CANCUN – Secretary of Energy Steven Chu’s remarks yesterday in Cancun were attended by an expectant international audience clamoring to hear the latest official word on what Washington intends to do about global warming, despite roundly subdued expectations of the U.S. and the UN process both. Although one might have expected to hear boilerplate remarks on positive efforts by the Obama administration to tackle climate change, the audience was treated to a different kind of oddly familiar speech: Secretary Chu gave what felt like a lecture in a college freshman course entitled “Climate Change 101,” complete with colorful PowerPoint.

His tone was reassuringly professorial; calm, matter-of-fact, but not pedantic. For almost thirty minutes, Secretary Chu explained the principles of global warming science: the earth’s rising temperature since 1880, satellite measurements of Greenland’s ice mass loss, and how changes in the ratio of radioactive and non-radioactive carbon in the atmosphere prove that human activity has definitely contributed to the problem.

Only halfway through the presentation did Secretary Chu switch to talking about the administration’s actions on climate change, from $90bn in stimulus money going to renewable energy and efficiency projects, to high risk-high reward ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy) projects, to support of innovation hubs à la Bell Laboratories.

One might be puzzled as to why the Secretary chose such a forum to talk about climate science instead of focusing on actions being taken in the U.S. and making a qualified appeal for international cooperation.

Surely he doesn’t feel the need to educate the broad international collection of environmentalists, negotiators, and wonks who attend international climate negotiation conferences. The sensitive in the crowd might even balk at being given a climate science redux by the head energy bureaucrat of a country that has not accepted the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming.

It seems similarly unlikely that he aimed to address a U.S. audience. He wouldn’t need to come to Cancun to do that, not to mention that half the country has already decided not to believe the science anyway.

So why did the Secretary of Energy decide to talk about climate science in Cancun? To try to show the world that there are people at the highest levels of government in the U.S. who get it; not just in terms of job creation or energy independence that can be sold to the American public, but on the hard science that the rest of the world accepts and still desperately wants the United States to understand.

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