Bad Gas

I was driving back from the National Lab tucked into the hills above the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. The rain had passed and the clouds had raised and the light was soft.

Berzerkeley, we used to call it, because of the daily rioting over People’s Park, and the alliance of the Panthers with the Students, and the astonishing vehemence of the opposition to the War.

Both of our campuses went crazy over that subject. I remember the rioting in placid Ann Arbor, the windows smashing on the Bank across from Engine Arch and Sheriff Doug Harvey’s riot-clad officers storming the mostly unarmed students.

But regardless of what was happening on progressive campuses in the Mid-West, at Wisconsin and Michigan and even little Kent State, there was the granddaddy of student protest, the University of California at Berkeley, where a young radical took on the national government over Free Speech and Racism in 1964. It all started here, first with 800 students arrested, and then with 10,000 students occupying the Administration Building.

It was a long time ago and the inmates are running the asylum now. The school Administration has placed formal historical posters of Mario Savio in the Free Speech Café near the student union. The Young firebrand looks kind of cute in his younger days, short hair and blazer, and I was surprised to recall that he had died in 1997, nearly five years ago. The poster was an informational way of providing context for the students of today about the students of yesterday.

So I was in an agitated state of mind as I passed from the lush canyons where the Lab is situated, and down through the formal Greek-inspired buildings of the University, and then bohemian Berkeley, and into the slums of Oakland. The same little California houses would bring you a million dollars in San Diego, or across the Bay.

But not here.

I had been looking for a gas station all day, since the rental car needs to be topped off when I return it to the airport in the morning, or incur an extra charge. It is one of the things I don’t like to leave until the morning, and driving up San Pedro Boulevard I saw a BP station on the left. It was not a good neighborhood, but it was broad daylight and I figured it would be safe enough.

I had no idea which side the filler nozzle was on, and guessed wrong on the first try. Then the pumps had no credit card slot, and a prominently posted sign informed me I had to pay first. The cashier was behind a bulletproof Plexiglas shield and there were several disgruntled people waiting to pay. Someone asked why he was closing now, and how long it would be till he opened again. They did not seem happy about it.

A man in a dirty sweatshirt popped around the back of the car and asked if he could pump the gas for me. I looked at the line, and looked at the man, and got in the car and drove away. This looked like a recipe for bad gas to me.

I don’t know why there are no gas stations in Oakland. They seem to be extinct. The corner lots that used to sell the stuff have been converted to parking lots or Mexican or Chinese restaurants. Maybe it is the Berkeley City Council’s concern over the environment, though there seem to be plenty of cars around, or maybe it is because the owners got tired of having their employees robbed or shot.

I dunno. There will be a gas station on the San Francisco side of the Bay, or there won’t be. The worst they can do is charge me an outrageous amount for a few gallons at the Avis garage.

It was curious that the day had devolved into a practical exercise in energy. There had been a chance that I could fly out a day early, but the Admiral who worked for the Regents of the university system that manage the Labs had been very helpful. He said that if I was serious about wanting to partner with them, I should talk to some of the key players.

Accordingly, I arranged a call with a senior official at one of the Labs, who seemed suspicious and a bit paranoid. Maybe it was the nature of the phone conversation, out of the blue, prompted by higher headquarters. I will have to explore that one more deeply. Then I called the office of the Director of the other lab located in the Bay area. It turned out he was available, and would be happy to see me on what would be the last call of the trip. I was eager to make it, and be done with this endless travel.

I motored over in the morning, past the quaint buildings. One thing about a slum, it is a good mechanism for preserving the shells of a civilization that is gone. No one cares. Most of Oakland seemed to be either in the beauty products industry or experimenting with various flavors of store-front religion.

The neighborhoods got better as I drove up into Berkeley. It was boho and nice. The university district was pulsing with life, students walking to class, and I kept going up the hill to the Lab complex hidden in the trees.

The guard told me where to go and where to park. There was a guy watching, but he didn’t seem armed. I skirted up the steep hills and found the space that had my name on it. The Lab HQ was an unprepossessing industrial building of indeterminate age. On the porch was a stainless steel tub about the size of a casket.

