Obama will also nominate Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as his energy secretary, a Democratic Party official said.Who's Steven Chu? He deals with frickin' laser beams:
Chu’s own research has resulted in numerous awards, including the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips, for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.Any guy who works with laser beams in a meaningful way is instantly cool. Further, he's formed a public/private group working on solutions to global climate change:
Chu is currently pushing his scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and industry to develop technologies to reverse climate change. Chief in Chu's campaign is an unprecedented research pact reached between UC Berkeley, oil industry giant BP, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the University of Illinois.I understand absolutely nothing about the work of Steven Chu, but if we're going to have a new Manhattan Project to develop alternative energy, this sounds like the guy to pull it off.
We're always told that technology can solve the issues of alternative energy and global climate change, and then everyone proceeds to do nothing about it. My sense is that with a real scientist at the helm of DOE, we'll begin to actually develop some real solutions other than the industry sham of "clean coal".
1 comments:
I agree this is fantastic news. We finally have a serious leader elected to the White House who will attract other serious leaders including, finally, one to tackle energy issues. I highly doubt if Obama himself quite understands the science on this, but how comforting to have a president-elect with the ego strength to tolerate working with true geniuses in areas beyond his scope of expertise!
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