U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu (who just happens to be a Nobel prize winning physicist) gave a wonderful talk today at Argonne. I’ve managed to hear him speak 5 times during my career and each time he has been suitably inspiring. I had anticipated that this talk would focus on budgetary aspects of spending, what would be funding, changes to funding opportunities, streamlining to save money, etc... Instead it was mostly about science. I’ll try to summarize his talk below.


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Point #1 : Global warming is real. Temperatures are getting hotter. We have measured the combined energy deposited on the earth from the sun, solar wind, cosmic rays, etc... The energy varies on an 11 year cycle, but we’ve now been measuring for more than 3 full cycles and find that over those 3 cycles the total energy put into our planet each year remains constant.

However, we know that the total energy emitted by the earth has decreased, mostly due to the increased presence of greenhouse gases.

We know that the level of CO2 is increasing. It has increased dramatically since the industrial revolution. It is the highest it has been in at least 800,000 years (and that increase has come in ~ 100 years). That is significant. Most changes to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere occur much more slowly. Not only is our level of CO2 very high (for the last million years), but the rate of change is dramatic.

At points in the more distant past we do know that there were higher levels of CO2 naturally in the atmosphere. But guess what, the temperatures during those times were much, much hotter. In fact, we know quite well exactly how hot we need to make the earth to melt the Antarctic ice. This makes the point in many respects that increasing greenhouse gases really does in fact lead to global warming.

Furthermore, we know that the new CO2 in the atmosphere is man-made. Carbon-14, that great isotope for carbon dating, should be existing “in equilibrium” in the atmosphere (where it is made from cosmic ray interaction with Nitrogen), and on the surface of the earth (where the C-14 is easily mixed). Yet the CO2 we’re seeing in the atmosphere is mostly C-12. This is because the carbon that is contained within fossil fuels has been underground long enough for all (essentially) of the C-14 to have decayed. So, aside from putting additional C-14 in the atmosphere with nuclear explosions, we know that the CO2 increase in the atmosphere must be coming from man made sources.

Constant energy input, lessening energy output due to CO2 increase, CO2 increase being man-made, all of these things point to man made global warming.

Point 2) First the price of oil will increase.

We are lagging behind the rest of the world, most notably China, with regards to developing energy technology. Energy efficient transmission, nuclear energy, sustainable energy sources, efficient buildings and transportation, are all places where we are lagging far behind. And it’s not just China, we’re behind countries such as Spain and Italy. We are, in effect, now consumers not just for foreign energy sources, but also of foreign energy technology.

Point 3) We are at a Sputnik moment. There are significant energy problems on the horizon and the United States is doing far too little to keep pace. We have a huge challenge and need much more than just funding for the immediate problem. We need a long range, long term vision. That vision must include significant investment in science education and in supporting both academic and applied science, particularly that done at universities.