Archived Newsletters

April 1994 Newsletter 

Volume 23, Number 2 Apr 1994

In This Issue

Letters

Articles

News

Comment

Improving Courtroom Presentations of Scientific Evidence

Edward Gerjuoy (October 1993) misquoted me. In speaking of the Science Court he quotes me as asserting that the procedure would "assuredly" lead to the "correct" scientific facts. I have never made such an absurd claim. In the report of the Task Force (1) we said: "We have no illusions that this procedure will arrive at the truth..." On the basis of this misquotation, Gerjuoy dismisses the Science Court as "radical."

Current opinions on, and experience with, scientific adversary procedures for dealing with factual scientific disputes relevant to public policy can be found in the Spring 1993 issue of Risk (2).

Arthur KantrowitzDartmouth College4 Downing RoadHanover, New Hampshire 03755

  1. Science Vol. 193, p. 654 (1976).2. Risk--Issues in Health and Safety Vol. 4, No. 2,  Franklin Pierce Law Center, Concord, New Hampshire 03301

Response:

The Task Force Report that Kantrowitz himself cites states (1): The basic mechanism proposed here is an adversary hearing, open to the public...in which expert proponents of the opposing scientific positions argue their cases before a panel of scientific judges....After the evidence has been presented...the panel of judges will prepare a report on the dispute....The Science Court will be strictly limited to providing the best available judgments about matters of scientific fact.

The language in my paper to which Kantrowitz objects states:

Whenever the parties to a legal dispute could not agree on the correct scientific facts, the dispute was to be referred to the Science Court for determination of those "correct" facts via open adversarial hearings, conducted by scientists in front of a scientific jury. With this referral procedure, according to Kantrowitz, the laymen jurors in the original dispute assuredly would get the correct scientific facts...

Freshly reviewing these two quotations, I do not think my language presents Kantrowitz's thesis unfairly, or that I can be said to have misquoted him. I was pressed for space and had to condense Kantrowitz's descriptions of the Science Court's operations into a very few lines. I therefore used the common shorthand device of putting "correct" within quotation marks to signify my doubts that the Science Court's determinations about "matters of scientific fact" necessarily would be truly correct. Kantrowitz himself has used the same device in a paper (2) that gave the following restatement of the Task Force language Kantrowitz quotes: "We have no illusions that this procedure will arrive at the 'truth,'..." Nevertheless, if my words could be taken to imply that I thought Kantrowitz believed the Science Court assuredly would arrive at the truly correct facts, then I do owe Kantrowitz an apology. That implication is unfair to Kantrowitz and was not my intention.

On the other hand, I stand by and do not apologize even conditionally for the language in my paper that stated the Science Court (and other proposals I discussed) are "even more radical" than the proposal to abolish jury trials and: "...have a fundamental flaw which, irrespective of their merits, makes their wide adoption unlikely. Such proposals simply represent too radical a departure from traditional trial procedures."

Edward Gerjuoy

  1. Science, 193, 653 (1976)2. A. Kantrowitz, Jurimetrics Journal 28, 332 (Summer 1987).

Perception of Risk and the Future of Nuclear Power

Regarding Paul Slovic's article (January 1994): Even if nuclear power were demonstrably safe, the problem of trust would still remain. However reluctant we are to face it, problems symptomatic of overpopulation impact almost all of us daily, and abundant energy would almost certainly exacerbate that problem. To gain the trust of the "skeptical elite" these problems must be discussed and dealt with effectively. Unfortunately the public does not understand that these problems must be considered as parts of an entire closely coupled system. To see physicists still pinning their hopes on "competent government regulation" is frankly depressing.

Elmer Eisner
Rice Univ

The Environmental Paradigm

Recently there have been a number of articles by scientists employing risk analysis and attacking "environmental extremists." Although it is clearly necessary to analyze environmental problems scientifically, there may be serious difficulties with the usual approach of risk analysis.

Usually the result of a cost-benefit analysis is that the cost of some act to protect the environment is greater than the benefit. Again and again the risk analyzers tell us to accept the risk either because it is small or uncertain or because it would be costly to attack. Following these guidelines often results in a steady deterioration of the environment. As a consequence the world we leave to our children is not the world we wanted to leave them. The "scientific" analysis leads us where we do not want to go.

Thomus Kuhn has provided an interesting way to understand what is wrong with the standard analysis. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn defines the usual science activities as "normal science" based on an established set of concepts, or paradigms. Normal scientists are extremely productive because they use well-established methods or (to bring Kuhn up-to-date) standard software. However, occasionally a time arrives when it is evident that normal science is giving the wrong answer.

The environmental movement has provided us with a new paradigm that can lead us to the right answers and to the future that we desire. The new paradigm requires looking at planet Earth as a whole with its limited resources and its limited tolerance of modern civilization's environmental insults. The new paradigm requires considering fundamental institutional changes to preserve planet Earth.

The cost-benefit analysis involves a perturbation approach. One considers a small change in a limited number of parameters (such as limits on certain pollutants) and compares the change in benefits and costs. Most often one finds that the present situation is a local minimum; that is, the perturbation costs more than the value of the benefits. Nevertheless with time the height of that local minimum often keeps increasing. The desired global minimum far below this rising local minimum is never reached by the perturbation methods of normal science.

As an oversimplified example: A major cost of closing a polluting factory may be a large number of unemployed workers. However, if the government had an institutional framework for hiring such workers for environmental projects, the cost would be transferred into a benefit.

It needs to be recognized that the environmental paradigm is the basis for a truly scientific approach and that good science does not mean the "normal science" of risk analysis.

Lincoln Wolfenstein
University Professor of Physics
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213-3890

Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Award

William Lanouette

Leo Szilard is not a name you hear around most households. It isn't even a name you hear much around most science labs or classrooms. But when a complete history of 20th Century science is finally written, I suspect that Szilard's name will drive the indexers crazy--because it will seem to pop up everywhere.

Throughout a busy life that began in Budapest, Hungary, in 1898 and ended in La Jolla, California, in 1964, Leo Szilard managed to think up a surprising number of today's familiar inventions and institutions.

Szilard applied the concept of entropy to information, stating the basis of modern information theory in 1922; he thought up, with physicist Dennis Gabor, the mechanism for an electron microscope in 1927; he filed seven joint patents with his mentor and friend, Albert Einstein, in the 1920s for the first electromagnetic pump; he thought up and patented a linear accelerator in 1928, about the time that Rolf Wideroe first envisioned his successful invention; he patented a cyclotron in 1929, a year before Ernest Lawrence built his first machine at Berkeley; and in 1934 he devised the Szilard-Chalmers Effect for isotope separation.

In the 1940s and 50s, Szilard thought up, named, and sketched out plans for the breeder nuclear reactor. He invented the Chemostat for maintaining bacteria in a steady state; he pioneered biological studies for birth control; and he urged on the French biologists Monod and Jacob the idea of anti-repression in human immune systems, an explanation they first resisted but later tested--and for their breakthrough won a Nobel Prize. In 1960, Szilard devised radiation therapy that would cure him of bladder cancer, but he also invented a painless suicide machine--just in case.

In politics, Szilard was a founding participant of the Pugwash Conferences of Science and Word Affairs, which since 1957 have brought together the experts directly involved in the nuclear arms race and its control. At a private meeting in 1960, Szilard gained Soviet Premier Khrushchev's personal assent to the Moscow-Washington hotline. In 1962, here in Washington, Szilard founded the first political-action committee for arms control, the Council for a Livable World--an institution still thriving today.

Szilard loved to think up inventions, but then dropped them as his insatiable curiosity led to other topics. As a result, Szilard is best remembered today for three things: a patent, a letter, and a political satire.

His 1934 patent for the nuclear chain reaction led him to co-design, with Enrico Fermi, the world's first nuclear reactor. The reactor went critical at the University of Chicago in 1942, but when the US patent for it was issued publicly in 1955 it was to "E. Fermi, et al." The "et al" was Szilard.

