Friday, November 13, 2009

1. CLIMATE CHANGE: APS TELLS DENIERS TO COOL OFF.

Two years ago the elected council of the American Physical Society adopted a strongly worded statement calling for reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases. The statement called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible," which is about as far as you can go in that direction. There are, however, eminent physicists who do not agree. They petitioned the Council for a reconsideration of its statement. APS president Cherry Murray appointed an ad hoc committee, chaired by Dan Kleppner, to consider whether the statement needed to be revisited. The council overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to replace the statement with one favored by those who deny anthropogenic climate change, but the society's Panel On Public Affairs will review it for "possible improvements."

2. EDITORIAL: WHAT HAS THE SPACE PROGRAM SHOWN US?

There is no place else to go. If global warming is real and we're the cause, we need to mend our ways. We are not going to clean up the Earth's atmosphere by burying carbon. There are just two things we can do: make fewer people, and use energy more efficiently. The first seems to be mostly a human rights problem; the second falls squarely on our shoulders, but it won't help if the fertility rate remains high. But what if carbon in the atmosphere is not a problem as the deniers insist? We ought to promote efficiency anyway, if only for the sake of future generations.

3. BRAIN CANCER: OF COURSE CELL PHONES ARE DANGEROUS!

Cell phones may lead to neural atrophy as mindless chatter is substituted for coherent information, but they don't cause brain cancer. This week, however, a doctoral thesis at a university in Sweden suggested that cell phones are linked to some brain cancers. It went around the world in Science Daily on Wednesday. This imaginary link is "discovered" about every five years or so. Photons induce cancer by the photoelectric effect, breaking chemical bonds and creating mutant strands of DNA. In 2001, I was invited to write an editorial on cell phone hazards for the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI, Vol. 93, Feb 7, 2001, p. 166). I pointed out that the photoelectric effect would require photon energies at the extreme blue end of the visible spectrum, which is why it's the ultraviolet rays in sunlight that cause skin cancer. Microwave photons are about 10,000 times less energetic. In a classic 2001 op-ed, LBL physicist Robert Cahn observed that Albert Einstein discovered in 1905 that microwaves couldn't cause cancer. The cell phone scare was launched in 1993 on the Larry King Live Show, which is not peer reviewed. It almost strangled the infant cell-phone industry in its crib, but researchers found nothing.

4. LHC: IS PARANOIA BECOMING THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE AT CERN?

Ten days ago as CERN prepared for the turn on the giant collider their work was interrupted by dangerous overheating in sector 81. A bit of a baguette, perhaps dropped by a passing bird, fell into an electrical substation on the surface far above. Why would a bird do this? Or was it a bird? Could it be, as we reported a month ago, that God just doesn't like the Higgs? http://bobpark.umd.edu/WN09/wn101509.html Or has the staggering responsibility of searching for the God particle finally driven some physicists at CERN over the edge?

Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.