There is good climate change and bad climate change. One of the very best types is the radical warming of the atmosphere for scientific inquiry we’re already feeling from the incoming Obama Administration.
Past posts and watchdog reports have detailed the suffocation of science in the Bush Administration — the censorship of findings, delays in producing required reports, reduced funding for earth sciences. President Bush is not known as the inquisitive type. As I have reported in the past, some members of the federal government’s science corps believe the president stifled climate science because he doesn’t want to know the answers. He most likely doesn’t want the rest of us to know them, either.
What a difference an election can make. President-elect Obama, often the smartest guy in the room, obviously is open to new knowledge, information and ideas. He’s named Nobel Laureate physicist Stephen Chu, director of Lawrence Livermore Berkeley National Laboratory to Energy; physicist and energy/environment expert John Holdren of Harvard as his science advisor; Marine biologist Jane Lubchenco of Oregon State University to NOAA; Harold Varmus, former director of the national Institutes of Health, and Eric Lander of MIT as co-chairmen of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
As Alan Leshner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science notes in the Economist, “we’ve never had a president surrounded in close proximity with so many well-known, top scientific minds.”
Another signal that it’s springtime for science is the economic stimulus plan the Obama team is circulating in Congress and in cyberspace. According to the plan:
Obama and Biden support doubling federal funding for basic research and changing the posture of our federal government from being one of the most anti-science administrations in American history to one that embraces science and technology.
Here are some additional suggestions — some of them offered in previous posts but worth repeating as the Administration prepares to take office.
End political censorship: During his first week in office, President Obama should issue an executive order that forbids political interference in the work of federal climate scientists. The order should also remove barriers to contact between federal scientists and the media and order agencies to release draft scientific reports that become buried in the “black hole” of agency review. (Other important provisions of this directive have been proposed by the Government Accountability Project and Union of Concerned Scientists.)
Restore earth sciences: Obama should direct NASA to put the study of the Earth back into its mission statement. More substantively, the Administration should ask Congress to increase the agency’s funding for climate-observing satellites, its capability to analyze climate data, and its studies of the likely local and regional impacts of climate change in the United States. As I reported in a previous post:
Climate scientists lament that with the erosion of NASA’s satellites budget, the institutions trying to better understand global warming are going blind. “The observations we have at this point just aren’t good enough,” said Robert Charlson of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle. “The biggest single problem we have now is a lack of adequate satellite measurements, and the platforms that could be moving us toward answers are either pending or being killed.“
If necessary, funding for NASA’s Mission to Mars should be transferred to Earth sciences. We need to understand Earth’s life-support systems now; we can worry about Mars later.
Protect the oceans: The atmosphere is not the only life-support system in distress. Climate change and other anthropogenic misdeeds are degrading oceans worldwide. Problems range from plastics pollution to red tides, from depleted fisheries to sea-level rise, and from coral bleaching to new pressures to mine everything from minerals to methane. (For a current summary of ocean issues, see the Economist’s special section on “Troubled Waters“.)
We can expect Dr. Lubchenco to move NOAA forward on our understanding of ocean ecology and how to protect it. While the United Nations and several national and international commissions have studied ocean problems (for example, Defying Ocean’s End, which involved 150 experts from 20 nations in 2003 to develop recommendations for ocean protection), Dr. Lubchenco should explore the creation of an IPCC for the oceans, an unprecedented collaboration among the world’s top marine scientists to better understand what’s happening in our oceans and to propose what should be done about it. Among other things, this new body — call it the IPMC (Intergovernmental Panel on Marine Conservation) — should explore the implications of proposals to geo-engineer the oceans to better store carbon, a questionable idea that suggests we can safely manipulate oceans before we fully understand them.
In short, the Obama Administration should capture the title of Teddy Roosevelt of the Oceans from President George W. Bush.
Fund the full technology path: Obama’s proposal to double funding for basic research should be expanded to cover all stages in developing and deploying clean energy technologies. Basic research alone doesn’t create jobs or solve the climate crisis.
Technology development can be divided into three categories: evolutionary (ready in three years or less), disruptive (ready in 3-10 years) and revolutionary (not ready for 10 years or more). We need for more funding for all three. We need more applied research to accelerate the maturation of critical technologies including advanced batteries for electric vehicles, cellulosic ethanol to offset petroleum, and utility-scale energy storage to solve the intermittency problems of solar and wind energy. We need to expand programs that move new technologies to market and speed their market penetration.
Given the deplorable cuts in federal R&D funding, doubling is a start but it’s not enough. For example, in Fiscal Year 2008, the only national laboratory dedicated to research on energy efficiency and renewable energy — the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. — was allocated less than $330 million for its research. That money is spread across its work on infrastructure, building efficiency, solar energy, transmission and distribution, bio-energy, wind power, vehicle technologies, hydrogen, federal energy management, geothermal energy and basic sciences. Given the urgency and span of NREL’s work on technologies that not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also lead to a stable new energy economy, $330 million is an underinvestment, to put it politely.
