GLOBAL CLIMATE DEBATE

[McGINNIS]  Hello, and welcome to "Clean Skies Sunday," a weekly half-hour look at energy issues facing Washington and America.  I'm Susan McGinnis. 
This week, the government says half the spilled Gulf oil is gone, evaporated or dissolved by nature, sucked up, skimmed, or burned by the cleanup.  But that still leaves half in the ocean and much unaccounted for.  We talk about where that oil is going. 
When the summer heat is on, the pressure's on electric grid operators to keep your AC power coming.  We take you inside a regional control room deep underground in Pennsylvania. 
Plus, gasoline, ethanol, butanol, and more.  We take you to Argonne National Lab, where scientists have an engine that's not picky about what kind of fuel goes in, and what comes out could be the engine of the future. 
Well, we got encouraging words from BP and the government this past week.  BP claimed a milestone, announcing for the first time that drilling mud forced down into the well finally held back the flow of oil out.  Then, a federal report came out, saying the bulk of the oil that spilled is dispersed in the ocean or gone.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says about half the leaked oil is gone.  It's been contained, burned, skimmed, dispersed naturally or chemically, dissolved or evaporated.  Of what's left, half is dispersed in tiny droplets, naturally or by chemical dispersants, and the rest -- about a quarter of the leak total -- is still unaccounted for.  The government says the oil is degrading quickly or being cleaned up on shore. 
NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenko did warn the remaining oil is still a threat to aquatic life and Gulf Coast marshes. 

[LUBCHENKO]  I think the common view of most of the scientists inside and outside government is that the effects of this spill will likely linger for decades.  The fact that so much of the oil has been removed and in the process of being degraded is very significant and means that the impact will not be even worse than it might have been.  But the oil that was released and has already impacted wildlife at the surface -- young juvenile stages and eggs beneath the surface will likely have very considerable impacts for years and possibly decades to come. 

[McGINNIS]  And joining us now from Tallahassee is Ian McDonald, professor of oceanography at Florida State University.  Ian, thanks for being with us. 

[McDONALD]  Good morning. 

[McGINNIS]  What concerns you most about this report?  You say it can leave an incorrect impression among folks. 

[McDONALD]  One thing we need to be clear about is that the report is not based too much on hard data.  The only real hard numbers they have are for the burning, the skimming, and the chemical dispersion, in addition to the recovery that they got onto the ships.  So we're trying to account for about 4.1 million barrels of oil, and they only can account for about 10% of that with real hard numbers.  The rest of the data in that report comes from extrapolations based on theoretical considerations taken from scientific literature.  I think that should be clear. 

I guess another thing about the report is that -- and also the Flow Rate Technical Group -- is that it doesn't make any mention of the gas that's been released with this total hydrocarbon load.  And the gas is a huge component of the total release.  And because it was released at 5,000-foot depth, a lot of that gas dissolved into the water, which has a direct impact on this biodegradation pathway that the NOAA report cites. 

[McGINNIS]  So the gas is not being measured by any organization as of now? 

[McDONALD]  No, NOAA is not measuring gas, and they haven't really counted it up.  And it turns out to be a lot, a big volume.  Everything is being reported in barrels of oil, which is a liquid volume, but if you convert things to units of mass, equivalent units of mass, or energy equivalent, barrel of oil equivalent units, the oil plus the gas is 1.5 times the oil alone.  So the gas -- a lot of which got into the water, it dissolved into the water -- is a huge component of this total release and should be considered, ecologically. 

[McGINNIS]  Okay, but would you say that at least we do know that the majority of oil is accounted for, whether it's evaporated, dispersed, or collected, or whatever?  You do agree we know where the majority is, even if the numbers on them is imprecise? 

[McDONALD]  Well, we've been given an estimate of where this oil went, and it's certainly consistent with what we're seeing -- the satellite data doesn't show a lot of visible oil floating on the water anymore.  And that's consistent with the models that show that oil, light crude oil floating in the Gulf of Mexico under summertime conditions, will disappear from the surface waters with a half-life of about seven to five days.  So, at this point, we should be down to a couple of foldings, so maybe 25%, and that's consistent with the table. 

