Oh, wait... he's actually not a rocket scientist! How about that?
What he is is an incredibly brilliant atomic- and bio- physicist, who can give a great lecture on his work at a level the general public can understand. Dude's pretty impressive -- I don't see what's so special about rocket scientists anyway.
The atomic physicists among us want to make perfectly clear that he's not a rocket scientist! Rocket scientists are engineers!
The unreported important thing about Steve Chu is that he's currently heading a large lab which is heavily involved in alternative energy research, so he knows the field.
Chu is a great, out-of-the-box choice; the idea of installing another governor at Energy was not inspiring given the overhaul we need. But he's a theoretical physicist and biochemist, not a rocket scientist; Marc might want to check out the differences.... Also note that current Secretary of Energy Bodman spent several years on the MIT chemical engineering faculty; Chu is not even the first science/engineering PhD to run DOE. (Not to put their respective academic accomplishments on par.) All in all, a win for fact-based policy making in the energy/environmental sphere...
The rocket scientists among us want to make perfectly clear that he's not a rocket scientist! Rocket scientists are engineers, mathmeticians, chemists, computer scientists, materials scientists, or physicists who work on rockets!
Most of us are from the first category, but I know people from most, and know of people from each. Probably a couple more categories would fit that don't come to mind just this second...
the idea of installing another governor at Energy was not inspiring
I wonder how much of the Energy Secretary's work actually requires him to know physics, and how much is political horse-trading and personnel management that governors are likely good at. His work in a national lab may be helpful, or possibly not. Hard to tell.
I know Chu only by reputation, and he has a very good one. I hope it turns out that his skill set matches the job requirements.
I'd like to not that the current admininstrator of NASA is a rocket scientists. Not a Nobel Laureate, but a real rocket scientist.
Of course, he's under a lot of fire and will likely be replaced, because of his temper and a my way or the highway attitude.
Chu is probably a good choice because he has experience running a lab, so he knows admininstration. Appointing almost any other Nobel Laureate would be a disaster. Being a brilliant lab scientist doesn't mean you are a good administrator. The Secretary of Energy is not going to be doing science, but executing the programs laid out by the White House and Congress. He's in charge of nuclear weapons research and production, the most important function of DOE. All the alternative energy stuff is a sideline. (Current budget of about $25 billion - 9 billion for weapons work - 5 billion for radioactive waste work - 3 billion for science.)
My sense is that much of bureaucratic infrastructure that makes DOE work is well-established; he's not coming on to shake up the Energy Information Administration or even NNSA (which presumably has fairly well nuke security procedures). On the other hand, he should have a very good sense of both the theoretical limits of various energy-related ideas, as well as the current state of the art (in both power and fuel research). So in terms of mapping out a green "Manhattan Project," or even implementing a smart grid or directing resources to solar or alternative fuels initiatives, he may be one of the best at knowing what is technically and economically feasible and what is pie in the sky.
It's harder for me to see Ed Rendell or Arnold Schwarzenegger asking the right questions or knowing how to sift through competing scientific views on the toughest issues.
But you're right, he may lack critical political skills to implement his ideas. Hopefully he will have some good aides to help him in that respect. It's an inversion of the usual roles (science guy leaning on political help instead of a political operator relying on science advisors). This is hopefully an indicator of the status of good science in the new administration...
So in terms of mapping out a green "Manhattan Project," or even implementing a smart grid or directing resources to solar or alternative fuels initiatives, he may be one of the best at knowing what is technically and economically feasible and what is pie in the sky.
Undoubtedly. Here's hoping Congress will pay attention to him.
"he's currently heading a large lab which is heavily involved in alternative energy research, so he knows the field."
Good. That means he knows that there aren't any serious economic alternatives to oil and we can move on to some truly serious issues......like where can we drill for more oil and build more power plants.
The points above about administrative versus scientific expertise are good. LBL was a mess when Steve Chu came in, too -- at LBL and LLNL there'd been issues of waste and fired whistleblowers and there was actually a credible threat that UC would cease running 'em, so Steve Chu has been part of the necessary damage control there.
