A Quote by Burton Richter
Since stepping down as laboratory director in 1999, I have devoted an increasing fraction of my time to international issues. I am involved with energy, environment, and sustainability issues, particularly as they involve new energy sources free of greenhouse gases.
Related Quotes
I will be asking my network to lead a discussion on the issues of class, race, energy, the environment, disaster planning, Iraq -- all those things and more. This encompasses so many of the major issues of our time.
With time environmental issues got much more complicated. It is pretty easy, if you know what you are doing, to stop a company from pouring poison into a lake where kids swim. It is much harder to address all the myriad greenhouse gases emitted by different sources - from petrochemical refineries to hundreds of millions of peasants cutting down trees for their incredibly inefficient cook stoves.
Neglecting clean energy sources such as solar, wind, and especially nuclear, can result in blackouts, increased power bills, and will take a heavy toll on our efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.
I'm on the Armed Services Committee, which gives me the opportunity to get involved on some of these international issues. My focus is, as you know, on the economic issues and budget issues.
Are global temperatures rising? Surely, they were rising from the late 1970s to 1998, but 'there has been no net global warming since 1998.' Indeed, the more recent numbers show that there is now evidence of significant cooling [...] Mankind is responsible for just a fraction of one percent of the effect from greenhouse gases, and greenhouse gases are not responsible for most of what causes warming (e.g., the Sun).
Replacing traditional sources of energy completely with renewable energy is going to be a challenging task. However, by adding renewable energy to the grid and gradually increasing its contribution, we can realistically expect a future that is powered completely by green energy.
I don't want to be involved with just the environment because I think other issues tie so much into the environment, like native issues, children's issues, women's rights - I think they all completely tie into each other, even the economy.
Creative energy manifests in the 'aura' of the environment - the distinct atmosphere, quality and 'air of the place.' It has a contagious effect on people. When we walk into the environment, we know immediately whether or not the energy is present. Most of us need communities as sources of motivation and vitality; and in keeping with the basic movements of energy in nature, people charge one another in positive and negative ways.
The basic scientific conclusions on climate change are very robust and for good reason. The greenhouse effect is simple science: greenhouse gases trap heat, and humans are emitting ever more greenhouse gases.
The cost reductions for renewable energy continue downward in a very dramatic way. We're in the early stages of a sustainability revolution in the globe that has the scale of the industrial revolution but the speed of the digital revolution. And you see it with renewable energy and you see it with LED lighting, which takes a fraction of the energy for the existing bulbs. All new lights are going to be LED. Electric vehicles. There are a lot of changes underway right now. I'm excited by the prospect, and I look forward to working in the months and years to come to accelerate this transition.
This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. This is fantastical because the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity: it is moral ignorance and weakness of character. We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy.
Reporters have an obligation to report accurately and fairly on all issues they cover, especially ones as important as energy and the environment.
Renewable energy also creates more jobs than other sources of energy - most of these will be created in the struggling manufacturing sector, which will pioneer the new energy future by investment that allows manufacturers to retool and adopt new technologies and methods.
The world community simply should not support such extreme measures when there are so many other pressing issues at hand. The optimal response to greenhouse gases is to start modestly.
With leading research universities, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and private companies like Blue Sun working on developing alternative fuels, Colorado is poised to become an international leader in clean energy.
It's a slow process, but it is scary, because if someone can control your energy sources, they can control you. We are already being told what light bulbs we can and cannot use...through legislation. We are being forced to fund research into alternative energies sources that are inefficient, and that cause the price of food, energy, and everything else to rise...through legislation...rather than allow free enterprise to allocate funds to those energy sources that will survive through good old American innovation!
Related Authors
Austin O'Malley Quotes
American
Scientist
Carl Sagan Quotes
American
Scientist
Charles Darwin Quotes
English
Scientist
E. O. Wilson Quotes
American
Scientist
Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes
German
Scientist
Isaac Asimov Quotes
American
Scientist
Jane Goodall Quotes
English
Scientist
Margaret Mead Quotes
American
Scientist
Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes
Lebanese
Scientist
Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes
American
Scientist
Richard Dawkins Quotes
English
Scientist
Stephen Jay Gould Quotes
American
Scientist
Steven Pinker Quotes
Canadian
Scientist
Sylvia Earle Quotes
American
Scientist
Thomas Huxley Quotes
English
Scientist
W. Edwards Deming Quotes
American
Scientist