The Presidential Climate Action Project recommends that the federal budget for research, development and commercialization of clean energy technologies be increased ten-fold. If that’s not possible right now given the federal deficit and the economy, then it needs to be our goal over the next four years.
Mobilize entrepreneurs: If the information technology revolution was any indication, the next big breakthrough in energy technologies may happen not in a laboratory, but in a garage or dorm room. Part of the federal research strategy should be to empower inventors, small businesses and entrepreneurs. The Obama stimulus plan contains several good provisions to engage small businesses in economic recovery. Other ideas: Increase and stabilize funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA-E, the new research program created by Congress in August 2007 to “support transformational energy technology research projects with the goal of enhancing the nation’s economic and energy security”. There have been questions about whether the U.S. Department of Energy is the right agency to administer the program; those questions need to be answered. The President should also seek increased funding and greater focus on energy and climate security for the Small Business Innovation Research Program, in which 11 federal agencies contribute a small percent of their R&D budgets for technology innovations by small businesses.
Now that Hillary Clinton is on the team, the Obama Administration might even pick up a few ideas from the science platform that she announced during her run for president. Good ideas on energy and climate policy, and sound science from all quarters should be welcome again in the White House.
We’re about to emerge from a Dark Age — eight years in which the operative philosophy of the most powerful leader in the world has been “what we don’t know won’t hurt us.” How wrong he was. We need the smartest guy in the room to surround himself with other smart people, to listen to them and to give them resources equal to the enormous problems they now must help us solve.
Related Posts:
- Obama: “The science is beyond dispute… Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.”
- Why Biden is such an important pick for those who care about the climate
- SOS trumps NSA (Hillary Clinton trumps Gen. Jones)
- Carol Browner to oversee energy and climate at the White House
- Top 5 reasons Chu is a great energy pick — #1: “It’s not guaranteed we have a solution for coal”
- Obama picks a green jobs leader for Labor Secretary: Hilda Solis
- For NOAA head, Obama appoints yet another scientist who gets climate
- Obama’s strongest message on climate yet: John Holdren to be named Science Adviser
Previous in TP Climate Progress
“Among other things, this new body — call it the IPMC (Intergovernmental Panel on Marine Conservation) ”
Or, better yet, co-opt militaryspeak, and make it ICPM: Intergovernmental Comission for Pelagic Monitoring. …OK, OK, clunky, and “pelagic” is obscure, but still… the idea is tempting, no? ;-)
How about: FPSGC: Faithful Patriots Saving God’s Creation.
How could Faux News object to that?
FYI, according to your link yesterday
• NASA: $600 million, including $400 million to put more scientists to work doing climate change research, including Earth science research recommended by the National Academies, satellite sensors that measure solar radiation critical to understanding climate change, and a thermal infrared sensor to the Landsat Continuing Mapper necessary for water management, particularly in the western states; $150 million for research, development, and demonstration to improve aviation safety and Next Generation air traffic control (NextGen); and $50 million to repair NASA centers damaged by hurricanes and floods last year.
It probably is the case that $400 million isn’t enough to do everything, but the plan currently is putting money toward satellites
or maybe just Business as Usual
Obama and Chu see coal as a vital resource with a big future.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123198153797183981.html
Great post, Joe!
I need a good dose of hope for the weekend. And I absolutely love the graphic – where did you get it?
I blogged about the fun weather this morning in northern MN (-19F), while Fairbanks Alaska was a steamy +33.5F (less than a degree different from New Orleans). I wonder how the deniers will spin that?
Across the pond:
http://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2009/01/lynas-obama-economy-green
“If necessary, funding for NASA’s Mission to Mars should be transferred to Earth sciences. We need to understand Earth’s life-support systems now; we can worry about Mars later.”
I suspect you don’t mean NASA’s robotic Mars missions, which are quite complimentary to Earth sciences in science (how did Mars and Venus get such different CO2 atmospheres from Earth and each other?) and technology (industry support for similar launchers, spacecraft, and instruments).
I suspect you mean NASA’s human exploration plans. However, NASA doesn’t have a humans-to-Mars program. They’re working on a return to the Moon, including a lunar base. Mars appears in Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration, but the plan doesn’t even get astronauts to the Moon at all until 2020 at best. With a lunar base in the mix, you can imagine how far off any Mars astronaut program would be.
Even the astronaut part of the lunar program isn’t really happening yet. They’re waiting for Shuttle retirement to get funds to start working on that. Currently they’re working on a sort of Shuttle replacement to get astronauts to the Space Station when Shuttle is retired, and that will be part of the lunar system too.
