E = MC2 may be the best-known principle of physics, but close behind is the rule that physicists must, like Albert Einstein, have a mustache -- and Richard A. Muller is no exception.
Richard A. Muller.
Facial hair earns no mention in his new book, Physics for Future Presidents, but it's an illuminating read nonetheless. In it, Muller argues persuasively that science, and physics in particular, must return to the White House. The UC-Berkeley professor, whose physics class for non-majors was recently voted the best course at the university, says many challenges facing the country -- like how to confront global warming and improve energy efficiency -- are, at heart, scientific issues. The problem, he says, is that objective, nonpartisan science hasn't had a place in the Oval Office for some time.
"It was different under Kennedy," Muller says. "Glenn Seaborg, the great scientist from Berkeley, and John Kennedy were on a first-name basis. ... The president really knew what was going on, what was possible in science and engineering. We have to bring that back."
In the current race for president, scientific issues have not been front and center, but John McCain and Barack Obama have both answered a set of questions about how they would address a number of science-related issues.
Grist caught up with Muller by phone to discuss the presidential race and his new book.
What should a President McCain or Obama know about global warming?
Physics for Future Presidents, by Richard A. Muller.
The bottom line is that there is a consensus -- the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] -- and the president needs to know what the IPCC says. Second, they say that most of the warming of the last 50 years is probably due to humans. You need to know that this is from carbon dioxide, and you need to understand which technologies can reduce this and which can't. Roughly 1 degree Fahrenheit of global warming has taken place; we're responsible for one quarter of it. If we cut back so we don't cause any more, global warming will be delayed by three years and keep on going up. And now the developing world is producing most of the carbon dioxide.
[Y]ou need to know how much power you can get in a solar cell, how much power you can get from wind. There are technologies called clean coal, which both candidates have favored. You have to recognize that oil is now considered dangerous and therefore we need to reevaluate some of the technologies that we once dismissed because they were [also seen as] dangerous, like nuclear. We should reevaluate [nuclear energy] and see if it is more or less dangerous than coal. Things like solar and wind may get a lot cheaper, but they aren't cheap enough yet for countries like China, so they are not an immediate solution.
Is it more important to have global warming solutions that are affordable for China and India than to have the United States take the lead on global warming?
Yes, absolutely. We can be idealistic, but as soon as the price of oil goes up, suddenly everybody wants to drill offshore and send pipelines up to [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge]. The same thing is true in China. [If w]e say, "You should cut back for the good of the world," they'll be thinking, "You want me to cut back on a degree or two of global warming when my economy is exploding like yours did 100 years ago?" I'm no expert on economic policy, but I think we have to pay for [China's] clean coal. I can't imagine that they will slow down their economy by putting in the expensive clean-coal plants when they can build two [non-clean] plants instead.
Some say clean coal will be neither clean nor affordable. Can you explain your support for it?
The affordable [factor]'s a big issue. The issue is, is clean coal more affordable than solar? Solar is pretty expensive too, and it's not clean either. You've got to build the cells -- that uses carbon dioxide. I think we need everything. We need a rainbow of different technologies: conservation, solar, wind, better transmission, clean coal, nuclear, better automobiles.
Your book says that batteries for electric cars are expensive and don't hold as much energy as gasoline does, and you aren't a fan of corn-based ethanol. What about other alternative fuels?
There's a future for car batteries, but that depends on the development of battery technology that is not in the marketplace yet. Biofuels in general are a very good idea. The idea of taking something like miscanthus or switchgrass and turning that into a carbon-neutral fuel that can be used in automobiles is a very important development.
The introduction to your book offers a quote that's often wrongly attributed to Mark Twain: "The trouble with most folks isn't their ignorance; it's knowin' so many things that ain't so." What's one commonly held notion about energy that people need to unlearn?
One of them is that solar power is so spread out that it can never compete with fossil fuels. The fact is, there's a gigawatt of solar power in a square kilometer. Solar really does have a future.
Do you consider yourself an environmentalist?
Oh yes. [Laughs.] In fact, back in the early '80s, I resigned from the Sierra Club over the issue of global warming. At that time, they were opposing nuclear power. What I wrote them in my letter of resignation was that, if you oppose nuclear power, the U.S. will become much more heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and that this is a pollutant to the atmosphere that is very likely to lead to global warming.
In an interview on NPR, you talked about ANWR's natural gas, the oil off of California's coast, and the Canada oil sands. How does the recent chant of "drill, baby, drill" resonate with you?
