Scientists See Coal As Key Challenge

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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5itu3eeUnmGmvQWWkqwmNoCCEzFeg

The proliferation of coal-burning power plants around the world may pose "the single greatest challenge" to averting dangerous climate change, an international panel of scientists reported Monday.

Governments and the private sector are spending too little on research into a partial solution — technology to capture and store the carbon dioxide emissions from such plants, the group said.

The study by 15 scientists from 13 nations, "Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future," was commissioned by the governments of China and Brazil and is the product of two years of workshops organized by the InterAcademy Council, the Netherlands-based network of national academies of science.

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"The first thing it says, really, is that conservation and energy efficiency will remain for the next couple of decades the most important thing the world can do to get on a sustainable path," said co-chairman Steven Chu, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and director of California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

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[eppur_se_muova]

1. A major understatement. nt