On the other hand you simply _can't_ run a lab like LBL without having grossly broad and deep scientific knowledge, and administering research at the National Labs and elsewhere is actually a pretty important function of DoE.
Steve Chu has much relevant experience. To become a successful scientist you need to run a research group-similar to a small business- but your 'customers' are various government agencies, corporations, and non-profits. Running a national lab is probably the best experience for the scientific research mission of the DOE. I'm less certain about the regulatory aspects, although the current NRC chair is a faculty member of Texas on sabbatical. In an unrelated note, there was an article a while back in Chemical & Engineering News about chemistry bootcamp for regulators in charge of the chemical industry.
I wonder if his nomination signals that Obama isn't considering serious action on climate change to be feasible in his first term (it's, anyway, more a of a second-don't-care-about-re-election-but-about-posterity-term kind of policy).
It's a great symbolic nomination, but the real energy problems are not technical, but are at the political level (even the economics is mostly solved: carbon tax or cap-&-trade). In that sphere, Chu might be a light-weight (who owes him favours in Congress? how well will he resist pressure?). I hope to be proven wrong, but the more I think about it, the worse it seems.
It's an exciting choice. One of the reasons I was for McCain was his pronuclear position without which IMHO presidential candidate speeches in 2020 will include 'and when I am elected we will achieve energy independence...' These things have become bridges to nowhere. Chu can calculate the energy returns. In regard to the 'no rocket scientist' jibe which is usually offered as an engaging self (or other) deprecatory remark, I think this comes from the time of our engaging Werner von Braun and a few other of his not so Jewish buddies to build our military rockets. It is really faint praise for the German 1940's autism which included skill in the rocket science area which pragmatism led us to take advantage of.
Typically Aerospace/Aeronautic engineers are thought of as rocket scientists, not physicists. So he's no rocket scientist...
So is the guy in charge of TARP. This could be a trend.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95492450
Oh, wait... he's actually not a rocket scientist! How about that?
What he is is an incredibly brilliant atomic- and bio- physicist, who can give a great lecture on his work at a level the general public can understand. Dude's pretty impressive -- I don't see what's so special about rocket scientists anyway.
The atomic physicists among us want to make perfectly clear that he's not a rocket scientist! Rocket scientists are engineers!
The unreported important thing about Steve Chu is that he's currently heading a large lab which is heavily involved in alternative energy research, so he knows the field.
Chu is a great, out-of-the-box choice; the idea of installing another governor at Energy was not inspiring given the overhaul we need. But he's a theoretical physicist and biochemist, not a rocket scientist; Marc might want to check out the differences.... Also note that current Secretary of Energy Bodman spent several years on the MIT chemical engineering faculty; Chu is not even the first science/engineering PhD to run DOE. (Not to put their respective academic accomplishments on par.) All in all, a win for fact-based policy making in the energy/environmental sphere...
And a hell of a nice guy to boot; some of my buddies worked with Chu. Jeez, the "Best and the Brightest" meme is going to explode.
The rocket scientists among us want to make perfectly clear that he's not a rocket scientist! Rocket scientists are engineers, mathmeticians, chemists, computer scientists, materials scientists, or physicists who work on rockets!
Most of us are from the first category, but I know people from most, and know of people from each. Probably a couple more categories would fit that don't come to mind just this second...
the idea of installing another governor at Energy was not inspiring
I wonder how much of the Energy Secretary's work actually requires him to know physics, and how much is political horse-trading and personnel management that governors are likely good at. His work in a national lab may be helpful, or possibly not. Hard to tell.
I know Chu only by reputation, and he has a very good one. I hope it turns out that his skill set matches the job requirements.
I'd like to not that the current admininstrator of NASA is a rocket scientists. Not a Nobel Laureate, but a real rocket scientist.
Of course, he's under a lot of fire and will likely be replaced, because of his temper and a my way or the highway attitude.
