Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Learnin' about Convective Clouds!

On Thursday at 7pm at the Norman Public Library, we're going to gather to hear Dr. Michael Jensen of Brookhaven National Lab talk about the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E). This experiment is employing the largest network of meteorological instruments in history for the study of convective clouds, which are the progenitors of severe thunderstorms. The researchers hope to better understand the processes that lead to these types of clouds, so that we can better forecast severe weather in the future.

I personally went to the Department of Energy's Southern Great Plains facility near Lamont, Oklahoma, and the array of instruments is impressive. In addition to multiple radars with different capabilities, there are many different types of sensors for estimating the amount of moisture throughout the atmosphere above the site (important for cloud formation), several different lidars (like a radar, but with pulses of light), and a pair of airplanes that fly into cloud structures to measure what the cloud looks like directly.

Hopefully you will all come out to learn more about clouds, which is a favorite topic of mine, and to support Science Cafe. Don't forget we'll we having Gray Owl Coffee, and snacks provided by the Friends of the Norman Public Library!

Monday, May 9, 2011

Posters on Therapeutic Approaches to Treating Viral Disease at the Norman Public Library

Dr. Susan Schroeder of OU's Departments of Botany and Microbiology, and Chemistry and Biochemistry, alerted our good friend and librarian Theresa Tittle to a poster display of individual research projects being put on by her students. The posters are aimed at the general public, and are being presented by students headed for health careers. The projects to be presented are related to new therapeutic approaches to treating viral diseases, and will be showcased in the Lowry Room at the Norman Public Library from 1 to 4pm on Thursday, May 12. Come check out the research of these aspiring scientists!

Friday, May 6, 2011

Last Night's Gathering with Dr. Milton

Last night we gathered at the Norman Public Library to hear Dr. Kimball Martin of Physics at OU talk about nuclear power. I was looking forward to a vigorous discussion of the topic, and the attendees did not disappoint. I would estimate about 60 people attended, and there were questions about almost every slide that Dr. Milton presented.

Some of the take away messages of the presentation:

(1) No source of energy is clean, free or without risks. Dr. Milton discussed the various ways we produce energy currently, and costs and limitations of each. He expressed concern over the contributions of fossil fuel use to accelerating warming in the climate, and to the limited supply of petroleum left to us. In addition, he noted that hydroelectric generation has gotten close to capacity for the US, and that newer and larger dams around the world are causing ecological damage and displacing millions of people. Other renewables have unknown effects, and are expensive. With this information in hand, it may be time to consider again whether nuclear power has a role to play in the energy budget.

(2) Fears about safety are based on bad calculations of risk. Dr. Milton said that the safety record of nuclear power plants is quite good, and certainly no worse than generating power by other means. The few failures have been spectacular in nature, which leads us to overestimate risk, since the probabilities of failure are low, but the outcomes have been disastrous. He also said that power generation from coal kills several hundreds per year in mining accidents, and that oil exploration is becoming more dangerous, and pointed to the recent Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico as evidence that other methods are quite risky.

(3) There are serious concerns with generation of power using nuclear reactors, other than safety. Nuclear waste must be stored for millions of years to become inert, and in a place that won't change significantly and thus expose the radioactive materials to the environment. Also, nuclear power and nuclear weapons are "entwined technologies", meaning that proliferation of nuclear weapons is a very possible side effect of widespread nuclear power use, since the same basic processes and technologies are used for both. Finally, the only international governance of nuclear power, the IAEA, has very little power for enforcement, and is chronically underfunded.

With these points, Dr. Milton suggested that we need to think deeply as a society about our goals as a society, and that moving forward will require a combined effort of efficiency, conservation, and smarter power production. He stressed that he is not an active proponent of building more nuclear power plants, but rather that our current system is not working and needs to be reconsidered.

Let me know if you're interested in the presentation, and I'll do my best to answer specific questions. Hope to see you at the next one! Details to follow soon!