So, overall, the table, or the results in the NOAA budget, are reasonably accurate.  But it's not clear that a lot of these are derived not from measurement but from extrapolation based on models. 

[McGINNIS]  Do you believe that the amount of oil that is unaccounted for could still pose a threat to the ecology and marine life and wildlife? 

[McDONALD]  Absolutely.  In the NOAA table, or in the table in this NOAA report, they talk about 26% of this total 4.9 million barrels.  That's five Exxon Valdez units.  That's still residual, present in the environment, which can impact the organisms and the ecology directly.  A lot of that material is buried in the marine sediments of the coast and the coastal soils, and that buried material, we know from past experience, will be around for decades and will have an ecological impact for decades. 

As for the oil that's dispersed or dissolved in the water, what we're hoping is that the dilution is sufficient that it won't have an acute toxic impact.  But it's almost certain to have a residual impact, a sub-lethal impact, possibly reducing the overall productivity of the ecosystem by some measurable percentage. 

[McGINNIS]  So "dispersed," "evaporated," words like that, don't necessarily mean environmentally benign. 

[McDONALD]  They don't mean gone.  "Evaporated," I'll give you, is gone, but that's probably no more than 10% by mass of the total amount.  But the rest of the material is still in the water. 

And it was interesting when Browner and Lubchenko and others spoke, they said, the efforts of the Unified Command had removed a lot of the oil and that Mother Nature had done her part.  Well, if you actually look at the numbers, Mother Nature is doing 90% of the work for this cleanup effort, and I sure hope we're going to start paying back Mother Nature for her tremendous effort in this very soon. 

[McGINNIS]  Do you think this report is misleading in that respect, that it gives more credit to the human efforts in the cleanup? 

[McDONALD]  The report doesn't, per se, but I think some of the statements introducing the report certainly made it seem as though the Unified Command were doing the work, whereas, in fact, that's the tail wagging the dog. 

[McGINNIS]  When you hear from Administrator Lubchenko talking about the numbers, she doesn't seem to be overselling the results of the report.  She really talks a lot about studies that need to be ongoing and more testing done over many, many years.  You know, that a lot more needs to be done, of course.  Do you agree that she --

[McDONALD]  I agree, and I think she made some good statements there.  She talked about, for example, the bluefin tuna, which is a commercially very important fish.  It's also a fish stock that's tremendously overfished, and so it's under stress before anything happens.  And she mentioned that any bluefin tuna larva or juvenile fish that would be in the water column or up in the surface of the water and exposed to oil would die. 

Well, the oil was covering thousands of square miles, so that's many, many millions, perhaps billions, of bluefin larvae and juveniles that may not make it into the fishery.  That's a severe impact -- we're going to have to track that. 

But there are many other species that we know less well.  For example, flying fish.  They're right there in the surface waters.  They can't escape.  But we don't have any idea about what the population of flying fish should have been before the spill, let alone what it will be after the spill.  So yes, there's a lot more work needed to be done, and Lubchenko is correct in that. 

[McGINNIS]  And she made clear, as do you, the level of scientific uncertainty here. 

[McDONALD]  That's right, I think we have to be very clear about that.  This report was not science, per se.  This was a report, it's useful, it explains what we're seeing, but we should be clear that, although the oil is not visible anymore, it's still in the environment and we still have to be very vigilant about tracking down the impacts of it. 

[McGINNIS]  Professor Ian McDonald, Florida State University, thank you so much for joining us. 

[McDONALD]  Thank you. 

[McGINNIS]  And still to come, an engine that can handle any fuel you throw at it. 

And keeping cool in the dog days of summer.  We show you first-hand how grid operators keep you cool and keep the lights on. 

[BREAK]  

[EVAN WOLF, GULF COAST CLEAN UP, LOUISIANA NATIONAL GUARD]  When I signed on with the National Guard, I did it to help protect America from our enemies, like in the Persian Gulf -- not to clean up an oil company's mess here in the Gulf of Mexico. 

