Scientists are naïve

I have been reading/browsing/listening to a lot of stuff on science communication, and one thing that is coming through in spades is that we scientists are a bunch of rubes.

Much of the lack of respect from the policy and business community, in addition to the inattention to science by the general public, comes from the fact that we not only preach integrity, but we live by it too. It makes us "boring." To our detriment, because other communities, while mouthing integrity, do not live by it at all, and quite happily get the decision outcomes they want. It's a balance: do you want integrity, or results?

Now I certainly do not espouse abandoning integrity, but science in general should be less naïve about what will be used against us, and stop being “shocked, shocked” when it happens.

Science does not live in the real world.

Fevered words:

This is what happens when you write when you are mad.

Someone sent me this article by John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, and noted climate change skeptic. This will make more sense if you read Coleman's piece first. No, really - go read it, then come back here. I'll wait.

The question from the sender was: who is Coleman, and what are his credentials?

Well, reading Coleman's article got me wound up, and I decided to write a piece in the voice of an angry conservative (which I am, but not to this extent: I let my emotions take control). See if you can spot the devilish details that _I_ embellished or ignored to make my points, or juxtaposed simply for effect. The same type of techniques so well employed by Coleman in his piece. I was hoping this might make it onto some of the lists that circulate this type of vitriol.

But I'm sure this will bite me in my employment ass later, or be paraded in front of me at some Senate Confirmation hearing or other, along with trivial details from my tax returns from beyond the statute of limitations ... (look out, libertarian diatribe building!)

John Coleman is the founder of the Weather Channel, so he does have good credentials. I do not know if he has a science background, but he may well have training in meteorology. He is a good contrarian and a worthy curmudgeon.

So, a comparison based on something I recently heard on the radio. A doctor tells you you have a rare form of cancer called "testaloma," and tells you you can only eat lettuce from now on, and then refers you to the Mayo Clinic. The Clinic concurs, and they convene a world-wide conference to discuss your symptoms, and several thousand of the world's leading experts in cancer agree that you have testaloma, and that lettuce is really the only thing they can think of. Do you take their advice?

In fact, they write a report that is reviewed by ten thousand more doctors, and all the NIH's in the world, and they agree you have testaloma as well, and that perhaps Bibb, Boston and Iceberg lettuce are all acceptable, but lettuce is all you get. Do you take their advice now?

But wait - there's a reporter in the crowd at the conference, who has been taught that she must give equal weight to opposing sides in order to be a good reporter. So she seeks out contrarian views, does her due diligence, and devotes an equal number of column inches to the few non-doctors who object and to the many non-doctors who are suspicious that doctors are all feathering their nests (some of them receive money from ChavezCorp lettuce harvesters), and other assorted anti-lettuce kooks. Her editor is delighted, because this is a "fight," and fight sells copy. Now who do you trust?

...and so it goes on and on.

Come on people! I'm a conservative somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan, have never voted for a pinko Democrat, but I KNOW MY SCIENCE. I have my doctorate in Geoscience, and I manage a large part of this great nation's investment in climate change science. I tell 90% of scientists asking me for money to go away, and some of them get fired because I said "no." Too bad. This is real, and we are avoiding this as assiduously as we are avoiding the fact that we have maxed out the national credit card, and no stupid "Stimulus Package" is going to address that. We all spend too much on consumer products instead of building value in our society and capital in our industries, and we spend far too much energy getting from here to there, and running all our little gadgets. I'm not concerned about the warming here, just the fact that we are exponentially increasing the use of a resource that is finite.

Whether the world is warming or not I will leave until later. The scary part is that we will be in dire straits if our energy sources are restricted. This is fear that I sympathize with in the diatribe by Coleman and his conspiracy-mongering cadre. Our alternatives are very limited - most technologies are really in their infancy, and not ready to mainstream. The only thing on deck is coal, and my bet is that we and the Chinese will burn every ounce of coal we can dig up (and the two of us have the largest coal deposits on Earth). When that runs out, look out. Time to send the Marines to get it. Our societies can't change directions on a dime, and THAT is what concerns any President - Dubya or the current occupant, Obamarama. We are currently pouring our wealth into lovely places like the Middle East and Venezuela. Billions. Trillions. Folks who I am convinced will one day suffer regime change to even more virulent rulers, and who will gladly and blindly kill their golden-egg laying goose, and set off a nuclear weapon in the USA. THAT is what concerns the President, as he slowly absorbs his daily security briefs.

