Saturday, December 13, 2008

Climate Change and Fossil Fuel

Aware of the danger of quoting from blogs of friends, I offer up this item from Ron Smits' Blog, titled "then there is this..." which leads into a very nice evening shot of two F-16s. Ron and I share the experience of having flow the Lawn Dart, and a great experience it was.

Ron has strong views on Climate Change, views I don't exactly share (I am in the "jury is still out" mode). However, where we are in agreement is that we need to be changing our energy sources, to move away from fossil fuels, especially oil, which we import at a horrendous rate.

However, even if I am still waiting to see about climate change and whether or not it is bad, we all need to look at all sides of this issue.

I will say that I am very encouraged by President Elect Obama's selection of Nobel Laureate Dr Steven Chu as the Secretary of Energy designate. I don't know Dr Chu, although I would know to differentiate him from Dr David Chu, the current U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Readiness. Thanks to Instapundit I caught a video on line of a talk Dr Steven Chu gave this year on energy and climate change. It was excellent. Here it is on You Tube. I caught it at the "Classical Values" Blog, where the issue was Bussard Fusion.

In my humble opinion, once newly Inaugurated President Obama has worked the short term issues--Treasury, State, Defense--the long term issue of Energy will be the most important area for his focus. I hope that Dr Chu finds an open door and a receptive mind with our new President. This issue could not be more important for the long run, as a minimum in terms of our economy (we can't keep importing oil for ever) and maybe in terms of climate change.

Regards -- Cliff

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the link.

    I am not certain what method for fusion will be viable, but I am against megaprojects like ITER until we actually know what we are doing.

    Five $20 million a year small reactor projects will get us results faster than one $100 million a year big reactor project.

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Please be forthright, but please consider that this is not a barracks.