Chu is probably a good choice because he has experience running a lab, so he knows admininstration. Appointing almost any other Nobel Laureate would be a disaster. Being a brilliant lab scientist doesn't mean you are a good administrator. The Secretary of Energy is not going to be doing science, but executing the programs laid out by the White House and Congress. He's in charge of nuclear weapons research and production, the most important function of DOE. All the alternative energy stuff is a sideline. (Current budget of about $25 billion - 9 billion for weapons work - 5 billion for radioactive waste work - 3 billion for science.)
@Rob Lyman:
My sense is that much of bureaucratic infrastructure that makes DOE work is well-established; he's not coming on to shake up the Energy Information Administration or even NNSA (which presumably has fairly well nuke security procedures). On the other hand, he should have a very good sense of both the theoretical limits of various energy-related ideas, as well as the current state of the art (in both power and fuel research). So in terms of mapping out a green "Manhattan Project," or even implementing a smart grid or directing resources to solar or alternative fuels initiatives, he may be one of the best at knowing what is technically and economically feasible and what is pie in the sky.
It's harder for me to see Ed Rendell or Arnold Schwarzenegger asking the right questions or knowing how to sift through competing scientific views on the toughest issues.
But you're right, he may lack critical political skills to implement his ideas. Hopefully he will have some good aides to help him in that respect. It's an inversion of the usual roles (science guy leaning on political help instead of a political operator relying on science advisors). This is hopefully an indicator of the status of good science in the new administration...
So in terms of mapping out a green "Manhattan Project," or even implementing a smart grid or directing resources to solar or alternative fuels initiatives, he may be one of the best at knowing what is technically and economically feasible and what is pie in the sky.
Undoubtedly. Here's hoping Congress will pay attention to him.
"he's currently heading a large lab which is heavily involved in alternative energy research, so he knows the field."
Good. That means he knows that there aren't any serious economic alternatives to oil and we can move on to some truly serious issues......like where can we drill for more oil and build more power plants.
The points above about administrative versus scientific expertise are good. LBL was a mess when Steve Chu came in, too -- at LBL and LLNL there'd been issues of waste and fired whistleblowers and there was actually a credible threat that UC would cease running 'em, so Steve Chu has been part of the necessary damage control there.
On the other hand you simply _can't_ run a lab like LBL without having grossly broad and deep scientific knowledge, and administering research at the National Labs and elsewhere is actually a pretty important function of DoE.
Steve Chu has much relevant experience. To become a successful scientist you need to run a research group-similar to a small business- but your 'customers' are various government agencies, corporations, and non-profits. Running a national lab is probably the best experience for the scientific research mission of the DOE. I'm less certain about the regulatory aspects, although the current NRC chair is a faculty member of Texas on sabbatical. In an unrelated note, there was an article a while back in Chemical & Engineering News about chemistry bootcamp for regulators in charge of the chemical industry.
I wonder if his nomination signals that Obama isn't considering serious action on climate change to be feasible in his first term (it's, anyway, more a of a second-don't-care-about-re-election-but-about-posterity-term kind of policy).
It's a great symbolic nomination, but the real energy problems are not technical, but are at the political level (even the economics is mostly solved: carbon tax or cap-&-trade). In that sphere, Chu might be a light-weight (who owes him favours in Congress? how well will he resist pressure?). I hope to be proven wrong, but the more I think about it, the worse it seems.
Wait, so... you can appoint competent experts to Cabinet positions?
Wow, really? I wish someone would have told George Bush!
It's an exciting choice. One of the reasons I was for McCain was his pronuclear position without which IMHO presidential candidate speeches in 2020 will include 'and when I am elected we will achieve energy independence...' These things have become bridges to nowhere. Chu can calculate the energy returns. In regard to the 'no rocket scientist' jibe which is usually offered as an engaging self (or other) deprecatory remark, I think this comes from the time of our engaging Werner von Braun and a few other of his not so Jewish buddies to build our military rockets. It is really faint praise for the German 1940's autism which included skill in the rocket science area which pragmatism led us to take advantage of.
I'm waiting for him to say that he'd have accepted the job even if it weren't the highest paid of the cabinet posts.