Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

I’ve been looking at Chapters 6 and 11 of Prof. Happer’s Optically Pumped Atoms (for sections about excited state depolarization by collisions with buffer gas), but I fear I don’t really understand them—exactly how the mathematics correspond to physics, and exactly how the spin-exchange with fictitious atom produces the pressure broadening (without also causing depolarization of ground state).

Well, so it looks like I’ll be sticking with the devil I know: writing terms into my optical Bloch equations to model pressure broadening and excited state depolarization piece by piece … in physically (and least to me) intuitive terms.

Maybe one day I’ll understand Prof. Happer’s approach.

Prof. Happer says,

On February 25th, 2009, Will Happer spoke before the Committee on Environment and Public Works in the U.S. Senate about climate change and carbon dioxide.

There are several places on the web where you can find his testimony—here are two:

• The Environment and Public Works Blog
• The Science and Public Policy Institute

I guess there are two ways of looking at it. The first way would be to dismiss Prof. Happer (who has written a very nice optical pumping primer that everyone that goes through Physics 111 Advanced Lab should read) saying, “But he’s an atomic physicist, what does he know about climate?”

Another way would be to recognize that perhaps only someone who’s not a “climatologist” (or whatever they call themselves these days) can speak the truth against the global warming orthodoxy. After all, is there a single lie or exaggeration in his statement (compare that to Gore’s famous work of fiction)?

After all, Gore’s only a politician. What does he know about science?