USA Today: Despite widespread concern over global warming, humans are adding carbon to the atmosphere even faster than in the 1990s, researchers warned Saturday.
Carbon dioxide and other gases added to the air by industrial and other activities have been blamed for rising temperatures, increasing worries about possible major changes in weather and climate.
International Herald Tribune: Steven Chu, the new secretary of energy, said Wednesday that solving the world's energy and environment problems would require Nobel-level breakthroughs in three areas: electric batteries, solar power, and the development of new crops that can be turned into fuel.
Science: The international Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) has established a "planetary protection" policy that involves not contaminating other worlds in a way that would jeopardize the conduct of future scientific investigations. As a signatory to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the US is required by article IX to avoid "harmful contamination" of the other worlds of the solar system. However, further revisions to the policy are needed.
Energy panel chairman sees role for coal, new drilling
Houston Chronicle: A longtime congressional critic of the oil and gas industry said Monday that there may be a place for expanded offshore drilling and a long future for coal in the US, but only with caution and a lot of investment.
Obama administration seeks treaty to cut US, Russia nukes
The Associated Press: The Obama administration, reversing the Bush administration's limited interest in nuclear disarmament, is gearing up for early negotiations with Russia on a new treaty that would sharply reduce stockpiles of nuclear warheads.
ScienceNOW: Over the last 3 years, interest has been growing among climate scientists in radical new schemes to tinker with the planet's temperature or the make-up of the atmosphere. Now, in a new paper, scientists have estimated just how effective these schemes would be.
In a study published today in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, earth systems scientist Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and a graduate student analyzed 17 schemes for cooling the planet.
NPR: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently said, "If you want to know the agenda for this new Congress, remember four words: science, science, science and science." Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Maria Zuber of MIT discuss what that might mean for science investment today.
French President attacks 'infantilizing system' of 'weak universities'
Chronicle of Higher Education: President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has infuriated a key part of the country’s higher-education establishment with the tone of a speech he delivered last Thursday on France’s national strategy for research and innovation.
Calling the country’s higher-education system ill-adapted to the challenges of knowledge and growth in the 21st century, Mr. Sarkozy said France trailed other industrialized nations in research and innovation because “too often we have retreated from the necessity of reforming our universities and research institutions.”
Gore urges Senate to avoid failure in climate talks
NPR: When Vice President Al Gore returned from Kyoto, Japan, with a climate treaty in 1997, it was already a dead letter. The Senate, which ratifies treaties, strongly opposed the deal even before Gore signed it.
On Wednesday, Gore returned to the Senate to offer advice about how to arrive at a different outcome as a new climate treaty is negotiated this year in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The New York Times: When he vowed in his Inaugural Address to "restore science to its rightful place," President Obama signaled an end to eight years of stark tension between science and government.
CNN: The United States signed an agreement Thursday on civil nuclear cooperation with the United Arab Emirates -- the first such pact with a Middle Eastern country.
EU environment agency outlines challenges for 2009
Environmental News Network:
Tackling climate change and its consequences, reforming the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, improving air quality, and reducing the environmental impact of biofuels will top the bloc's environmental policy debates in the coming year, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA).
US News & World Report: The White House on Monday released a long-awaited document broadly laying out U.S. policy toward the Arctic, a region whose potential for oil, gas, and mineral exploitation is for the first time being unlocked by a historic ice melt driven by climate change.
U.S. thwarted Israeli plan to bomb Iranian nuclear facility
The Washington Post: President Bush last year rejected an Israeli request to provide sophisticated, deep-penetration bombs to attack Iran's underground nuclear enrichment facilities, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
The Independent: An emergency "Plan B" using the latest technology is needed to save the world from dangerous climate change, according to a poll of leading scientists carried out by The Independent. The collective international failure to curb the growing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has meant that an alternative to merely curbing emissions may become necessary.
The plan would involve highly controversial proposals to lower global temperatures artificially through daringly ambitious schemes that either reduce sunlight levels by man-made means or take CO2 out of the air. This "geoengineering" approach – including schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms – would have been dismissed as a distraction a few years ago but is now being seen by 54% of the scientists they surveyed as a viable emergency backup plan that could save the planet from the worst effects of climate change, at least until deep cuts are made in CO2 emissions.
ENN: The burning of fossil fuels - notably coal, oil and gas - has accounted for about 80 percent of the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial era. Now, Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York have shown that rise in carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels can be kept below harmful levels as long as emissions from coal are phased out globally within the next few decades. The research is published in the Aug. 5 in of Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
"This is the first paper in the scientific literature that explicitly melds the two vital issues of global peak oil production and human-induced climate change," Kharecha said. "We're illustrating the types of action needed to get to target carbon dioxide levels."
Why China helped countries like Pakistan, North Korea build nuclear bombs
US News and World Report: Former US Air Force Secretary Thomas Reed knows nuclear bombs better than most people. For starters, he designed two of them when he worked at the Livermore National Laboratory as a weapons designer.
His new book The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation, co-written with Danny Stillman, the former director of the technical intelligence division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, rewrites much of the public understanding about how countries with nuclear weapons came to acquire them. All countries that built bombs, including the United States, spied on or were given access to the work of other nuclear powers. In particular, the book is a scathing indictment of the Chinese government, alleging that it intentionally proliferated nuclear technology to risky regimes, particularly Pakistan.
Did the Soviets steal the hydrogen bomb idea from the US?
New York TImes: A new book says Moscow acquired the secret of the hydrogen bomb not from its own scientists but from an atomic spy at the Los Alamos weapons lab in New Mexico. Historians call its case sketchy but worthy of investigation, saying the book, “The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation,” by Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman, adds to a growing number of riddles about who invented the Soviet H-bomb a half century ago.
At a sleek bioenergy lab, a lens on a cabinet pick
The New York Times: The Joint BioEnergy Institute, which encompasses the fourth floor of a high-tech office building here in a neighborhood of biotech companies, radiates a sleek ecological modernity: floorboards manufactured of recycled materials and laminated to look like bamboo, trendy office furniture and laboratories stocked with new equipment.
Advocates for action on global warming chosen as Obama's top science advisers
The Washington Post: President-elect Barack Obama has selected two of the nation's most prominent scientific advocates for a vigorous response to climate change to serve in his administration's top ranks, according to sources, sending the strongest signal yet that he will reverse Bush administration policies on energy and global warming.
The New York Times: The team President-elect Barack Obama introduced on Monday to carry out his energy and environmental policies faces a host of political, economic, diplomatic and scientific challenges that could impede his plans to address global warming and America's growing dependence on dirty and uncertain sources of energy.
Physics Today: President-elect Obama's transition team is expected to shortly announce that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu will be nominated as secretary of energy, while Lisa Jackson, a former environmental policy official in New Jersey, has been picked to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Carol Browner, who led the EPA under President Clinton, will fill a new White House "energy czar" role. The announcements came from Democratic officials on Wednesday night.
Chu, who will be the first Nobel Prize winner to be appointed to the US cabinet, is the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and has played a key role in moving the lab in the direction of specializing in renewable energy, particularly in the field of new fuels for transportation. LBNL is experimenting with making biofuels from different types of biomass, using algae in fermentation tanks to make fuel, and applying solar energy to convert water and carbon dioxide to fuels. "[President-elect Obama] certainly needs somebody who can focus on the science and energy policies and I can't think of a better guy than Steve," says Mike Lubell from the American Physical Society.