We'll do whatever mission we're given, and do it well, but America needs a new mission, because whether it's deep-drilling oil out here or spending a billion dollars a day on oil from our enemies overseas, our dependence on oil is threatening our national security. 

The thing is, a clean American energy plan would cut our dependence on oil in half.  It's more power for America, made here in America, putting our people to work using all the resources we have. 

Some folks in Washington say now's not the time for clean American power.  I got to ask, if not now...when? 

[KRISTI YAMAGUCHI]  Meet the faces of influenza, groups who should be immunized every year. 

[MAN]  I have a chronic medical condition. 

[WOMAN]  Diabetes. 

[BOY]  Asthma. 

[MAN]  I have COPD, a serious lung disease. 

[WOMAN]  Pregnant during influenza season. 

[WOMAN]  We live with a baby under 6 months old. 

[GIRL]  I'm 4 1/2 years old. 

[BOY]  I'm 14. 

[WOMAN]  I'm over 50 years old. 

[WOMAN]  Way over 50. 

[WOMAN]  Care for someone at risk. 

[BOY]  I live with someone at risk. 

[YAMAGUCHI]  The American Lung Association asks, do you see your family or yourself here?  As one of the many faces of influenza, you and I and those close to us need to get vaccinated.  In an average year, about 36,000 people die from influenza and its complications.  See your healthcare provider about getting vaccinated.  It's a safe and effective way to prevent influenza.  Visit facesofinfluenza.org.  Influenza isn't the common cold.  It's serious. 

[END BREAK] 

[McGINNIS]  Welcome back.  Summertime and the livin' is easy.  But not for the people who run your power grid.  When a heat wave flattens the East Coast, that's when all of their training and skills are put to the test.  Margaret Ryan reports. 

[RYAN]  It's a summer afternoon.  Your house is heating up and you think, "I'll turn on the air conditioning."  You probably don't think, "Will it come on?"  And here, deep in a bunker near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, is the reason you don't. 

This is the dispatch center for the PJM power grid, where operators take power from more than 1,200 generating facilities and send it to 51 million consumers, across 13 states and the District of Columbia, from North Carolina to New York, from Chicago to the Atlantic.  It's a delicate dance, because how much electricity they put into the system has to balance with how much you take out. 

[JOE CIABATTONI, SHIFT SUPERVISOR, PJM SYSTEM OPERATIONS]  Every time somebody turns on a light switch or turns on their dishwasher, we're either increasing energy to meet that demand or decreasing it, as you shut them down. 

[RYAN]  When record heat waves hit our region, as they have this year, PJM operators have their hands full.  Shift supervisor Joe Ciabattoni and his team prepare each day with a series of conference calls with generators and transmission companies. 

[CIABATTONI]  We forecast the load, so even though we're not absolutely sure what you're going to do, we have a pretty good idea of what you're going to do based on weather patterns. 

[Telephone rings] 

[RYAN]  And then, more calls, as the temperature rises. 

[CIABATTONI]  On a minute-to-minute basis, we have about eight control room operators who will talk to the individual generators and the individual transmission companies and coordinate outages, movement of generation, and things like that. 

[RYAN]  Generators bid power from their plants a day ahead, and PJM takes the cheapest power first. 

But the power travels on transmission lines, and that's the bottleneck.  There's more generation to the west than there is transmission to carry it east to the big cities.  On high heat days, operators may forgo cheaper power to keep transmission lines from overheating and failing. 

[CIABATTONI]  We'll actually load more expensive energy and back off the cheaper energy.  Then that allows us to maintain the power balance. 

[RYAN]  PJM members are building more lines, but Ciabattoni says there's art as well as science to keeping the grid in balance, with each team member developing not just technical expertise but a feel for how the grid's reacting. 

[CIABATTONI]  There's somewhat of a progression through the control room.  So you start out in the capacity of scheduling.  Then you would move on to the generation dispatcher and then eventually to a power director. 