So, who paid for all this 'science' that tells us about the climate? Well, actually it is the Republican administrations, mostly. Strangely, science generally does better under the GOP. Democratic administrations love social issues, but social issues are expensive, so there's usually not much left when they get to science's level in the Federal money-barrel. Republicans like science, but for a very Washingtonian reason: it allows delay on difficult issues while "more study is done." Who put together the U.S. Global Change Research Program? George H.W. Bush. Who flattened the USGCRP budget? Clinton. Subsequent occupants had other things in the money barrel that were quite expensive, so neither social issues nor science stood much of a chance during the budget-sausage-making - it ended up being a wash. I'll be interested to see what the current President does.

Do scientists like money? Wait, wait... Do bears s#!t in the forest? Are they desperate for it? Of course. Say for instance that for your job, your career, you had to write about ten major essays every year and submit them to the government, manage an office, and continually hire employees. Your boss keeps yelling at you to sell product, which actually means writing several extra essays and sending them to magazines. Most of your essays get rejected. About 90% of them. But that's your only product, so you are desperate. Every two years or so, your boss puts you in front of a committee, and you are told you are not working hard enough, and are not smart enough to work at your company, so you have to resign and go find a lesser-ranked company that does not push so hard, and has lower quality employees. Welcome to academia for the vast majority of scientists. That's why they accept money from industry, and from people who have vested interests in the outcomes of their research, which can potentially later ruin their careers. Of course the smart ones build empires - they are ambitious as well as smart. It's the American thing to do.

OK, now that I have outgassed, on to global warming.

The main "greenhouse gases" water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are present in the atmosphere in very small amounts (0.4% H2O, 0.035% CO2, 0.0001745% CH4, 0.00003% NO2). Yes, that's very small. So who says something has to be big to have an effect? If you don't believe it, I have a very small amount of Plutonium for you. Go on, swallow! It's less than 0.00003% of your weight!

We know these gases are increasing in concentration. We know they have been high in the past (much higher, in fact than they are now). However, from the isotope signatures in the current atmosphere, we can tell that this latest increase is in large part due to our activities (transport, construction and electric power generation are the main sources). If there are any left, any elementary school science teacher can give you a kindergarten-level demonstration involving breathing into empty 2 liter coke bottles, thermometers and a lightbulb that will show that CO2 absorbs more energy. The same experiment with CH4 and NO2 we leave for slightly higher levels of education. So, the sad truth is that most of this might actually be of our making. But is it bad? Can't we plant more stuff in Canada now? Yes, of course, there will be some winners in all of this. And some losers, like the American southwest, which is in for a drought that may last several centuries. We will have to adapt, because there is no other choice. Some adaptations will actually increase our wealth. That will be an interesting game which I am all for, because America is very good at that kind of game once we get in gear. The bad thing is that this is all very positive for the first few decades, even perhaps a century. After that, things look like they are really different. Different enough that we do not understand the fundamentals of the system.

Do you remember doing titrations in high-school chemistry? Waiting for that very last drop to change the color of the solution? Do you remember that the pH changed very suddenly when you reached that last drop? Do you remember that this was actually an experiment in a 'buffered system' where you could add a lot of acid to the solution and not really affect the pH very much? Most of the Earth's chemical cycles are buffered, and they can take a lot of change before 'changing color.' Thank goodness, because we keep getting hit by meteors, volcanoes pour out magma and all sorts of gases, and oceans keep getting created and closed by plate tectonics. This means that all the inputs and drains for the various chemicals in the system keep getting turned on or off, and the system still stays relatively stable, most of the time. The problem occurs when you get to that last drop, that tipping point. Then you get a shift to some other semi-stable configuration, and it might or might not be friendly to trilobites, to dinosaurs, or... to society as it runs today. We simply do not know what kind of system will result. Worse, we have no idea where that point is. It could be 500 years from now. It could be a within our lifetime. This is typical behavior for a chaotic system. I am fully confident that humans will survive, but just as certain that it will not be all of us, and we will not be able to live the way we do today.