Originally his father wanted him to be an architect as "the competition in physics was too strong." Chu did both his graduate and postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley. He then spent nine years at Bell Labs before joining Stanford University's physics department where he remained between 1987-2004. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Phillips for cooling and trapping atoms with lasers.
The largest part of the Department of Energy's budget however, goes towards maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile. It is too early to say what the implications are for Chu's appointment to the long term future of the three main nuclear weapons labs at Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia. According to the Wall Street Journal, Chu is likely to focus his attention on the Energy Department's core missions: basic science, nuclear weapons and cleaning up a nuclear-weapons manufacturing complex contaminated since the Cold War.
New York Times: How do you measure the sources, or emissions, of planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide? And how do you measure the impact of carbon "sinks"---the forests, cropland, and oceans that absorb carbon. Susan Moran in the New York TImestakes a look at how some research groups are measuring the changing cycle of carbon from the atmosphere and how such measurements will impact government policy.
The Associated Press: The Bush administration said Tuesday there are no technology constraints to a major expansion of the proposed nuclear waste site in Nevada, calling for possibly tripling the amount of highly radioactive used reactor fuel that could be stored there in manmade underground caverns.
ITER plan looks to recharge hopes for fusion power
USA Today: On Nov. 19-20, the ITER Council, with representatives from China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States, met at the Chateau de Cadarache in France to visit the ITER site and review a progress report on the project, projected to cost $10 Billion Euros (about $12.5 Billion at today's exchange rates) over its 30-year lifetime. Representatives signed $518 million worth of agreements to go ahead and buy magnet and vacuum equipment for the project.
But all is not well for ITER. "To keep momentum, ITER needs the collective efforts and continued support from its members, laying the foundations for a new model of global scientific collaboration," said Kaname Ikeda, director-general of the ITER Organization, in a statement at the meeting.
The bad news comes from the United States which, "cannot live up to our commitments" to ITER, the Energy Department's Gene Nardella told an advisory committee earlier this month. Congress allocated only $20.5 million for the project, just enough for staffing, instead of a requested $214 million for 2009. A National Research Council panel in June warned, "The lack of funding stability will make it difficult for the U.S. to effectively participate in ITER, and ultimately, to access and thus benefit from the valuable scientific and technical knowledge to be gained from the facility."
San Francisco Chronicle: Despite new signals from President-elect Barack Obama and Congress that they may defy predictions of delay by pressing forward with legislation on global warming, California's role as the key battleground for climate policy is greater than ever - and local communities will be on the front line.
Obama victory signals rebirth of US environmental policy
Environmental News Network: President-elect Obama will shred the Bush administration's energy policies and introduce a major climate change bill in an attempt to bring the US back into the international environment fold according to his senior advisers.
Deep-Sea scientific drilling hit by a cost double whammy
Science: As the oil industry gears up for the ongoing offshore-oil boom, scientists who study the sea floor say competition for scarce drilling resources is leaving them high and dry. "Funding goes down, oil goes up," laments paleoceanographer Henk Brinkhuis of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Facing soaring costs and lengthening delays, the United States component of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP)--the current phase of the cooperative international investigation beneath the sea floor--has been literally stuck in dry dock, leading to an unprecedented 3-year hiatus in U.S. drilling. Japanese and European components of IODP are not faring much better. "I am very concerned about the long-term future of IODP," says marine geologist Craig Fulthorpe of the University of Texas, Austin.
EPA weakens new lead rule after White House objects
McClatchy: After the White House intervened, the Environmental Protection Agency last week weakened a rule on airborne lead standards at the last minute so that fewer polluters would have their emissions monitored.
The EPA on Oct. 16 announced that it would dramatically reduce the highest acceptable amount of airborne lead from 1.5 micrograms of lead per cubic meter to 0.15 microgram. It was the first revision of the standard since EPA set it 30 years ago.
However, a close look at documents publicly available, including e-mails from the EPA to the White House Office of Management and Budget, reveal that the OMB objected to the way the EPA had determined which lead-emitting battery recycling plants and other facilities would have to be monitored.
The Washington Post: The Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration have among the most restrictive policies in the federal government on releasing scientific information to the press and public, according to a "report card" being issued today by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
USA Today: The Pentagon wants to rocket troops through space to hot spots anywhere on the globe within two hours, and planners spent two days last month discussing how to do it, military documents show.
Editorial: The administration's case for a new nuclear warhead
The New York Times: With the Bush administration, no bad idea ever dies. So it should be no surprise that the Pentagon and the Department of Energy have released a new policy paper — pitched to the next president — arguing the case for a new nuclear warhead.
Price overruns for nuke detectors likely to be in the billions
CNET News: Soaring cost estimates for protecting US borders against nuclear smuggling arrived at by the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) are unreliable and could result in "significant" overruns, according to a Government Accounting Agency (GAO) report.
How significant? The projected cost to implement the Radiation Portal Monitor Program has gone from $399 million in 2003, when the Customs and Border Protection was in charge of the project, to $1.3 billion when DNDO took over in 2005. In 2007 the cost of equipping US ports with portal monitors was $1.7 billion. It's now $2.1 billion. But this latest estimate fails to take into account several major "cost elements". The true cost will be about $3.1 billion, but could go as high as $3.8 billion, according to the GAO.
ScienceNow: US science agencies will receive no budget increases until March 2009 at the earliest after Congress voted over the weekend to freeze spending for every federal program outside of national security and veterans affairs. For many agencies, that means a second year of little or no growth.
Nature: The US National Academies have appointed Roger Blandford to chair the next decadal survey in astronomy, starting a two-year process that culminates in a priority list of astronomy projects for the next 10 years.
Offshore wind power meets the power of local politics
New York Times: Wind entrepreneur Peter Mandelstam had his eureka moment when he released how much power was associated with the Mid-Atlantic Bight. This coastal region running from Massachusetts to North Carolina contained up to 330,000 megawatts of average electrical capacity. This is, in other words, an amount of guaranteed, bankable power that was larger, in terms of energy equivalence, than the entire mid-Atlantic coast’s total energy demand — not just for electricity but for heating, for gasoline, for diesel and for natural gas. Indeed the wind off the mid-Atlantic represented a full third of the Department of Energy’s estimate of the total American offshore resource of 900,000 megawatts.
Building offshore turbines to exploit it however, would leave Mandelstam against the local power companies, who didn't want the competition, and holiday resorts who didn't want their coastline view spoiled with windmills in the distance. It would lead to millions of dollars spent fighting one of the most protracted political battles in Delaware history, and the proposal to build a 200-megawatt wind farm off the coast of Delaware.
Mark Svenvold looks at the politics behind wind power, why states are shaping the state of the national energy grid, and the need for federal regulation and subsidies for renewable energy.
The Wall Street Journal: The Bush administration, seeking to secure a landmark nuclear-cooperation deal with India before its term expires, will push Congress to pass the required legislation by the end of the month.
