I mostly appreciate and agree with the points Kumi Naidoo makes in his editorial 'The Safe Bet: Renewables' [July 27]. Certainly it is important to continue to support the further development and implementation of renewable sources of energy.
However, he undermines his argument by not acknowledging several fundamental scientific barriers that must be understood and addressed.
One is in regard to his statement from a UN report that '[renewable energy] dominates nuclear power globally by a ratio of six to one'. It is true that the report indicates that renewable energy is a larger source of energy than nuclear energy, 12.9% to 2%. But Mr. Naidoo leaves out two important points: 1) 10.2% of the renewable energy is listed as 'biomass', which still generates greenhouse gases; and 2) 2.3% is hydropower which leaves 0.4% of energy coming from wind, solar and geothermal. So, true sources of renewable energy that do not create greenhouse gases (unlike biofuel) and are broadly expandable (unlike hydropower) still trail nuclear energy by an order of magnitude. There is much development still needed before they become significant factors.
Another important point that Mr. Naidoo ignores in his article is that oil, gas and coal provide something that wind and solar in particular cannot provide: a stable energy supply available day and night. Aside from the obvious problem that the wind is not always blowing nor the sun always shining, battery technology is not currently developed to a point were the necessary amounts of energy can be stored for use during these 'down' times. He should clearly acknowledge this as a fundamental area of technology development that is needed to make wind and solar power more broadly feasible energy sources.
Finally, he trumpets the current shift in Japan and Germany away from nuclear power. But, despite the significant gains that Germany has made in implementing solar panels and solar water heaters (in a trip there earlier this year it was surprising how wide-spread these were in the area I visited), both Japan and Germany are expected to need to turn to increased use of coal, oil and gas to replace the energy that is being given up by nuclear power. (Germany actually may also need to turn to nuclear energy from France.) The reality is that there is an immediate need for an energy source that will produce 24 hours a day and that will allow us over the next couple of decades (i.e., very quickly) to reduce to near zero the generation of greenhouse gases. Renewable energy sources today satisfy neither of these criteria. It is hard to see at this point a source of energy other than nuclear power that will allow us the time to make the transition to clean energy while avoiding the approaching climate disaster.
To be clear, I largely agree with Mr. Naidoo's goals. I would like to see subsidies for coal, oil and gas companies ended, a carbon tax implemented, investment in renewable energy increased and the phase-out of particularly coal as a source of energy. But it does a disservice to these causes to ignore the reality of the scientific challenges facing us in working toward these goals.
Better to be upfront about the challenges, and point out feasible path to a solution: end subsidies for coal, oil and gas companies and use these subsidies to invest in the further development of renewable energy technologies. Implement a carbon tax (the income from which is directly turned over to people) to drive efficiency improvements through the market. And, though possibly unpalatable, but critical, invest in the nuclear power plants required to allow us to end our need to burn coal before we pass a dangerous tipping point in our climate.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Book Review: 'Night of the Golden Butterfly' by Tariq Ali
Night of the Golden Butterfly (2010)
Tariq Ali (1943-)
275 pages
Night of the Golden Butterfly is the final novel in Tariq Ali’s Islam Quintet. Each of the five novels has been set in a different period in the history of Islam and a different location in the Muslim world. (A list of the first four, along with brief descriptions, is included at the bottom of this posting.) This final work of the quintet is centered in Punjab province of modern day Pakistan, though significant time is spent among Pakistani ex-patriots in London and China as well.
The narrator of the novel, Dara, is a Punjabi writer from Lahore; as the story opens, he has agreed, in re-payment for an old favor, to write the life story of a long-time friend and fellow Punjabi, nicknamed Plato. To tell Plato’s story, Dara finds that he must also tell his own and that of a circle of friends who had first come together as regulars at a café in Lahore during their student years in the 1960’s, discussing their lives, as well as the social and political situation in Pakistan and internationally. Through an unusual event Plato, at that time in his mid-thirties, became part of this group. The novel develops as a mix of Dara’s own life story, its intersection with the lives of his other friends including Plato, and what he experiences and learns as he gathers the information he needs to complete his task.
The resulting story spans the Eurasian continent, as Dara and several of his friends have emigrated out of Pakistan to Western Europe and China. It also reaches back in time to mid-1800’s China, and the history of a revolution begun by a group of Muslim Chinese and their Han sympathizers in the southern province of Yunnan against the ruling Qing dynasty (who were of the Manchu minority), that led to almost two decades of tense independence for the province. The plot itself evolves fundamentally around a series of misunderstandings --- small ones between friends and large ones between societies, in which politics and social prejudices lead to poor assumptions and decisions with often destructive long-term consequences.
