In case you are just venturing out of your cave for the first time in a week, you are probably aware that President-elect Obama has announced his new energy team:

Obama names energy team

The team includes Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy, former EPA head Carol Browner to fill the newly-created job of Energy Czar, and Lisa Jackson to head the EPA. The focus of this essay will be on Dr. Chu, but I will comment briefly on the others.

Lisa Jackson is trained as a chemical engineer (as was the outgoing Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman). It should go without saying that I like to see technical people in roles like this, where understanding science and data are both critical. Carol Browner, while not trained as a technical person, has a lot of administrative experience within the EPA. Incidentally, I once met Mrs. Browner, as she was the person who presented my research group with the 1996 Green Chemistry Challenge Award at the National Academy of Sciences for our work on biomass conversion to fuels.

Sarkozy: "La demande en produits pétroliers est de plus en plus forte et l'offre n'augmente pas ou très peu"

Sarkozy: "Demand for oil is stronger and stronger and supply is increasing very little, if at all"

When I heard him say this on the radio this morning, and continue by adding that we had to be aware that prices would continue to remain high, I was pleasantly surprised. But that did not last.

[UPDATE, Chris Vernon] Here's Gordon Brown's contribution to the debate.

Atrocious policies but devious politics from McCain:

McCain Proposes Break in Gas Taxes

PITTSBURGH (AP) — John McCain wants the federal government to free people from paying gasoline taxes this summer and ensure that college students can secure loans this fall, a pair of proposals aimed at stemming pain from the country's troubled economy.
(...)
To help people weather the downturn immediately, McCain was calling for Congress to institute a "gas-tax holiday" by suspending the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day. He also renewed his call for the United States to stop adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and thus lessen to some extent the worldwide demand for oil.

Let me make the following bets...(under the fold...)

I made the following comment recently in a discussion on Global Warming:

If you put it to a popular vote, and people learned that GHG emissions could be arrested (hypothetically) if they were willing to pay $7/gallon of gasoline, what percentage would vote for that? My guess is that it would be well less than 20%, implying that GW concerns will give way to economic concerns.

At one time I was really worried about Global Warming. And at the risk of starting a Global Warming debate here (one that I don't wish to participate in), my position is that the scientific consensus backs the hypothesis that human activity is contributing to Global Warming. I am not an atmospheric scientist, so in this case I rely on the scientific consensus of the experts. This is the same standard I apply to other fields in which I lack expertise.