I knew Roger Revelle, and I have met David Keeling, Hans Dieter Suess, Fred Singer, and Maurice Strong. I have no desire to meet Gore, and I don't know Chauncey Starr. I do not get invited to the Bohemian Grove gatherings, and I am a proud member of the hoi-pelloi. Coleman's logic is a personal insult to all of them, and could be compared to a childish attack on Coleman for daring to have such a blatantly pro-energy surname.

My conclusion: Coleman is an ostrich. A respected ostrich.

Oh crap

Not an e-mail you want to receive:

Dear Mr. Fulano,

As you may have seen in the Director General’s May 27, 2008 ALDAC “Announcing the 2009 Iraq/Afghanistan Cycle (State 056058)” and in the Secretary’s personal message to the field (link below), the Department has begun recruiting for summer 2009 openings in Iraq. I am writing to inform you that the Department considers you among those particularly well qualified for the key positions listed below and is asking you to seriously consider volunteering for an opportunity to tackle our nation’s top foreign policy priority.

20700000 ECON Officer (ESTH) FS-03

You are considered well qualified because your record of achievement indicates that you have the skills and experience, as defined by Embassy Baghdad, to be successful in these positions. Information about the Embassy’s criteria as well as the position descriptions for these and other jobs in Iraq can be found on the following website:

http://hrweb.hr.state.gov/prd/hrweb/dg/assignment_iraq/.

HR/CDA and others will soon be contacting you to discuss further your interest in these positions.

The Director General is confident that with your help, and that of others who step forward, we will staff Iraq with volunteers as we have in the past. As noted in the cable, however, the Director General will assess at an appropriate time how best to complete the cycle. If positions remain unfilled, you would be among the pool of qualified individuals potentially subject to identification for one of these positions.[Italics added] In the interest of fairness and transparency, this is something we wanted to communicate to you at the earliest possible point in the assignments process. Again, our goal is 100% volunteers.

I will give you a call next week (June 2-6) to discuss more in depth what this might mean for you, but please feel free to contact me sooner if you wish. In the meantime, I urge you to take another look at the ALDAC referenced in paragraph one for details on the Iraq-Afghanistan cycle and the overall timeline for 2009 assignments. If you will be in Washington, I also urge you to attend the upcoming Iraq brown bag event on June 3 and to watch for the upcoming Iraq/Afghanistan Open House as well as other events, including DVCs with selected posts. We will be announcing details about these events soon.

I look forward to working with you as you consider stepping forward for one of these critical assignments.

Regards,

Your Career Development Officer

Link to the Secretary’s message:

(http://bnet.state.gov/viewClip.asp?clip_id=1148),

In accordance with the policies and procedures outlined in Executive Order 12958, this e-mail is UNCLASSIFIED.

The passage in italics is the code for "volunteer or else." The only hope for escape from this is to a) quit, b) get pregnant, or c) hope they reach 100% capacity before reaching your name in the list.

Political Science:

More nonsense about pencil-necked scientists from those savants on the Hill, via the American Institute of Physics' FYI listserv edition.

Discussing the reauthorization bill (H.R. 1867) for the National Science Foundation, there were several attempts at amendments to limit the increase in the budgets for the NSF or to at least limit the areas in which NSF was allowed to invest taxpayer moneys:

There was far more discussion about an amendment offered by Rep. John Campbell (R-CA-48): "None of the funds authorized under this section may be used for research related to seven activities such as "the accuracy in the cross-cultural understanding of others' emotions" or "archives of Andean Knotted-Sting Records." Said Campbell: "What this amendment does is it says that there are certain things upon which we should not be spending money through this bill during this time of budget deficits, stealing Social Security funds, and increasing taxes." He added, "I understand that there is a process of peer review from which these studies come in the National Science Foundation, and that's all well and good. But our job here is we are the elected representatives and stewards of the taxpayers' money, not the academics in the National Science Foundation, and it is our decision whether or not we wish to spend taxpayers' funds on studies of the social relationships and reproductive strategies of Phayre's leaf monkeys or on bison hunting on the late prehistoric Great Plains. I think we should not do that. I am sure that some believe that these are very fine academic studies. That's excellent. Within the realms of academic halls, they may think a number of things are fine academic studies. That's not the question. The question before us is, do these things rise to the standard of requiring expenditures of taxpayer funds in a time of deficits, proposed tax increases and raiding Social Security funds? I think the answer is a resounding no."

Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA-3) immediately refuted the logic of the Campbell amendment, first quoting a letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the similar position of the Association of American Universities. He then said, "the gentleman [Rep. Campbell] seems to suggest, it seems, that we here in the Congress, with a cursory evaluation of the abstracts from studies, should insert ourselves in the peer-review process. I wonder if the gentleman had looked at chemistry research or physics research in the same way, and do we really want to spend this body's time, and do you, sir, or you, sir, have the expertise to evaluate these studies? That's why we have a peer-review process. That's why we have a National Science Foundation. It is why we have a Science Foundation Board to direct us."

Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI-3) outlined his opposition, telling his colleagues: "you can't always judge the full proposal by the title. This was evident a few years ago when we went through exactly the same charade when discussing the National Science Foundation budget. Some of my colleagues came down to the floor to amend the NSF appropriations bill, and one offered an amendment to remove grants for the study of ATM. This person gave a magnificent speech why we should not spend money at the National Science Foundation or the Department of Energy to study ATM. His argument was, let the banking industry do the research on ATMs. What he didn't know is that the proposal was not on automatic teller machines but the proposal was on studying asynchronous transfer modes, which involves the way computers talk to each other. This research led to a substantial change in the speed at which computers were able to talk to each other. This is a good example of why it is dangerous to just look at titles and make a judgment."

Sigh. Echoes of "why do we need NOAA? We have the Weather Channel to do that."

Ranking Member Vernon Ehlers (R-MI-3) is a Ph.D. physicist, one of only two Members of Congress with scientific degrees.

"Only two members of Congress hold doctorates in the sciences, both in physics: Rep. Vern Ehlers of Michigan ..., and Rep. Rush Holt [(D-NJ-12)] of New Jersey (leader of the congressional Science Coalition and former Congressional Science Fellow). Sadly, the House Science Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space are not considered high profile committees and many of the members assigned to these committees have little expertise in the broad array of scientific issues that come before them, yet they are being asked to determine the direction and funding of federal science."

(Michèle Koppes, 2004-2005 GSA-U.S. Geological Survey Congressional Science Fellow)

Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA-3) is the House Subcommittee on Research and Science Education Chairman.

Chilean History in DC:

You're all fired:

When I finally got a job after graduate school, it was after many months of struggling. Naïvely, I had simply sent out resumé after resumé, and made cold calls each day after searching the want ads in EOS, Nature, Science, The Economist, Chronicle of Higher Ed, etc. etc. etc.

The job offer was as a result of one of those friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend deals. My friend Mike knew Martin, who worked for something called the Universities Space Research Association, or USRA. Martin did a lot of work on managing the UARS satellite for NASA Headquarters, which was nearby (but on the other side of the railroad tracks). Martin was able to convince Lisa, an official at NASA, to have lunch with me. She and I talked about many things, but all I can recall clearly is that she asked me to produce a piece of writing for her, and that I had the good sense not to order a beer with lunch. She picked out one of the themes from our conversation as the topic for the paper: Colombia.

What resulted was my piece on Pablo Escobar, The Cathedral at Envigado, which I have posted previously. Some time after my sending it to her, she let me know that the folks at NASA HQ would like to talk to me, and we set up a visit.

I remember visiting with Lisa and with another person who has ended up tangled in the warp and weft of my life, Dixon B. While apparently my writing about Colombia's woes with drugs was enough to convince Lisa that I might be worth some consideration, it was the fact that I owned a NeXT computer that impressed Dixon. More on my computer selection prowess (or lack of) in another post.

In the end, USRA brought me on as a Visiting Scientist, and I worked for Lisa on international and social science issues and for Dixon on data system issues, including intellectual property. You might think this was a strange assignment for someone with a degree in marine geophysics, but as I have gained experience in the job market, I have learned that your degree specialization in widgetry is really only of marginal importance unless your job ends up being "design widgets."

