power installations with just a few or even one turbine, on places like roofs or even power and telephone poles. So it's a good stop-gap solution because the technology is already there and drivers have incentives to buy the car en masse and immediately cut down on emissions, while in the long term we are looking at new and even better technologies. I think that was the meat of his argument, and it made sense to me at least.

But you're right, Chris -- we do tend to forget that electrical energy doesn't just magically replace gasoline.

That's very true, but rather than dealing with controlling the emissions from millions of sources, we'd be controlling emissions from a few thousand sources.

A car is a relatively inefficient fuel-to-energy conversion device, putting out lots of waste (pollution). A power plant is much more efficient, and we can more effectively invest in pollution reduction efforts.

.....even if you're not talking about hydro.

I was having the discussion about plug-in cars this weekend and a friend of mine said she'd just finished reading Zoom:The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future. She said it's an excellent overview of the debate about plug-in cars, the effect of generating electricity to power them and climate change.

I haven't had a chance to pick it up yet--but I plan on it. It seems like it might hold a great deal of relevance in this discussion.

Paul, if your brother is Ed Gronke, we were contemporaries at Reed (as you know actual graduation years are somewhat loosely tied to matriculation years) -- I remember him as good guy, I think we crossed paths at KRRC. My degree was 1982. Also was visiting assistant professor of History and Humanities from 1991-96, taught mostly Hum 110 plus African, African-American & comparative slavery history. I think the search that brought you to Reed took place during my last year -- anyway, we have many friends, acquaintances & and colleagues/former colleagues in common. For a while I was a faculty spouse but since that ended I haven't been around the college as much as I once was, makes things simpler for my ex.