Global Warming: A Blessing in Disguise
USA Today Magazine (November 2009)
“The real tipping point for civilization is the beginning of another Ice Age–not a world a few degrees warmer.”
{ Category Archives }
Politics
Initiatives to Enhance Nuclear Stability and Non-Proliferation in the 21st Century
Physics & Society Vol. 38, No.3 (July 2009). Coauthored with George S. Stanford.
Three initiatives that the Obama Administration can undertake that would greatly increase nuclear stability and enhance the non-proliferation regime for many years to come.
Falling into the Afghan Trap
USA Today Magazine (May 2009)
The U.S. is bogged down in tactical responses to Taliban initiatives. Little by little, the Soviet experience is becoming more and more relevant.
When the Stars Begin to Fall: The Waning of the Enlightenment
Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism Vol. 17 (1), Spring-Summer 2009
Creationism and Science
As fundamentalist religious thought strengthens its hold on U.S. politics, and increases its role in politics around the world, enlightened values that form the very foundation of modern society are coming under attack. In the United States the wedge issue being used by fundamentalists is a pseudo-debate over creationism and Darwin’s theory of the descent of man.
SEAWATER pH AND ANTHROPOGENIC CARBON DIOXIDE
To appear in Climate Change, Ed: Siddhartha P. Saikia (September 2009).
In 2005, the Royal Society published a report titled Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. The report’s principal conclusion—that average ocean pH could decrease by 0.5 units by 2100—is demonstrated here to be consistent with a linear extrapolation of very limited data. It is also shown that current understanding of ocean mixing, and of the relationship between pH and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, cannot justify such an extrapolation.
Truth, Faith and Reason: Pope Benedict XVI’s Lecture at the University of Regensburg
Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism Volume 16(1) Spring-Summer 2008.
Pope Benedict XVI interleaved two themes in his talk at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006. These are discussed here in two separate parts: Truth, Faith, and Reason and The Dialogue of Cultures. The first addresses the Pope’s proposal to expand scientific reasoning to include the “rationality of faith”; and the second with the threat of radical Islam, and whether a “dialogue of cultures” is possible if the West persists in its belief in what the Pope calls a “reason which is deaf to the divine”. Truth, Faith & Reason
Goracle Gushings on Faith-Based Science
USA Today Magazine (January 2008) Goracle PDF
“We are about to waste an enormous amount of money and effort on carbon mitigation without lowering CO2 emissions one whit. The Goracle and his fellow travelers will carry the day.”
AL GORE won an Academy Award for his skillfully done film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” It was well-deserved. Had he given as good a performance during his campaign for president, he would have won in a landslide. As environmental drama, it only can be compared with Michael Crichton’s novel, State of Fear. Both have elements of scientific and political fact, and both are excellent fiction.
America’s Left Has Taken a Wrong Turn
USA Today Magazine (May 2007) (PDF)
Socialism, the Left, and its future in the United States.
The Left in the US is in crisis. It has lost the broad support it once enjoyed in the working class and finds itself captive to the past—or, worse yet, to an impotent radicalism. It no longer offers working people a political outlet for their interests, but only a means of protest about issues that are not central to their lives.
Recycling Nuclear Waste
American Physical Society Special Session on Nuclear Reprocessing, Nuclear Proliferation, and Terrorism (15 April 2007)
Coauthors: William H. Hannum and George S. Stanford
In the public mind, the foremost reservation about nuclear power is, “What can we do with the waste?” Fortunately there is an answer: We can use the worrisome, very long-lived components as fuel in the right kind of reactors, and then the rest becomes manageable. Will this lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons or to an increase in the threat of nuclear terrorism? Not necessarily. Prudent recycle of nuclear waste will actually reduce these threats—while also reducing the time that nuclear waste must be sequestered to a few hundred years instead of thousands.
Can the Clash of Civilizations Produce Alternate Energy Sources?
USA Today Magazine (January 2007) (PDF)
In the Summer of 1993, Samuel Huntington introduced an apt phrase into the lexicon of futurologists: “The Clash of Civilizations.” While the clash that is developing between the Muslim world and the West is indeed cultural, it is driven by the economics of energy and, in particular, oil.