Another crack occurs in NPT treaty as India nuclear trade waiver receives approval
New York Times: Forty-five nations approved a U.S. proposal on Saturday to lift a global ban on nuclear trade with India in a breakthrough towards sealing a U.S.-Indian atomic energy deal.
One hurdle remained before the U.S.-India deal can take force -- ratification by the U.S. Congress. It must act before adjourning in late September for elections or the deal could be left to an uncertain fate under a new U.S. administration.
Reuters: North Korea has begun reassembling its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, able to make material for atomic bombs, in violation of U.S. conditions for improved diplomatic relations, U.S. and Japanese media reported.
Japan's Kyodo news agency said reconstruction began on Monday. It cited sources in Beijing close to six-party nuclear talks on North Korean, which involve Japan, South Korea, Russia and China, as well as North Korea and the United States.
Opinion: The difficulty with switching to renewable energy in under ten years
Washington Post: Despite the current boom in green power, renewable sources such as the sun and the wind still provide just a tiny fraction of the U.S. electricity supply. The rest is mainly fossil fuels: coal, gas, oil. To replace one with the other over the course of a decade, energy experts say, would make the Manhattan Project look like a science-fair volcano.
And even if we wanted to try Gore's plan to make the US 100% dependent on renewable energy in under 10 years, his goal is likely to get more distant every year. That's because, even as Americans demand more action on climate change, their laptops and flat-screen TVs are demanding more electricity every year -- and they're not asking whether it's clean or dirty.
"This goal is so far outside the realm of possibility," said Richard Newell, a professor of environmental economics at Duke University. "It would be practically infeasible, politically impossible and economically and environmentally unwise."
U.S. Weighs Halt to Talks With Russia On Nuclear Arms Curbs
The Wall Street Journal: The Bush administration, escalating its response to Russia's actions in Georgia, has placed under review talks with Moscow focused on missile defense and nuclear-weapons disarmament, according to U.S. officials.
How earthquake science can predict presidential elections
The Washington Post: While people who study elections usually scrutinize individual voters, politicians, advocacy groups, issues, campaign contributors and volunteers, historian Allan Lichtman and geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok, decided to think about an election the same way geophysicists regard earthquakes. Getting too close to the phenomenon -- the views of individual voters and campaigners -- is like trying to study an earthquake by analyzing every single molecule of rock and soil.
"The systems that generate elections and earthquakes are complex systems," said Keilis-Borok, who is now a professor of earth sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles. "They are not predictable by simple equations, but after coarse-graining -- averaging -- they become predictable."
In a paper in the International Journal of Forecasting, Lichtman predicted a political earthquake this November: The incumbent party will crumble, and Sen. Barack Obama will be elected president.
US scientists challenge UK over new coal power plants
The Guardian: The British government will lose its leadership position on climate change and risk scuppering a global deal to cut emissions if it presses ahead with a new generation of dirty coal power, say leading US scientists and environmental leaders.
The heads of three influential groups, the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council, representing more than 2 million members, have written to the foreign secretary, David Miliband, warning that the UK proposals for up to eight new coal plants threatens the chance of the US joining a post-Kyoto international agreement to be agreed in 2009.
A recent report by the IPPR said the European Union's goal of reducing emissions from the power sector and heavy industry through its emissions trading scheme would collapse if the go-ahead were given to seven new coal plants in the UK and up to 75 across Europe./p>
Space.com: In another frustrating foul-up on the path towards converting Soviet-era military missiles into cash-paying satellite launchers, a military-industrial team in Moscow has announced the "indefinite suspension" of plans to launch an earth resources survey satellite for Thailand.
The reasons: at the last moment, for the second time, overflight permission has been revoked by a country downrange of the launch site. First Uzbekistan, and now Kazakhstan, denied permission for dropping the booster's spent first stage onto their territories.
CNN: North Korea said Tuesday it has stopped disabling its nuclear plants and will consider restoring them because the United States has not removed it from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.
Science: Every June, US climate scientists descend upon Breckenridge, Colorado, to kick the tires on the nation's foremost academic global climate model. Some years there is added pressure, as scientists try to tune up the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) for simulations that will feed into the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is one of those years, and scientists are more worried than usual.
The question is whether they can meet a 1 October deadline for completing a critical part of their increasingly complex simulation of the interplay of Earth's atmosphere, oceans, land, and ice. "We're all very nervous," says atmospheric modeler Philip Rasch, who works remotely for the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in nearby Boulder and who oversees the atmospheric component of the model. A big reason for the concern is the budget cuts that have affected the center, which hosts and manages CCSM.
Scientists urge more funding for US climate research
Various: Eight scientific organizations have called for Congress and the next president to almost double research investments in weather prediction, climate research and monitoring in order to protect the country from climate change and natural disasters.
The proposed plan, which was sent as a document to the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama, would cost the nation about $9 billion above the current $10 billion already allotted for fiscal years 2010-2014.
The groups include the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union.
"With more than a quarter of the U.S. gross national product sensitive to weather and climate, these events substantially impact our national health, safety, economy, environment, transportation systems, and military readiness," the document states.
The document stressed the need for more research in five areas:
Observations. Fully fund the Earth observing system from satellite and ground-based instruments as recommended by the National Research Council.
Computing. Greatly increase the computer power available for weather and climate research, predictions and related applications.
Research and Modeling. Support a broad fundamental and applied research program in Earth sciences and related fields to advance present understanding of weather and climate and their impacts on society.
Societal Relevance. Support education, training and communication efforts to use the observations, models and application tools for the maximum benefit of society.
Leadership and Management. Implement effective leadership, management and evaluation approaches to ensure that these investments are done in the best interest of the nation.
Various: The FBI has released details about its case against accused researcher Bruce Ivins, who killed himself last week after being told he would be prosecuted as the prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks. A number of websites have provided some analysis of the FBI's case. The Smoking Gun has collated the highlights to the prosecution's case. Meryl Nass, a noted anthrax researcher, writes on her blog Anthrax Vaccine that “What came out today was another pastiche of innuendo and circumstantial evidence, with an awful lot of holes.”
Nass raises the following main questions:
1. Ivins had just been immunized against anthrax. He was required to have yearly immunizations, and some anthrax scientists have chosen to be vaccinated every six months for safety, since the vaccine’s efficacy is weak — and Ivins had proven its weakness in several animal models. In his career he had probably received about 33 separate anthrax vaccinations.
2. Earlier in the week, anonymous officials at the FBI leaked to the press that the envelopes came from the specific post office he frequented. Today the affidavit states it is "reasonable to conclude" they were purchased in Maryland or Virginia.
3. Choosing a strain that would direct suspicion at Ivins. The perpetrator(s) were tremendously careful to leave no clues vis a vis the envelopes. For example, block lettering was used, which is the hardest to identify with handwriting analysis. Second, stamped envelopes were chosen to avoid using saliva. Third, there were no fingerprints on anything.
Why would the person(s) who took such care select an anthrax strain that would focus suspicion on himself? In 2001, strain analysis was possible. It had been discussed many times as a forensic tool for biowarfare, including in a paper Nass wrote in 1992, which Ivins had read, and in which Nass thanked him for his contributions.
