Nobel Laureate Steven Chu: #1 Problem Is Climate Change

May 24th, 2013 by Guest Contributor

Telling it like it is, in this Climate Progress repost, outgoing Energy Secretary and Nobel laureate Steven Chu discusses the #1 problem society faces today: climate change.

By Joe Romm

Dr. Ernest Moniz was sworn in as the new Energy Secretary this week. Last week, the previous Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, gave an interview to Stanford where he is returning as a physics professor.

The Nobel laureate was asked “What’s the No. 1 problem on your list?” His answer:

Climate change. We’re heading into an era where if we don’t change what we’re doing, we’re going to be fundamentally in really deep trouble. We’re already in trouble. So we have to transition to better solutions.

We’re not too far away from producing a lot of renewable energy, and doing it cheaply. Solar power is going to become cheaper and cheaper – costs have plummeted three-fold in six years, partly because of the dropping price of modules and electronics. Wind energy is within 15 percent of the cost of new natural gas energy, and the DOE predicts that that cost will cross over within one or two decades, so we need to start to plan the transition system that can conduct more wind energy.

But right now, we’re not prepared. As technology continues to race forward – battery technology has advanced faster in the past five years than what I’ve seen in the [previous] 15 years – we need policy to guide and anticipate development. It takes decades to change things like infrastructure, and so people have to think about that today. Otherwise, progress slows down, and we emit more carbon and get into more trouble environmentally.

Back in 2009, Chu said “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”

Chu did keep talking about climate change in the past 4 years, but neither the media nor the White House were paying much attention. And so we are “already in trouble” with much, much worse to come if we don’t act now.

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Tags: Climate Change Legislation, DOE, Steven Chu, Steven Chu climate change

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Caba Aba Baba

why do people still think agw isn’t disproven?

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/physicist-co2-greenhouse-effect-is.html
jfreed27

Lifeguards are sometimes attacked by the drowning in their panic. Who should we believe? Experts or Joe six-packLet’s get going and solve it. Let the fossil fools howl!
- Ross
  
  Fossil fools. Like it.
mememine

Hey Ernie would you make yourself open to criminal charges for uttering your CO2 death threats to our children when catastrophic climate change is proven in court to be the total exaggeration that it is?

To end the debate instantly all science has to do is say their catastrophic climate crisis is “inevitable” not just “possible” and “could be” and……..
How close to the point of no return from complete unstoppable warming of the planet will science take us before they say their catastrophic climate crisis is as real as they like to say comet hits are? A catastrophic climate crisis IS a comet hit of an emergency and 28 years of science only saying “maybe” a crisis proves it “won’t be” a crisis.
- photosymbiont
  
  Hey, I have some wonderful Florida coastal property that you can pass on to your grandchildren, want to buy it? You don’t think it will be underwater in 80 years, do you? And here, I have some very cheap farmland in Texas that I’m sure you’re interested in, too. No? Why not?
- Ross
  
  Science is not determined in courts of law. It is based on observation, theory, experiment, predication, mutually supportive lines of evidence and peer review. This robust process has successfully led to our present level of understanding of the world.
  
  Secondly saying that science must prove there’ll be an immediate catastrophe (e.g. all the permafrost melting tomorrow) as the only way of justifying corrective action for the global warming and climate change we’re observing is too high a bar. We need to act now to prevent an escalating series of increasingly bad catastrophes.
- http://soltesza.wordpress.com/ sola
  
  Hey mememine, would you make yourself open to criminal charges for your anti-climate-change propaganda when our planet becomes uninhabitable in the next decades due to people like you?
  
  You may still be around when the first couple of million people dies and it becomes obvious that delayed action killed them.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Scientists try to avoid using words like “always” and “never”, they avoid absolutes because there’s always a possibility that they could be wrong. The strongest language you’re likely to see is “very probable”/”very improbable” statements.
  
  Climate scientists have been telling us that we are almost certainly going to very badly hurt ourselves if we keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
  
  In laypersons language “We are fucking ourselves very, very badly and if we don’t quit using fossil fuels very quickly we can kiss our asses goodbye.”.
  
  Is that clear enough for you?
  - Otis11
    
    To be honest, I’ve never much understood the argument against renewables. Even if you say there’s a 10% chance of catastrophic global warming, heck, even a 2% chance, is that not enough of a reason to fix the problem? Especially when the actions are becoming economically competitive (and in many location economically beneficial?)
    
    Second, even if you throw the whole Global Warming thing out the window, we have undisputed evidence that burning FFs if bad for the health of the surrounding populace. Fine particulate matter, NOx, SOx, Hg, and many other heavy metals.
    
    Then there’s the environmental impact of extracting these FFs. How many of these FF supporters have seen the destruction of strip-mining? Or Mountain top removal? Water pollution?
    
    Or how about talked to the workers that produce these fuels – Coal miners that are significantly more likely to have health issues (although the conditions are getting better, it’s still a fairly bad job). Or Oil workers who spend weeks at a time on the rigs away from their families is semi-hazardous conditions… (More dangerous than unhealthy)
    
    All of this, and in short order, Renewables will be cheaper… yet people fight against it. It just doesn’t make sense. Ok, they want to argue about climate change… I’m not even going to bother because they’re not going to change their mind no matter what you say, but regardless – we can be on the same team for utterly different reasons. And I honestly don’t see a reason to be on the other team… for anyone… (Except for the greed factor). Sure we need some FFs now for the transition, but if you’re not working away from that, you’re missing something…
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      I think resistance to renewables breaks into about three categories –
      
      1) Those with money in the fossil fuel game. Obviously.
      
      2) Those who are treating it as a contest between their team and the other side. Must support fossil fuels and nuclear against the left/hippies/commies. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, ya gotta support your side.
      
      3) Some people who are simply afraid of change. They hear someone say that their lives are going to be different and it sets them all aquiver. Solar won’t power their electric blankets at night, ergo, renewables will send us packing to the caves.
      
      —
      
      I think this third group are the ones we should be trying harder to educate. Help them see why nothing that matters to them will change. In a bad way….
      - Otis11
        
        So I see:
        
        1)Greed
        2)Don’t understand and don’t want to learn
        3)Genuinely just don’t understand
        
        Yeah… That about sums it up. At least we can change group 3.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Groups 1 will change. They will either figure how things are headed and reposition their capital or go bankrupt.
        
        They’ll either come over or become unimportant.
      - Otis11
        
        True, but by the time they make a significant portion of the movement, we’ll already be well on our way… They’ll hold on until they simply can’t. By that point we won’t really need the help. (Although the faster the better!)
- Arndt Ritter
  
  Don’t worry about mememine, he’s a professional troll paid to spread doubt. Just check out his other posts.
  - Ross
    
    They need to be countered but perhaps more so on general interest forums beyond Cleantechnica.
- http://www.energyquicksand.com/ Edward Kerr
  
  You make the exact same inane comment in two posts and then have the gall to call others “lazy copy and paste clowns!” What an a$$hole. Bob, who is always polite, has called you out for the idiot that you are. Get a life….better yet kill yourself.
  Oh, and “climate catastrophe is INEVITABLE….
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    Edward, I’m taking your comment down because it was aimed at someone who is ‘no longer with us’. Your comment now has no context.
    
    Thanks for the support. But, unfortunately, I must point out that I am not always polite. I sometimes have trouble controlling my inner 13 year old…
- jfreed27
  
  It is carbon that threatens your children; as does their father who allows BigOil and Coal to auction their future.