Discussion on:

Chu: Cleantech innovation race vs. China is America's 'Sputnik moment'

Yeah, we definitely could never catch up if the Chinese get a head
start. That's why everyone uses VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 now. And
why the only car manufacturer is Ford and the only telephone
company is Bell Telephone.

?As President Obama has said, we should not, cannot, and will not play for second place.?

We are not. We are playing for LAST PLACE under Obama's regime.

"Chu also outlined a project underway by an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers at the California Institute of Technology working to turn sunlight into fuel. The project: an integrated system modeled after photosynthesis that can convert sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into usable fuels such as gasoline."

But... but... but... isn't burning fuel contributing to "man made global warming"?
Hypocrites!

"Advanced coal tech. Solar and wind may get all the attention, but it?s advancement with fossil fuel tech that?s really of concern. China is rapidly deploying efficient (45 to 48 percent) coal combustion plant; meanwhile, the most efficient U.S. plants are at 40 percent. Until renewable energy becomes the norm, fossil fuel improvements are what?s fueling this race."

We could have been the leaders if Obama and his fellow demorats and environmentalists did not seek to destroy the coal mining industry. Obama himself pledged to end our use on coal.

Hypocrites!

The USA has lost the game of "Technological Advancements per Decade" and unless we somehow increase our focus on non-military technological advancements now we will be falling farther behind in the next decade. China is more open to overall learning than the USA and as a result is rapidly adopting the acceptance of change in its economic sector whereby it will retain the leadership (if measured by nation) of most technologies for at least the next one hundred years.

One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the Chinese will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new Free Market Communist overlords. I?d like to remind them that as a trusted poster, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their factories and sweatshops.

is this real, or do you just believe what China is claiming?

Given this article about pollution in the journal Pediatrics, It makes me wonder.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18762533

I hope America will wake up and rise to the challenge. Unlike some other people here
who can't read graphs and between the lines, I don't think, he (OBAMA, nor CHU) is to
blame for what happened in America last decade. We can safely say that you are not
playing for the second but the third place, unless, of course that sputnik moment
might well be functioning.

On an another note: China never claims anything, that's what's scary, that we all
should be afraid of (I live in EU, by the way, the second guy after China). You only
know that they have the supremacy, when it's done. And no, they don't use Visicalc
and Lotus 1-2-3 to realize all that. I should say that it's to the benefit of everybody
living on earth that they realize those things, first of course for themselves because
they are in a hurry to find solutions and they do it intelligently sometimes copying
what others doing as well. But hey, I can't blame them, if you've heard the news two
days ago: "The city of Shangai suspended work at factories and construction sites
and kept vehicles off the streets to ensure clean air" so they are in a hurry to have
those High Voltage Transmission lines to bring energy from thousands of miles away,
they need those power plants. If only we could have seen this 20 years ago, to sell
them power plants today.

MimarSinan is partly right. The other aspect of the previous posts is that some people here in the USA would rather be in denial, play the blame game, or both, than progress.

Albee, (#2)

But... but... but... isn't burning fuel contributing to "man made global warming"?

Burning fuel only contributes to global warming if the carbon in the fuel is from fossil sources that have been sequestered from the environment for millions of years. If you derive the carbon in your fuel from atmospheric CO2 then release it again when you burn it there is no net change in the amount of carbon in the carbon cycle.

It's really sad that the global warming deniers and other naysayers in the USA have so much influence. It's like they're afraid of change, afraid of a future that's different than the past. As long as they keep holding the USA back we'll just keep falling further and further behind the rest of the world. We could be world leaders if we wanted to. Eventually we will be shunned by other countries if we don't clean up our act.