The whole idea of "drill, baby, drill" is not that you would actually get huge amounts of fossil fuel that way, but that you get enough so that we're no longer at capacity -- some excess capacity and the oil prices will drop. And I think that's probably true.
When we're talking about offshore oil, we're really talking about energy independence and not the global warming issue. We need, in our own minds, to always be clear about this. You will find politicians, especially the Republicans, who are deeply concerned about energy independence; they say we're financing the terrorists [with our oil dollars]. And you'll find people, Democrats, who are really more concerned about global warming.
Is it possible for science to remain separate from politics?
It absolutely has to be. Yes. And when it isn't, then science loses the credibility, and that means the politicians lose science. I try to be nonpartisan. I tend to become a little bit of an advocate on nuclear, just because I have a long history of that -- but on everything else, I try to tell the physics.
[The American people] need to know that offshore drilling addresses oil independence but not global warming. These are the physics issues. And the policy [issues] -- is it more important for us to educate the children of the United States with this money? is it more important for us to send this money to China to make their coal clean? -- I try to stay away from that.
What's your take on NASA climate scientist James Hansen?
Hansen I've known for many years. He's a very good climate scientist, but he's decided to do the politics. I feel that he's doing some cherry-picking of his own [when it comes to the science]. At that point, he's not really being a scientist. At that point, you're being a lawyer. He's being an effective advocate for his side, but in the process of doing that he's no longer a neutral party and he's no longer giving both sides of the issues.
Do McCain and Obama have a strong grasp of physics?
You really cannot tell. Part of the reason is that they are hesitant to speak publicly on these issues because the public understanding is so poor on these subjects that if they say anything, people will think they're wrong. I suspect both Obama and McCain are in favor of nuclear reactors. I think they both understand that these things are environmentally preferable to coal. They all agree on renewables and energy independence, but when you get them down to particulars they will talk around the issues. As a result, I can't tell how deep their knowledge really is. My guess is it's not terribly deep.
You once unfavorably compared George Bush's push for hydrogen-powered cars to JFK's more realistic goal of putting a man on the moon. How can the next president ensure he doesn't set impractical scientific goals?
Part of it is to learn some of the science themselves. Another thing is to recognize that there is such a thing as nonpartisan science. I'd like to see the president every month introduce a fireside chat in which nonpartisan science is produced. We need to have more science close to the White House. You can't just have a president who, when he has a science question, calls up a science adviser. You have to have a science adviser who can somehow reach the president. And that's what we haven't had under Democrats or Republicans for a long time.
I know you drive a Prius. What else are you doing to reduce your carbon emissions?
My house is lit by compact fluorescent light bulbs. Let me just tell you, though: Suppose I drove an SUV and lit my house with the worst kind of light -- I could still be an environmentalist. Al Gore flies around in a jet plane -- absolutely fine with me. The important thing is not getting Al Gore out of his jet plane; the important thing is solving the world's problem. What we really need are policies around the world that address the problem, not feel-good measures. If [Al Gore] reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion -- which he does, but he's very effective at it -- then let him fly any plane he wants.
Obama’s environmental adviser talks coal and mountaintop mining
Comments View as Flat
Earl Killian Posted 12:50 am
06 Oct 2008
sad when a Professor peddles bad information
First, not all solar is PV, as in the answer given. Second, the lifecycle emissions of PV and Coal+CCS have both been estimated. One journal article estimates PV is 19-59 g CO2e/kWh, Coal+CCS is 255-442. That is an order of magnitude difference. You would think a Professor that has pretensions of advising Presidents would know this sort of thing before implying that these are on par because building PV produces CO2.
Second, the California Public Utilities Commission asked E3 to study emissions and costs of new power generation for California. The levelized busbar cost per MWh were $89.10 for wind, $93.82 for Gas CCCT, $101.82 for Geothermal, $105.54 for Coal ST, $126.53 for Concentrated Solar Power, $153.16 for Nuclear, and $173.17 for Coal IGCC+CCS. In other words, Solar is cheaper than Coal+CCS. But you wouldn't know that from Professor Muller's answer.
This is an improvement over the misinformation Professor Muller writes in his book, but it is still not accurate. First, in his book Professor Muller slams batteries for having low Wh/kg compared to gasoline, but practical electric cars were built six years and sold to the public using 1990s NiMH battery technology with 61 Wh/kg. Despite the low energy density, the 2002 Toyota RAV4-EV had 4.9 times the energy efficiency of the gasoline version (2002 RAV4 2WD Automatic). The Lithium-Ion batteries for electric cars in the marketplace today are twice to three times that Wh/kg. These batteries have lifetimes that in many cases are so long that the issue becomes will we have to invent ways to move them from our old vehicles to our new ones.
