Book review: Physics for Future Presidents

[Guest guest]

Scientific advice for potential presidents by Graeme Wood August 3

Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines

By A. Muller. W.W. Norton; 380 pages; $26.95

The late F. Buckley famously said he'd rather be governed by the first

2,000 people in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University.

No one, to my knowledge, ever asked him to choose between the Berkeley phone

book and the UC Berkeley faculty. I suspect the conservative Buckley would have

held his nose and opted for the faculty - if only in hopes that a few right-wing

economists might compensate for the liberal s that he imagined made up the

rest of the professoriat, to say nothing of the population at large.

The latest book by A. Muller, a polymath in Berkeley's physics

department, conceals artfully whether its author is a Buckleyite, a or,

for that matter, a Buckleyite . " Physics for Future Presidents " condenses

Muller's popular physics course at Berkeley into a handful of chapters about the

key scientific issues that an American chief executive from either party will

face.

The book is not political. It doesn't mention, for example, McCain's

climate-change policies or Barack Obama's academic research on the intersection

of modern physics and legal theory. And except for a forcefully argued section

about nuclear waste disposal, it remains resolutely modest in its advice,

preferring to hide its politics behind its science and opine only in arguments

that can be settled by appealing to mathematics or known physical laws.

The light of science shines bright, and the dark corners it reaches are more

numerous than one might think. In Muller's book, global climate change receives,

as predicted, a great deal of attention and ink. Nuclear weapons do, too: Future

presidents have to know the different types of uranium and plutonium bombs,

since each presents different threats and requires different types of technical

know-how by the nations that possess them.

But even low-tech questions yield to treatment by physics. Muller has lucid

explanations of how the World Trade Center collapsed and why the greatest

threats posed by terrorists are still from conventional weapons rather than

biological (hard to deliver and not worth the effort) and nuclear (way, way

beyond al Qaeda's expertise). The burning jet fuel that took down the twin

towers packed many times more energy per pound than TNT. Bombs and gas still

kill the most people for the least cost and risk.

Muller's section on nuclear weapons and radiation is a neat little gem of

science writing and a model for unhysterical explanation of an inherently

fraught subject. It turns out to matter greatly what type of nuclear weapons

North Korea has tested, to indicate both what damage Kim Jong Il can do - so

far, all the tests have been duds - and how he acquired his bombs. Thinking

prospectively, too, Muller gives simple advice on how to identify countries that

are trying to make bombs from scratch. Look for countries that import maraging

steel, he says, but don't play a lot of golf. (Maraging steel's main use, other

than the manufacture of high-end clubs, is to make gas centrifuges for enriching

uranium.)

On the subject of energy, the insights are more equivocal. Muller points out the

potential of solar power, which is indeed impressive: Just 1 square kilometer of

direct sunlight at midday produces the same power as a large power plant.

But the problems of energy turn out to have at least as much to do with

environmentalists and economists as they do with physics. Solar power still

costs too much, wind farms kill too many birds (although far fewer than, say,

cars), no one wants to flood a valley for a hydroelectric dam, and geothermal

power simply isn't ready.

And it isn't clear that economy-crippling carbon taxes and huge investments in

present technologies would be money well spent, especially when one considers

the alternative of being patient, studying the problem and dedicating more

research money to more effective climate interventions. Muller can explain why

solar power is expensive today, but it takes an economist - Nordhaus of

Yale - to tell us just how expensive it would be to wait a few more decades and

try to find a better solution.

Muller knows the limitations of science well, and it is a credit to his modesty

that he nearly always leaves the political questions to the reader (who is

addressed throughout, somewhat preciously, as if he or she were the

president-elect of the United States). Nevertheless, he might have profited from

being slightly less tentative in discussions of politics, since physics does

have to enter the practical world somehow. Even a few paragraphs on the role of

scientific and technical advisers in the executive branch would be welcome,

since these are the people who actually implement scientific policy.

To take one example, Muller mentions an incident in which U.S. nuclear expert

May went to Pyongyang to determine whether the North Koreans really had

reprocessed fuel into plutonium, as they claimed. The inspector asked to hold

the plutonium in his bare hand to feel its warmth and weight. The North Koreans

hadn't anticipated this seemingly bold gambit, but they let him hold it anyway,

and thereby, perhaps unwittingly, gave the United States evidence that their

reprocessing had succeeded. May knew the plutonium would be safe to touch, since

its alpha-particle emissions wouldn't be able to penetrate the dead skin of his

hands.

We don't expect the next president to be so scientifically adept that he can

juggle fissile material at state dinners; presidents seek expert advice on many

subjects, and only a rare politician will know as much about economics as Ben

Bernanke or as much about asymmetric warfare as Petraeus. And although I'd

certainly prefer to have a president conversant in the scientific issues Muller

raises, one who knows the issues only vaguely but retains and listens to

advisers of Muller's stature may be just as effective.

What's most disturbing is that we expect presidents to be ignorant of the most

basic science in this book. Would you be surprised if, in a debate, a

presidential candidate showed that he knew the difference between horsepower and

a kilowatt-hour? I would. This is a low bar, and I wish both candidates could

surpass it, with or without Muller's counsel. Graeme Wood is an editor at the

Atlantic.

This article appeared on page M - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/03/BAKK121FFB.DTL & hw=gr\

aeme+wood & sn=001 & sc=1000