Where the earlier novels in the quintet provided a window into a very specific time and place in the history of Islam, in Night of the Golden Butterfly Ali highlights the similarities of the cultural elite in modern Muslim countries to their counterparts in the non-Muslim world. Dara and his well-off friends display a mixture of worldliness and provincial attitudes, a willingness to travel, explore and understand new places contrasted with a preference for the familiar, that the author seems to want to make clear is no different from people of similar station anywhere in the world.
In contrast to the first four novels in the quintet, this latest one has a much more direct style: Governments, corrupt in the east and hegemonic in the west, along with theocratic fundamentalists, constitute the enemy; most journalists settle for and report the easy answers given by governments; and the majority of people in all countries are unwilling or unable to see past the hypocrisy and misinformation presented to them. These messages are often delivered with a hammer in this novel, compared to the much more subtle approach Ali took in the earlier ones, though the effect may be a result in part of the modern day setting, which makes the political situations and actors more familiar to the reader. But the resulting story has the feel of being built around a strong frustration with the current state of the world; given the events of particularly the last ten years, it could be considered an understandable frustration.
Similar to the rest of the quintet of novels, however, Night of the Golden Butterfly provides western readers with a look into a complex Arab world and history that can often appear in simplified stereotypes in the press and movies. The series, taken together, provides a reader with not only a set of wonderful stories, but also a deeper insight into the history of a part of the world that can often feel remote and mysterious, and realization of the shared human values and desires on both sides of this apparent cultural divide.
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The other four novels in Tariq Ali’s Islam Quintet:
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (1992): In Spain shortly after the fall in 1492 of Granada, the last part of the Iberian Peninsula to be controlled by the Muslims, a Muslim family struggles to adapt in a now Christian dominated society.
The Book of Saladin (1998): In the Near East of the late 12th century, the Muslim leader Saladin unites the Arabs in resisting the Crusades.
The Stone Woman (2001): In a gradually disintegrating Ottoman empire, in 1899, a family reflects the growing divisions of their country.
A Sultan in Palermo (2005): In Palermo, Sicily, in 1153, the Normans have re-taken the island from the Arab, but the Christian king rules as Sultan, preserving much of the Arab culture and many of its practices.
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Sunday, March 13, 2011
Career Counseling for Paul Wolfowitz from Maureen Dowd
From Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times today:
Even now, with our deficit and military groaning from two wars in Muslim countries, interventionist on the left and the right insist it's our duty to join the battle in a third Muslim country.
"It is both morally right an in America's strategic interest to enable the Libyans to fight for themselves," Wolfowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece.
You would think that a major architect of the disastrous wars and interminable occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq would have the good manners to shut up and take up horticulture. Bu the neo-con naif has no shame.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Book Review: 'Death With Interruptions' by Jose Saramago
Death With Interruptions (2005)
José Saramago (1922-)
238 pages
A simple enough premise for a story: beginning from the stroke of midnight ringing in the New Year, no one in the country dies. José Saramago bestows this gift upon the residents of an unnamed country --- and then imagines for us the result.
It would spoil the reader’s pleasure of discovery to provide even a single example of the many and often interconnected consequences of eternal life that Saramago’s friendly narrator describes in the first half of the novel. Suffice it to say, however, that it quickly becomes apparent to both political leaders and ordinary citizens that a finite life expectancy is integral to proper functioning most if not all aspects of daily life in society. Not unexpectedly there are some who adapt more readily to the new situation, and even find opportunities they can exploit to their advantage, but for most it is far from clear whether this new state of affairs is a blessing or a curse.
In the second half of the novel Saramago introduces the cause of the sudden change in the people’s fate, death herself. The narrator from this point in the story focuses on death and her occupation, and allows her to explain her decision to grant eternal life in the country in which normally she is responsible for killing those fated to die. And, when she tinkers again with her procedures, death unexpectedly meets her match, in an aging musician who is unaware of his imminent fate.
Death With Interruptions is written in much the same style as Saramago’s recent novels Blindness and Seeing, an omniscient narrator in conversation with the reader, reporting on the actions and conversations of everyday citizens, politicians and others as they cope with the unprecedented situation they face. As in these earlier books, Saramago writes all dialogue without quotation marks or even line feeds, setting off a change in speaker with simply a comma and a capital letter; the technique serves this story well, as it underscores the confusion and uncertainty of the characters by pulling the reader pell-mell through their conversations. And, in another similarity to his earlier writings, while the common people show for the most part a calm forbearance as they adapt to the sudden change in their world, most political, institutional and business leaders concern themselves more with the protection of their position and power than with the public they ostensibly serve.