I like the idea of a permanent human return to the Moon (or missions to other destinations like Mars, for that matter). However, the goals of the lunar “Vision” were based centrally on benefits returned: economic, security, science, commercial participation, and international participation. Those are all achievable, but NASA’s plan ignores these goals, and instead focuses on 2 big NASA rockets and related systems that aren’t good for anything but the Moon mission (one is redundant with existing rockets and the other is too big and expensive).
That being the case, I’d be all for a change in NASA’s plans that will actually return benefits like the lunar program was supposed to (economic, security, science, etc), or other ones like helping to solve problems in areas like the environment, energy, disaster preparedness, education, transportation, health and medicine, and so on. It’s not about the destination, it’s how you get there.
Let’s suppose you take the $7B or so per year NASA plans for the Moon rockets, and divide it into the following buckets:
- more traditional Earth remote sensing satellites (starting with the National Academies recommendations)
- more traditional planetary science and heliophysics missions, with an emphasis on ones that best compliment Earth studies
- non-traditional environment monitoring missions using new, cheap, rapid-turnaround commercial suborbital reusable rockets and small satellites – great for science, education of young scientists in actual missions, calibration of satellites, test of instruments, etc
- encouragements for commercial rockets to get astronauts to the Space Station (similar to NASA’s existing $500M program for 2 new and distinct types of commercial rockets to get cargo to the Station)
- aeronautics (energy efficient planes, etc)
- space station science and engineering (including energy, environment, medicine, etc – and including use of commercial space stations now in development)
- robotic lunar missions (eg: using private Google lunar prize competitors, affordable missions from NASA Ames)
- space infrastructure (better satellite components, new capabilities like satellite tugs, refueling, or other servicing, etc)
- low cost space access demos (X Planes) and research
- some mission for NASA astronauts beyond Space Stations and suborbital rockets, but with a greatly restrained budget … it could be the Moon, or servicing environment satellites like they do the Hubble, or whatever. To succeed with a small budget, it would be obliged to rely on commercial and international participation, as well as the other items on this list. No $100B giant NASA rockets!
I’d claim that such a program is better than NASA’s current giant rocket plan for all of the NASA “Vision” goals (i.e. science, security, general economics, commercial space, and international participation), as well as for areas like health and medicine, education, and so on. I’d also claim it’s better than NASA’s current plan for shrinking the self-inflicted 6 year (and growing) “gap” where the U.S. will have no way to get astronauts in space. It might even be better for getting back to the Moon if so desired, since it actually has a more sustained lunar robotics effort to start, and it has a more affordable astronaut program relying on diverse, gradually-built, economically self-sustaining space infrastructure rather than a $100B+, 15-year, 1-problem-brings-it-all-crashing-down government-run rocket program.
Finally, I’d also claim that it allows NASA to make a much better contribution to solving our environment and energy problems than NASA’s current plans. However, to afford it I assume the Shuttle and Ares rockets would have to go.
I’m opposed to spending any more federal $$ on man-in-space. It is quite, quite clear that robots are vastly the better way to explore the solar system, inclduing even the moon.
> Obama and Chu see coal as a vital resource with a big future.
Here is Carl Pope’s answer to the article you referenced:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/the-spin-room_b_158313.html
Doesn’t sound so bad.
As reference, I am pasting two quotes from the Carl Pope answer linked by John Hollenberg:
Paste 1: “Because if and when scientists figure out a scalable and affordable way to get the CO2 out of the flue gases emitted by coal-fired power plants, public utilities burning coal will be expected to use that technology. And right now they’re not even willing to use the air pollution devices we already have to clean up sulfur, nitrogen, particulates, and mercury from their old power plants. ”
Paste 2: “And far from digging coal out of the deeper hole created by the disaster at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee, the events of the week have been anything but kind.
(end paste)
I continue with my comment:
My reading was that the Kingston TVA disaster was a gypsum pond that was created by the practice of removing SO2 from the exhaust, which is a process that actually produces gypsum which is said to be useful as such. This seems to contradict the idea that power plants are not using such cleaning technologies.
So this, and common sense, makes me question the conclusion by Pope that utilities will not use practical solutions that are developed. The key is how we perceive what is practical. It is understandably hard to understand the economic inertia that comes from massive investment in a facility which is required to provide electric power, and the associated reluctance to throw away equipment to accommodate changes. Power company directors are delighted to make changes if they are confident that the cost can be passed on to customers. But they know from experience that getting into costly projects can be encouraged in the beginning by regulators, only to be reneged on when there are protests at the high costs. Then the stockholders are furious for being cheated on what they thought was a secure investment.