It had stainless fittings and a plastic shield rendered milky white by exposure to the elements. There was a sign that informed me that the tub had once been the first device to identify sub-atomic particles based on the bubbles they left behind as they passed through a liquid medium of super-heated fluid.

It was a very expensive piece of gear in its time. Inside the lobby were more plaques and signs, and a desk in a plastic case, preserved as it was  the moment a founding director received a telegram informing him that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, and that a letter would follow to that effect.

It might have been the first Nobel to come to the Lab, but it was certainly not the last. There was a gallery of the awardees on the wall, and I paused to look at them. The last in the line was the man who I had come to see. I swallowed, thinking through the misconceptions contained in what I had intended to say to him before I knew.

I had not anticipated addressing a Nobel Laureate. This would both ease and complicate my remarks. I doubted that I had much to say to him on the state of science in the Labs I represented, since in fact the Prize was in fact derived, in part, from his time spent with my employers.

He was talking to his Chief of Staff when I got to the office and he waved me in. He was a good guy, modest and very approachable. Soft-spoken but self-assured. I mentioned the Prize early on, and but it appeared that I was more impressed by it that he was. Or perhaps, the issue was that he had his and I never would and that was the end of it.

It turned out that the new President of our Labs had once shared a seat on a private Gulfstream jet a few years ago, going into southern China. The Laureate thinks highly of him, since he once offered him the loan of his own private jet, in case the burden of travel became unsupportable.

We had a free-wheeling conversation about the management of the National Labs in general, and the management of his in particular. I had nothing to sell him, except a relationship, and that appeared to be a given. There then ensued a long discussion about the unique culture of each of the national labs, and the prospects for those located in New Mexico when the senior Senator from that state retired from the Appropriations Committee.

The Laureate leaned forward for emphasis and suggested it was likely to be a rude awakening.

Then we talked about particular areas in which we might be of use to him, and he began to wax eloquent. This Lab had been a key part of the Manhattan Project, able to attract the very best minds by virtue of the serendipitous collocation of the University and the climate.

But things were changing. There was still research in those areas going on, and this will be a bastion of physics for the foreseeable future. But the Laureate is convinced that there is a threat to the National Security. It is as real as the original reason his Lab was established.

Most of our hour was spent on a detailed discussion of the energy situation. Current trends are forcing a confrontation between China and the U.S. for resources. The oil in the ground will be consumed over the next century; the fight over that is a tactical struggle. The strategic question is what we do about what will come next.

The two short-term remedies are, of course, coal and nuclear power. Both come at great cost; so high, in fact, that it cannot be paid. The level of bad carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere has increased over historical records from around 250 parts per million to something approaching 400.

Carbon is reamrkably stable. It will stay in the atmosphere for a hundred years, even if we cease immediately the proliferation of bad greenhouse gases. Thus, we will continue to accelerate along the line of current trends unless we can find a way to scrub them out of the atmosphere. The alternative to increased use of coal is nuclear power. Existing technology produces material with a half-life of 400,000 years, or the equivalent of the period in which the earth produced four ice ages.

There are techniques that can reprocess fuel into additional power and reduce waste. But the problem is that those techniques are the very ones that produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Both alternatives are losers. Accordingly, the Laureate believes that some sort of process by which sunlight can be captured and transferred to a chemical medium (similar to photosynthesis) is our technical salvation. He has bolstered the presence of bio-physicists at the Lab, and is very interested in nanotechnology applications to help along the way.

I offered to facilitate exchanges that could augment his capabilities in that regard, and came to the end of the meeting ready to plant a green flag on the hood of my rental Chevy. The Laureate had been generous with his time, and gracious in his manner, making the science involved seem like something anyone could understand.

I thanked him as I left, marveling at the experience and scheming at how I could support his efforts. I walked past the stainless casket where the secrets of the atom had been revealed, and across the blacktop to the  Chevy. I fired it up, releasing a little greenhouse gas into the crisp California air.

Last call of the trip, first time to talk to a Laureate. Interesting, I thought as I drove down the hill. Then I realized I had to find a gas station before I could get out of town.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.VicSocotra.Com

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