Aside from the dark humor in Saramago’s view of society’s many and varied adaptations to the gift of eternal life, it is his damning description of the mediocre and self-centered leadership of the country that sticks with a reader after finishing the novel.
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Saturday, February 26, 2011
Book Review: 'One Second After' by William Forstchen
One Second After (2009)
William Forstchen (1950-)
350 pages
Although a work of fiction, One Second After is also William Forstchen’s attempt to bring more awareness to what he sees as an imminent threat that too few Americans recognize: a terrorist attack using a few atomic bombs to create an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) that destroys not only the US power generation and distribution grid, but also most electrical devices, from modern cars, to household appliances.
The basic concept (as explained in more detail in the novel, as well as in an afterward by a military expert) is that the explosion of an atomic bomb creates an EMP, which is picked up by nearby electrical equipment and, essentially, overloads their circuits, like a lightning strike. If such an explosion occurs above the atmosphere, then the atmosphere can act as an “enhancer” to the effect, and the area affected and the impact of the EMP becomes significantly larger.
The story takes place in a small town in the western hills of North Carolina, near Ashville. Early on the residents suddenly lose power; their appliances go silent, their cars --- except for older models that don not have electronics --- stop running, and even the telephone system dies. The main character in the novel, having left the military to come teach in this, his wife’s home town, soon realizes that an EMP has most likely been the cause, that much of the US has been affected, and that life will be a long time, if ever, in returning to ‘normal.’ What follows is Forstchen’s vision of how American society would slide in the aftermath of such an event, and how principled groups of people would struggle to survive and resist the loss of, as the characters mention several times, the American Dream.
And the vision presented is frighteningly realistic. Aside from the immediate impact of the loss of most all of the electrical devices we take for granted, the sudden collapse of the distribution network of food, medical supplies and all other goods dramatically reduces the sustainable population. Add to that the elimination of the complex social structure that guides --- and enforces --- civilized behavior, and the result is a chaotic struggle to survive. Forstchen tells a compelling and often moving story of good people fighting to maintain their personal principles and belief in the American way of life even as they face both personal loss as well as the potential destruction of the community they love.
The story, however, also tends to be heavy-handed in some way. For one, a wide current of American uniqueness runs through the story: the main characters repeatedly arguing that something must or must not be done a certain way not because it is the proper way for human beings to behave, but because it is the way Americans behave, and to do otherwise is to slip into communism, socialism or totalitarianism --- by implication to become like the rest of the world. One example is that of an Arab shopkeeper in the town, who plays no significant role in the overall story, is given a lengthy introduction apparently to make the point of how the town rallied around him when he was suspected by the FBI of terrorist activity: his presence in the story seems to be mainly to establish the goodness of true, small-town Americans. It is possible for a reader to believe in, as President Reagan put it, America as the “shining city upon a hill” without having it quite so unsubtly hammered home.
Perhaps more concerning is Forstchen’s intent with the story to stake out the EMP threat as the critical threat that faces the United State today. Early on, one of his characters complains: ‘Global warming, sure, spend hundreds of billions on what might have been a threat, though a lot say it wasn’t. This [the EMP threat], though, it didn’t have the hype, no big stars or politicians running around shouting about it…’ Having the main character, who is the intellectual, moral and philosophical center of the town and the novel, agree with the idea that ‘a lot’ of people saying global warming is not a threat shows how misguided support for it has been, only undermines his credibility and so, to an extent, the author’s claims about the threat of an EMP attack; at the very least it calls into question the thoughtfulness of his argument. Would the author accept that ‘a lot’ of people not seeing the EMP attack as a threat constitute proof that money would be wasted on preparing for it, or would he rather that decision be made on a scientific analysis of the facts? It is possible to claim that an EMP attack is a more immediate and even a more important danger than climate change, without misstating so blatantly the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.