The letter, written in 1939 to President Franklin Roosevelt, warned about German A-bomb research and urged a similar American effort. This letter led to the Manhattan Project, but is best know because it was signed by Albert Einstein. Later, Einstein said he "really only acted as a mail box" for Szilard. Indeed, Einstein signed two more of Szilard's letters to Roosevelt before World War II ended: one in 1940 to urge more research, and one in 1945 to introduce Szilard's ideas about post-war control of the A-bomb.

The 1940 letter dislodged some federal money for Fermi and Szilard to build exponential piles at Columbia University. The 1945 letter failed to reach FDR before his death, but Szilard was undeterred, went to the White House, and was sent by President Truman to meet his new Secretary of State. When nothing came of that, Szilard drafted the international-control sections of the Franck Report on future uses of the A-bomb, and he circulated a scientists' petition to Truman arguing for a demonstration of the A-bomb and against its use on Japanese cities.

After the war, Szilard led his scientific colleagues in their successful lobbying for civilian control of atomic energy, and he spent the rest of his life working on molecular biology and arms control. He died in 1964 at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, a research center of his design that was to combine science and social issues.

Szilard's most memorable piece of political satire was "The Voice of the Dolphins," a "history" he wrote in 1960 to describe how, by the late 1980s, the US and USSR would finally reverse the nuclear arms race.

It was fitting that the APS should name its award for combining science and society after Leo Szilard. When Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov received the award in 1983, he said that Szilard's devotion to public service "sprang from his innate, acute feeling of personal responsibility for the fate of mankind on our planet, and for the possible consequences of science's great victories." American physicist John Gibbons, former director of the Office of Technology Assessment and now President Clinton's science advisor, said when he received the award last year that "Szilard should be the Patron Saint of OTA" because of his many efforts to "clarify what the real issues were."

As you see, Szilard is most remembered for inventions that are not just scientific, but which apply science to social and political ends. As with Szilard, Kidder and Woodruff are not names you hear around most households. But around the labs where they have worked --and in the halls of government where their voices have been heard, and heeded--they are living legends.

An Insider's Perspective: Grappling with Change at TRW

Jeff Newman

When the Cold War came to a close, I was an electronics engineer for a Los Angeles defense firm. For many of us in the defense industry this was a time of mixed emotions. On one hand, we felt had successfully thwarted the Soviet threat, making the world a safer place. However, with this victory came an uncertainty about the future of our jobs. Contrary to what those on the outside might think, the post-Cold-War era was received with fear and avoidance by most of my fellow workers. During my seven years working in the defense sector of TRW (an aerospace and automotive conglomerate) I became aware of the challenges that would face the defense industry in times of peace. Realizing that there were few mechanisms for our company to address the necessary changes, I began to explore the potential for conversion. I played a role in TRW's attempt to identify products and services for new lines of business, especially in the area of environmental monitoring technologies. To help steer TRW towards conversion, I initiated an ad hoc group called The Renaissance Committee to identify conversion problems and to establish a support network for changes within the firm. Our aim was to prepare for the rebirth of TRW as it shifted from a technology-driven monopsony to a demand-driven business. I later presented the group's ideas to a variety of people in upper management, but unfortunately I was laid off in Spring of 1992 before most of our ideas were adequately pursued.

Internal Impediments
One fundamental problem at TRW was that the perceived value of a technology was not based on market-driven criteria. The management as a whole did not examine the demand-side opportunities for our technologies, and the company lacked a detailed strategic plan for adapting to the changing external and internal environment. At TRW, the ability to license or market cutting edge technology into the commercial arena was never a priority because it had not been a concern of the military "customer." In some cases, allocating time toward assessing commercial applications was viewed as a distraction from the purpose of the organization and a drain on the limited time of the technologists. Unless a technology was relevant to a particular contract, its business value was not pursued. This was true even in microelectronics, one of our strengths. In contrast, the Japanese have already targeted specific products for emerging technologies.

Another problem was the inconsistency between the stated objectives and the final decisions of management at the highest level. I witnessed one attempt at commercialization go awry, when a project based on a technology showing commercial promise was fully funded by upper management, only to be subsequently disabled by the highest echelon of management. The motivation for cancelling the project was to limit the visibility of potential failure, which is always a possibility when entering a new market.

The majority view from upper management at TRW was one of avoidance and denial. The radical changes we were experiencing were seen as just part of the normal business cycle. The view that the company could "ride out the storm" and consolidate its assets around its core competencies was shared by both upper management and my fellow line engineers. Many of my colleagues allowed themselves to get caught in the middle. They worked longer and harder, without extra pay, under the impression that they could save their jobs. Sadly, their real need was to begin a personal process of transition, since many of them were and are slated for lay off.

Exploring the Potential for Conversion
To allow for greater employee input in decision-making, TRW set up the NOVA Program--a panel of managers available to assist in the development of new lines of business. However, little came of this program because without a comprehensive plan, an employee could only push his or her ideas so far. So to encourage what I called "applied brainstorming," I started the Renaissance Committee. I recruited a team composed of a dozen people from management, marketing, engineering and strategic planning. We shared a common belief that improving the company was of greater importance than merely protecting our jobs, and that our potential could be brought out and our jobs enriched by meeting the challenges presented by conversion. We all understood that, since the committee was initiated with neither the sanction or recognition of management, we would have to carry out its work on our own time. We wanted to alter the internal environment and enable a change in the corporate culture.

One of our first tasks was to identify those in upper management who shared our assumption that the new business environment demanded radical, not just evolutionary, change. There was a distinct possibility that the "core" business might disappear and/or be replaced. We were also looking for the support of leaders who could influence those who clung to the values and perspectives of the status quo. Two Vice Presidents were supportive of our ideas, but we were unable to convince others in upper management to provide us with funding before I was let go due to lack of funding. When that occurred, the Renaissance Committee was abandoned.

An Internal Technology Audit
Before being laid off, I made a presentation to a Vice President in the NOVA Program about the need for an internal technology audit to bring marketable products and services to the surface, and to identify the appropriate personnel to work on these ideas. My idea was met with enthusiasm and was made viable through the funding of three employees to help out part-time. I felt TRW needed a mechanism to disseminate and coordinate information about company personnel, ideas relevant to new products and services, and appropriate market segments. To this end I created an interactive database, called the Enterprise Exchange, which enabled personnel in diverse disciplines and geographical locations to discover each other and collaborate on the basis of common business interests. The database was completed at a pilot level, but was never fully implemented.

Restructuring the Company Bureaucracy
The lesson learned by me and my colleagues on the Renaissance Committee was that for large defense corporations to continue to exist in a changed world, it is necessary to examine the requisites for entering new markets as the old military market shrinks. To gain an understanding of its strengths, weaknesses and abilities to adapt, we educated ourselves about the history of the company. TRW's management and marketing structures had been set up to accommodate a single buyer (the U.S. government) and that buyer's peculiar purchasing requirements. Our corporate culture would have to evolve to meet the challenges of a changing business environment.

We realized there were several requisites to successful marketing of new products. Avenues for greater dialogue between management and informed employees must be a priority. The corporation must provide its technologists with data about appropriate markets, so they could plan accordingly. Through this increased participation in decision making, employees are better able to contribute information and ideas from their own perspective. This new viewpoint would help management understand the problems and potential already existing within the company. We saw the beginnings of this at TRW.

Further, the company itself must understand the match between the external market needs and the internal corporate resources and designs, as well as the undiscovered synergies between existing and planned technologies and services. To enable this, industry CEOs should tie a significant portion of incentive raises for the top echelon of management to creating at least one new product or service for the private or civilian government sector every two to three years.

Concluding Thoughts
In my seven years at TRW, I witnessed the company succeed in doing what it was set up to do, but fail to develop a plan for adjusting to a changing world. There was neither the will nor the understanding among enough of the upper management to move safely into new markets. Unless the responsible parties in big defense companies and the federal administration initiate large-scale changes, there will be no potential for conversion. Instead, the corporations will have to consolidate, massive layoffs will continue, and we as a nation will lose an opportunity to reinvigorate our technological infrastructure. Although the defense industry has the talent and technology to greatly contribute to society, my experience shows that presently both top management and government pose major obstacles to positive and sustainable change.

