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| Energy Nominee Shifts His Stance | ||
| 2009-01-14 | ||
| Physics met politics at the confirmation hearing Tuesday for Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate scientist chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to head the Department of Energy, and the physics bent a bit, as Dr. Chu backed away slightly from earlier statements he has made -- that gasoline prices should be higher, and that coal was his "nightmare." Dr. Chu, whose last job was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, answered an array of questions from the Senate committee on Energy and Natural Resources -- about his position on new nuclear reactors (yes, at least for a few plants), offshore drilling (only as part of an energy package) and new coal-burning power plants (a few, until we figure out a better way). He told the lawmakers that "last year's rapid spike in oil and gasoline prices not only contributed to the recession we are now experiencing, it also put a huge strain on the budgets of families all across America." Last September, though, he told The Wall Street Journal, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe."
He also said that coal, which has a wide political constituency, would continue to be used, and that the trick was to convert it to electricity cleanly. Dr. Chu, who is 60, got a friendly welcome from the committee, but really warmed up when Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, asked him how plants could be turned into substitutes for petroleum. "Actually, now we're getting to science, I love this," he said, to laughter around the room. He said he had supervised research to figure out, "How do you break those plants down into the kind of sugars these little critters, the yeast and bacteria, can actually use." Gene-altered bacteria have been developed to turn sugar into substitutes for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, he said. | ||
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 Get that foot in the door, doc. Foot in the door. What happens after that? Stay tuned... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2009-01-14 12:58 |
| #3 Do I have to look into this guy's "views" any more than this to conclude that he's a complete moron outside whatever his narrow technical specialty might be? OK, let's see. The answer is efficiency, using less so that even if the price rises, the bill does not, he said. THIS is the level of economic - and scientific - illiteracy that now passes for cabinet-level appointments. And, of course, the AGW religious cult nonsense. Of course he can't match the catastrophic idiocy of Clinton's EnSec who was hot to distribute nuclear weapon design info around the world. But it would be unfair to judge him by that lofty standard .... |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2009-01-14 12:21 |
| #2 Well gee, cutting production 80% would be the fastest, easiest way of using less energy. Just throttle the powerplants and refineries down to idle speed and watch usage go down, down, down. The wealthy (important) people will have generators anyway. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2009-01-14 10:45 |
| #1 This guy is a loon. In the linked video he asserts: a) that the goal of the US should be to reduce energy usage to the world average (a reduction of around 80% from current levels); and b) that government regulation forcing the a 50% reduction in energy usage from current levels will have no negative economic impact or cost and will not affect Americans' standard of living. He's also an AGW true believer and begins his analysis with the implicit understanding that man is affecting climate and that such must be stopped. Scary stuff. Obviously the Nobel Committee didn't award his prize based on his common sense. |
| Posted by: AzCat 2009-01-14 01:00 |