Nobel prize-winning
physicist Jack Steinberger, 92, and John
Flannery
How can we expect the United States to save the
world when it’s not able to remain open to do its business?
When you have to pay
your bills past due and owing, do you get to negotiate and say, well I'll pay
if you, Mr Landlord, change your policies and, oh, reduce my rent? Not
very likely! You live in the real world
rather than the tea-induced fantasy factory that’s stymied the Republican House
Speaker, John Boehner, and put our nation at risk.
In this dystopian context, we have to ask what our
government is doing that’s really important, is it doing anything to “save the
world,” whether it’s anticipating what we do when we’ve exhausted our fossil fuels
as an energy source or how we protect against the annihilating force of a
targeted nuclear weapon.
I had the
opportunity to listen and talk with Nobel prize-winning physicist, Jack
Steinberger, 92, about “saving the world,” although his characterization was
more modest, like his manner.
Jack won the Nobel Prize in 1988 “for the neutrino
beam method and the double structure of the leptons through the discovery of
the muon neutrino.” In other words, he’s
real smart.
Aside from its terribly adverse effect on the
world’s environment, Jack says of our dependence on fossil fuel that it begs
the question, what do we do when our fossil fuels run out? Jack estimates that we have a depleting inventory
of oil (lasting 30 years), gas (for about 35 years) and coal (for 60
years). “How are we going to keep planes
in the skies,” said Jack, “when these fuels are gone?”
Jack’s prescriptions are straightforward: 1. Reduce
our birth rate, 2. Reduce our consumption, 3. Increase our energy efficiency,
and 4. Explore the use of thermal solar energy.
Thermal solar is Jack’s preferred response to the
unsolved challenge, how we store energy from renewables in those times of the
day or season when there’s no wind or sun to generate power.
“The Solar Energy Generating System (SEGS), working since
1985 in California, with a huge production capacity,” Jack says, “is one
example of what works and is being used right now.”
It’s a parabolic mirror that reflects the solar
radiation to a focal point, where glass tubing containing fluid is heated, and
this heat is stored for months at a time, providing not only peak power but
also baseload power generation that can displace coal- and natural gas-fired
power plants.
Parabolic Mirror –
Solar Thermal
Jack was hopeful when he heard our newly minted President
Barack Obama speak in Prague, on April 5, 2009, saying, “we must confront
climate change by ending the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.”
By September 2013, however, we are still waiting for
initiatives that might accomplish this objective.
As recently as this past weekend, a self-described
Cold War bomber pilot, writing in the Post, in a brilliant example of Orwellian
newspeak, said “nuclear weapons are instruments of peace.”
Jack was quite encouraged in in April 2009 when the
President took a different tact, promising that he would confront “the spread
of catastrophic weapons” that could erase the world “in a single flash of
light” and committed his Administration “to seek[ing] the peace and security of
a world without nuclear weapons.”
Jack concurred, “I think there is absolutely no way
but to get rid of them, and America is the one who must lead the way.”
When Obama gave a second speech in Berlin this past
June, however, he said we have more nuclear weapons than we “need,” but then pushed
further down the road any comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and any fissile
material cutoff treaty. The Department
of Defense released a report that now we must maintain a deterrent, rather than
the President’s earlier promised commitment to disarmament, and we must use our
nuclear arsenal to “deter” not only Russia but China as well. One step forward, two more backward. Nor is Congress any help. Many object to any reduction in the nuclear
arsenal.
“I can’t imagine using a nuclear weapon,” said Jack,
“can’t imagine a war, so we have to solve this problem. As long as we lead, others will follow. But we are not leading.”
Perhaps it’s a lot to ask our government to “save
the world” when it can’t guarantee that it’s open for
business. But saving the world is more than an aspiration;
it’s about our very survival.
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