The author is at 2000 Mathews Avenue #5, Redondo Beach, CA 90278. He published an article similar to this article in Positive Alternatives, Fall 1992, Center for Economic Conversion, Palo Alto, CA.

Promoting Energy Efficiency in the Utility Sector through Coordinated Regulations and Incentives

David Goldstein

Energy policy initiatives, primarily at the state level, have achieved significant successes over the past fifteen years. These successes lead us to a better knowledge of what the potential impact of new and existing technologies for energy efficiency and renewable energy can be, and how effective policies have been in securing energy goals.

I will begin by reviewing the potentials for energy efficiency in the utility sector, focusing on end-use efficiency measures. Then I will discuss how changes in the incentive structure faced by utilities and by their customers are already allowing great strides to be made towards achieving these efficiency potentials. Finally, I will discuss the implications of these policies and programs for research and new product development.

Potentials for End-use Efficiency
Up until the mid-1970s, conventional wisdom held that energy demand must grow in proportion to economic production (gross domestic product or GDP). It also held that electricity demand grows faster than GDP, typically at 7% per year for the United States. Contemporaneous studies pointed out that such coupling was not necessary, that policies designed to increase efficiency, along with higher energy prices, would lead to a decoupling of energy (and electricity) with GDP.

This decoupling began to occur nationally for total energy after 1973. As shown in Figure I, energy per unit economic production declined about 25% over the following fifteen years. Even greater success was achieved in states that tried to develop affirmative energy policies. The figure also shows that in California, which adopted strong policies to reduce utility sector energy use, overall energy intensity went down faster than the rest of the United States, despite already starting at a lower level.

Figure II illustrates electricity intensity in California compared to the rest of the United States: through its energy policies, California was able to decouple electricity use from economic production as well.

Last year, several of the nation's leading environmental organizations completed a study of what could result from a comprehensive national energy policy based on lowest societal costs (1). The results are displayed in Figures III and IV. In the most aggressive "climate stabilization" scenario, electricity use declines by 14% in absolute terms while the economy grows by a factor of 2.4. Natural-gas consumption by end users (not including electric utilities) drops by 36%.

Politics to Achieve Energy Efficiency
Over the past twenty years, energy efficiency standards for new buildings and products have accounted for the bulk of energy savings. For example, the California Energy Commission projected some 14,000 megawatts of peak power savings from building and appliance efficiency standards over a 20 year period (2), compared to a total state peak load of approximately 45,000 megawatts.

Utilities can promote energy efficiency by providing rebates or other financial or informational incentives to their customers to encourage the selection of more energy-efficient products and designs. These incentive programs work synergistically with standards.

Energy-efficiency standards assist utility incentive programs by providing a base beyond which utilities are justified in paying for savings. Standards also provide test procedures by which products or designs can be rated, so that savings from the utility program can be more easily quantified and qualifying products identified.

Utility programs complement standards by effectively testing the feasibility of higher standard levels. If a utility achieves high market penetration of a given level of efficiency across a broad range of product designs or manufacturers, this achievement provides evidence that a standard would be economically justified. Standards can then achieve the same effectiveness with higher market penetration and without the necessity of utility customers as a whole paying for the efficiency improvements.

Traditional regulatory practices fail to let utilities see the long-term costs of capital-intensive power supply projects when they are comparing the economics of efficiency versus new supply. Under these policies, kWh sales can be profitable to the utility even when they are not in society's long-run best interest.

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 encourages states to reform their regulation of utilities to correct misplaced incentives. This can be done by three simple mechanisms, all of which are used in some states: 1. Sales can be decoupled from profits. Under decoupling, a utility receives revenues based on projected sales, rather than actual sales. If it over-collects revenue due to higher sales than projected, this revenue, with interest, is returned to its customers in the form of lower rates the next year. The reverse situation applies for sales under the forecast. Revenues are thus constant. Since fuel costs are passed through directly to customers as an addition to ordinary revenue requirements, utility profits are also decoupled from sales. 2. Ability to pass through costs of energy efficiency programs. 3. Savings can be shared. Utilities in several states have been offered profit incentives in which some fraction of societal net benefit from energy efficiency programs--typically on the he order of 10%--is provided to shareholders. A utility makes money to the extent that it can install a larger number of more cost-effective energy efficiency measures.

When these three reforms are implemented, the results can be dramatic. Figure V shows the increase in energy savings from utility programs in California following a collaborative process in which these reforms were implemented. The growth of annual energy savings acquisitions is expected to continue, since many promising technologies and end-use areas have not yet been addressed by the utilities.

Transforming Markets
Early utility energy efficiency programs took the viewpoint of an average consumer who would go into a store and choose among the products in stock. Utilities would survey what products were available in their areas through retailers or distributors and offer incentives for the better products. The result of this approach was small energy savings, because the range of available efficiencies typically is small, and because of a significant "free rider" problem: Many of the customers who accept utility incentives to buy the more efficient product might have bought it anyway.(3)

Later generation approaches to utility incentive programs recognize that the utility industry can be a large player in the consumer products market. They look upstream to the needs of the manufacturer and distributor, and at the availability of technologies that may or may not currently be in production. They feature bold efficiency targets, announced sufficiently in advance for manufacturers to respond.

This approach has had significant impacts in transforming the market. Its success is illustrated by residential refrigerators. After the efficiency improvements provoked by the 1987 California standards, the range of efficiencies offered on the market was low. 1988 data suggested that a program seeking 10% energy savings beyond the slightly more stringent 1990 federal standards would be difficult to implement, because (depending on size and features) only 10% of the models on the market met a 10% savings threshold. Only a handful of units--less than 1%--were 15% lower in energy use than the standards. While some utilities were deterred from running programs by these data, one utility did offer rebates, producing the results illustrated in Figure VI (4). For 1990, the California utilities, which represents over 10% of the national market for refrigerators, agreed to base their programs on uniform efficiency targets at 10% and 15% savings. The results were unexpectedly good: nearly half of the rebates were issued for the 15% models.

As a result of this success, the 1991 program added a 20% improvement category. As seen in Figure VI, this category was the most popular one for 1991, despite the fact that such products did not exist at all eighteen months earlier. The 1992 California program dropped incentives entirely for the 10 and 15% savings levels and added higher tiers at 25%, 30%, and for some utilities, 35% and 40%. Manufacturers responded to these higher levels by producing a large number of 30%-savings models, and a significant number of 35%-savings.

This new strategy is being pursued through a continent-wide collaboration of utilities, public interest organizations, and state and federal government called the Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE). CEE is designing model programs, analogous to the refrigerator program, that can be adopted voluntarily by utilities throughout North America. These programs will be based on levels of efficiency that could be manufactured and sold in a cost-effective manner if the market demand for new efficiency technologies is sufficiently high.

CEE will also explore additional methods of acquisition of efficiency measures not currently available on the market. An example of this approach is the "Gold Carrot"(TM) program for refrigerators, in which utilities offered a Request For Proposal for refrigerators with efficiencies far beyond anything available in the market. The contract will be awarded on the basis of maximizing the economic value of energy savings. By raising $30 million to purchase more than a quarter million refrigerators for their customers, participating utilities will be able to cause the creation and marketing of products that use some 50% less energy than the 1990 standards.

Currently, energy efficiency does not sell. Most consumers will not pay extra for a device that saves energy unless the additional costs pay back in two years or less, even if the device will use energy for 20 or 50 years. In many cases, customers won't even purchase devices with payback periods shorter than two years. Thus, a physicists or engineer who invents a new device or process that can save energy will not be funded by his or her company to undertake the research necessary for product development. The scientist's boss will conclude that even if the inventor is correct and meets costs and performance goals, the product will not sell.

With utility programs designed to transform markets, this will no longer be the case. Product designers will find that whenever a device makes sense economically for society as a whole, it will become marketable through utility programs. This change should have major implications for the directions of product development, providing new opportunities for physicists, chemists, and engineers to apply their creativity towards improving energy efficiency.