4. Ivins was the “sole custodian” of the strain. But the strain was grown in 1997, and more than 100 people had access to it over that four year period. Having received a sample, or obtained it surreptitiously, they would be “custodians” of it too.
Nass also points out that the FBI report does not explain how the anthrax was weaponized, nor can explain how Ivins created it. The FBI also cannot explain how the letters were mailed from Princeton. "Either Ivins had an alibi or he didn't.... If Ivins cannot be placed in New Jersey on those dates, he is not the attacker, or he did not act alone," says Nass.
Update: 8/19/2008. The FBI release some of the evidence related to their investigation. NPR's David Kestenbaum provides some details of the case, along with New York Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and Nicholas Wade. Although some of the techniques have been reviewed, the research has yet to be independently verified by experts not associated to the case. Richard O. Spertzel, a retired microbiologist who led the United Nations’ biological weapons inspections of Iraq, told the New York Times that he remained skeptical of the bureau’s argument despite the new evidence. “It’s a pretty tenuous argument,” Spertzel said, adding that he questioned the bureau’s claim that the powder was less than military grade. Nass adds some more questions to the coverage
Nations pool resources to study lunar seismic activity
Nature News: Representatives of nine national space agencies signed an agreement on 24 July to create an International Lunar Network, which aims to plant a system of six or more seismic stations on the Moon.
According to the Associated Press, prosecutors were seeking the death penalty as part of the indictment.
Ivin's lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, who has represented Ivins for the past year, issued a statement asserting Ivins' innocence.
"For more than a year, we have been privileged to represent Dr. Bruce Ivins during the investigation of the anthrax deaths of September and October of 2001," Kemp said. "We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have established that at trial."
"The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people, as has already been seen in this investigation. In Dr. Ivins' case, it led to his untimely death. We ask that the media respect the privacy of his family, and allow them to grieve."
Ivins worked for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, at Fort Detrick in Maryland. Ivin's was an expertise on anthrax and has been called on by the FBI to analyze the anthrax spores that were sent through the mail to media organizations and politicians shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The anthrax letters killed 5 people and sickened 17.
In 2003 Ivins received the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees for helping solve technical problems in the manufacture of anthrax vaccine.
After Ivins had expressed suicidal thoughts to a therapist he was seeing to treat depression, his access to sensitive work at the government labs was curtailed, and he was subsequently hospitalized for depression.
Ivins was released from the hospital on July 24, but he was facing the prospect of forced retirement, according to a colleague, who described him as “emotionally fractured” by the government scrutiny.
Nature News: Can the Chinese government meet its ambitious targets on space, the environment, research, energy and health? David Cyranoski takes a look at China today and what it hopes to be tomorrow.
Nature News: Many of the research projects launched as part of the International Polar Year (IPY), which runs from March 2007 to March 2009, are under threat because of the steep rise in marine-fuel costs. Hundreds of Arctic and Antarctic scientists face uncertainty as polar science programmes worldwide are curtailed, postponed or cancelled.
Middle East solar power could provide Europe's electricity says EU
The Guardian: Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Waldau of the European commission's Institute for Energy, said that the Middle East could supply Europe's energy needs by building solar power farms that would the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts on roughly an area the size of Wales.
Scientists are calling for the creation of these series of huge solar farms as part of a plan to share Europe's renewable energy resources across the continent.
The JRC plan includes fuel cells and hydrogen, clean coal, second generation biofuels, nuclear fusion, wind, nuclear fission and smart grids. The plan is designed to help Europe to meet its commitments to reduce overall energy consumption by 20% by 2020, while reducing CO² emissions by 20% in the same time and increasing to 20% the proportion of energy generated from renewable sources.
Wired.com: The Pentagon's storied research and development arm turned 50 years old this year, and its birthday present appears to be another $100 million in budget cuts, according to a Defense Department document. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is having a tumultuous financial year: in June, DARPA faced a $32 million cut because it was "underexecuting", leading the agency's director, Tony Tether, to strike back by saying the Pentagon's "comptroller apparently does not believe in accountability."
Cognitive computing systems, which has previously been hit by congressional cuts, will lose another $13 million, while Network Centric Technology is sliced by $19 million. Another $18 million is being diced from biological warfare defense, and a big cut is taken out of DARPA's Electronics Technology program, which loses $26 million. The cuts also indicate that DARPA's high power fiber laser program has apparently been canceled.
UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in chaos says report
The Guardian: An internal audit undertaken by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has found significant financial risk that were exacerbated by misunderstandings, unminuted meetings and lack of sufficiently trained staff which has led to embarrassing cost overruns that forced the department to find £400m worth of emergency funds from other budgets to balance the books.
Texas congressman contemplating legislation to overhaul NASA
Houston Chronicle: Two days after telling an online town hall meeting that NASA had "failed us miserably" and "wastes a vast amount of money," Houston Rep. John Culberson said Thursday he was weighing legislation to overhaul the structure of the space agency responsible for about 20,000 Houston-area jobs.
UK to set no limit on number of new nuclear reactors
The Independent: Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to fast-track the building of at least eight nuclear power stations to cut Britain's dependence on oil following the dramatic rise in its price.
Brown is quoted in a speech at the "Union for the Mediterranean" summit in Paris as saying there will be "no upper limit" on the number of nuclear plants that will be built by private companies. This would mean, despite the decommissioning of nearly all the UK's current reactors over the next 15 years, that nuclear power, which currently provides about 20 per cent of Britain's electricity, could meet a bigger share. The location for the first batch of new nuclear power plants will be announced in 2010.
The speech outlined the UK's vision of a "post-oil economy", calling for "a renaissance of nuclear power" and "massive expansion" of renewable energy in which the North Sea becomes "a vital energy resource through harnessing wind power.
Washington Post: The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now.
US Vice President's Office said to edit climate change testimony
The New York Times: Vice President Dick Cheney’s office was involved in removing statements on health risks posed by global warming from a draft of a health official’s Senate testimony last year, a former senior government environmental official said on Tuesday.
The Washington Post: The Bush administration moved to impose financial sanctions on Iranian officials and companies accused of helping develop nuclear weapons there.
ENN: The European Union and green groups piled pressure on the United States on Monday to agree to a target to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century and back the need for rich countries to set 2020 goals as well.
New York Times: The United States may be synonymous with the high-tech revolution, but it is in danger of losing its high-tech edge, according to Cybercities 2008, a report released Tuesday by AeA, a technology industry trade association.
The New York Times: With an infusion of money, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will avoid layoffs of 80 employees and resume work on a project to investigate ephemeral particles known as neutrinos.
US government overwhelmed by number of solar energy projects
New York Times: Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.
Supplemental spending bill gives $400 million to four US science agencies
Science: Science agencies are barely a footnote in the $186 billion supplemental spending bill to continue funding the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan approved by the House of Representatives last week. But the footnote includes a welcome bump-up of $400 million for four agencies whose research budgets were flattened late last year by legislators.
Canada to launch early warning system to track asteriods
Globe and Mail: The space telescope will be no bigger than a hefty suitcase and weigh just 65 kilograms, but the Canadian scientists behind the project say when the device is launched two years from now, it may well go on to save the world.