Forstchen, through his characters, also implies that intellectual and budgetary effort has been wasted on protecting against other threats, such as direct nuclear attacks on cities, rather than the EMP threat. But again, the story feels too adamant in making this point. The basic premise of the story is that the distribution system of the country collapses, along with the communication systems that allow a comforting sense that the larger society (and its protections) has remained intact, and so the country descends into a chaotic fight for survival. But, in another recent novel, World Made by Hand by James Kunstler, the country follows a similar descent into chaos, in this case after nuclear bombs are exploded in two major port cities, Los Angeles and Washington DC. The destruction of the cities not only shuts down functioning government, but also leads to panicked rules being put in place that cause major disruptions in transportation of goods around the world --- most critically the distribution of oil. And without oil, there is ultimately little electricity, because oil is at the heart of the distribution of not only food and medicine, but also coal. The full impact takes somewhat longer to play out, but Kunstler ends up in the same place as Forstchen: many people die, small communities struggle to survive, larger cities devolve into chaos. The same result, but no EMP involved.
Add to this the pure fantasy in One Second After that the rest of the world somehow survives well (at least sufficiently well to be able to have the US receive aid from other countries and allow them even to take advantage of the situation to invade US territory), the world economic situation apparently not significantly affected by the 100% loss of the American market; hard to imagine when the recent recession of 2008 in the US has left the world economy deeply struggling --- a recession that is minor relative to what the US faces in the novel.
Despite these shortcomings, Forstchen’s novel presents a fascinating though disturbing vision of the effect, due to whatever cause, that the collapse of the US economic and political structure would have on all of our lives.
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The author’s website, including a page on how to prepare for an EMP attack.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Book Review: 'Girl by the Road at Night' by Dave Rabe
Girl By The Road At Night: A Novel of Vietnam (2010)
David Rabe (1940-)
230 pages
She’s a complete f**king mystery, like the weather in some far-off part of the world changing the weather where he is. Like the planets and their shifting in a horoscope, and you read it in the newspaper and say, “What the f**k?” (p. 194)Pfc Joe Whitaker, having drifted through life with little in the way of a plan, his aimlessness leading to frustration that can quickly turn into anger, finds himself a few days away from the hard certainty of deployment to Vietnam, as David Rabe’s new novel Girl By the Road At Night
When their paths finally cross, each becomes dimly aware of having found a kindred soul in the turmoil of the war that surrounds them. But mystifying cultural differences and the written and unwritten rules of the soldiers on both sides make the relationship that develops between them a struggle at every step.
Along the way, David Rabe, a Vietnam Veteran himself, provides stark images of the chaotic situation the American soldiers stepped into in Vietnam. They are able to mix freely with the civilians in the towns and cities around their bases, but certain areas remain off-limits to them, dangerous for no clear reason; they find the civilians and South Vietnamese army dependent on them, but distrustful and fearful at the same time; they walk nightly patrols guarding a camp carved out of the jungle, not allowed to arm their weapons, and not sure who might be waiting in the dark on the other side of the fence as they pass by.
Along the way, David Rabe, a Vietnam Veteran himself, provides stark images of the chaotic situation the American soldiers stepped into in Vietnam. They are able to mix freely with the civilians in the towns and cities around their bases, but certain areas remain off-limits to them, dangerous for no clear reason; they find the civilians and South Vietnamese army dependent on them, but distrustful and fearful at the same time; they walk nightly patrols guarding a camp carved out of the jungle, not allowed to arm their weapons, and not sure who might be waiting in the dark on the other side of the fence as they pass by.
And, what for me drove home the disconcerting nature of the war, the cognitive dissonance it must have caused, was the description of Whitaker’s meals at several points in the mess hall; for example, “He downs two cheeseburgers with tons of catsup and piles of fired potatoes, piles of pickles, some orange juice, and several cups of coffee” (p. 209). It is as if Whitaker has been able to pass from the jungles of South East Asia, into a diner on any street in the US, before passing a short time later back into the chaos outside. It somehow brings home too, more clearly than a description of all the equipment of war, the monumental undertaking of moving essentially a community, its people and material and structure, up out of one country and dropping it into another.
Rabe also brings references to Vietnamese cultural and literary traditions into the novel, making the story more than that of simply an American soldier in Vietnam. As Lan tries to make sense of her place in a Vietnam turned upside down by war, and her troubled relationship with Whitaker, she considers them in the light of the traditions she has grown up with, and the stories she knows from her youth. For an American reader, this can be a fascinating part of Rabe’s novel --- the reason for reading, really, to learn about some other people and their history.
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Rabe also brings references to Vietnamese cultural and literary traditions into the novel, making the story more than that of simply an American soldier in Vietnam. As Lan tries to make sense of her place in a Vietnam turned upside down by war, and her troubled relationship with Whitaker, she considers them in the light of the traditions she has grown up with, and the stories she knows from her youth. For an American reader, this can be a fascinating part of Rabe’s novel --- the reason for reading, really, to learn about some other people and their history.
