Word: carbonize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Farms vs. forests - that's the usual dynamic in tropical countries, where the growth of agriculture often comes at the expense of trees. In nations like Brazil and Indonesia - where deforestation is behind the vast majority of carbon emissions - rain forests are not just cut down for logging but also burned to make room for new farms and pastureland. As more people need more food - and biofuels as well - there's a risk that we could see many of our remaining virgin rain forests wiped out completely...
...spearheaded a major project to investigate solar energy. "Steve is a visionary, and he really galvanized the lab with his vision," says Paul Alivisatos, who was Chu's deputy there. But some scientists bristled at Chu's demand for dramatic scientific breakthroughs - brand-new ways to store energy, sequester carbon or fuel cars - as opposed to incremental engineering improvements. "Chu likes flashy, sexy technological fixes that attract a lot of attention. He gets bored when they aren't nano-this or bio-that," says University of Texas engineering professor Tad Patzek, who left the Berkeley Lab after clashing with...
...efficiency rules for U.S. refrigerators alone save more energy than the controversial Three Gorges Dam in China's Hubei province will produce. He's especially obsessed with promoting white roofs and light-colored pavement, constantly citing Rosenfeld's calculation that having them throughout the U.S. would save as much carbon as taking every car off the roads for 11 years...
...clear message Chu took home from China was that its leaders are dead serious about climate change and clean energy. They won't accept an emissions cap before we do - understandably, since our per capita emissions are still four times higher - but they're preparing for a carbon-constrained economy. They already have cars that are more fuel-efficient than ours, and they're developing more-advanced transmission lines. They're still building a new coal-fired plant almost every week, but two years ago, they were building two of them every week. They're making a huge push into...
...fact, GOP leaders have said that global warming is a hoax, that fears about carbon are "almost comical," that the earth is actually cooling. When I asked Chu about the earth-is-cooling argument, he rolled his eyes and whipped out a chart showing that the 10 hottest years on record have all been in the past 12 years - and that 1998 was the hottest. He mocked the skeptics who focus on that post-1998 blip while ignoring a century-long trend of rising temperatures: "See? It's gone down! The earth must be cooling!" But then he got serious...