I hope it's been an interesting week for those of you who've been following this Silver Bullet series. (Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 can be found here for those who may have missed them.) I figured the week of Earth Day was a good time to do this, and I've been wanting to get word of Dr. Bussard's work out to a wider audience for some time.
To recap quickly, I started by sketching out the problem (energy supply vs. demand, global climate change, people), proposed a solution (nuclear fusion), spent a couple more days fleshing out the background on nuclear tech, and yesterday held forth on a new approach to fusion that just might be the real Silver Bullet solution. Today I'm going to end by riffing on the topic a bit and seeing if I can expantionate the dynamulon. (more)
One of the greatest crimes that has been taking place over the last few decades is the deliberate destruction of belief in: the public good, the positive role of government, and the importance of good science and long term thinking. It's been traded away for political and financial advantage. Instead, we're supposed to believe in market forces, faith, and the power of magical thinking and authoritarian leaders. It has been aided and abetted by traditional media that no longer asks the hard questions it is supposed to ask, and that wouldn't understand the answers if it did.
This is the fourth component of the problem I sketched out in Part 1 of this series, and in many ways it's the toughest one to deal with. The reason we're desperately hoping for a Silver Bullet is because we've failed as a society and a civilization to confront the problems looming over us now back when they were much more manageable years ago.
The most critical part of the problem however is getting people to SEE there is a problem, agree on the nature of the problem, agree on a solution, and work cooperatively to solve it - especially when the solution is going to involve changes in the way things are. People hate change, especially when it involves personal sacrifice, inconvenience, and real pain. Or even if it doesn't.
The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 should have been a wake up call right then and there. Ever since then there have been perennial calls for "Energy Independence" - which has become nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. The Cheney-Bush plan for energy independence was to grab Iraq. (Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. - Salvor Hardin) As fundamentally wrong and criminal as they've been in their actions, their Iraq disaster has one small parody of virtue: it was an actual serious attempt to address the energy crisis, even if in the worst possible way. The U.S. does not have a very impressive track record of accomplishment when it comes to less violent alternatives. Remember cardigan sweaters and the Moral Equivalent of War?
Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.
It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.
We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.
We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.
Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress. Its members will be my partners and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices.
The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation.
Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war" —except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.
It's actually painful to look at these words now. Carter was a prophet without honor in his own country. The unfortunate nature of the American psyche seems to be that a Moral Equivalent of War just isn't good enough. We want the real thing. We want to be told sweet comfortable lies, for as long as possible - then we need a scapegoat or a distraction.
Ronald Reagan looked at the setting sun and proclaimed "It's morning in America" while his regime ran covert wars and told us "Government is not the answer - it's the problem." George H.W. Bush talked about a "Thousand points of light" while dabbling at war in Panama to overcome his wimp factor - then stumbled into Gulf War One. He won - but lost because he forgot "It's the economy, stupid!" Bill Clinton managed to give us the economy - but squandered the opportunity to use the good times for the kind of change the country really needed while triangulating away the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, along with his moral authority. After the Clinton "Economy" we got the "Stupid" and George W. Bush. We need a silver bullet now because of three decades of wasted opportunities.
Even now, there is real reluctance on the part of our political leadership to fully address the problems facing us, in part because the political system has been deliberately skewed to make it impossible, re Glenn Greenwald's new book, Great American Hypocrites.
Republicans can't and won't do it because there is no room in their mythology for effective government action outside of a military/security context, they have a base whose wealth and power depends on keeping things going the way they've been going for as long as possible, and an inherent antipathy to science and reason.
Democrats can't and won't do it because they've been politically knackered by the GOP and campaign consultants. If they say America is facing serious challenges, must sacrifice, and make fundamental changes, A) the GOP charges they don't believe in America and other assorted nonsense, while B) common wisdom is voters will turn away from doom and gloom. They remember in their bones what happened to Carter - and they learned all the wrong lessons. Witness what happened to Al Gore, and why he has walked away from politics to try to work directly through the people to save the planet.
If you look at the websites of Obama, Clinton, and McCain, for an idea of what they'd do to address Global Warming and the Energy Crisis it's not encouraging. While both Clinton and Obama at least connect the two and have some ambitious goals, neither of them are pushing a program of the magnitude we're going to need. Their ideas are going to be overtaken by events.
McCain is even worse. His web page is an incoherent mashup of buzz phrases heavily seasoned with patriotic testosterone. He's the only one who even dares mention nuclear energy though (as an advanced technology); the Democrats are at pains to emphasize Green proposals. Alas, it's looking more and more like Biofuels create more problems than they solve, and both feature them prominently; Clinton even cites "Clean Coal" which is one of the great marketing oxymorons of all time. It's hard to tell how much they actually understand about the issues here, and how much is focus-grouped just to sound good to voters.
That's why I couldn't resist putting Vampires, Werewolves, and Zombies in the title of this diary about Silver Bullets. In the GOP we have the equivalent of Vampires, sucking the life out of the world. We have plenty of Werewolves - programs like corn based ethanol or clean coal that look fine by day, but by moonlight reveal their monstrous side. As for Zombies, well there are plenty of people of all political persuasions who might as well be brain dead when it comes to looking at facts and coming up with a reality-based course of action.
Consider that all three presidential candidates still will not take part in a National Science Debate. Survival in the 21st Century as a viable civilization is not going to be possible unless and until our country has a better grasp of Science, with leaders who are not afraid of being scientifically literate in Public.
Almost all of the major challenges we will face as a nation in this new century, from the environment, national security and economic competitiveness to energy strategies, have a scientific or technological basis. Can a president who is not comfortable thinking about science hope to lead instead of follow? Earlier Republican debates underscored this problem. In May, when candidates were asked if they believed in the theory of evolution, three candidates said no. In the next debate Mike Huckabee explained that he was running for president of the U.S., not writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book, and therefore the issue was unimportant.
Apparently many Americans agreed with him, according to polls taken shortly after the debate. But lack of interest in the scientific literacy of our next president does not mean that the issue is irrelevant. Popular ambivalence may rather reflect the fact that most Americans are scientifically illiterate. A 2006 National Science Foundation survey found that 25% of Americans did not know the earth goes around the sun.
Our president will thus have to act in part as an "educator in chief" as well as commander in chief. Someone who is not scientifically literate will find it difficult to fill this role.
Amen.
Anyone have a link to the school transcripts of the three candidates so we can see if they took any science classes, and how well they did IF they did? It might well be just as important as poring over their tax returns, and their bowling scores.
I'm actually pretty optimistic about the Polywell concept proving out, and even more reassured to find people here who've already been tracking this for a while. There have been some really good comments to the diaries with information that has added a lot to the discussion. Real leadership on this is going to have to come from the bottom. I'd love to be able to sit down with any of the three candidates just to find out if they even know about the Polywell concept - and how receptive they'd be to promoting it if elected. It ought to be an incentive to point out that it should be possible to build a working Polywell reactor capable of reaching break-even within the 8 years of a two-term presidency. Maybe even a working power plant model. Instant legacy!
From there, it'd be an easy step to announce a program to save the planet by launching the equivalent of the old Liberty Ship program to crank out Polywell power plants as quickly as possible. Their footprint ought to be of a size to fit right in where existing fossil fuel plants generate electricity now. Install the Polywells, tie them into the local grid - then shut down the fossil fuel dinosaurs forever. It probably won't be that easy - but it might still happen in my lifetime. I think I'd rather like to see that - and fusion powered spacecraft as well.
What worries me is, even if the Polywell reactor delivers on all the promises, it will still face tremendous opposition. The coal and oil industry will not look favorably on it - and the multinational power generating conglomerates are going to have real problems with a technology that upsets all of their profit models. The idea of electricity that might actually BE too cheap to meter is not one they are going to accept.
Then there's the NIMBY factor and the fear of anything with the word "nuclear" in it. People who don't understand how it works are going to be scared to death of radiation, melt-downs, and terrorist attacks. Some of the polling data from the diaries suggests that there is a percentage of people who will reject the Polywell out of hand because they don't believe any nuclear technology can be considered Green, and they'd rather see resources devoted to wind, solar, and wave exclusively. We certainly need those now - but they shouldn't shut the door to alternatives.
And of course, there will be any number of experts who will proclaim the technology can't work, is impossible, and will actively seek to stop it. Clarke's First Law and all that. The controversy over Cold Fusion still lingers; fraud charges will probably be raised by some regarding the Polywell concept. (There's a growing body of evidence that Cold Fusion is a real phenomenon. It's biggest sin was being discovered by a couple of Chemists, not Physicists.) Certainly, all of the institutions, corporations, governments, researchers, etc. involved in the ITER project will not look kindly on an upstart alternative - especially if it is superior. (Think Current Wars.)
I'm am optimist despite years of evidence suggesting that's not the way to bet, and I think I'd rather have to worry about all of the problems the Polywell reactor will create when it IS successful. As Kauffman Rule 18 notes Every solution creates new problems.
The auto solved the horse-manure pollution problem and created an air pollution problem. Modern medicine brought us longer, healthier lives--and a population explosion that threatens to produce a global famine. Television brings us instant access to vital information and world events--and a mind-numbing barrage of banality and violence. And so on. The important thing is to try to anticipate the new problems and decide whether we prefer them to the problem we are currently trying to solve. Sometimes the "best" solution to one problem just creates a worse problem. There may even be no solution to the new problem. On the other hand, an apparently "inferior" solution to the original problem may be much better for the whole system in the long run.
Let me toss out a few possible problems. The availability of cheap energy makes urban sprawl explode even faster. The idiots who believe technology will ALWAYS turn up in time to solve our problems will continue to think this proves they can continue to act like idiots and behave totally irresponsibly. The removal of energy constraints on the economic systems of the world will lead some people to think all constraints can be ignored. (They should all be made towatch this. Over and Over.) Polywell-powered container ships will make it even easier to off-shore manufacturing jobs. Some bright boy will get the idea of building fusion-powered flying battle platforms equipped with gigawatt lasers that'll make this look like a toy. I'll never be able to get my kids to turn anything off again. And so on.....
Ah well, Kauffman Rule 28. Foresight always wins in the long run.
Solutions to problems affecting complex systems usually take time. If we wait until the problem develops and then react to it, there may not be time for a good solutions before a crisis point is reached. If we look ahead and anticipate a problem, however, we usually have more choices and a better chance of heading the problem off before it disrupts things. Reacting to problems means letting the system control us. Only by using foresight do we have a real chance to control the system; or: those who do not try to create the future they want must endure the future they get.
This series has been a big effort - but very rewarding, thanks to all of the responses to it. Please bookmark it, don't hesitate to pass it on, and spread the word. As I said, this could be the Silver Bullet we need - but only if we're able and willing to consider it in the first place. (And if you want to donate to the EMC2 effort, here's the link.)