The $12-million Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite, dubbed NEOSSat, is considered a world's first - designed specifically as an early warning system to pinpoint asteroids on a collision course with Earth. It will also detect space junk in the path of other orbiting satellites to prevent crashes that could shut down telecommunications - television, telephone, GPS and banking systems - around the globe.
ENN: The European Union reached a landmark agreement Thursday to cap emissions from aircraft, raising the stakes in an increasingly ferocious battle with the United States over how to regulate global greenhouse gases.
In the first requirement of its kind, all airlines arriving or leaving from airports located in the EU would be obliged to buy some pollution credits beginning in 2012, joining other industrial polluters that trade in the European emissions market. That includes non-European carriers like American Airlines and Singapore Airlines
White House refused to open EPA's email on CO2 emissions
The New York Times: The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.
Financial Times: When candidates agree, it is not always front-page news. Election coverage hinges on conflict. Effective governance works differently. The next president must work to build consensus to get things done. Nuclear security is an excellent place to start; in fact, a remarkable bipartisan consensus is emerging that can help the 44th president revolutionise America’s policy towards nuclear weapons.
The Times: India and China are taking their rivalry into orbit, with Delhi determined to catch up with Beijing in what is starting to look like an Asian version of the Cold War “space sace”.
General Deepak Kapoor, India’s Chief of Army Staff, has spoken publicly for the first time of his fears about China’s military space programme and the need for India to accelerate its own.
“The Chinese space programme is expanding at an exponentially rapid pace in both offensive and defensive content,” he told a conference attended by India’s military top brass this week. “The Indian Army’s agenda for exploitation of space will have to evolve dynamically. It should be our endeavour to optimise space applications for military purposes.”
ScienceNow: A third of a loaf is better than nothing. That's the feeling among the U.S. research community after the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly yesterday to boost the current budgets of four key science agencies by $337 million. Although it was less than lobbyists had hoped, it's probably more likely to happen than the sizeable budget increases for next year approved this week by several House and Senate spending panels with jurisdiction over a number of science agencies. Lobbyists fear those numbers, for the 2009 budget year that begins in October, could represent high-water marks in a process that likely will extend far beyond the November elections.
Wired.com: The U.S. military is shifting $32 million away from its premiere research agency -- because that agency, Darpa, can't find enough qualified people to run its cutting-edge projects.
The Associated Press: A Bush administration official was seeking to convince skeptical lawmakers Thursday that a U.S.-Russian agreement on civilian nuclear power would not undermine efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear program.
The New York Times: According to the Congressional Research Service, there are only about 30 scientists among the 535 senators and representatives in the 110th Congress, and that is counting the psychologist, the psychiatrist, a dozen other M.D.’s, three nurses, an engineer, two veterinarians, a pharmacist and an optometrist.
The Washington Post: Military power requires brainpower, and the Defense Department is moving to engage a new generation of scientists and engineers to conduct research that may pay off in technological breakthroughs for the nation's military.
AMS was without a launch vehicle after the loss of space shuttle columbia cancelled its 2009 flight. NASA had been looking at alternative launch vehicles but the large cost involved made approval unlikely (see NASA Cancels Science Flight, Ditches International Partners May 2007).
"NASA has a key role to play in the nation's innovation agenda, ensuring the future health of our nation's aviation system, and advancing our efforts to better understand our climate and the changes facing the Earth system," said Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN). "In addition, a properly structured human space flight and exploration program can provide dividends technologically, scientifically, and geopolitically--and is worthy of the nation's investment in it."
H.R. 6063 adds more than $1.6 billion to the White House request. The bill emphasizes the importance of aeronautics R&D, strengthening the exploration program, and NASA leadership in Earth science research and applications. It increases funding for the climate-monitoring satellite Glory, the development of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and the Ares launcher, which is currently scheduled to enter service in 2015, nearly 5 years after the last shuttle flight.
ENN: Even before debate began on Monday on the first comprehensive climate change bill to reach the Senate floor, the White House said President George W. Bush would veto it in its current form.
Bush himself slammed the bill, saying it would cost the U.S. economy $6 trillion. His estimate drew quick denials from those who support the legislation, including Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat and longtime environmentalist.
Cutting global warming emissions cheaper than living with the consequences says report
ENN: Doing nothing about global warming would cost America dearly for the rest of this century because of stronger hurricanes, higher energy and water costs, and rising seas that would swamp coastal communities, says a new study by economists at Tufts University.
The study concludes that it would be cheaper to take aggressive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions than it would be to suffer the consequences of a changing world. "The longer we wait, the more painful and expensive the consequences will be," the report states.
China says radioactive substances contained in quake area
The Boston Globe: Emergency crews worked yesterday to secure 15 sources of radiation buried in the rubble of China's catastrophic earthquake, the government said.
One senior official said China faces "a daunting challenge" to prevent environmental contamination from other sources.
There has been no leak of radioactive substances into the environment, Wu Xiaoqing, China's vice minister for environmental protection, told reporters in Beijing.
He said 50 sources of radiation were buried by debris from the massive earthquake in central China, 35 of which had been secured. The rest lay buried or located but unreachable under collapsed buildings. He gave no specifics about the radiation sources.
The number of unsecured sources was far higher than the two the government reported earlier this week. Foreign observers said the radioactive sources probably came from materials used in hospitals, factories, or in research, not for weapons.
G8 environment ministers urge their leaders to halve CO2 emissions by 2050
Reuters: Environment ministers from the G8 rich nations on Monday urged their leaders to set a global target to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a small but vital step in the fight against climate change.
But they stopped short of suggesting specific interim targets ahead of 2050, a key demand of developing countries in tough U.N.-led talks to forge a new treaty on global warming by the end of next year.
About 190 nations have agreed to negotiate by the end of 2009 a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 37 advanced nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12
Science: Two of Australia's science agencies are shedding jobs and trimming programs to comply with a new national budget that's both praised and criticized by research leaders. The spending plan announced by the Labor government last week--its first since coming to power in 2007--provides more money for education initiatives, including a $10.5 billion trust fund for higher education infrastructure, but less for two key players, the nation's premier science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). The cuts are troubling, some say, because the government expects to reap a $20.7 billion surplus over Australia's next annual budget cycle, which starts 1 July.
Nature News: France’s CNRS, the largest fundamental science agency in Europe, is to be reorganized into six quasi-autonomous national institutes by the end of the year. In essence, the move amounts to a dismantling of the CNRS, commentators say, replacing it with a UK-style system, which is organized by major discipline.
"In late 2006, it became clear that the NCSX construction project would not be able to meet its approved baseline total project cost of $102M or its completion date of July 2009," said Undersecretary for Science Raymond Orbach in a statement. Since then the DOE, Princeton University, and thePrinceton Plasma Physics Laboratory have been reviewing options for the project and PPPL. They concluded that "the budget increases, schedule delays and continuing uncertainties of the NCSX construction project necessitate its closure," said Orbach. The new proposed cost for NCSX was $170 million and its new start date was August 2013, which would have put research at PPPL in peril, said an April 2008 Office of Science report.
"PPPL's future as a world-leading center of fusion energy and plasma sciences is more assured by a renewed focus on the successful Spherical Torus confinement concept," added Orbach. Under the existing construction proposal for NCSX, the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) would have had to close, which would have had implications for US involvement in the ITER fusion project.