One of my first assignments was to deliver news that eventually resulted in the firing of several hundred people. I didn't need a degree to do that, but I did need courage. A lot of the people this was to affect had just been hired, so I couldn't help feeling strange about it. I travelled out to the mid-West and told the managers of a program that they were to be cut from $55 million per year to $18 million.

In the end, they had to fire most of their graduate students, programmers, and junior researchers. People just like me, recently starting out in their careers - the interesting part was that the program itself was not bad. Their problem was their history - they had been rammed down NASA's throat by the local Congressman, and for their first few years, had produced not much more than shiny pamphlets.

In fact, Martin's predecessor had lost his job over a comment he made at a press conference a while before, where he was asked if NASA considered this particular program to be "Congressional pork." He thought he was being sufficiently delicate by replying that NASA preferred to think of it as "finely sliced Danish ham," but he was on the street the very next day, looking for another job.

By the time I came along, a new director had put this program on track, and it was well on the way to producing a lot of very interesting information. But the damage had been done, and there were a lot of axes being ground in Washington. The Congressman had just died, and NASA jumped at the opportunity to get the spending under control.

"Hello, my name is Paul. You are all fired."

#35 & #43:

Besides dooming the U.S. hatmaking industry with his bareheaded 'viggah,' John F Kennedy set NASA on its course to the Moon with his Message to Congress in May of 1961 and his more famous 1962 Moon speech at Rice University.

At NASA Headquarters, on January 14, President Bush made a speech about new directions for the U.S. space program, including a return to the Moon with the ultimate goal of putting a man on Mars. Perhaps significantly, this initiative was missing from his January 20th State of the Union Address.

First, it is interesting to compare these speeches. Now, I don't want to get into a Texas vs. Massachusetts debate, Yale vs. Harvard, or even 'jocks and geeks,' but my end conclusion was that unfortunately Dubya's speech writers have not been putting out their best.

The next few days after the Moon/Mars announcement we of course saw inevitable sniping about how could the nation afford this given the present budget climate, etc. etc. I have had to endure some pretty fierce ribbing from European counterparts at recent meetings about this issue.

My questions have been: What did the NASA budget look like in 1962? What has the NASA budget done since? What about science in general? What about other major pieces of the budget pie?

So, given my penchant for posting horribly long tables, here is the Federal budget history, from 1962 onwards.

Federal Finances, 1962-present

| Year |	NASA Budget |	Total Gov't Outlays |	NASA % |	National Defense % |	General science % |
1962	$1,257	$106,821	1.18	49.00	1.61
1963	$2,552	$111,316	2.29	47.97	2.74
1964	$4,171	$118,528	3.52	46.20	4.13
1965	$5,092	$118,228	4.31	42.82	4.93
1966	$5,933	$134,532	4.41	43.19	4.99
1967	$5,425	$157,464	3.45	45.35	3.96
1968	$4,722	$178,134	2.65	45.99	3.10
1969	$4,251	$183,640	2.31	44.92	2.73
1970	$3,752	$195,649	1.92	41.75	2.31
1971	$3,382	$210,172	1.61	37.53	1.99
1972	$3,423	$230,681	1.48	34.32	1.81
1973	$3,312	$245,707	1.35	31.21	1.64
1974	$3,255	$269,359	1.21	29.46	1.48
1975	$3,269	$332,332	0.98	26.03	1.20
1976	$3,671	$371,792	0.99	24.10	1.18
TQ*	$953	$95,975	0.99	23.20	1.21
1977	$4,002	$409,218	0.98	23.76	1.16
1978	$4,164	$458,746	0.91	22.78	1.07
1979	$4,380	$504,032	0.87	23.08	1.04
1980	$4,959	$590,947	0.84	22.67	0.99
1981	$5,537	$678,249	0.82	23.22	0.95
1982	$6,155	$745,755	0.83	24.85	0.97
1983	$6,853	$808,385	0.85	25.97	0.98
1984	$7,055	$851,874	0.83	26.70	0.98
1985	$7,251	$946,423	0.77	26.71	0.91
1986	$7,403	$990,460	0.75	27.60	0.91
1987	$7,591	$1,004,122	0.76	28.09	0.92
1988	$9,092	$1,064,489	0.85	27.28	1.02
1989	$11,036	$1,143,683	0.96	26.54	1.12
1990	$12,429	$1,253,198	0.99	23.89	1.15
1991	$13,878	$1,324,403	1.05	20.64	1.22
1992	$13,961	$1,381,684	1.01	21.59	1.19
1993	$14,305	$1,409,512	1.01	20.65	1.21
1994	$13,695	$1,461,902	0.94	19.27	1.11
1995	$13,378	$1,515,837	0.88	17.95	1.10
1996	$13,881	$1,560,572	0.89	17.03	1.07
1997	$14,360	$1,601,282	0.90	16.89	1.07
1998	$14,206	$1,652,619	0.86	16.24	1.10
1999	$13,664	$1,701,932	0.80	16.15	1.06
2000	$13,442	$1,788,826	0.75	16.46	1.04
2001	$14,199	$1,863,926	0.76	16.39	1.06
2002	$14,484	$2,010,975	0.72	17.33	1.03
2003	$14,885	$2,140,377	0.70	17.58	1.01
2004	$15,305	$2,229,425	0.69	17.51	1.02
2005	$15,854	$2,343,399	0.68	17.50	1.02
2006	$16,511	$2,463,663	0.67	17.18	1.00
2007	$16,954	$2,576,203	0.66	16.94	0.99
2008	$17,531	$2,710,517	0.65	16.99	0.97