Such a dynamic will also increase the potential savings from energy efficiency measures. Studies such as "America's Energy Choices" are based on analysis of policies that will implement efficiency measures whose cost and performance can already be characterized and quantified. Additional improvements that would be cost-effective but are not accessible in the open literature can never be included in such studies. Thus, the true potential for energy savings may greatly exceed that of even the most optimistic rigorous study.

Conclusion
There is a vast potential for energy efficiency improvements in the utility sector. Realistic levels of implementation of known technologies can yield absolute reductions in utility energy use. Mechanisms to achieve this potential are evolving and working in a number of states and with a number of utilities. When these policy mechanisms become widely accepted, they will unleash substantial new work in research, development, and commercialization of new products and new design processes to meet societal needs for cost-effective energy savings.

  • A. Meyer et al., America's Energy Choices, Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, MA, 1991.
  • California Energy Commission, Energy Efficiency Report, October 1990, P400-90-003.
  • Under the existing utility regulatory schemes, such results, featuring small energy savings but potentially moderately large customer participation, could be more profitable to the utility than the more effective energy efficiency programs described below.<.li>
  • The results for 1989 are slightly less in energy savings than illustrated on the graph, because the 10% and 15% categories for that year referred tot he 1987 California standards rather than the 1990 federal standards. The difference between the standards is roughly 2.5-5%.

The author is with the Natural Resources Defense Council, San Francisco

Abstract: Toward a Leaner and Greener Transportation System

Marc Ross, University of Michigan

Transportation is responsible for 25% of CO^2 emissions in the US, and is largely responsible for excessive ozone or carbon monoxide in several metropolitan areas. Emissions from new cars are much higher in use than laboratory tests and standards suggest. Transportation is also responsible for the lion's share of US petroleum consumption. Furthermore, although growth petroleum consumption has been constrained by fuel economy improvements, it is set to start again as the benefits of the CAFE standards are fully exploited and travel continues to increase. In the short term, more efficient petroleum-fueled vehicles, based for example on lean burn engines, sophisticated transmission management, idle off, efficient accessories, and more light materials, would help. In the medium term, natural gas vehicles might provide a lower-emissions alternative with good performance and costs and--if vehicle efficiency is high--good range.

In the long term, fuel cells appear attractive, and might profit from experience with a gaseous fuel. There are of course other interesting possibilities. R&D challenges will be discussed. One need is support for fundamental research at universities. Policies to encourage adoption of such technologies will also be addressed, including the issue of excessive reliance on regulations that are based on vehicle tests. To improve the environmental performance of such a pervasive activity as transportation, a multifaceted package of policies is needed, including correcting policies on the books that encourage automotive travel.

Abstract: The Outlook for Renewable Energy

Robert H. Williams, Princeton University

Despite the relative inattention in public policy over the last 12 years given to energy generally and to renewable energy in particular, major advances have been made on many fronts in the use of renewable energy sources for the production of fuels and electricity. These advances are likely to continue and may accelerate in the future, in response to growing concerns about the environment. If these emerging opportunities are seized it should be feasible to provide more than half of total world energy requirements with renewable energy sources by the middle of the next century at world energy prices that are not much higher than at present (1).

  1. T.B. Johansson, H. Kelly, A.K.N. Reddy, and R.H. Williams, in  T.B. Johansson, H. Kelly, A.K.N. Reddy, and R.H. Williams, editors,  Renewable Energy:  Sources for Fuels and Electricity, Island Press,  Washington DC, 1993, pages 1-71.

Abstract: Energy Efficiency, Newly Recognized Overseas, Can Replace Most Dangerous Nuclear Plants.

Arthur H. Rosenfeld, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

The cheapest way to achieve global energy/environmental goals is to encourage investment in efficiency overseas. Energy intensity is defined as E/GNP, where E = primary Energy, and GNP = Gross National Product. E/GNP is 2-3 times higher in the 2nd (formerly communist) and 3rd (developing) worlds than in the "1st" world. In the 1st world E/GNP is dropping 1-2%/year, but, except for China, it is still rising in worlds 2 and 3. For developing countries, E/GNP first rises with a need for heavy industry, then falls as efficiency improves and industry "lightens". In units of tonnes of oil equivalent ("toe"), the UK peaked at 1 "toe"/$1000 in 1880; with improved efficiency, France peaked at 0.5 in 1930, and Japan peaked at 0.4 in 1970.

But there are 7 serious barriers against efficient use of energy: (1) Price. Energy is invariably subsidized, keeping its price low. (2) Poor information, for instance no fuel economy labels on cars, equipment appliances. (3) Lack of choice. Little opportunity for comparison shopping. (4) Poor management. Industry still produces the wrong thing. Thus in Hungary 80% of the energy goes to heavy industry, which yields only 20% of the value added. (5) Ideological utility policy. Particularly in communist countries, energy and electrification were seen as manifest goods (the way we view wealth). There was no concept (as is now growing in the West) that a utility should provide efficient energy services instead of raw energy. So individual dwellings have no meters for heat or electricity, and one adjusts the temperature by opening the window. (6) Ideological western institutions, particularly the World Bank and the regional development banks, who typically devoted <1% of the energy sector loans to efficiency. (7) Large discount rates for future savings. Energy efficiency commonly has a higher first cost and a lower operating cost to the consumer. However, consumer behavior in the market reveals very large discount rates (perhaps 60% annually) for future savings--the poorer the consumer, the higher the discount rate. This skews the societal investments in favor of more energy supply.

Given the remarkable success of efficiency in the West, and the acceptance of "integrated utility planning" where utilities can diversify into more profitable investments on the customer side of the meter, all these barriers are crumbling rapidly. It should be easy to replace all the dangerous nuclear plants in the former Soviet Union with just more efficient lamps and motors.

Call for Nominations for Szilard and Forum Award!

The Forum on Physics and Society is primarily responsible for two of the APS's annual awards. The Leo Szilard Award is given for the use of physics for the benefit of society in such areas as energy, environment, arms control, and science policy. The 1994 Szilard Awardee is Herbert York. The Forum Award is given for promoting public understanding of issues at the interface between physics and society. The 1994 Forum Awardee is Gary Taubes.

Nominations and supporting materials should be received by 1 September 1994, but earlier is preferable. Send these materials to the Chair of the Szilard/Forum Awards Committee, Professor David Hafemeister, Physics Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA 93407. Phone 805-756-2205, email dhafemei @ oboe.calpoly.edu.

Call for Nominations for APS Fellows!

It's time again to think about who should be honored with APS fellowship for distinguished work of interest to the Forum on Physics and Society. The 1993 fellowship awardees were Carol Jo Crannell, Art Hobson, and Ruth Howes. Nomination forms are in the APS News and, as indicated there, should be sent (along with a curriculum vitae and supporting letters) directly to the APS Executive Secretary. Materials for candidates working in Forum-type areas are then forwarded to the Forum Fellowship Committee for its consideration. Nominations must be received by April 30 for consideration in the current year. It would be helpful if, on sending materials to the APS, a copy of the nomination form itself is also sent to the Chair of the Forum Fellowship Committee, Alvin M. Saperstein, Box 439, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

Call for Suggestions for Forum Sessions!

Two of our Forum's effective avenues for presenting issues are the APS invited and contributed sessions. Invited sessions feature talks by outstanding researchers and policy makers, talks that are then extended to the entire Forum membership through publication in Physics and Society. Participants in our contributed sessions can share their thoughts on important physics-and-society concerns with their fellow APS members.

Our Forum sponsors several invited sessions every year at APS meetings. Is there an interesting topic that you would like to see discussed? Send your suggestions to us and, most importantly, consider organizing a session! Think in terms of the meeting that you are most likely to attend, and potential topics of interest to our Forum. Send suggestions, or volunteer, to Alvin M. Saperstein, the upcoming Program Chair, at Box 439, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, asaper @ delphi.UMD.edu, (301)270-5312. Include the suggested topic, suggested speakers, a suggested organizer, and a suggested APS meeting at which the session could be held.

Volunteers Needed for Forum Colloquium Speakers List!

