What's New Friday December 21, 2007

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 28 Dec 07   Washington, DC

1.  HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS: SANK IN "THE GATHERING STORM."
Science-policy reps were patting each other on the back in August when 
President Bush signed the bipartisan America COMPETES Act in response to 
the NAS report Rising Above the Gathering Storm.  It was meant to keep 
America competitive by boosting basic science, including a doubling of 
funding for NSF and the DOE Office of Science.  Six months later, the most 
basic of all the sciences, high-energy physics, is in a death spiral.  
Fermilab faces major layoffs, the neutrino oscillation experiment, NOvA, 
which was expected to be the lab’s principle activity after the Tevatron 
shuts down, is terminated.  Three quarters of the funding for the 
International Linear Collider is cut.  The US again stiffed ITER on our 
share of the fusion program.  The NSF increase was pared down to 1 
percent.  Meanwhile, in a letter to the research community, House Speaker 
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said her "commitment to the innovation agenda remains 
strong and steadfast."  Try spending that.

2. IT’S FUNDAMENTAL: DO WE NEED HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS?
Why would fragile, self-replicating collections of atoms, trapped on a 
tiny planet for a few dozen orbits about an undistinguished star among 
countless other stars in one of billions of galaxies, spend their orbits 
trying to understand how it happened?  Others claim to know all the 
answers, but the only way to know is to experiment - and they haven’t done 
it.

3. LOW-ENERGY PHYSICS: FUNDING IS UP FOR "CLEAN COAL."
The spending bill did increase funding for "clean coal."  Sound like an 
oxymoron?  Integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) generators were 
supposed to be all over the place by now.  They turn coal into gases and 
filter out the CO2 before the gases are burned.  Clean coal plants cost 
more to build but are cheaper in the long run - or at least they would be 
if they captured and sequestered the carbon dioxide like they’re supposed 
to.  The technology, however, is not there yet, and some planned clean-
coal plants are being cancelled.  That’s a relief to some people in West 
Virginia, where coal companies want to scrape the tops off the mountains 
to get the coal, filling the valleys with the rubble.

4. IT’S A DAM SHAME: WHAT ARE WE WILLING TO LET GO?
The rules have changed.  China, according to a story in today’s Wall 
Street Journal, has become the dam builder for the world.  Chinese 
companies are now involved in deals to construct at least 47 major dams in 
27 countries, not all of which have nice leaders.  Construction of large 
dams involves the forced relocation of people - in the case of the 
gigantic Three Gorges Dam in China 1.4 million people had to be 
relocated.  Fifty years ago the Pacific Northwest was the envy of the rest 
of the nation for its cheap hydroelectric power - the sun does all the 
work.  Then the public mood began to shift away from fish ladders and back 
toward wild rivers.  With global warming as a new term in the equation, 
pressure for new dam projects is certain to increase.  Although dams alter 
the environment, the changes are not necessarily bad.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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