Home

Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, October 30, 2006 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Marty Hoffert

"Needed: An Apollo Program for Energy"

ABSTRACT -- The world's critical energy problems require solutions beyond those policy makers are exploring now. Global warming is accelerating the rate at which radical transformations of energy systems away from fossil fuels are needed to avoid "dangerous human interference with the climate system." Given the world's large -- but climatically problematical, if CO2 is freely vented to the atmosphere -- coal resources, such a transition might be deferred to the 22 Century. But global warming is the canary in the mine. Already arctic sea ice, tundra, alpine glaciers and the Greenland Ice cap are melting; sea level is rising; tropical disease vectors carrying West Nile virus and cholera penetrate temperate latitudes; and sea surface temperatures have warmed to the point where intense hurricanes like Katrina are not only more probable; but happen. Given the decades lost since the US last had an appropriate-scale alternate energy R & D program in the 70s I will argue that only a radical and disruptive Manhattan Project- or Apollo Program-style approach will work; and that engineers and scientists need to become pro-active on this issue.

SPEAKER -- Martin I. Hoffert is Professor Emeritus of Physics and former Chair of the Department of Applied Science at New York University. His academic background includes a B.S. (1960) in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; M.S. (1964) and Ph.D. (1967) from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now the Polytechnic Institute of New York) in Astronautics; and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, M.A.L.S. (1969) from the New School for Social Research where he did graduate work in sociology and economics. He has been on the research staff of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation, General Applied Science Laboratories, Advanced Technology Laboratories, Riverside Research Institute and National Academy of Sciences Senior Resident Research Associate at the NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He is a Member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is presently a consultant to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Versatility Software, Inc.




Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov