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.
USA Today Magazine (March 2006) (PDF)
Saudi Arabia is the key to containing the terrorist menace, assuring stability in the Gulf, and keeping the oil flowing at a reasonable price.
Articles appearing in Physics & Society
Bombs, Reprocessing, and Reactor-Grade Plutonium (April 2006)
Coauthor: George S. Stanford (PDF)
Nuclear Power and Proliferation (January 2006)
Coauthor: George S. Stanford (PDF)
Purex and Pyro are not the Same (July 2004)
Coauthors: William H. Hannum and George S. Stanford (PDF)
Gaps in the APS Position on Nuclear Energy (April 2002)
Coauthor: George S. Stanford (PDF)
Scientific American (December 2005)
Coauthors: William H. Hannum and George S. Stanford
Fast-neutron reactors could extract much more energy from recycled nuclear fuel, minimize the risks of weapons proliferation and markedly reduce the time nuclear waste must be isolated. (PDF)
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.
This Critique builds on A Global Warming Primer. Like the Primer, its purpose is to help the reader determine whether our understanding of the earth’s climate is adequate to predict the long-term effects of carbon dioxide emissions from the continued burning of fossil fuels, to permit informed public policy decisions. This is a limited critique, looking only at a few topics covered in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The purpose of this primer is to help the reader determine whether our understanding of the earth’s climate is adequate to predict the long term effects of carbon dioxide released as a result of the continued burning of fossil fuels.
Praeger Press 2001
A Project of the Center for International Policy
Coauthors: Craig Eisendrath and Melvin A. Goodman
Like President Reagan with his “Star Wars” program, President Bush has again made national missile defense (NMD) a national priority at a cost which may exceed $150 billion in the next ten years. Defense experts Eisendrath, Goodman, and Marsh contend that recent tests give little confidence that any of the systems under consideration—land-based, boost-phase, or laser-driven—have any chance of effective deployment within decades. The interests of the military-industrial complex and the unilateralist views of the Bush administration are driving NMD, not a desire to promote national security.
Rather than increase U.S. security, the plans of the current administration, if implemented, will erode it. NMD will heighten the threat from China and Russia, alienate key allies, and provoke a new arms race and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, all in response to a greatly exaggerated threat from so-called “rogue states,” such as North Korea and Iran. Thoughtful diplomacy, not a misguided foreign policy based on a hopeless dream of a “Fortress America,” is the real answer to meeting America’s security goals. Designed to stimulate interest and debate among the public and policy-makers, the Phantom Defense provides solid facts and combines scientific, geopolitical, historical, and strategic analysis to critique the delusion of national missile defense, while suggesting a more effective alternative.
Physics Letters A Vol. 262, pp. 257-260 (1999)
Coauthor: Charles Nissim-Sabat
Comment on an article by Van Flandern on the speed of gravity. Van Flandern argues that the speed of gravity must be greater than 2 X 10^10 c. We show this is not the case.