Our Forum is establishing a list of physicists willing to give colloquia on topics related to physics and society. Such colloquia could make students aware of different possible careers for physicists, provide role models for career options, interest younger physicists in addressing societal problems, give non-traditional careers more legitimacy within the physics community, make societal issues more accessible to all physicists, and educate the audience on a specific topic.

The list will function like the APS Colloquium Speakers List of Women in Physics and the Minority Physicists Colloquium Speakers List. These lists, which are updated annually and sent out by the APS to all physics department chairs in the United States and Canada, give the names, addresses, phone numbers, and talk titles of women and minority physicists who are willing to give physics colloquia. Speakers are listed by geographic region and by topic. APS has no eligibility requirements, and lists everyone who volunteers. A physics department wanting a speaker contacts that person directly.

Our Forum's Speakers List will be limited to physical scientists and not include, for example, politicians or political scientists. The list will include the above information as well as abstracts for each speaker. Abstracts will be useful as advertising (many physicists may not have a good idea of what such a non-conventional physics talk would be about), and to allow a department to determine in advance what perspective the speaker will bring. A Forum committee will review the abstracts to ensure they are not too vague or lacking in content. Other than that, all volunteers will be listed.

While renowned physicists are encouraged to volunteer for inclusion on the Forum Speakers List, speakers need not be well known. After all, part of our goal is to show students and others that all physicists can contribute policy issues.

Inclusion on the list does not imply a commitment to respond positively to all invitations, just a willingness to give one or more colloquia during the following year. So, let's show the APS that we have something to offer the wider physics community! Send your name, position, mail and e-mail addresses, phone, and fax numbers, and any number of abstracts to Lisbeth Gronlund, either via e-mail (to gronlund @ athena.mit.edu) or on a 3.5" disk in Word, WordPerfect or ASCII format (to Union of Concerned Scientists, 26 Church St., Cambridge, MA 02238). This first list will become effective in the Fall of 1994. If you have any questions, contact Dr. Gronlund at either of the above addresses or by phone (617-547-5552).

Notice to Invited Session Organizers and Speakers!

Publication of the invited sessions is one of the important functions of Physics and Society. Our Forum tries to publish all of the invited sessions, thus multiplying each session's audience far beyond the audience actually attending the session, and also providing a permanent record of each session. In order to do this, Physics and Society needs a paper based on each invited talk. If you are a session organizer, please ask your speakers to provide you with a copy (or summary or some other reasonable facsimile) of their talk. If you are an invited speaker, please provide a copy of your talk to the session organizer, or else send a copy directly to the editor of Physics and Society.

Invited Sessions at APS Meetings in 1994

Our Forum is sponsoring several invited sessions at two APS meetings during 1994. There were two Forum-sponsored sessions at the 21-25 March meeting in Pittsburgh:

  • Employment issues for physicists, organized by Julia Thompson;
  • Biological effects of electromagnetic fields: facts and policy responses, organized by Ed Gerjuoy.

There will be five Forum-sponsored sessions at the 18-22 April meeting in Crystal City, VA:

  • The nuclear legacy of the Soviet Union, organized by John Ahearne, co-sponsored by the Committee on Applications of Physics;
  • Surprises, models, and uncertainties in global climate change, organized by Martin Hoffert;
  • Physicists, science advising, and the four governments, organized by Peter Zimmerman, co-sponsored the the Forum on the History of Physics;
  • Theater ballistic missiles: What is the threat? What can be done? organized by Lisbeth Gronlund;
  • The Forum Awards Session. This year's awardees are Herbert York, who will receive the Leo Szilard Award for the use of physics in the public interest, and Gary Taubes, who will receive the Forum Award for promoting public understanding of physics-and-society issues.

Also at the April meeting in Crystal City, there will be two sessions organized by other groups and co-sponsored by our Forum:

  • Diversity in the classroom, organized by Ruth Howes, sponsored by the Forum on Education;
  • Science advice, organized by Sylvan Schweber, sponsored the the Forum on the History of Physics and by the Forum on International Physics.

NOTICE to session organizers and to speakers: Please see the announcement in the preceding news article!

Two New POPA Studies Announced

At the November APS Council meeting, the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) received approval to conduct two studies, one on the current state and technical potential of renewable energy sources, and another on the performance of the US Patriot missile during the 1991 Gulf War.

The study on renewable energy sources will focus on solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, wind, and biomass energy, and will also consider energy storage technologies and the problem of matching intermittent sources of supply with demand. Norval Fortson, a professor in the Physics Departmetn at the University of Washington, Seattle, will chair the study group. A final report is expected in the spring of 1995.

The second study will look at the Gulf War performance of the Patriot missile, a defensive missile designed to intercept and destroy incoming ballistic missiles. The Patriot Missile has been a source of controversy for several years now. To help POPA decide whether to recommend that the APS conduct a study of Patriot performance and if so, what type of study to recommend, a POPA Ad Hoc Panel was established to review the relevant issues and make recommendations. This panel was chaired by Jeremiah Sullivan, professor of Physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana. It held a meeting on May 24-25, 1993 to hear from the major participants in the debate--the US Army, the Raytheon Company (the manufacturer of the Patriot), and several non- governmental physicists: George Lewis and Ted Postol of MIT and Peter Zimmerman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Following this meeting and after extensive reading of the relevant literature, the panel produced a report--the Report of the POPA Ad Hoc Panel on Patriot and Theater Missile Defenses, available from the Washington APS Office on Public Affairs (202-662-8700). The panel was not asked to draw conclusions about Patriot performance, and their report does not do so. Nevertheless, it makes several useful contributions to the ongoing debate. A summary of the report is given in the next news article.

Lisbeth Gronlund

Summary of the Ad Hoc Panel Report on the Patriot Missile

During the war, Iraq launched roughly 80 modified Scud (Al-Hussein) missiles against Israel and Saudi Arabia, and Patriot missiles were launched to counter 44-46 of these 80. Official US statements made during the war indicated that the Patriot successfully intercepted almost all of these missiles; the Army later revised its estimate of the intercept success rate to over 80% in Saudi Arabia and over 50% in Israel, and then to over 70% in Saudi Arabia and over 40% in Israel. The Army estimates are based on ground impact data and data recorded by some of the Patriot control units during their operation, all of which remains classified. The report notes that the panel had no way of making an independent assessment of the Army's data or their analysis. However, the Army's classified analysis has been reviewed by two congressional groups, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Government Accounting Office (GAO), which concluded in unclassified reports that the data used by the Army has significant limitations and that the Army data and analysis do not support their conclusions about intercept success rate. To this day, the Army stands by its 70% and 40% figures.

An independent, unclassified analysis performed by two MIT physicists, George Lewis and Theodore Postol, reaches a different conclusion: that Patriot success rates were significantly lower than those reported by the Army and may be zero. Lewis and Postol base their conclusions largely on a detailed examination of commercial videotapes (filmed by media crews during the war) that show 33 Patriot intercept attempts against 18 different incoming Al-Hussein missiles. Their methodology and conclusions are rejected by the Army, and have been criticized in Congressional testimony and in print by Peter Zimmerman and Raytheon. In particular, the Army maintains that no useful information about Patriot performance can be gained from commercial video tapes and Zimmerman has argued that the Lewis-Postol methodology used to interpret these videotapes may be erroneous in several respects.

Thus, as the report points out "the situation is one in which two fundamentally different methodologies applied to two essentially distinct databases reach incompatible conclusions." However, the panel was able to reach several important conclusions about this situation.

The Report of the POPA Ad Hoc Panel concludes that commercial video tapes can be useful: "It is clear to the panel that important information can be learned about the Patriot-Scud encounters in the Gulf War from the commercial video tapes in spite of the severe limitations they present to the analyst. Statements to the contrary are, at best, misleading." In addition, the report concludes that most of the criticisms of the Lewis-Postol methodology are incorrect or irrelevant: "The majority of the criticisms of the methodology of Postol and Lewis that featured prominently in the [Congressional] hearings have already been laid to rest." Finally, although the panel did not attempt to resolve the remaining points of dispute, the report concludes that the remaining methodological issues can be resolved through technical analysis, perhaps including numerical simulations, and, if necessary, tests.