How does Professor Muller's opinion compare to the estimates of the US DOE EIA? They write,
It seems to me that Professor Muller is giving a political answer, not a scientific one.
Professor Muller does plenty of cherry-picking in his book. Having read both Muller's and Hansen's work, I would say that Hansen's is a lot more professional.
You can find more detail on Professor Muller's cherry-picking at http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/9/15/131736/938 and http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/9/15/133219/223
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mihan Posted 3:30 am
06 Oct 2008
Holly,
Occasionally, physicists are female. Usually, these physicists do not have 'staches.
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jeffgreen11 Posted 4:42 am
06 Oct 2008
This guy is slightly out of touch
(The affordable [factor]'s a big issue. The issue is, is clean coal more affordable than solar? Solar is pretty expensive too, and it's not clean either. You've got to build the cells -- that uses carbon dioxide. I think we need everything. We need a rainbow of different technologies: conservation, solar, wind, better transmission, clean coal, nuclear, better automobiles.)
I disagree with Dr Mueller's conslusion about solar. Once solar is large enough it can manufacture off its own energy.
(There's a future for car batteries, but that depends on the development of battery technology that is not in the marketplace yet.)
This guy must be living under a rock. Toyota Prius has proven itself with the battery technology.
(if you oppose nuclear power, the U.S. will become much more heavily dependent on fossil fuels,)
How about a little foresight here. Many phd's have come up with plans to run the country with solar and wind.
Interesting that he is a proponent of nuclear. Solar electricity is on same par of cost as nuclear. I find this guy out of touch with the main stream of renewable energy.
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VangelV Posted 9:11 am
07 Oct 2008
Bending the truth...
Muller is not much better than Hansen because he has the same problem with the truth that Hansen does.
Why not simply tell the truth as it is instead of accepting people like Gore and Hansen lying so that they can advance some good intentions? How many people will we let die of malaria before we admit that getting rid of DDT spaying inside African residences as a horrible idea? How many people will we try to condemn to poverty because we are pushing the false idea that CO2 emissions are driving global temperatures? When will we admit that we have not seen any warming in the past decade and that the imagined trend ended when the PDO flipped into its negative phase and solar activity diminished after hundreds of years of increases that brought it to a millennial high? Shouldn't rational people start to look at things as they are instead of theories that imagine a world that diverges from observed reality?
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In the belly Posted 9:27 am
07 Oct 2008
another Muller mistatement
Wind turbine installed capacity is exploding in China (if only they could get them hooked up to the grid!).
Apparently it is cheap enough for China.
With someone like Muller advising the next president we'll continue to be in the same boat we are now--watching other countries manufacture and export renewable technologies to us.
And I will second the praise of Jim Hansen. I actually just saw him speak today at the Geological Society of America Joint Meeting. The case for 350ppm as the target for "safe" atmospheric CO2 concentration and the need to build no more non-CCS coal plants was compelling, and built on clear scientific evidence. For Muller--shilling his book purporting to advocate to the next president--to belittle someone for being an advocate looks like petty jealousy to me.
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VangelV Posted 9:52 am
07 Oct 2008
The problem with solar...
Unless you live under a rock you have to know that solar energy is still way too expensive and is unlikely to make economic sense for at least another decade. That is simply not the case with nuclear, which is very safe and very cheap. What we need is for governments to get out of the way and to let people who want to make a few bucks invest their own capital into solutions. If that happens we will get a combination of alternative sources that will help us solve the crisis that will come in a post peak oil world.
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In the belly Posted 9:57 am
07 Oct 2008
Jim Hansen on Target Atmospheric CO2
James Hansen's October 7 2008 talk at the GSA Joint Meeting can be found here.
Warning: deniers may find it long and full of actual science.
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VangelV Posted 10:44 am
07 Oct 2008
Hansen...
Actually, Hansen seems to have a big problem with the truth and has to resort to cherry picking.
A perfect example are the graph that show CO2 concentrations and temperature. They actually show that temperature leads CO2 levels and as such CO2 can't be the cause of temperature trends.
Another example is the whole forcing issue. This is important because most scientists, including the alarmists, agree that the direct warming from CO2 would be between 0.3 and 1.0 degrees Celsius for a doubling in the CO2 levels. (The extremists' case comes from the climate sensitivity.)
