What's New Friday, Nov13, 2009 Washington, DC

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park    Friday, 13 Nov 09   Washington, DC

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

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

3.  BRAIN CANCER: OF COURSE CELL PHONES ARE DANGEROUS! 
Cell phones may lead to neural atrophy as mindless chatter is substituted 
for coherent information, but they don't cause brain cancer.  This week, 
however, a doctoral thesis at a university in Sweden suggested that cell 
phones are linked to some brain cancers.  It went around the world in 
Science Daily on Wednesday. This imaginary link is "discovered" about every 
five years or so.  Photons induce cancer by the photoelectric effect, 
breaking chemical bonds and creating mutant strands of DNA.  In 2001, I was 
invited to write an editorial on cell phone hazards for the Journal of the 
National Cancer Institute (JNCI, Vol. 93, Feb 7, 2001, p. 166).  I pointed 
out that the photoelectric effect would require photon energies at the 
extreme blue end of the visible spectrum, which is why it's the ultraviolet 
rays in sunlight that cause skin cancer.  Microwave photons are about 
10,000 times less energetic. In a classic 2001 op-ed, LBL physicist Robert 
Cahn observed that Albert Einstein discovered in 1905 that microwaves 
couldn't cause cancer.  The cell phone scare was launched in 1993 on the 
Larry King Live Show, which is not peer reviewed.  It almost strangled the 
infant cell-phone industry in its crib, but researchers found nothing. 
 
4.  LHC: IS PARANOIA BECOMING THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE AT CERN?
Ten days ago as CERN prepared for the turn on the giant collider their work 
was interrupted by dangerous overheating in sector 81.  A bit of a 
baguette, perhaps dropped by a passing bird, fell into an electrical 
substation on the surface far above.  Why would a bird do this?  Or was it 
a bird?  Could it be, as we reported a month ago, that God just doesn’t 
like the Higgs?  http://bobpark.umd.edu/WN09/wn101509.htmlOr has the 
staggering responsibility of searching for the God particle finally driven 
some physicists at CERN over the edge?

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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