In light of these conclusions, the report recommends three possible APS activities: (1) an article written by a team of technical experts for publication in Physics Today or Science that would "describe the separate methodologies and databases used by Army-Raytheon and the MIT group, the patterns of agreement and disagreement as they now stand, and the technical issues at the center of continuing disagreements;" (2) a major POPA study to address the "key issues associated with the effectiveness of future theater missile defenses;" and (3) an "integrated study" of Patriot performance in the Gulf War that would use both commercial video data and the database used by the Army, thus requiring access to the classified data.

At the 21 November 1993 meeting of the APS Council, POPA was authorized to proceed with option (3). As of March, POPA was trying to obtain the cooperation of the Administration and access to the Army database. A chair for the integrated study will be selected later. In addition, Jeremiah Sullivan has been given the responsibility of carrying out option (1), which will probably involve most of the other Ad Hoc Panel members as well. Finally, POPA will continue to consider whether option (2) should be pursued in the future.

Lisbeth Gronlund

Report on the APS Council Meeting

The following highlights from the November meeting of the APS Council in Albuquerque, NM, may interest members of our Forum.

Retiring president Donald Langenberg, in his report from the APS executive board, said that the board was encouraging a study of the future of high-energy physics, following Congress' failure to fund the SSC.

There is continuing concern, especially among those working in public affairs for APS, about the increasingly negative public perception of physics.

The APS Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) proposed a resolution that APS not "sponsor any further meetings in Colorado or any other state or locality which prohibits protection from discrimination, or explicitly discriminates, on the basis of sexual orientation." This resolution will not affect meetings already planned and it will not go into effect in Colorado until the courts remove the current suspension of the implementation of the amendment passed there last year. The Council voted in favor of this resolution.

The APS executive board approved the appointment of Norval Fortson of the University of Washington to chair the POPA study of energy from renewable sources.

A subcommittee of POPA has been considering an issue that was first proposed by members of our Forum: the performance of the Patriot missile in the Gulf War. The subcommittee has written a report summarizing the issues and proposing that POPA consider three actions: (1) commission an article on the topic in a widely-read journal, (2) initiate a large study, and (3) initiate a limited study in which the POPA study group would have access to classified information. POPA is not inclined to start a second large study at this time, but Council approved its proposal to go ahead with the limited study based on classified information.

POPA proposed that the APS Council endorse a resolution to bolster continuing federal research on nuclear energy, which has been somewhat endangered in the current administration. The first part of the statement points out the need to pursue research on alternatives to fossil fuel, especially renewable energy sources. The second paragraph states that the nuclear energy option may have to be kept open as well. To that end, the statement urges attention to (1) reactors that can be built and operated in a safe, economical and environmentally sound manner; (2) development of programs for the safe disposal of nuclear waste, and (3) effective public education programs. The final statement reads "The American Physical Society is deeply concerned that current progress in these areas is inadequate."

Dave Hafemeister submitted a dissenting opinion on this proposed resolution; in essence he felt that the resolution implicitly supported continued research on the liquid metal breeder (and burner) reactor. I pointed out that it might be inappropriate to make any resolution if POPA had not studied the options in depth. In the debate that ensued, many council members felt that the statement as written (without the accompanying report submitted by POPA) was all "apple pie" and did not necessarily endorse any particular reactor. The resolution passed by a relatively wide margin.

The APS Division on International Scientific Affairs continues to be very active. It has had a program to assist scientists in the former Soviet Union and is now collaborating with the International Science Foundation in a program to provide large grants to FSU researchers. The APS sent letters of concern when local political forces threatened to dismantle a cosmic-ray research station located in Pamir, Tajikistan. The APS participated in UNESCO meeting to consider an agenda for scientific cooperation. And APS is working to forge closer ties with physical societies of Europe, Japan and the Asian Pacific.

The Council elected David Bodansky to Chair Elect of POPA; David Hafemeister to Vice Chair; and the following people to serve on POPA: Bill Appleton (Oak Ridge), Edward Gerjuoy (University of Pittsburgh), Ruth Howes (Ball State University), Robert Socolow (Princeton), Robert White (Carnegie Mellon University).

Fee free to contact me if you have questions about these or other items discussed by the Council

Barbara G. Levi, Forum Councilor

Society for Chaos Theory, and Its Upcoming Conference

The Society for Chaos Theory in Phychology and the Life Sciences brings together people interested in applying dynamical systems theory, self-organization theory, neural nets, fractals, and other forms of chaos and complexity theory, to the study of nonlinear interdependent systems. Regular membership is $25, or $10 for students and those on limited income. Member hail from psychology, sociology, economics, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and literature. The Society publishes a newsletter, maintains a CHAOPSYC bulletin board, and is hosting its national conference in June. The first collected volume of papers will be published in 1994, and a journal will be published soon.

For more information on the bulletin board or membership, send a note with your mailing address to: Katherine E. Robertson, Society for Chaos Theory, P.O. Box 7226, Alhambra, CA 91802-7226; e-mail 0005699249 @ mcimail.com.

Abstracts of papers, posters, and session proposals are sought for the Society's next annual conference, June 24-27, at Johns Hopkins University, just north of Baltimore. Workshops on methods will be held on June 28-29. To promote interdisciplinary dialogue, conference sessions will be organized around topics rather than disciplines. Topics include theory and methods, and application of chaos theory to all types of clinical practice, organization psychology, anthropology, neuropsychology, sociology, economics, education, and the humanities. Abstracts of 800 words of less and session proposals should be submitted as soon as possible to: Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein, 29 Hayes Road, Amityville, NY 11701; email goldstein @ adlibv.adelphi.edu.

Join the Forum! Receive Physics and Society!

Physics and Society, the quarterly of the Forum on Physics and Society, a division of the American Physical Society, is distributed free to Forum members and libraries. Nonmembers may receive it by writing to the editor; voluntary contributions of $10 per year are most welcome, payable to the APS/Forum. We hope that libraries will archive Physics and Society . Forum members should request that their libraries do this!

APS members can join the Forum and receive Physics and Society by mailing the following information to the editor !

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High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program: Are There Issues to Concern Physicists?

In 1988, discussion first appeared in Physics and Society about a recently patented concept dealing with modification of the Earth's upper atmosphere using high-intensity radio frequency radiation (1,2,3). Not only did this approach seem to have ramifications relating to ionospheric physics, but also certain of the proposed activities appeared to potentially threaten Earth's upper atmosphere and to have arms control implications.

Briefly, the patented invention involves generating an extremely intense beam of circularly-polarized radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation of appropriate frequency and directing this toward the upper atmosphere (1). At certain altitudes, electron cyclotron resonance heating of existing electrons would be expected to cause further ionization of the neutral particles in the atmosphere, and a range of other consequences could ensue (1,2). The patent presents claims that changes in Earth's atmosphere could be created which would persist for prolonged periods of time, and the language of the patent also indicated that it is intended to produce effects on a global scale (1,2). It has been suggested that these changes may pose a danger to the upper atmosphere, in that irreversible damage to the upper atmosphere may ensue from tests of the types described in the patent (1).

Among the proposed applications are the disruption of microwave transmissions of satellites; the selective enhancement, modification, or interception of communications; and causing total disruption of communications over a large portion of Earth (1,2). Other proposed applications include weather modification; changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere; transporting plumes of particulates or plasma within the atmosphere; lifting large regions of the atmosphere; and intercepting or destroying incoming missiles or aircraft (1,2). That this invention has features satisfying the requirements of a weapons system is emphasized in the patent (2).

It was pointed out in subsequent correspondence in Physics and Society that realization of this invention might lead to violations of the Environmental Modification Convention (3). This Convention, signed in 1977 and ratified by the United States in 1979, prohibits military or any other hostile use of environmental modifical techniques, and states that "Each State Party to this convention undertakes not to engage in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting, or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party." Both the Convention itself and the accompanying Understandings Regarding the Convention make it explicitly clear that the atmosphere, the ionosphere, and near-Earth space are included in the Convention (4).

