If you smoke and get lung cancer 20 years later, you might view your action as a matter of personal choice. But what if you knew that your smoking now would cause lung cancer in your grandchildren 50 years later?
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| Steven Chu |
Steven Chu presented this imaginary scenario as an analogy to human-induced global warming and climate change.
Chu, the longest-serving U.S. Secretary of Energy (January 2009 through April 2013) and winner of a Nobel Prize in physics in 1997, spoke about climate change as part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Eugene P. Wigner Distinguished Lecture Series in Science, Technology and Policy. Chu is currently a professor at Stanford University.
“There is a delay in climate change as the atmosphere and ocean heat up,” he said, noting that the water temperature at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is 35 degrees, but the surface temperature is 86 degrees in summer.
“It may take 100 years to heat up this huge thermal mass so it reaches a uniform temperature,” he said. “The damage we’ve done today will not be seen for at least 50 years.”
He showed the audience a slide of the earth’s surface temperature record from 1800 to 2011.
“The globe is warming up,” he said, acknowledging that the temperature rise has leveled off in the past 12 years for reasons not yet understood.
The temperature rise has been steepest since 1980, Chu said. Scientists have attributed this trend to the sharp increases in emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, from the growth in fossil fuel power production and in transportation using fuels made from oil.
“It may take 100 years to heat up this huge thermal mass so it reaches a uniform temperature,” he said. “The damage we’ve done today will not be seen for at least 50 years.”
Chu cited the melting of glaciers in the Arctic and the heat wave in 2003 in Europe that killed 52,000 people as dramatic examples of a changing climate.
Reinsurance companies, which sell insurance to companies that sell it, have tracked extreme events that trigger large insurance company losses, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires, tornados and floods.
The extreme events that have been “trending upwards” in number are weather-related, Chu said, adding that the number of violent storms is higher over the past 50 years compared with previous 50-year periods in weather records.
The costs of hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, he noted, have included the weatherization of levies and subways and the closure of many small businesses. In addition, U.S. government-backed flood insurance has contributed $26 billion to the national debt.
“If you include ethanol production in the U.S., we are the largest producer of transportation liquids in the world,” Chu said. “We will not run out of oil, gas and coal anytime soon.”
To slow the use of fossil fuels, Chu suggested “better solutions,” such as increased use of energy-efficient appliances. He argued that tighter energy standards have not only improved the efficiency of refrigerators, room air conditioners and clothes washers but also lowered their cost.If you smoke and get lung cancer 20 years later, you might view your action as a matter of personal choice. But what if you knew that your smoking now would cause lung cancer in your grandchildren 50 years later?
Steven Chu presented this imaginary scenario as an analogy to human-induced global warming and climate change.
Chu, the longest-serving U.S. Secretary of Energy (January 2009 through April 2013) and winner of a Nobel Prize in physics in 1997, spoke about climate change as part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Eugene P. Wigner Distinguished Lecture Series in Science, Technology and Policy. Chu is currently a professor at Stanford University.
“There is a delay in climate change as the atmosphere and ocean heat up,” he said, noting that the water temperature at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is 35 degrees, but the surface temperature is 86 degrees in summer.
“It may take 100 years to heat up this huge thermal mass so it reaches a uniform temperature,” he said. “The damage we’ve done today will not be seen for at least 50 years.”
He showed the audience a slide of the earth’s surface temperature record from 1800 to 2011.
“The globe is warming up,” he said, acknowledging that the temperature rise has leveled off in the past 12 years for reasons not yet understood.
The temperature rise has been steepest since 1980, Chu said. Scientists have attributed this trend to the sharp increases in emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, from the growth in fossil fuel power production and in transportation using fuels made from oil.
Chu cited the melting of glaciers in the Arctic and the heat wave in 2003 in Europe that killed 52,000 people as dramatic examples of a changing climate.
Reinsurance companies, which sell insurance to companies that sell it, have tracked extreme events that trigger large insurance company losses, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires, tornados and floods.
The extreme events that have been “trending upwards” in number are weather-related, Chu said, adding that the number of violent storms is higher over the past 50 years compared with previous 50-year periods in weather records.
The costs of hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, he noted, have included the weatherization of levies and subways and the closure of many small businesses. In addition, U.S. government-backed flood insurance has contributed $26 billion to the national debt.
“If you include ethanol production in the U.S., we are the largest producer of transportation liquids in the world,” Chu said. “We will not run out of oil, gas and coal anytime soon.”
To slow the use of fossil fuels, Chu suggested “better solutions,” such as increased use of energy-efficient appliances. He argued that tighter energy standards have not only improved the efficiency of refrigerators, room air conditioners and clothes washers but also lowered their cost. More