"The Spherical Torus is closely related to the [ITER] tokamak, and experiments planned for the next several years in the NSTX facility promise many exciting discoveries that should directly impact our ability to understand the new plasma regimes expected in ITER," says Orbach. "Proposed upgrades for [NSTX] can keep this facility at the forefront of fusion science research... well into the future."
Tennessee professor indicted by grand jury in high tech export plot
Knoxville News Sentinel: Professor emeritus J. Reece Roth, 70, from the University of Tennessee is accused of giving two graduate research assistants - one from Iran and another from the People's Republic of China - unfettered and unauthorized access to sensitive military arms information and lying about it.
A federal grand jury on Tuesday returned an 18-count indictment against Roth, alleging that he had used his technology firm to violate the Arms Export Control Act, which bars the transfer of sensitive technology to foreign countries.
Roth is accused of conspiring with former UT physicist Daniel Max Sherman, 37, to keep the US State Department in the dark about the work of two foreign nationals on U.S. Air Force defense contracts awarded to Knoxville firm Atmospheric Glow Technologies Inc.
Sherman in April struck a plea deal, agreeing to cooperate in a probe of Roth and AGT.
Congressional report charges interference on emissions
New York Times: The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency initially supported giving California full or partial permission to limit tailpipe emissions, but reversed himself after hearing from the White House, a Congressional report says.
The report, by the Democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, cites sworn depositions by high-level officials of the agency and amounts to the first solid evidence of the political interference alleged by Democrats and environmentalists since the administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, denied California’s request in December.
USA Todaym: The Bayh-Dole Act was enacted 27 years ago, but the ramifications persist to this day. The act lets universities patent and commercialize inventions that come from federally funded research. It has gradually turned universities into incubators for breakthroughs in technology and medicine.
Stanford owns the patent on Google's Internet search technology, and last year, the university earned $48 million from 428 technologies licensed to companies. Texas Instruments was early to recognize the power of university research. The company has partnerships with Rice, Georgia Tech and the University of Illinois, among others, and with universities in India and China. CEO Rich Templeton, 49, spoke with USA TODAY management reporter Del Jones about the R&D coming from colleges.
Salon News: In 2007, some 20,000 megawatts of wind were installed globally, enough to power 6 million homes. Most wind power manufacturers are no longer American, thanks to decades of funding cuts by conservatives. Still, new wind is poised to be a bigger contributor to U.S. (and global) electricity generation than new nuclear power in the coming decades says a new report from the department of energy.
But while it is poised to happen, and other governments are working hard to claim market share, America will need a bold president to ensure leadership in this major job-creating industries of the 21st century says Joseph Romm.
Opinion: The Role of the US in Promoting Global Science
OSTA Bridges: Norman P. Neureiter reminisces over his years working in science and technology sectors, and the impact government policies have on research and development. He ends with:
The US is admired throughout the world – even in the most hostile countries – for its science and technology. Much of our current leadership position has come from scientists born outside the US; and as the international science community continues to grow around the world and in many countries, and the interest in science and engineering careers among US students declines, it is increasingly important that we maintain close cooperative ties with those international communities and continue to attract the best and the brightest from around the world. The US Government must do everything possible to facilitate such cooperative relationships – with appropriate funding, creative initiatives, international leadership, more student exchanges, and new visa and export control systems that truly protect our vital security interests while maintaining our great national legacy of openness and freedom of inquiry. For a long time the US has been the shining scientific city on the hill for much of the world. We need to make sure that the light of US science and technology continues to shine
Three years after the Gathering Storm Report, science and education is still underfunded
Science: Recently US academics and policy analysts met to assess the country's response to a 2005 report by the U.S. National Academies titled Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (RAGS).
A parade of speakers gave the federal government failing grades for not heeding the recommendations in RAGS for bigger research budgets, more undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships, changes in immigration policy, and an improved environment for innovation.
"We have … attract[ed] substantial bipartisan support for the notion of investing in research," notes Robert Berdahl, president of the 60-member Association of American Universities in Washington, D.C., "But we've made no progress in making it a reality. It's a failure of leadership by both the White House and Congress, and it's very disappointing."
Much of that disappointment stems from the last-minute collapse in December of plans to give several science agencies double-digit increases in 2008. So meeting organizers tried to rally support for adding up to $900 million for science as part of a supplemental spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush opposes the plan--even though he asked for the entire amount more than a year ago as part of his American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI).
The higher education community seemed especially disappointed that the report's warning of a "gathering storm" hasn't stirred public interest in strengthening U.S. science. Even the popular idea of a national project to achieve clean energy independence, as Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) proposed at the meeting, hasn't resonated with the public, notes C. D. "Dan" Mote, president of the University of Maryland, College Park.
"The country responds to a crisis, preferably one involving national security," says Mote. "But the country doesn't see a crisis. Congress doesn't see a crisis. People complain about $4-a-gallon gasoline, but nobody sees the connection to not developing enough alternative energy technologies. They blame it on not drilling in ANWR [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] or on gasoline taxes." Mote says that the cost of the recently passed economic stimulus package--$168 billion in checks of up to $600 to taxpayers--"could pay for RAGS for a decade. As it is, the money doesn't do a damn thing about the underlying problem."
US declares MIT science grad students are security threats
The Tech: Eight MIT graduate students with student visas were denied a key credential by the Department of Homeland Security. After their department appealed the decisions on their behalf, the DHS declared at least two of the students “security threats.”
The troubles stem from a new homeland security program called the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, a plastic card which, like an MIT ID, contains personally identifying information and can be read wirelessly. Without the credential, the students will soon have a harder time boarding and leaving ships at U.S. ports, including the three research ships at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, where the students work.
The situation was well-known to WHOI, but it only came to MIT’s attention yesterday, when a German student forwarded to colleagues in the Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Sciences Department a letter from the Department of Homeland Security. The letter said in part: “I have personally reviewed the Initial Determination of Threat Assessment, your reply, accompanying information, and all other information and materials available to the TSA. Based upon this review, I have determined that you pose a security threat and you do not meet the eligibility requirements to hold a Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC).” A British graduate student received a similar letter, said James A. Yoder, dean of WHOI.
Opinion: Do we understand the threat of global warming?
London Review of Books: John Lanchester, a contributing editor at the London Review of Books reviews a series a books on global warming and ends his review with the following paragraphs:
The remarkable thing is that most of the things we need to do to prevent climate change are clear in their outline, even though one can argue over details. We need to insulate our houses, on a massive scale; find an effective form of taxing the output of carbon (rather than just giving tradeable credits to the largest polluters, which is what the EU did – a policy that amounted to a 30 billion euro grant to the continent’s biggest polluters); spend a fortune on both building and researching renewable energy and DC power; spend another fortune on nuclear power; double or treble our spending on public transport; do everything possible to curb the growth of air travel; and investigate what we need to do to defend ourselves if the sea rises, or if food imports collapse. If we do that we may find that we develop the technologies that China and India will need. If we can show that it is possible to cut carbon output dramatically without trashing our economy – well, that might be the single most important thing we could do, far outweighing the actual impact of our emission reductions.
