‘Climate crisis’ needs brain gain

The UK alone has invested more than half-a-billion pounds in the LHC

The most brilliant minds should be directed to solving Earth’s greatest challenges, such as climate change, says Sir David King.

The former UK chief scientist will use his presidential address at the BA Science Festival to call for a gear-change among innovative thinkers.

He will suggest that less time and money is spent on endeavors such as space exploration and particle physics.

He says population growth and poverty in Africa also demand attention.

“The challenges of the 21st Century are qualitatively different from anything that we’ve had to face up to before,” he told reporters before the opening of the festival, which is being held this year in Liverpool.

“This requires a re-think of priorities in science and technology and a redrawing of our society’s inner attitudes towards science and technology.”

Huge expense

Sir David’s remarks will be controversial because they are being made just as the UK is about to celebrate its participation in the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest physics experiment.

The Collider, built at the Cern laboratory under the Swiss-French border, is starting full operations this Wednesday.

It will seek to understand the building blocks of matter, and, in particular, try to find a mechanism that can explain why matter has mass.

This international venture is extremely expensive, however. The UK alone has contributed more than £500m to the LHC – the largest sum of money to date invested by a UK government in a single scientific project.

Sir David said it was time such funding – and the brains it supports – were pushed to answering more pressing concerns.

“It’s all very well to demonstrate that we can land a craft on Mars, it’s all very well to discover whether or not there is a Higgs boson (a potential mass mechanism); but I would just suggest that we need to pull people towards perhaps the bigger challenges where the outcome for our civilization is really crucial.”

Big ideas

Chief among these challenges for Sir David is the issue of climate change. When he was the government’s top scientist, he made the famous remark that the threat from climate change was bigger than the threat posed by terrorism.

He said alternatives to fossil fuels were desperately needed to power a civilization that would number some nine billion people by mid-century – nine billion people who would all expect a high standard of living.

“We will have to re-gear our thinking because our entire civilization depends on energy production, and we have been producing that energy very largely through fossil fuels; and we will have to remove our dependence from fossil fuels virtually completely, or we will have to learn how to capture carbon dioxide from fossil fuel usage,” he said.

Finding and exploiting clean energy sources was now imperative, he said; and Sir David questioned whether the spending on particle physics research in the shape of Cern’s Large Hadron Collider was the best route to that goal.

He even doubted whether Cern’s greatest invention was an outcome that could only have come from an institution that pursued so-called “blue skies research”.

“People say to me: ‘well what about the world wide web? That emerged from Cern’. Brilliant. Tim Berners Lee was the person who invented that. What if Tim Berners Lee had been working in a solar [power] laboratory? Perhaps he would have done it there as well. The spin-out would have come from the brilliant individual.”

McCain vows to fight to change US

McCain vows to fight to change US

John McCain has accepted the Republican Party’s candidacy for the White House in a speech to cheering supporters at the party’s national convention.

He vowed to bring change to government, restore the people’s trust in the party and to fight for a better nation.

Praising his running mate Sarah Palin, he said she was the right person to help him bring change to Washington.

The Arizona senator said he respected Democratic rival Barack Obama and would seek a bipartisan approach to politics.

Presenting himself once again as a maverick, he pledged to fight corruption, whether Democratic or Republican, and make sure that he worked for the good of the American people.

“Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd: change is coming,” Mr McCain told the crowds in St Paul, Minnesota.

Again and again, I’ve worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed John McCain

In a criticism of his own party, he said he would “fight to restore the pride and principles” of the party, damaged after some Republicans gave in to “the temptations of corruption”.

“We’re going to recover the people’s trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire,” he said. “The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.”

Mr McCain then turned to attacking the Democrats over taxes and spending, saying they would seek to raise taxes whereas he would keep them low and cut them where possible.

Going into some policy specifics, he pledged create new jobs, improve education and to reduce a “dangerous dependence on foreign oil” by producing more energy at home, including by drilling new offshore oil wells.

Mr McCain promised to take a bipartisan approach to resolving the nation’s problems, saying: “Again and again, I’ve worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed.

McCAIN’S MOST-USED WORDS

“That’s how I will govern as president. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again.

“I have that record and the scars to prove it. Barack Obama does not.”

After speaking of the five years he spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and how that experience had inspired his love of his country, he called on his fellow Americans to fight with him to make it a better one.

“Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.”

The almost hour-long speech, which ended in the traditional shower of confetti and red, white and blue balloons, brought to a close the party’s four-day event.

‘Tested and true’

Mr McCain’s speech was measured and entirely lacking in the sarcasm and vitriol which have been levelled at Mr Obama over the past couple of nights.

He said he hated war and would use all America’s tools – diplomatic, military and economic – to build what he called a stable and enduring peace, as well as shaking up Washington and including Democrats and independents in a McCain administration.

Mrs McCain praised her husband as a great father and devoted American

It was all a rather different tone to the Republican politics of the past eight years, and to many of the other speakers at this Republican convention, our correspondent says.

There was very little of President George W Bush in this speech, our correspondent adds, as Mr McCain tries to show that he is his own man and can signify a break with the Bush years.

Mr McCain’s wife, Cindy, in her speech praised her husband’s family values, strength of character, war service and leadership.

“If Americans want straight talk and the plain truth, they should take a good close look at John McCain… a man tested and true, who’s never wavered in his devotion to our country,” she said, after arriving on stage flanked by their seven children.

Her speech followed the convention’s formal nomination of Mrs Palin – the Republican Party’s first female vice-presidential candidate.

Mrs Palin becomes only the second woman, the first being Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, to run for the US vice-presidency.

‘Integrity and courage’

Speaking ahead of Mr McCain’s address, senior Republicans praised his courage and leadership.

I have to say, from my vantage point next to the DC delegation, my overall impression was that the audience in the hall were disappointed BBC North America editor Justin Webb

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, at one point hotly tipped to be Mr McCain’s running mate choice, described the Arizona senator’s life as “a testimony to service, duty, courage and common sense”.

“In this time, we don’t need a president who can just read a poll or momentarily thrill a crowd. We don’t need rhetoric or empty promises,” he said.

“We need a president who has the integrity and courage to make the tough choices so America will be stronger and safer.”

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham hailed Mr McCain’s determination to back the Bush administration’s “surge” strategy in Iraq despite the political risks.

HAVE YOUR SAY

McCain is an experienced person and his speech impressed me

Hariprasad Bhusal, India

He introduced a video presenting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a “maverick” moose-hunter from Alaska who was joining “the original maverick” Mr McCain to bring change to Washington politics.

In a well-received speech on Wednesday, Mrs Palin praised Mr McCain and attacked Mr Obama as having talked of change, but done nothing of substance.

President George W Bush has also strongly endorsed John McCain as the best man to succeed him in the White House.