News + Media

Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office
As deficit hawks appear poised for victory at the polls, the MIT economics professor presents the case for more spending on infrastructure and R&D.

Government deficit spending has been a contentious issue during this year’s U.S. mid-term election campaigns. Yet some economists believe that additional government spending in certain areas is needed to help spur growth. MIT News asked Michael Greenstone, MIT’s 3M Professor of Environmental Economics, and director of The Hamilton Group, a Washington-based public-policy organization, about America’s spending priorities.

Presidential science adviser calls for increased energy R&D to create jobs and boost business; supports conclusions of MIT nuclear study.

David L. Chandler, MIT News Office

The two toughest challenges the nation faces in terms of energy, according to presidential science adviser John Holdren ’65 SM ’66, are meeting our transportation needs with less oil, and meeting economic aspirations while producing less climate-altering carbon-dioxide emissions. But the good news, he told an MIT audience on Monday, Oct. 25, is that meeting those challenges really can promote significant job creation and business growth...

Presidential science adviser John Holdren ’65 SM ’66
delivers the David J. Rose Lecture in Nuclear Technology at MIT.

...He said he agrees fully with the conclusions of the recently released MIT study on The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, calling for economic support of the first several new nuclear plants in this country, as well as for increased research on potential new fuel-cycle technologies for the longer run and for long-term spent fuel storage options...

The MIT nuclear studies, he said, “have in my judgment reached all the right conclusions,” and he has been actively circulating those documents in Washington.

Hemispheres will respond to climate change differently, with weaker summer storms in the North, study suggests.

Weather systems in the Southern and Northern hemispheres will respond differently to global warming, according to an MIT atmospheric scientist’s analysis that suggests the warming of the planet will affect the availability of energy to fuel extratropical storms, or large-scale weather systems that occur at Earth’s middle latitudes. The resulting changes will depend on the hemisphere and season, the study found.

More intense storms will occur in the Southern Hemisphere throughout the year, whereas in the Northern Hemisphere, the change in storminess will depend on the season — with more intense storms occurring in the winter and weaker storms in the summer. The responses are different because even though the atmosphere will get warmer and more humid due to global warming, not all of the increased energy of the atmosphere will be available to power extratropical storms. It turns out that the changes in available energy depend on the hemisphere and season, according to the study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

MIT study finds no shortage of uranium for nuclear energy for decades, but more research is needed to develop improved fuel-cycle options.

Uranium supplies will not limit the expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. or around the world for the foreseeable future, according to a major new interdisciplinary study produced under the auspices of the MIT Energy Initiative.

The study challenges conventional assumptions about nuclear energy. It suggests that nuclear power using today’s reactor technology with a once-through fuel cycle can play a significant part in displacing the world’s carbon-emitting fossil-fuel plants, and thus help to reduce the potential for global climate change. But determining the best fuel cycle for the next generation of nuclear power plants will require more research, the report concludes.

The Joint Program's Executive Director John Parsons was a member of the Fuel Cycle study group.

Research suggests ocean color is linked to formation, movement of tropical cyclones

More hurricanes may form in greener waters, where sunlight tends to be absorbed at shallower depths, than in clear seas, according to new research that draws a link between ocean color and the formation and movement of tropical cyclones.

It’s no secret that hurricanes depend on a recipe of moist air, warm water and converging winds. But in a paper due to be published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers from MIT and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory say ocean color — which is typically influenced by the concentration of tiny marine organisms — may also be a factor.

Analysis shows that, contrary to some claims, proposed legislation to limit carbon emissions would not disadvantage those with lower incomes.

So-called “cap and trade” legislation has often been portrayed as a regressive policy — one that would hit poor people the hardest. A new MIT study concluded that this is not the case.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a cap-and-trade bill last year, and different versions of that bill had been working their way through the Senate until being yanked from consideration last month.

The study, co-authored by researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and at Tufts University, found that under all three versions of the bill submitted so far, the costs would fall hardest on wealthier households, and that lower-income households would see no change or a net benefit. (more...)

Study finds significant potential to displace coal, reducing greenhouse gas emissions

Natural gas will play a leading role in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions over the next several decades, largely by replacing older, inefficient coal plants with highly efficient combined-cycle gas generation. That’s the conclusion reached by a comprehensive study of the future of natural gas conducted by an MIT study group comprised of 30 MIT faculty members, researchers, and graduate students. The findings, summarized in an 83-page report, were presented to lawmakers and senior administration officials this week in Washington.

The two-year study, managed by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), examined the scale of U.S. natural gas reserves and the potential of this fuel to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Based on the work of the multidisciplinary team, with advice from a board of 16 leaders from industry, government and environmental groups, the report examines the future of natural gas through 2050 from the perspectives of technology, economics, politics, national security and the environment.

The report includes a set of specific proposals for legislative and regulatory policies, as well as recommendations for actions that the energy industry can pursue on its own, to maximize the fuel’s impact on mitigating greenhouse gas. The study also examined ways to control the environmental impacts that could result from a significant expansion in the production and use of natural gas — especially in electric power production.

(More…)