We know all this, but whether any of it will actually happen is a different question. It is easy for politicians to stick wind turbines on their houses and ride bicycles, but effective action on climate change is about to require doing things that are not popular. In his eponymous report, Nicholas Stern has argued that it would cost about 1 per cent of global GDP now to prevent a loss of 5 per cent of global GDP in the future. The calculation is tweaked to make the cost now sound manageably small – but it is not yet clear whether Western electorates are willing to pay it. One per cent of global GDP is 600 billion dollars, most of which would be paid by the developed world. The idea is that by paying it now we would be keeping the world’s economy on track so that by 2050 the developed world would be 200 per cent richer and the developing world 400 per cent, while our emissions decline by 60 to 90 per cent and theirs increase by 25 to 50. (One problem is that 17 per cent of that growth in developing world emissions has already been used up.) The promised economic growth is jam tomorrow; we would be paying for it today, in the form of increased taxes and lost jobs. These things are all real to voters in ways that climate change perhaps is not. Are people going to give things up in the present in order to prevent things that computer models tell them are going to happen in 25 years’ time? If they – we – aren’t, then we’re heading for breeding pairs, and camels in the Arctic.
New EPA standards would cut amount of lead in the air, but not enough to protect the public
Washingtonpost.com: The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday proposed tightening the federal limits for lead in the air, but the proposal fell short of what its own scientists said is required to protect public health.
House spending bill leaves out money for physical sciences
Chronicle.com: Advocates for scientists have lost their bid to persuade Congress to raise spending on physical-sciences research during the remainder of the 2008 fiscal year. The money is not contained in a war-spending bill that the U.S. House of Representatives is to consider on Thursday.
According to Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), who recently sent a letter to the administration requesting an explanation, the Vice President's office is objecting to NOAA's research as the Vice President's staff "contends that we have no evidence that lowering the speeds of 'large ships' will actually make a difference."
In a memo obtained by the OGR committee NOAA rejected these objections, stating that both a statistical analysis of ship strike records and the peer-reviewed literature justified the final rule. NOAA reported that there is "no basis to overturn our previous conclusion that imposing a speed limit on large vessels would be beneficial to whales."
Waxman says that he questions "why White House economic advisors are apparently conducting their own research on right whales and why the Vice President's staff is challenging the conclusions of the government's scientific experts. The appearance is that the White House rejects the conclusions of its own scientists and peer-reviewed scientific studies because it does not like the policy implications of the data. This is not how the review process is supposed to work."
msnbc.com: One of the nation's top fusion researchers is worried that America is already falling behind in an energy race that won't start for 30 or 40 years.
McGraw-Hill Construction: National laboratories are losing funds in real dollars and could face as much as a 20% drop in research activities because small, incremental budget increases in recent years have fallen short of inflation.
Funding fiasco made UK science look incompetent says panel, chief exec under pressure to resign
New Scientist: Damaging funding cuts to UK physics have left the UK looking like an "unreliable" and "incompetent" partner for international science, according to a damning report by politicians. Most of the blame for the fiasco is pinned on the head of the research council behind the cuts.
The UK Parliament's Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills committee examined the causes of the physics funding crisis which emerged in December 2007. The Science and Technology Facilities Council – the UK's main funding body for physics and astronomy, and which looks after some of the largest science centres in the country – was faced with a deficit of £80m after an unfavourable government spending review last year.
The move stunned physicists, who had received little warning that UK involvement in the projects was in jeopardy. They argued that the measures were taken with little warning or consultation. Today's 55-page report, based on evidence provided by STFC bosses, civil servants and physicists at three hearings earlier this year, comes to a similar conclusion.
The report condemns the decision-making process behind the cuts as "ineffective" and "secretive" and describes the STFC's peer-review system as "weak".
Updated: 1:24 PM EST
According to a report in The Register, Keith Mason, the head of the Science and Technology Facilities Council is now under pressure to resign over his handling of the budget cuts.
Science: Three cities vying to host a €1 billion neutron beam research center called the European Spallation Source (ESS) last week submitted bids to a specially created, independent panel of "wise people." "Rational criteria are better than the handshake of two powerful people," says Colin Carlile of Lund University in Sweden, director of the ESS-Scandinavia consortium.
Early in the decade the ESS project foundered and its central project office closed in 2003 due to a lack of political will to get the facility constructed. Meanwhile, the United States built the Spallation Neutron Source in Tennessee, and Japan built a source as part of its nearly complete J-PARC facility at Tokai.
ESS was given new impetus by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), a body tasked by the European Union with drawing up a list of planned large facilities that EU nations should work together on.
ESS was one of 35 projects in the first ESFRI road map released in 2006. Three cities were soon vying to host ESS--Lund in Sweden, Bilbao in Spain, and Debrecen in Hungary--and seeking allies. The Lund team is building an alliance of five Scandinavian nations, the three Baltic states, and Poland. Debrecen is working on its central European neighbors (including Poland) as well as Russia. And the Debrecen and Bilbao teams pledged to support each other should one of them have a face-off with Lund.
National academies revisit Gathering Storm report on science and the economy
Chronicle of Higher Education: Two years ago, the National Academies sounded the alarm in a widely cited report, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” that America was slipping behind other countries in science and technology. On Tuesday leaders from academe and business met here to try to refocus Congress’s attention on the report’s many recommendations that require lawmakers’ action.
One expected topic of discussion on Tuesday is a lobbying effort already under way to persuade Congress to increase federal spending for physical-sciences research significantly this year. The money could be squeezed into a broader supplemental-appropriations bill that legislators are expected to consider in the coming weeks to finance the Iraq war.
Die Spiegel: Nuclear power is too dangerous. Coal is too dirty. Gas involves too much dependence on Russia. And renewables are insufficient. So just where is Germany going to get its power from?
Nonproliferation essential to future of nuclear power says panel
Japan Times: Full-fledged reinforcement of the international nuclear nonproliferation framework is of vital importance for facilitating peaceful use of nuclear power and thereby for addressing the pressing global challenges of energy supply and global warming, according to a private policy study group.
To attain this goal, all nations, regardless of whether they have nuclear capability, must work on nonproliferation initiatives, such as stepped-up disarmament efforts and reinforcement of nuclear site inspections, according to the Study Group on Nuclear Nonproliferation.
The proposal by the 12-member expert group, headed by Shunji Yanai, former ambassador to the U.S., was submitted to Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura last Wednesday
Confusion reigns over changes to EPA chemical hazards database
Science: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has substantially modified the way it updates a database on chemical hazards that influences how chemicals are regulated. The agency says the changes should make the process more transparent and more rigorous, and speedier. But critics argue that the new procedure is more secretive and gives too much clout to federal agencies that pollute or face massive cleanup costs. One result, they say, will be further delays in regulation.
UN climate change reports to increase accuracy, timeliness
Science: The international team of climate change scientists that produced an influential series of reports last year--and won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize--will be doing things a little differently in the future. Government delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), meeting last week in Budapest, Hungary, approved a plan for the 20-year, 100-nation enterprise that would generate more precise and relevant information on climate change--without taking any longer than the current 6-year gap between reports. To do so, the delegates endorsed procedural changes that scientists had proposed to streamline the process.