If the CO2 warming was the only factor we would expect that man induces warming would top out at less than 1C, which is what we have seen since the end of the Little Ice Age. Hansen does not and cannot claim that such warming could justify the measures that he and his political master are calling for so he argues that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks.
The problem for Hansen and company is that direct observations do not support the claims of positive feedbacks. We have about a century of measurements for CO2 and temperature that do not support any claim for high positive feedbacks. In fact, the implication is no feedback that can be attributed to CO2 increases.
And Hansen still has trouble explaining why we have not had any warming in ten years even though CO2 levels have increased or why we should believe climate models that cannot make adequate use of such things as changes in cloud cover or can't predict changes ten years out.
You can dance and posture all that you want but the science is certainly against man made warming due to CO2 emissions.
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saluki Posted 3:03 pm
07 Oct 2008
Hansen's folly
"The problem for Hansen and company is that direct observations do not support the claims of positive feedbacks."
To get those feedbacks Hansen requires that the extra heat produced by CO2 forcing put more moisture in the air and that the extra moisture then gives us more greenhouse effect. But the problem is that there is no evidence that moisture in the air is increasing. If anything it seems to be decreasing.
"And Hansen still has trouble explaining why we have not had any warming in ten years"
This is not a problem for Hansen. He simply "adjusts" his GISS temp record so that he does get warming, and he ignores the fact that he is rapidly diverging from the other major global temperature records like HadCrut3, RSS, and UAH.
Here:
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/05/divergence- ...
And here is a more recent plot of the past 11 years, but excluding Hansen's fraudulent record.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/06/11-year-tem ...
And here is one with a linear regression trend line drawn through the solar cycles for the last 100 years.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/07/20th-centur ...
Then, of course we have Hansen testifying to legislators about 25 meters of sea level rise. But the University of Colorado only shows a trend that would give us 13 inches in the next 100 years. The IPCC only predicts 19 inches in the next 100 years. And even these may turn out to be garbage, since there has been zero sea level rise in the last 3 years.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/06/university- ...
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Earl Killian Posted 12:44 am
08 Oct 2008
The problem with solar...
Your comment suggests you are lumping the hundreds of kinds of solar together. There is PV, at least 4 kinds of CSP, many sorts of CPV, CSP+TES, and so on. Some are quite cost-effective, and certainly less expensive than nuclear. Get out and look at the facts on Stirling Energy Systems, Ausra, BrightSource, SkyFuel, Sungri, CoolEarthSolar, etc. etc. etc.
Oh, now I see you're just a run-of-the-mill denier. No wonder you have trouble with facts.
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Earl Killian Posted 12:49 am
08 Oct 2008
CO2 leads and lags
You are missing the simple and important notion of positive feedback. You presume that the mechanism is one or the other rather than both. In the paleoclimate record it is clear that greenhouse gases can drive temperature (e.g. this is a leading hypothesis for the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum), and it is likewise fairly clear that temperature can drive CO2. This bidirectional effect is the result of positive feedback: temperature affects CO2, and CO2 affects temperature with the net result that a small change in either results in a larger total change (an amplification).
See http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm for more information.
The rest of your comment is outright false.
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VangelV Posted 5:20 am
08 Oct 2008
CO2 leads and lags
Sorry but when you get a lag of 800 years or so it is hard to argue that the effect is the cause. The bottom line is that we already have a century of observations regarding CO2 and temperature and there is no evidence of any positive feedbacks due to CO2. It is also clear that the factor that is mostly correlated to temperature over the last century is the phase of the AMO. We did have a strong cooling trend from 1945 to 1975 when the PDO was in its cool phase and scientists were talking about the next ice age. When it went positive they started to talk about warming.
Sorry but the real science is against the AGW position and no amount of scrambling will overcome the lack of credibility of the, 'man is responsible for warming,' crowd. As I pointed out above, that has now changed into 'man is responsible for climate change.'
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VangelV Posted 5:21 am
08 Oct 2008
OOPS..
I meant to write PDO, not the AMO in the posting above.
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Earl Killian Posted 1:11 am
10 Oct 2008
CO2 leads and lags
You're completely missing the point.
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VangelV Posted 10:54 pm
12 Oct 2008
Missing the point...
No. The point is clear. When the temperature trend change leads the change in CO2 concentrations you can't make the claim that CO2 is responsible for past changes in temperatures as Gore and Hansen have. Please note that we have dropped the term global warming for climate change. I guess that is what happens when the temperature trend has diverged from what the models have been predicting.
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