SCIENTISTS CALL FOR NEW ENERGY

Time Magazine: “…the dirty secret is that for all our talk about the importance of new, clean technology, governments around the world have underinvested in energy. The report's authors point out that global public investment in energy research and development was just $9 billion in 2005 — about a billion less than the U.S. is currently spending in Iraq per month…”

Panel Urges Global Shift on Sources of Energy
Andrew C. Revkin, October 23, 2007 (NY Times)
and
The Energy Solution: Do Something
Bryan Walsh, October 22, 2007 (Time Magazine)
and
Energy poses major 21st century crisis: scientists
October 22, 2007 (AFP via Yahoo News)

WHO
The InterAcademy Council, a group representing world scientific and engineering academies; Co-chairs: Bruce M. Alberts, former president of the United States National Academy of Sciences; Steven Chu, Nobel laureate in physics/ director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

International Energy Agency calculations show clear good results from measures within reach. (click to enlarge)

WHAT
The InterAcademy Council report: “Lighting the Way — Toward a Sustainable Energy Future”. This report calls for doubling research on emissions containment, putting a concrete and increasing price on emissions and aggressively increasing New Energy development.

WHEN
- The report was posted October 22.
- Time Magazine: “There's little time to waste. The rapid growth of developing economies presents both an opportunity and a risk…Cleaning up the developing world won't be simple, but it's one task we do not want to put off until tomorrow.”

WHERE
- The report was commissioned by the governments of China and Brazil.
- The InterAcademy Council is based in the Netherlands.

The sun is there when the science is ready to use it. (click to enlarge)

WHY
- The report’s 3 major emphases:
(1) Fossil fuels must be used more efficiently and both smokestack and tailpipe emissions controlled by upping the cost for them;
(2) Because coal use is inevitable, capture and sequestration of coal plant emissions must be perfected;
(3) SOURCES OF RENEWABLE ENERGIES MUST BE DEVELOPED!
- The report vigorously calls for more spending on research and development.
- The report called providing adequate energy for the world’s poor a “moral, social and economic imperative.”
- The report calls New Energy “untapped” and says it offers “immense opportunities” in poor countries rich in sunlight and wind.
- It said that nuclear energy could contribute to the world’s need for energy only if the cost, safety and weapons proliferation factors were resolved.
- It said food sources must be protected from biofuel developments by moving toward lignocellulose stocks (cellulosic sources) and it called for the development of plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell transportation.

And the US has lots of wind when the leaders become wise enough to build it. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Chu: “Sustainable energy is the equivalent of the U.S. moon shot…If you look at the funding in the United States during Kennedy’s era and followed by Lyndon Johnson, what the United States invested in the Apollo program, money of that magnitude, I am confident, would reveal a lot of breakthroughs in energy technologies, efficiency technologies and new forms of energy.”
- Report: "Making the transition to a sustainable energy future is one of the central challenges humankind faces in this century…Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that current energy trends are unsustainable…"