For energy chief, race is on to find fuel alternatives
He shows temperature records from 1880 to 2009.
"We may not currently understand all the bumps and wiggles, but we understand the overall trend," he says. "What's going to happen is it's going to warm up."
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Concern about global climate change helped bring Chu out of the physics lab and classroom and into public policy.
"Many of our best basic scientists realize that this is getting down to a crisis situation," he said in a 2007 interview when promoting a report on climate change.
At Princeton, he projects photos of scientists - such as Enrico Fermi and J. Robert Oppenheimer - who were among the fathers of the atom bomb during World War II. He says climate change poses a new threat to rally against.
"Scientists have come to the service of our country in times of national need," he says.
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"Are we willing to make investments today for our children?" Chu asks. "Or are we going to say we'd rather not increase the price of electricity half a cent a kilowatt hour, because we would rather take the money and spend it today?"
His biggest disappointment, he says, is that "two or three years ago I thought America and the world was really going to break forward and recognize that climate change is important, and now they are backtracking on that. The world economic recession has something to do with that, but the people who are against [climate action] have also tried to muddy the waters."
"Ironically," he adds, "in the last couple of years we know more and every year it gets more compelling."
The physicist sees a clear connection between addressing climate change and U.S. economic interests.
"People don't appreciate what's going on," he says, "that we are laying the groundwork for prosperity."
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