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A video of Dave Rabe discussing the book.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Book Review: 'The Grand Design' by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
The Grand Design (2010)
Stephen Hawking (1942 - ) and Leonard Mlodinow (1954 -)
199 pages“Why is there a universe, and why is the universe the way it is?” (p. 123)
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow go right to the big picture in their new book The Grand Design. In a quick 200 pages they provide an overview of the development of theories to describe the natural world, from the creation stories of early civilizations, through the thought experiments of Greek scientists and philosophers, to the growth of the scientific method in the work of Newton and others, leading finally to the focus of their book, the modern theories that physicists are working on to try to unify the behavior of everything, from the very small to the very large.
The authors introduce the concept of models --- which are developed to describe observed behavior in nature --- and the role of the scientific method in evaluating these models. A physicist will study physical behavior through experimental observation and develop a model in order to describe that behavior and to predict future behavior. Over time the model will be subjected to tests that either support it as an accurate description of the physical behavior, or that demonstrate it is inadequate. When a model is contradicted by experimental observation, it must then either be enhanced, to account for the new observed behavior, or replaced by another model that more accurately reflects the behavior.
As an example, over many years Newton’s laws were found to accurately model the interaction of objects seen in nature; around the beginning of the 20th century, however, as physicists explored the behavior of particles at the atomic level, it was found that Newton’s laws no longer accurately applied. New, more accurate, models (quantum mechanics) were eventually developed to replace Newton’s laws at this tiny scale. Hawking and Mlodinow point out, however, that physicists "are still working to figure out the details of how Newton's laws emerge from the quantum domain" (p. 68). So, two models end up being used: the familiar Newton’s laws for the behavior of larger objects, and the models of quantum mechanics at the atomic scale.
The difficulty of reconciling these two different models for the interaction of objects into a single model is a part of the larger challenge described in the book of creating a single, unified ‘theory of everything’: a single theory that will describe all observed behavior between objects (that is, the four known forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force). One such theory that the authors introduce is the so-called ‘M-Theory’, which rests on string theory, and represents one of the principal paths being followed by today’s physicists in their current search to find a unified theory.
Hawking and Mlodinow in fact conclude the book by arguing that “M-theory is the only candidate for a complete theory of the universe.” (p. 181). Their claim rests on the apparent (though still to be conclusively demonstrated) characteristic of M-theory to be fully consistent with the strong anthropic principle, which “suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints not just on our environment but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves” (p. 155). Thus, the strong anthropic principle states that if the fundamental laws of nature were much different than they are observed to be, life would be impossible. (The weak anthropic principle is based on the idea that “our own knowledge of our existence imposes rules that select, out of all the possible environments, only those environments with the characteristics that allow life.,” (p. 154) for example, the distance of our planet from the sun.)
As interesting as the final chapters are on how M-Theory could be the unifying theory that describes how the universe came to exist, it is the authors extended discussion of models, and the scientific method used to develop and confirm them, that may be the most interesting aspect of their story. The authors’ discussion of the models of quantum mechanics drives home a critical point: a model is not a description of how a set of objects interact, but rather a way of describing the outcome of the interaction, and predicting the outcomes of future such interactions.
At the macro level of everyday experience it can be easy to conflate these two ideas. We throw a ball and, taking into account the forces that act on it --- friction and gravity --- we can predict where the ball will land. It is easy to begin to think that we can ‘see’ the pull of gravity on the ball, and to imagine, because we can accurately predict the effect of gravity on the ball, that we have any understanding of how gravity is actually exercising its effect on the ball. In reality, and as made clear by the authors, what we really have is the barest idea how gravity physically carries out its work; we only have a very accurate description of the result.
For me, although I have little understanding of quantum mechanics, this makes more palatable the idea that much of the models of quantum mechanics deal with probabilities. As the authors state it, “according to quantum physics … nature does not dictate the outcome of any process or experiment, even in the simplest of situations. Rather, it allows a number of different eventualities, each with a certain likelihood of being realized.” (p. 72) The idea that nature might not be deterministic is a difficult one to accept, and it is some consolation to remember that quantum mechanics is a model of the behavior observed in nature --- a very accurate model based on much testing, but still only a model. And I have the consolation of being in good company: “It is, to paraphrase Einstein, as if God throws the dice before deciding the result of every physical process. That idea bothered Einstein, and so even though he was one of the fathers of quantum physics, he later became critical of it.” (p.72)
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