Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
Steven Chu
ENERGY

‘In the Great Ship Titanic’

Nobel physicist Steven Chu is out to revitalize U.S. industry and save the world—if he can.

 

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The Department of Energy is at the center of U.S. efforts to end our dependence on foreign oil, roll back climate change and create new jobs. Fareed Zakaria sat down last week with the department's new head, Nobel physicist Steven Chu, at NEWSWEEK's Energy Independence 2020 Forum Luncheon to talk about smart grids, solar panels and more. Excerpts:

Zakaria: Skeptics say there's still conflicting evidence on global warming.
Chu: I urge everyone to do this: Google the 2007 IPCC report. The 100-year trend is unmistakable. The first thing to emphasize is don't get excited about one or two years. It's just like you should not get excited that one very bad hurricane is evidence there's global warming.

Can we really prevent global warming? Or should we be thinking more about adaptation? Building coastal fortifications may be cheaper than halting the release of CO2.
Right now, the climate scientists feel that if all humans shut off carbon emissions today, it will still glide up by about 1 degree centigrade. In the business-as-usual scenarios, Nicholas Stern says there's a 50 percent chance we may go to 5 degrees centigrade. We know what the Earth was like 5 or 6 degrees centigrade colder. That was called the Ice Ages. Imagine a world 5 degrees warmer. The desert lines would be dramatically changed. The West is projected to be in drought conditions. And certain tipping points might be triggered. We can adapt to 1 or 2 degrees. More than that, there is no adaptation strategy.

What do you mean by tipping points?
There's lots of carbon in vegetation that has grown and died in the northern tundras of Russia, Canada. Normally what happens when a tree falls and dies is the microbes come and gobble it up and they recycle in terms of carbon dioxide, methane. But in the frozen tundra, those microbes are asleep. So the big fear is that once the tundra thaws, those microbes wake up, they digest all that carbon. It goes up in the atmosphere. At that point, no matter what humans do, it's out of our control. This is the realization in the last decade that has caused many of us to get very, very concerned. Adaptation at 1 or 2 degrees will be painful, it will cause a lot of hurt and pain, but adaptation at 5 or 6 degrees—I'm terribly frightened that that's catastrophic.

Aren't we in pretty bad trouble no matter what we do? We're not going to be able to stop burning fossil fuels for quite a while.
We're in the great ship Titanic, the Earth is, and it's going to take a half century to really turn the ship. But that doesn't mean we can't start doing it today, and we must. It's possible that the United States can greatly reduce its use of energy in our buildings, which consume 40 percent of our energy, and our personal vehicles.

You're basically talking about insulating buildings and using more fuel-efficient cars?
Well, not only insulating buildings—we haven't taken full advantage of the technologies that exist today. They haven't been integrated into making smarter buildings that can be 60, 80 percent more energy-efficient than existing buildings.

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  • Posted By: TZ192583 @ 05/14/2009 3:12:02 AM

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  • Posted By: TZ192583 @ 05/14/2009 3:05:05 AM

    Nothing is manifested bootless by Almighty Creator???s repository of attributes. That ???s why, 71% ???off-shore??? of our Planet ??? The Human Earth, pertaining to divine blessings of ???Oceans??? - actually impacts on developments of climates, equipoisingly designed wih erection of gigantic ???Forestry??? - naturally acts as smartest ???environmental-shield??? counterbalancing with 29 % of Lords-Land ???on-shore???.

    Let we protect & utilize our natural resources fascinated for us as ???ruby-&-Coral???, within our Oceans along with Forests, as simple as environmental friendly ???Part-of-Eco-Equation???.

    The disorganized & jumbled growth of ???Jungles??? should be ancient part-of-history when we were ???Tarzan??? . Now, we are so smartly-cultivated with ultra-smart technologies, that we can also work-out on smartest planning of our Forests to manage with such as well-planned Road-Mapping of cutting-edge infra-structure developments of our Forests to bring all out of the wood without unnecessary cutting of pointless wood; so that we our CTL (Coal ???To-Liquid) Plants to turn our vast Coal Reserves into barrels of Oil , our Coal Power Generation Plants and allied Industries having environmental-reservations becomes more environmental-responsive by absorption of excessive greenhouse gases like CO2, within these industrial-Sights we will especially select inside these Forestry on our planet .

    However, such an economical ???GREEN ???GROWTH??? Planning also demands mitigation initiative, enabling us to take our honest responsibility campaigning to mobilize all to come forward to foster environmental friendly Plants & coconut & other ???sea-zonal??? type of Trees which can be cultivated along Sea Side-by-Side of of our Industrial Port cities.

    The above mentioned Cultivated Road-mapping will ever be count as Sustainable International Development leading to creation of a huge number of new job opportunities, too.

  • Posted By: lucy321 @ 04/20/2009 1:58:04 PM

    Oh, yeah, rampant capitalism has worked out fabulously for the poor. Please don't speak for the poor. Please.

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