A Life More than "good enough." - 268

A great man passed away in June in a state he may play a role in saving. The state is Texas, and Texas is suffering from a heat wave on climate change steroids.

Texans are competitive people, especially in the oil business. In the last few weeks, Texans have been competing with places like Kuwait City, Baghdad, and Djibouti for a dubious record. Will Texas be the hottest place on earth? The Yellow Rose is wilting as heat records are falling. San Angelo and Del Rio have surpassed 110 F. Del Rio, already experiencing searing records ten days in a row, topped out at 115F. Rio Grande Village ran away with the roasting honors at 119F.

We have seen blistering hot records set at a pace of two hot records for every cold record for years. This rate of hot records to cold will continue until we cease polluting the air with heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

Luckily, we have the tools to turn this around. If we electrify our lives using solar, wind, and battery storage, we will not need to burn coal, oil, or gas and toast ourselves.

Science breakthroughs already made are the basis of my optimism. One of the key players in the race to save the planet was John Goodenough, who passed away at 100 years old.

He and fellow scientists and colleagues pioneered the work to make battery storage powerful and safe.

If you wish to investigate an improbable winner of the most coveted science award, the Nobel prize, search the Time magazine article on John Goodenough. His childhood did not predict his rise to greatness. His early years were unpleasant as he described his parents as distant, and his childhood was filled with "deep hurt." At 12, he was sent to a boarding school. He had a reading disability and chose to study Latin and Greek to overcome these.

He excelled at math and won a scholarship to Yale, but at this time, WWII broke out, so he went into the Air Force and served as a meteorologist.

He returned to his studies at Yale after the war. His work qualified him for graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he, improbably, studied physics. I say improbably because he had little background in physics.

His thesis at the University of Chicago was solid-state physics, which qualified him for work with the Department of Defense at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At that time, the military was keen on new-fangled gadgets called computers. His work was instrumental in developing computer random-access memory or RAM. Ram is what we call it today when we shop for a computer. This research kept him busy for 24 years, but in 1976 funding ran out.

He then applied to work as the Head of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford even though his background was weak in chemistry. He was accepted, and he turned his attention to batteries.

In 1986 he moved to the University of Texas, Austin, to teach and continue research. Goodenough was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on October 9, 2019, for his work on lithium-ion batteries, along with M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino.

He is the oldest person ever to have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

He continued to work and teach until he turned 98.

In addition to being respected for his well-earned wisdom, he was well-loved for his caring mentorship of students and his infectious booming laughter.

When asked what the recipe for success in science is, he replied with his sense of humor and wisdom, by saying four things were required. First, he said you need a supportive partner. He was referring to his wife of over 70 years, Irene. Second, he said you need good colleagues. These must have numbered hundreds over his long years of study and research. Third, a scientist needs to find a problem that matches their talents. And fourth, make sure when you discover something important, be sure entrepreneurs discover it too because when they make a lot of money, you will become famous.

Although he was by no means wealthy, he did receive monetary awards and raised money for education. He established the Irene W. Goodenough Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Nursing in his wife's honor. Additionally, he created the John B. and Irene W. Goodenough Endowed Research Fund in Engineering at St. Catherine's College.

The University of Oxford established a Goodenough Fellowship in Chemistry in his honor.

With men and women like John, our efforts to save the planet might be good enough.

A note from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas one day during the recent heat wave: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the grid serving most of the state, reported a record amount of renewable energy production yesterday. Solar and wind farms generated 31,468 megawatts, helping offset the 9.6 gigawatts lost when natural gas and coal plants were knocked offline.

"Wind and solar are giving us a big enough buffer that even when we have a handful of power plants go offline, it isn't causing disruptions," said Dan Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston.

Texas Water Breaks: Many local governments in Texas, such as San Antonio and Dallas, have ordinances requiring a minimum number of required water breaks, such as one ten-minute water break every four hours. These breaks have now been banned by a state law passed by the Republican lead state legislature.

A note about nights: We all look forward to cooler nights during heat waves. Unfortunately, nights are cooling slower as greenhouse gases thicken because greenhouse gases hold over the heat from the day. Night high-temperature records in Texas are being set faster than day high temp records.

By the way, Texas is setting these records in June.