Some points to note about the table:
(*) 1. TQ stands for the 'transition quarter' of July through September of 1976, which bridged the change from July-June Federal fiscal years to October-September.
2. Figures are not in constant dollars (a MAJOR fault with the above table).
3. All data are from historical tables of the US Federal Budget

Some additional data that I stripped from the table to avoid clutter:
- the interest on the debt in 1962 took up 8.54% of the total outlays. By 2003, the interest took up 16.59% of the budget, down from a high of 22.22% in 1997 during the Clinton administration. Basically, we have twice the amount of proportional debt, in non-constant dollars. Note also that the Federal spending on science as a whole has declined in proportional terms.

Here is the diagram on the projected budget for the new NASA objectives presented by the President during his January 14 NASA HQ speech (click on it for a larger, readable, version).

Of note is the definite horizon/end of the Shuttle and ISS programs. This also means the end of non-"human spaceflight" experiments aboard the ISS. For years NASA has trumpeted space as a place for new manufacturing technology and as a source of new materials, and justifications for the Shuttle and ISS were written in those terms. Unfortunately, even routine scientific research is extremely difficult to do in a test vehicle, and that is what these platforms are - the risk of catastrophic failure on launch or re-entry was always very real.

The budget presented shows that there really is little new money to be devoted to this re-ignited mission of exploration. Of special note is that after 2009, there is no projected increase in the budget - it simply keeps pace with inflation. What is clear is that this mission will eat away at most every other aspect of NASA science - aeronautics, remote sensing, astronomy, etc. - very much as the ISS and Shuttle budgets did.

One remaining point. When the U.S. went from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo to Shuttle, we built each successive generation of booster/capsule systems from scratch. Based on previous experience, of course, but any engineer knows that systems as complex as these need extensive testing before using them for human flight. Why does the U.S. do this? Because we put the prime contracts out to bid. Sometimes Boeing would win, sometimes Lockheed, sometimes others. Each of these had submitted a proposal that had to be different enough to catch the selector's eye. The Russians, in contrast, have stuck with the basic RK-7 Soyuz rocket configuration for over 40 years. They have of course modified the boosters and capsules over the years, but the stability in the core program gave them one tremendous advantage: low cost. It is very probable that Russia could launch a manned mission to Mars for about one quarter of what it will cost the U.S. -- however, they currently lack the political will and financial power to do it. And that is, in the end analysis, what counts.

Having people in space is always much more expensive than simply launching metal. It's certainly much more exciting too, but we always have to be ready to face a catastrophe. And there will almost certainly be another disaster somewhere in this Moon/Mars series. I am not sure the U.S. has the political courage to face another space catastrophe so soon.