There might be someone better for Energy Secretary.

But I really don't know who it could possibly be.

If the latest set of transition leaks are as accurate as the previous few have been, President-Elect Obama will announce the nomination of Steven Chu for Energy Secretary.

And. The. Crowd. Goes. Wild.

Chu's background is a bit light on the politics side - no DC job, no elected political office - but even if you consider that to be a down side, the rest of his resume more than makes up for the lack. He's a career scientist. He's a world-class physicist, one of the 1997 recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and has been the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2004.

He understands the scientific process. He knows what it takes to do good science, and how to get in the way of that as little as possible. He's been an effective head of a national laboratory. He's served on international panels on a variety of issues, including climate change. He's an advocate for the use of good science in public policy, and for better science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. All of those things are good indications that this is a guy who might just be able to rebuild the Department of Energy.

Possibly the best thing about Dr. Chu is this: not only does he understand just how much we know about the relationship between climate, energy efficiency, and the environment, he also understands just how much we don't know. He understands how important it is to close that gap, how little time we have to do it, and just why these issues are so important:

I will leave you with this final image. This is -- I was an undergraduate when this picture was taken by Apollo 8 -- and it shows the moon and the Earth's rise. A beautiful planet, a desolate moon. And focus on the fact that there's nowhere else to go.

(image source: NASA)

It's a little too early to know for sure, of course, but I don't think Obama went to the right for this particular cabinet appointment.