[RYAN]  The grid must be staffed 24/7, so operating teams rotate shifts over a six-week period, which always includes a week of training, in classrooms, and in a simulator that mimics the control room. 

[CIABATTONI]  We also have a quite sophisticated simulator, where our training department will run us through scenarios.  They'll do anything from take a large unit out of service or have a series of transmission facilities come out of service, and then we'll actually work through that scenario. 

[RYAN]  And when these summer scorchers hit, what's it like working in the PJM dispatch center? 

[CIABATTONI]  On a hot day, we get to a point where we've done everything we could do.  So the real stressful part of it is really, you're sitting there waiting for the next event to happen, for the next piece of equipment to fail or the next unit to trip offline.  And then we basically come up with contingency plans of how we would respond to that.  So, really, sometimes it's a waiting game of seeing what's going to happen next. 

[RYAN]  This year, the highest demand PJM has had to meet was under 136,700 megawatts on July 6.  The record ever -- over 144,000 megawatts in August 2006.  And any August day, it could happen again.  In Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Margaret Ryan, Clean Skies News. 

[McGINNIS]  And PJM officials tell us, to get more of that cheaper electricity to the cities, utilities plan to spend about $15 billion on transmission lines in the next five years. 

The EPA has yet to make a crucial decision on whether more ethanol can be blended into the nation's gasoline supplies.  The debate has pitted the auto industry against ethanol producers.  Right now, what's called the blend wall sits at 10% ethanol.  The ethanol industry wants that to be raised to 15%. 

Engine makers argue higher blend rates could harm small engines like speedboats and lawnmowers, whose small parts can be choked and corroded by ethanol.  EPA has said it wants to wait for the results of more testing and plans a decision by the end of the summer.  But some work going on at Argonne National Lab could bring the debate over the blend to an end and leave drivers the winners.  "Clean Skies'" Lee Patrick Sullivan explains. 

[Engine revving] 

[SULLIVAN]  This engine is only two years old, but it's not a picky eater -- gasoline, ethanol, butanol, or any combination of the three, it will slurp it up and perform.  It's called the omnivorous engine, and the folks at Argonne National Lab outside Chicago say it could revolutionize the internal combustion engine. 

[THOMAS WALLNER, ENGINEER, ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB]  Our concept optimizes itself to run as efficiently as possible on a variety of fuels, including gasoline, ethanol, other alcohols like butanol, and the mix of all these fuels. 

[SULLIVAN]  Now, in theory, any alcohol-based fuel that can be ignited by a spark plug will work in a gasoline engine.  Just ask the folks that fill up with used French fry grease.  What they don't tell you is how poorly the cars perform.  Even E85 flex fuel vehicles lose efficiency when the ethanol mix gets higher. 

[WALLNER]  Right now, if you fill up with E85 versus gasoline, your vehicle will lose about 30% of its range because of the lower energy content of ethanol versus gasoline.  If we're successful with this concept, we might be able to run the engine more efficiently on ethanol than it runs on gasoline, because it optimizes itself. 

[SULLIVAN]  It does this by using a series of sensors in the fuel line.  These sensors can detect the ions in each kind of fuel and calibrate the engine accordingly.  This is something that would take a mechanic several hours to calibrate, based on what type of alcohol-based fuel was being used.  These sensors do it on the fly.  And the omnivorous engine is being put through the wringer in a virtual world at Argonne National Lab. 

[NEERHA SHIDORE, ENGINEER, ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB]  So behind the screen, is an entire model of a vehicle, with a battery, with tires, with electrical motor and everything. 

[SULLIVAN]  The software was developed at Argonne, and it tricks the engine into thinking it's in a real car, cutting down on research and development time.  Tests that used to take years for automakers now are completed in days. 

[SHIDORE]  So we have our own modeling software, called Autonomy, which is used to model vehicles.  And we use that software and we connect it to a real engine and make the engine believe that it's in the vehicle. 

[SULLIVAN]  If successful, the omnivorous engine could have a huge impact on energy policy.  Each state could come up with its own blend of fuel without having the automakers tweak their engines.  Driving through Iowa -- use 100% ethanol.  Entering Chicago -- use a butanol blend. 

