They Want To Believe (He Dazzled Them With Science!)
Morale continues to sag on the left as the Best and Brightest, led by the Bestest and Brightestest of all, continue to be stumped by a leaking oil well and the First Emoter continues his descent into parody.
Yesterday Ezra Klein led a brief rally around Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu (the other Nobel Laureate on Team Obama! I mean, how great are these guys?!?) as the man who would lead us home. His post, titled "It's Useful To have Geniuses Around" gushed over this bit from a WaPo storyon the oil debacle:
Obama has also called in some of the many scientists on the federal payroll, led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Chu at one point pushed the unusual idea of using gamma rays to peer into the blowout preventer to determine if its valves were closed, a technique he experimented with in graduate school while studying radioactive decay.
The suggestion at first elicited snickering and "Incredible Hulk" jokes. Then they tried it, and it worked. "They weren't hot on his ideas," a senior White House official said of BP's initial reaction to Chu's suggestions. "Now they are."
The Hulk! Gamma rays! Oh, whoa, dude - there hasn't been this muchscreaming and swooning since The Beatles hit the Ed Sullivan show.
So, why all this excitement based on a self-serving leak from a White House spinner? Well, they want to believe. Josh Green of The Atlantic interviewed Dr. Chu about this on May 13; to his credit, Andrew Leonard at Salon was able to keep his blood pressure under control:
Sure, I agree with Green, it's great that Chu assembled a team of top scientists to brainstorm with BP, and it is super-cool to hear him discuss the process...
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.
Planet not saved? Any day now! Since we are fortunate to have a genius amongst us, let's see what Dr. Chu had to say to the Times back on May 12:
“Things are looking up,” Dr. Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, told reporters after the meeting. “Progress is being made.” He cautioned that the situation was still not under control and declined to detail the reasons for his optimism. But when pressed, he said, “I’m feeling more comfortable than I was a week ago.”
Yup, we are moving from triumph to triumph.
And let's come back to the self-serving White House story that the BP people scoffed at Dr. Chu's gamma rays, but are not scoffing now. Per the Green interview, Dr. Chu got involved on the first Sunday in May, when Obamascrambled down to Louisiana to show his commitment and escape the shadow of Katrina.
Yet this is from the Times on April 29, Day One of Obama's enhanced involvement and before the Chu flash of brilliance:
Doug Suttles, the chief operating officer for exploration and production for BP, said the company had asked the military for better imaging technology...
Better imaging technology? What does the military do with imaging technology? Well, the Department of Homeland Security has been working on containerized cargo scanning since 2002; the Defense Department also has an interest, and has contracted for a militarized version of the scanners made by Science Applications International Corporation. And did I mention that since the containers and trucks being scanned often include thick steel, these are gamma ray scanners?
From which I infer that the idea of using gamma ray imaging to peer through thick steel is not exactly a cutting edge contribution.
Now, maybe BP hoped the Navy had some gamma-ray scanners rigged for deep-water work (and maybe they do!). Or maybe BP scoffed at the idea that a gamma-ray scanner developed for dry land use could be dropped into 5,000 feet of water after a bit of tinkering with baling wire and chewing gum. (I can hear myself in that meeting - 'Geez, if we drop some radioactive Cobalt 60 to 5,000 feet and the pressure cracks the unit open, the good news is that people will forget all about the oil leak...').
Well. Since BP was already looking for imaging ideas and equipment, I wonder whether they scoffed at all. And nearly a month later I would say that Ezra Klein and White House spin notwithstanding, Dr. Chu's genius has not revealed itself to be useful.
On the other hand, the NY Times reported today that the government brain trust charged with figuring out how much oil is leaking from the will has not been able to do so. The Best and Brightest do not lack for chores.
Posted by Tom Maguire on June 08, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBack (0)
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