As BP struggles to stem the oil leak on the Mississippi Canyon seafloor, there's been considerable talk about the government's response to the disaster. Some have labeled it "Obama's Katrina" while others have praised the administration's prompt reaction to the problem. Republicans incline to the former, while Democrats prefer the latter. Like anything else in our polarized, paralyzed, useless Politics, the oil leak has become a partisan issue.
In a fawning blog post, Joshua Green—a senior editor for The Atlantic since 2003 and according to the Columbia Journalism Review, one of ten young writers on the rise—interviewed Energy Secretary Steven Chu concerning his damn-near heroic efforts to stem the oil leak.
It sounds like something right out of Marvel Comics: Government scientists suggest firing high-energy gamma rays -- GAMMA RAYS! -- to diagnose a leaking oil well a mile below the surface of the ocean. But that's what happened in the Gulf, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu and his team advised BP to use the gamma ray imaging technology to finally see the extent of the damage to the underwater blowout preventer, the safety device that was supposed to seal the oil well.
An eternal fact of Washington is that government gets much more attention when it performs badly than when it performs well. As an illustration of the former, recall the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. To illustrate the latter, consider how the media is covering government right now. By my count at least three major natural disasters have occurred in recent weeks: the Nashville flooding, the deadly Oklahoma tornadoes, and the BP oil spill (admittedly not "natural" but threatening to be a major environmental disaster). Let's throw in an attempted terrorist attack in Times Square, too. On every front, government has performed ably--and often better than ably. And yet it's understating things considerably to say this success has not been widely recognized.
It should be recognized, though, because when it comes to government disaster response, the Bush years marked a low point and right now we're experiencing a high point...
As ass-kissing goes, this text is almost unmatched in the long history of Imperial sycophancy. A young man on the rise indeed! Here's part of Green's interview with Chu.
Chu — ... The president charged me with assembling a small team of scientists to go down there and that was what we were doing beginning Tuesday night. The idea was to bring in very smart people who also have great connections to the larger engineering and scientific community. The national lab director who's been engaged in this from the beginning, Tom Hunter, and I and four other scientists and engineers went down there.
Green — How is it that you know enough about gamma rays and oil spill technology to be helpful? I wasn't aware that that was an area you'd worked in before you were secretary?
Chu — Oil spills were not something I've worked on, but I do know about gamma rays.
Green — How?
Chu — Because I'm a physicist. And I dabble in many areas of physics. I did experiments when I was a graduate student on weak interactions, which are the forces of nuclear decay. And so I kept in my brain certain nuclear sources and what their energies were and I knew what the ranges were for how penetrating gamma rays could be. Very high-energy gamma rays can penetrate several inches of steel...
After this was published, Salon's Andrew Leonard had the temerity to question the importance of Chu's contribution to fixing the still-raging oil leak. This quote is from his Steven Chu: Obama's oil spill gamma ray action man—
However, Green and Chu are awfully short on details as to exactly what BP accomplished with the gamma ray tech they borrowed from Sandia National Labs. The planet has not been saved, yet. Yes, a New York Times article mentions in passing that "gamma-ray inspection of the [blowout preventer] device showed that it 'has external integrity,' the official said." And BusinessWeek offers a rundown of the brain trust summoned to the scene by Chu, including scientists involved with "designing the first hydrogen bomb, inventing techniques for mining on Mars and finding a way to precisely position biomedical needles."
Again, I applaud such efforts. But you'd think with the application of all this brainpower and gee-whiz technology that we'd at least have a good handle on how much oil is currently spilling into the gulf. A good scientist tries to get a fix on the extent of the problem at hand, no?
Gamma Ray Action Man
The Gamma Ray Action Man worships science & technology—there is no other word for it. His faith that basic research & new technology solves all problems is limitless. I first described his exaltation of Man's Cleverness in The Secretary of Synthetic Biology. (This article was widely praised by the few people who actually read it.)
Chu's idea of solving any problem is to get a bunch of "smart people" together—it doesn't matter if they know anything about the problem at hand—to brainstorm the situation and come up with suggestions for lines of attack. Whether these potential "solutions" are irrelevant or involve decades-long research projects doesn't matter. The oil leak is a case in point.
The blow-out preventer (BOT) is broken, it isn't going to get fixed, and who gives a shit about it's "external integrity" at this point? Who, outside the Action Man, could possibly care about shooting GAMMA RAYS at the BOT when there are thousands of barrels of crude oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico everyday?
Chu could be easily dismissed as just another goofball except for the fact that he is the Secretary of Energy, and Chu's solutions to our oil supply problem are just about as relevant to solving that problem as his gamma-ray inspection of the blow-out preventer was to fixing the oil leak. I first described this foolishness in Steven Chu's Energy Miscalculations.
If you care about the oil issues and the policies of Dr. Chu, I suggest you read my (long) articles on the subject. As to whether Democrat disaster responses are far superior to Republican disaster responses, I have a suggestion: root for BP to plug the leak and save the embarrassing partisan bickering for later.
Frank Zappa said politics is high school with guns and more money. I might add and more technology. Speaking of which, let me introduce you to the Turbo Encabulator.
I'm sure The Gamma Ray Action Man will be interested...
Comments