[SHIDORE]  You can use the same fuel.  You can use different fuels.  You can drive across cities which have different blends of ethanol or butanol or something and you can still use the same fuel and be assured that your car or engine is giving you the maximum performance possible. 

[SULLIVAN]  And the folks at Argonne are also working on a diesel version of the omnivorous engine. 

[WALLNER]  We have a different project where we're looking to ion-sensing feedback for diesel engines, and that could be used on diesel or biodiesel or other replacement fuels for regular, conventional diesel. 

[SULLIVAN]  To have an engine that runs on different types of fuels isn't a new idea.  The early Model Ts actually ran on ethanol and gasoline.  But if you changed your fuel, you had to recalibrate.  At Argonne National Laboratory, Lee Patrick Sullivan, Clean Skies News. 

[McGINNIS]  When we come back, a million dollars plus for the best oil spill cleanup technology.  We'll tell you about the X Prize. 

And we take you to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where scientists are mapping out long-term effects of the Gulf spill. 

[BREAK] 

[Man shooting basketball]

[GRAPHIC ON SCREEN]  Elias Kayessa has no outside shot.  And no shot in the NBA.  But he has saved countless lives of children who never would have had a shot without him.

[Kayessa speaking African language with child and mother] 

[GRAPHIC ON SCREEN]  Help health workers, like Elias, save children at GoodGoes.org. 

[Elias speaking with children] 

[GRAPHIC ON SCREEN]  Save the children.  Support.  Learn.  Give.  Advocate.  Join.  See where the good goes.  GoodGoes.org. 

[MAN]  Yeah.  That's it.  [Playing saxophone off-key] 

[ANNOUNCER]  You don't have to be perfect to be a perfect parent.  When you adopt a child from foster care, just being there makes all the difference. 

[GRAPHIC ON SCREEN]  AdoptUSKids.  1-888-200-4005 adoptuskids.org

[MAN]  There's also an extended warranty option.  There's just no need for you to get that.  You failed to get the tests that you needed at the doctor, so you won't be around in two years.  Okay?  Sign here, please. 

For a list of tests every man should have, go to ahrq.gov. 

[END BREAK] 

[McGINNIS]  Welcome back.  X Prize challenges have brought out breakthroughs from space travel to gene mapping to ultra-fuel-efficient vehicles and awarded millions to winners.  And now the X Prize Foundation is offering a new one.  This is for developing the best oil spill cleanup technology. 

The $1.4 million prize was recently announced in D.C., in part by Philippe Cousteau, grandson of explorer and ecologist Jacques Cousteau.  Over the next year, companies will compete to come up with the best rapidly deployable and highly efficient method for cleaning up crude on the ocean's surface.  Cousteau says the prize is important because industry, so far, has failed to come up with a solution to spills like the one from the Deepwater Horizon. 

[COUSTEAU]  I, frankly, don't know what kind of technology people are going to come up with.  I don't think anybody does, and I think that's what's so exciting about this, is, what this encourages people to do is to think outside the box, to break the status quo and break the inertia of...business as usual.  And I think that's what's particularly exciting about this to me is, I think we'll see solutions and inventions coming out of this prize that most people have never even dreamed of, but could just be the ones that solve this problem. 

[McGINNIS]  Wendy Schmidt, wife of Google's CEO, donated the prize money.  A winner will be picked next July.  As companies embark on that oil spill smackdown, the world's top scientists and engineers are working hard to assess the short- and long-term impacts of deepwater spills.  Clean Skies News went to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where great minds in oceanography are mining this disaster and using tools they learned from a 40-year-old spill right at their own back door that is still showing itself today. 

[CHRIS REDDY, OIL SPILL SCIENTIST]  Everything's unprecedented about this spill.  We've never looked at oil spills that are 5,000 feet below the surface.  We've never looked at an oil spill in which they've added dispersants below the surface.  You know, when we think of oil spills, we think of spills in which the event lasts for a day. 

[McGINNIS]  Chris Reddy, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has studied spills for decades. 

