Electrify Everything!

In the midst of our climate crisis there is some hope and good news. Every day, more people become a part of the solution. Fueled by passion and enabled by IRA funding, volunteers and paid professionals from grassroots organizations are increasingly providing the support and know-how to help homeowners, renters, schools, places of worship, municipalities and businesses make the change to clean energy. With an increasing awareness that we are out of time to make this change, there is also an increasing awareness that the energy transition is, in very personal ways, a good thing. A great thing! Electric cars are more reliable and never need an oil change. Heatpumps, which replace both air-conditioners and furnaces, often mean less expensive and more comfortable heating, not to mention healthier homes. They now include window-mounted units that renters can purchase instead of clunky AC units that provide no heat. Induction stoves are a joy to cook on. Solar panels on your roof mean lower energy costs, and backup batteries mean the heat stays on during a power outage that will be more frequent with our increasingly unstable climate.

At the same time, rebates and incentives offered by Massachusetts and the Federal Government mean that your next heating system will be the cheapest ever.

This is how you, as an individual, can participate. Electrify everything! Have a plan to replace every fossil-fuel driven accessory in your life with an electric equivalent.

The success of this strategy of course relies on the electric grid becoming greener – but that is also happening!

If you want to know more, I recommend Saul Griffith’s book, Electrify.

As a newly minted Rewiring America electrification coach, I am compiling a list of resources. Some of these you may find useful in your own energy transition: https://websites.umass.edu/lgoldner/electrification-and-electric-coaching-resources/

On Burning Forests to Power a Spaceport

The planet is in trouble. By now we should all know that. Societal emission of green-house gases, unabated, is changing our tiny speck of planet in ways that will, at very least, make large areas uninhabitable in our children’s lifetime.

Still, I have personally maintained hope. Recent changes in federal and state legislation, and a growing army of grass-roots groups and activists, are working to green our economy; decarbonize our buildings; speed the installation of solar and wind energy; electrify our transportation; and do all of this while centering environmental justice for the communities most at-risk.

I’m also a Physicist, one who marvels at every aspect of creation and still goes out at night to just stare at the stars. I value research and exploration and the innovation that springs from them.

But the pursuit of science and technology has limits. Limits that are far exceeded by France’s plans to burn 5300 hectares of the Amazon to provide energy for the EU Spaceport in French Guiana (link).

It is now clear that “biomass,” as currently used, is not a viable source of energy. Its use in power plants speeds the destruction of the planet. In many cases, burning wood or woody products to make electricity is worse than burning coal, emitting more in the way of green-house gases and deforesting large areas to do so. Claims of “no deforestation” by biomass producers are increasingly shown to be lies; for example, forests in South Carolina are regularly clear cut to make wood pellets burned in plants in the U.K., EU and Asia (link). Worldwide, governments are rethinking the use of biomass for electricity production. Australia outlawed its use at the end of last year. Sadly, other nations have yet to follow suit.

As scientists, we must reject the madness of burning the Amazon to power a spaceport. We can, and must, do better.



On Women and Minorities in Physics

On October 21, the Physics Department’s own Professor Jennie Traschen hosted a public affairs radio show on WMUA titled “Women and Minorities in Physics.” I was pleased and honored to participate in this one-hour discussion with another faculty member and four undergraduate students.  Particularly in light of Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy’s diversity initiative, and the ongoing under-representation of women and members of minority groups in physics and on campuses nationwide, the show was timely, and I hope, informative. You can listen to it here.

I would like to encourage you to take a moment to consider the causes of persistent under-representation of women and minority members in STEM.

To the extent that biases implicit in our culture are to blame, I encourage you to take one of the many tests that are available through Project Implicit at Harvard. I recommend particularly the gender-science implicit association test that you can get to from this page.  Recognizing that there is a problem, and understanding the nature of the problem, are essential first steps in solving a problem.

We all have implicit biases: recognizing this and understanding the nature of these biases is critical to increasing diversity in physics.

In the spring of 2014, Susan Metz of the Stevens Institute of Technology spoke on “Moving Beyond Fixing the Women to Changing the Culture in Academic STEM Fields.”  This excellent talk addressed directly and scientifically the impact of implicit bias on women.  It was well attended, but unfortunately not by the physics faculty. Fortunately Dr. Metz’s slides are linked on the UMass College of Natural Sciences Women in Science webpage.

 

Single Molecule Biophysics

Welcome to Lori Goldner’s blog.

For an overview of my research, please visit this website.

If you are looking for  Timetagger software or instructions for building hardware, please see “Hardware and Software” page, linked above. The Timetagger is an FPGA-based multi-channel timing unit useful for FRET, ALEX, FCS, DLS, and related techniques.