Currently, the patented invention (which is reportedly also covered by classified patents (1)) has been developed and is being implemented in military programs, most recently in the new High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) (5). In part because of its potential to disrupt communications as a side effect as well as deliberately, this project is received with apparent apprehension by Alaskans, and with favor due to its economic impact (6,7).

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, which is managed cooperatively by the Air Force and the Navy, is described in information sheets as a project having the goal of studying fundamental physical principles governing the ionosphere (5). The proposed research would use high-power radio transmitters to probe the overhead ionosphere, in conjunction with a complement of diagnostic instrumentation. A unique feature of the facility would be a high-power high-frequency radio transmitter with the capability of rapidly steering a narrow beam into a designated direction. HAARP would transmit HF radio waves within the 2.8 to 10 MHz band in a narrow beam, several degrees wide, depending on frequency, thus influencing a region several miles in diameter in the lower ionosphere (5). The power demands for the transmitters are reportedly 12 megawatts (5). Much higher power levels of 109-1011 watts are also considered in the original patent (1,2).

Potential applications for HAARP are described as including developing DoD technology for detecting cruise missiles and aircraft and for communicating with submarines (5). It is planned to construct HAARP at auroral latitudes in Alaska. The US Air Force has specifically settled on a site near the village of Gakona, northeast of Anchorage, where construction was scheduled to begin in 1993 and be concluded in late 1977 (5,7).

It would appear that, while construction of the HAARP facility may provide new equipment for ionospheric studies as well as applications, this technology does present issues that need to be publicly addressed by the technical community. Related research, and particularly the fact that that research has been non-competitively funded, has already drawn the attention of physicists (8). However, a detailed examination and explicit critique by members of the physics community of the characteristics of this particular technology might clarify the issues and contribute to allaying concerns and resolving questions that have already arisen, and to suggesting courses of action to address the issues raised by this project.

C.L. Herzenberg

  • Richard Williams Physics and Society, Vol. 17, No. 2, p. 16 (April 1988).
  • Bernard Eastlund US Patent Number 4,686,605 (August 11, 1987).
  • C.L. Herzenberg Physics and Society, Vol. 17, No. 3, p. 2 (July 1988).
  • Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements: Texts and Histories of the Negotiations, "Convention on the prohibition of military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques," US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Washington, DC (1990).
  • HAARP Fact Sheet, Office of Naval Research (4 November 1993).
  • C.J. Zickuhr, Anchorage AK, private communication (November 1993).
  • Peter S. Goodman, "Gakona Gets Ionosphere Project," Anchorage Daily News, Vol. 48, No. 319, p. B-1 (15 November 1993).
  • Robert L. Park, in What's New, American Physical Society, Washington DC (2 November 1990, 9 November 1990, 29 November 1991, 6 March 1992).

Comments on Guidelines

The APS Ethical Guidelines (APS News January 1982, p. 1) is probably one of the most important documents sponsored by the APS in recent years. A part of this document deals with peer reviews. It points out that peer reviews are an essential component of the scientific process.

Unfortunately the significance of peer reviews has not been sufficiently recognized in our scientific community (Physics and Society October 1993, p. 3), especially in the case of "letters" or "letters to the editor." These important scientific communications have been incorporated in many widely read publications. An unexplained and secret censorship completely alien to the traditions in science has been established in these publications. If a "Letter" is rejected, editors do not feel any responsibility for disclosing to an author reasons for rejection. However, in an orderly scientific process an editor has not only a responsibility but an obligation to disclose to the author pertinent reasons.

I made considerable efforts to clarify this unfortunate situation. The most I learned from the editor of one of these publications was that a rejection had been decided upon "after some deliberations." I was left with no choice but to accept these very secret deliberations and an incontestable and final verdict.

The editor of another publication came out with a different but interesting and original approach. I was informed that the publication in question is a "magazine" rather than a scientific periodical, and that it is not the policy of a "magazine" to disclose to the author any pertinent reasons for rejection. I do not wish to enter into a debate on how to label a publication which is devoted almost entirely to problems in science and which is read almost exclusively by scientists. I am mainly concerned with an arbitrary and an improper handling of important scientific information.

The lack of an appeal process creates a particularly disturbing situation. An editor is considered to be infallible. An error in judgment on the part of an editor is an absolute impossibility. Clearly such an assumption is contrary to sane judgment and common sense.

I suggest that a public discussion on the issues outlined above be considered, for two reasons. First, according to the guidelines, "no amendment to the bylaws will be sought until there has been an ample opportunity for public discussion of the guidelines." I suggest that before amending the bylaws, the current situation be openly and realistically appraised. The APS Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) should recognize the existence of two contradictory criteria for evaluating scientific information. One of these is open peer review. The other is secret and unexplained personal censorship by an editor or an editor's staff. The situation is on the verge of absurdity.

Second, our scientific community should be adequately informed on the relative merits of two conflicting criteria. Literature on peer review is abundant (see for instance a discussion between Jacob Neufeld and S.A. Goudsmit, Physics Today April 1970, p. 9). As far as I know there has not been a single reference pointing out the rationale behind the secret censorship.

Jacob Neufeld
113 Cedar Lane
Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830

Saving Science from the Fate of "Scientific Socialism"

With the demise of what since 1860 has been called "scientific socialism," scientists must recognize that there may be a significant backlash against science itself. Such a backlash is evident for example, in Vaclev Havel's op-ed article "The End of the Modern Era" in The New York Times, 1 March 1992.

Scientists themselves have done little to dissociate science from socialism. On the contrary, the roster of those who have been avid supporters of socialism includes the names of such scientific luminaries as Einstein, Oppenheimer, Haldane, Blackett, J. Huxley, Needham, and Bernal, while no prominent scientist has forthrightly attacked the claims that socialism can be validly called "scientific". My own efforts to show that socialism is in fact pseudoscientific have been buried under a pile of letters of rejection from editors and publishers that have often angrily denounced my efforts, the most important of which is an unpublished book, Road to Gulag--A Century of Pseudoscientific Socialism.

There has in fact been no dearth of attempts to expose the scientific fallacies of Marxism, but the fate of the early attempt by Eugen Duhring, the brilliant physicist, economist, and philosopher, illustrates how frustrating such attempts have been. Duhring's work was attacked by Engels in characteristically bitter Marxian style in a book that became a Marxian classic under the abbreviated title Anti-Duhring. Three chapters from that book, published separately as a pamphlet in 1880 as Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (SUS), spread socialist ideas quickly around the globe. SUS was to prove even more influential in promoting socialist ideas than the Communist Manifesto of 1848 or any other Marxian writing, and its success must be attributed at least in part to its characterization of Marxian socialism as "scientific."

Engles was a high-school drop-out, and neither Marx nor Engles had any education in science, including economics. They knew only catch-phrases of popular science, but were shrewd enough to garnish their works frequently with such phrases. They were both boastful, vain autodidacts who operated out of reach of the main scientific currents of their time. They denounced Newton at very opportunity and, as has often been pointed out, usually in works that have received little public attention, were in fact part and parcel of the romantic reaction against the enlightenment and the scientific revolution. One of the supreme ironies of the last century has been the willingness of many educated people to see Marx and Engels as sons of the enlightenment, when in fact they were its dedicated enemies, as has been shown by many writers including this one.

As one contemplates the debris of scientific socialism, one must press for answers to questions about the reasons for its unwarranted, temporary success. It is a relatively simple matter to expose its profound intellectual flaws, but as critics have long observed, socialism has deep political appeal. Even today, in capitalist countries, politicians vying for office pit rich against poor and haves against have-nots in shameless imitation of Marxian class-struggle tactics and their play on envy.

But for scientists there may be a special, deeper lesson to be learned from the downfall of scientific socialism that goes to the sources of financial support for modern science. Ever since 1950, science in this country has become increasingly dependent on the federal government, thereby giving an entirely new meaning to scientific socialism. There has been little tendency to criticize federal support of science. No one will bite the hand that feeds, and the federal government feeds a large number of American scientists. The science establishment has bent every effort to elicit more and more federal support, and many would make it seem that the fate of science itself hangs on federal subsidies. But as we contemplate the failures of Marxian scientific socialism, and the reasons for those failures in the economic disfunctions of socialism, we should question the increasing dependence of modern American science on its emergent socialist characteristics.

Is it time for science to enter the marketplace more consciously and with greater confidence that it has, while gradually slipping the leash of governmental dependence and the myths of Marxian socialism?

Lawrence Cranberg
Consulting Physicist
1205 Constant Springs Drive
Austin, Texas 78746

Statement on Protection Against Discrimination

The elected APS Council affirms the commitment of the Society to the protection of the rights of all scientists, including freedom from discrimination based on race, gender, nationality, religion or sexual orientation. The Society bears a particular responsibility to protect the participants in its meetings from possible discrimination.

Therefore, the Council resolves that The American Physical Society will not sponsor meetings in any state or locality that discriminates or prohibits protection from discrimination.

Specifically, the Council deplores the passage on 3 November 1992 of Amendment 2 to the Constitution of the State of Colorado removing and prohibiting protection from discrimination of persons owing to sexual orientation. Although implementation of Amendment 2 has been suspended pending judicial review of its constitutionality, the APS prohibition on meetings would apply if the suspension were lifted.

Adopted by the APS Council
November 1993

Fermi's Question and the Human Condition*

"Enrico Fermi was a frequent visitor to Los Alamos. ...A lunchtime conversation took place in 1950 when someone brought up the question of flying saucers. ...They all agreed that flying saucers were not real alien spacecraft... Fermi said 'Don't you wonder where everybody is?' He followed up with a series of calculations... [concluding] that we ought to have been visited long ago and many times over. ...He went on to conclude that the reason we hadn't been visited might be that interstellar travel is impossible, or if possible, it is always judged not to be worth the effort, or technological civilization doesn't last long enough for it to happen."

The quotation is from an article printed originally in Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience, edited by B.R. Finney and E.M. Jones (University of California Press, 1985), and reprinted in the American Association of Physics Teachers' excellent anthology Extraterrestrical Civilization, edited by T.B.H. Kuiper and G.D. Brin (AAPT, 1989).

Fermi's "series of calculations" is by now a standard exercise for those who like to speculate about extraterrestrial life. Typically, one focuses on our own galaxy, and makes estimates like those of Table 1.

Table 1. Extraterrestrial life in our galaxy, range of plausible estimates

Upper Estimate Lower Estimate
Number of stars in our galaxy 4 x 10 ^ 11 4 x 10 ^ 11
Fraction of these that are single stars 0.5 0.5
Fraction of these that are sunlike  0.1 0.1
Fractions of these that have planetary systems 1.0 0.1
Number of Earth-like planets/planetary systems 1.0 0.1
Number of Earth-like planets in our galaxy 2 x 10 ^ 10  2 x 10 ^ 8
Fraction of these where life has or will arise 1.0 0.1
Number of planets where like has or will arise 2 x 10 ^ 10 2 x 10 ^ 7
Fraction of these where intelligence develops 1.0 10^_6
Number of planets where intelligence arises 2 x 1010 20
Fraction of these that become technological ???? ????

Different speculators would put different numbers into Table 1, but most estimates fall within the ranges indicated. The table reflects broad agreement that there is life out there, but large uncertainties about the emergence of intelligence and of technology.

Despite the uncertainties, such speculation suggests that it isn't unreasonable to assume that technological civilizations have cropped up at least thousands of times during the history of our galaxy. Distributed throughout most of the 15-billion-year history of our galaxy, this suggests that new technological civilizations start at intervals of 10 million years or less. Thus, Fermi's question: Where is everybody? Is interstellar travel impossible, or is it always judged not worth the effort, or do technological civilizations have short lifetimes?

The "short-lifetime hypothesis" is worth considering, for it is one way of gaining perspective on our own condition on Earth: Perhaps technological civilizations destroy their own capacity to continue functioning as technological civilizations. Note that the hypothesis does not say that technological species become extinct, but only that they are eventually reduced to a pre-technological "stone-age" existence. The fuedal conditions of Bosnia, Somalia, and America's inner cities, make this hypothesis all too plausible.

Consider the only evidence we have, our own experience with technology. Our most vigorous technological efforts have gone into weaponry. For decades humans threatened themselves with intercontinental nuclear weapons that could have bombed the world back into the stone age. We have emerged, for now, from that threat, but smaller nuclear threats are even more plausible than they were. And, armed with everything from clubs to laser-guided rockets, we continue the organized killing of our own kind, both within and between nations.

But today the threat of war pales beside more insidious technology-related environmental problems. Driving all the other problems is the exponential growth of our species. At 6 billion strong, declining per-capita food production and other signs indicate that we have exceeded our sustainable population. According to some studies, our numbers are already three times larger than Earth can carry. Yet our number will double within 40 years, if we pursue vigorous birth control.

Other known problems include: poverty, illiteracy, deforestation, animal extinctions, large-scale plant extinctions for the first time on Earth, global warming, ozone depletion, legal and illegal drug abuse, resource depletion, urban decay, air pollution, water pollution, solid waste disposal, famine, desertification, subtle new epidemics such as AIDS, the gap between rich and poor nations, groundwater depletion, other water shortages, loss of soil fertility, overfishing, toxic algal blooms, immune systems weakened by pollution, rising sea levels, new drug-resistant bacterial strains, and the problem-multiplier effect of an expected ten-fold increase in global economic activity to meet the demands and aspirations of our exploding population. The unknown problems are anybody's guess.

Any one of these problems could stop our progress toward technological maturity, and the combined long-term effect of all of them is anybody's guess. These problems are subtle, pervasive, and caused by the apparently inconsequential daily actions of each one of us.

The root problem may be our continued reliance on age-old instincts in an age of powerful technologies. For example, because we have enthusiastically accepted technology's ability to control disease while doing little to control our instinctive desire to have children, we have the population explosion. This is but one example of our willingness to accept the easy fruits of technology without accepting responsibility for the hard choices and new thinking that must go with it if we are to survive. Intelligence-based technology demands that we apply our intelligence, rather than our instincts, to the uses of technology. It is difficult for our entire species to make such a fundamental cultural change during the explosive birth of the technological age. It is the fundamental contradiction of our time. The answer to Fermi's question might be that a similar conflict between traditional biological behavior and the sudden new requirements of technology caused the demise of most technological civilizations.

If the short-lifetime hypothesis is correct, then humankind is faced with a challenging project, one of universal proportions, namely the challenge of becoming one of the breakthrough civilizations that survives its own technology. It is in my opinion a spiritual challenge: Can we learn to use technology for our own and our planet's well-being, rather than for power and self-indulgence?

Humans have been described as natural systems having the curious property of self-awareness. We are perhaps among nature's most advanced attempts to become aware of itself. Will we meet the challenge of extending that awareness over millions of years following the explosive recent birth of technology on our planet? This question is being decided as you read these words.

Art Hobson

Statement on Nuclear Energy

The American Physical Society has a long standing interest in the establishment of a technically sound national energy policy. Such a policy must include steps to decrease the heavy dependence of the United States on fossil fuels. Their use entails significant environmental costs, including possibly substantial changes in global climate with uncertain consequences for human well being. Moreover, since resources of oil and, less immediately, natural gas are limited, U.S. reliance on foreign sources creates economic burdens and military dangers. We therefore endorse increases in federal funding and general support for programs in conservation and in the development of renewable energy sources.

A balanced energy policy, however, also requires that the Department of Energy have strong programs to keep the nuclear energy option open, through: (a) the continued development of nuclear reactors which can be built, operated, and eventually decommissioned in a manner which is simple, safe, environmentally sound, and cost-effective; (b) the development and implementation of programs for the safe disposal of spent fuel and radioactive wastes; and (c) the development of an effective public education program to allow a more informed debate on the strengths and weaknesses of nuclear power. The APS is deeply concerned that the current progress in these areas is inadequate.

Adopted by the APS Council
November 1993

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