[REDDY]  All oil spills are different, and it's very difficult to predict the long-term impacts of any spill.  There's too many variables involved.  To give you an example, I've worked on two oil spills of diesel fuel, both incredibly damaging in the short term.  One, I can still find effects 40 years later.  One, I'd be hard-pressed to find impacts six months later. 

[McGINNIS]  Some of the aftermath is immediate and obvious -- massive die-offs of birds, fish, and invertebrate species, marshes and beaches heavily oiled.  Judy McDowell, senior scientist at the biology department here, says this deepwater continuous gusher is what sets the Gulf disaster apart. 

[McDOWELL]  There's a subsurface plume and maybe a subsurface plume breaking into minor plumes, that is still in deep water.  And the fate of that oil is still unknown. 

[McGINNIS]  They know because of a spill they still study today that happened 40 years ago right on their doorstep. 

In 1969, an oil barge named Florida ran aground here in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, spilling 200,000 gallons of diesel fuel.  More than 40 years later in marshes miles from here, there's still evidence of the oil. 

[REDDY]  You can still find oil.  You can still smell oil.  And it's still affecting the ecosystem. 

[McGINNIS]  It's considered the longest-studied spill in history and one that set the foundation for studies of spills even today. 

[REDDY]  This body of knowledge is being used right now in the Gulf of Mexico, where they're protecting and trying their best to repair areas like salt marshes, which can show long-term impacts, as documented here.  So this is a location that is a learning point for responders down in the Gulf of Mexico. 

[GEORGE HAMPSON, OCEANOGRAPHER EMERITUS, WHOI]  During that time, we didn't even know that oil caused harm to the marine environment.  That's how primitive we were. 

[McGINNIS]  Biologist George Hampson did the first research into the 1969 spill.  He watched as oil first rushed ashore onto Old Silver Beach, then into a sensitive estuary. 

[HAMPSON]  The animals started coming out of the sediments because the oil was just going in, saturating the area.  And so all the clams are coming to the surface, all the invertebrates forming tide pools of life, and they were dying.  They just didn't die en masse; it took time to do that.  We had a silent fall that year because all the invertebrates were gone.  The birds had nothing to feed on here. 

[McGINNIS]  Over time, Old Silver Beach cleaned up, but some areas still show damage. 

[REDDY]  It's a rock.  Yeah, and you can still smell diesel. 

[McGINNIS]  While the marsh appears pristine and recovered today, Reddy has looked more closely. 

[REDDY]  In this location, crabs won't burrow any deeper.  The grasses aren't as robust. 

[McGINNIS]  For the Gulf, some predict massive dead zones where nothing can survive, and coastal communities sustaining future damage from hurricanes that stir up contaminated water. 

[JOHN STEGEMAN, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION]  Eventually, there will be recovery, but in between, there will be a long period during which the oil will be degraded slowly -- or rapidly, depending upon the particular conditions.  The oil will be degraded by microbes, by bacteria, and that will be an important process in part of the cleaning of the environment. 

[McGINNIS]  But with every spill different, and with the Gulf spill not even contained yet, Reddy says any predictions are impossible and would be irresponsible.  The most he'll say... 

[REDDY]  Only that there's likely going to be impacts.  If anybody out there says anything beyond that there's likely going to be some impacts and puts any timelines or any type of, "The sky is falling" predictions, they're being scientifically imprudent.  The best thing we can do is study what's going on, get good, high-quality data.  Let's not blog it the day we find it.  Work it out, be prudent, and at the end of the day, everybody's going to be better off. 

[McGINNIS]  Later this month, we get the results of a 12-day research effort in the Gulf by a team of investigators from Woods Hole.  They've been collecting data they hope will show how oil degrades over time and answer a lot of questions about the fate of oil released into the ocean. 

And that does it for us for this edition of "Clean Skies Sunday."  I'm Susan McGinnis.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend.  We will see you right here next Sunday morning, and until then, we'll see you at CleanSkies.com.  You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  Have a great day. 

[END SHOW]