The survey results show "an agency under siege from political pressures," says UCS while in a statement EPA says that the concerns may largely reflect a misunderstanding of how policy is made. EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar said the findings will not change anything.
The survey was sent to the majority of 7000 scientists at EPA last summer, and 1586 filled it out.
Among the UCS report's findings:
– 889 scientists (60 percent) said they had personally experienced at least one instance of political interference in their work over the last five years.
– 394 scientists (31 percent) personally experienced frequent or occasional "statements by EPA officials that misrepresent scientists' findings."
– 285 scientists (22 percent) said they frequently or occasionally personally experienced "selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome."
– 224 scientists (17 percent) said they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from an EPA scientific document."
– Of the 969 agency veterans with more than 10 years of EPA experience, 409 scientists (43 percent) said interference has occurred more often in the past five years than in the previous five-year period. Only 43 scientists (4 percent) said interference occurred less often.
– Hundreds of scientists reported being unable to openly express concerns about the EPA's work without fear of retaliation; 492 (31 percent) felt they could not speak candidly within the agency and 382 (24 percent) felt they could not do so outside the agency.
The UCS investigation also revealed that EPA scientists cannot freely communicate their findings to the media, public or colleagues. Seven-hundred-eighty-three respondents (51 percent) said EPA policies do not let scientists speak freely to the news media about their findings. Scientists also shared anecdotes about being barred from presenting their research at conferences and their difficulties clearing research publication articles with EPA managers.
Scientists who reported political interference tended to work in offices that write regulations rather than in basic research labs. Hundreds said they feared retaliation by officials if they voiced concerns about EPA regulations.
In optional essays, scientists repeatedly singled out the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, accusing officials there of inserting themselves into decision-making at early stages in a way that shaped the outcome of their inquiries. They also alleged that the OMB delayed rules not to its liking. EPA actions "are held hostage" until changes are made, a scientist from the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation wrote.
US unprepared for low-level nuclear attack says Senate committee
Washington Post: Concerned that not enough attention is being paid to the risk of a nuclear attack, a Senate committee yesterday looked at the consequences of such a terrorist strike in Washington -- and said that more could be done to save lives.
A hearing, called by the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, featured charts showing the horrific effects of a small nuclear device detonating near the White House. It was the panel's third session in recent months on the threat of a nuclear explosion.
I underestimated climate change threat, says UK's Stern
The Guardian: Sir Nicholas Stern has warned that the gloomy predictions of his high-profile review of the future effects of global warming underestimated the risks, and that climate change poses a bigger threat than he realised.
Stern said this week that new scientific findings showed greenhouse gas emissions were causing more damage than was understood in 2006, when he prepared his study for the government. He pointed to last year's reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and new research which shows that the planet's oceans and forests are soaking up less carbon dioxide than expected.
Stern said the new findings vindicated his report, which has been criticised by climate sceptics and some economists as exaggerating the possible damage. "People who said I was scaremongering were profoundly wrong," he told a conference in London.
The Daily Californian: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will lay off 535 employees beginning as early as mid-May, officials announced Tuesday.
The lab will release full-time employees who largely work in administration, in addition to scientists and engineers, said lab spokesperson Lynda Seaver. The last time it let go of permanent workers was 35 years ago.
"We're doing everything to make sure we still meet our mission, but obviously this does have an effect," Seaver said. "There are a lot of good people we're going to have to release."
Los Angeles Times: A successful Chinese missile test last year that destroyed one of China's own aging satellites has substantially added to space debris around Earth, increasing the danger that a chain reaction of colliding space junk could threaten parts of the world's satellite network, scientists said Tuesday.
The threat is that debris could begin slamming into other debris, creating a cascading effect called supercriticality, according to scientists addressing the American Physical Society conference here this week.
"Debris in space is already a problem," said David Wright, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass. "But it's potentially a very big problem."
>Geoffrey Forden, an MIT physicist and expert on the Chinese space program, said the danger from space debris was actually more of a worry than the threat that the Chinese, or some other country, could intentionally cripple American space assets with antisatellite weapons.
According to Wright, the Chinese shoot-down on Jan. 11, 2007, added more than 2 million pieces of debris in low-Earth orbit, where most satellites are located.
Washington Post: The directors of the nation's three national nuclear weapons laboratories say that budget cuts by Congress and the Bush administration have reduced their ability to carry out scientific research needed to ensure the reliability of the nation's nuclear arsenal in future years.
ENN: The world needs tougher action to combat global warming than a plan by President George W. Bush to halt a rise in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions only by 2025, delegates at a climate conference in Paris said on Thursday.
South Africa, one of 17 nations at the two-day global warming talks that started on Thursday, called Bush's proposals "disappointing" and unambitious when many other industrialized economies are already cutting emissions.
BBC Newsnight: Nicholas Owen, from the solar theory group at St Andrews University got loud applause when he asked a panel on the crisis in UK science funding at the annual meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society: "I'm a PhD student in solar physics. Why, in the current climate, should I and other students take the risk of continuing to do research in this area?"
The answer he got, from John Womersley, director of science programmes at the Science and Technology Facilities Council, was criticised as patronising: "If you cared about money you wouldn't be a scientist at all would you," he told the students in the hall.
"You may feel it's a bigger gamble than you want to make, knowing what you do about future funding."
"But if it's not rewarding, and it's not exciting and you don't feel you can make a contribution, then don't do it. If you can, then let's figure out a way that you can. The future budgets make it tough, I can't deny that."
ScienceNOW: A plan to hold a presidential debate on science and technology issues in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, next week has failed. Now organizers hope to stage the event on 9 May in Oregon. But with candidates careful to avoid missteps, that plan faces tough odds.
Science: The U.S. military has more to gain than lose by working with Chinese scientists on fundamental research. So says the Pentagon's former director of basic research, William Berry, in arguing for the removal of obstacles to scientific cooperation between the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and China despite the military rivalry between the two countries.
Berry, now a researcher at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., writes with colleague Cheryl Loeb in a working paper published by his center last week that collaborating with Chinese researchers at a time of rapid growth in China's science and technology investment will help DOD stay on the cutting edge of materials, biotechnology, energy sciences, and other disciplines relevant to long-term U.S. security interests.* It would also help the U.S. military learn more about China's scientific capabilities, says Berry, who was wowed by a visit to Shanghai's Fudan University last fall. As first steps toward fostering these links, the authors want DOD to encourage its program managers and scientists to travel to Chinese universities, establish a liaison office in China, and sponsor visits by Chinese academics to U.S. institutions.
Reuters: An ambitious vision to take people to the moon and Mars may fall apart before it even gets off the ground because of uncertain planning and inadequate funding, several experts said on Thursday.
A congressional report said NASA's replacement for the space shuttle, the Constellation Program, is in jeopardy, and members of Congress as well as at least one former astronaut agreed at a hearing on the issue.
BBC: Astronomers must make the best case for their subject to government if they are to stave off further funding woes says Keith Mason, head of the funding body for UK astronomy, when he addressed a scientific meeting in Belfast.
Administrators have cut projects and research grants as they attempt to plug an £80m hole in their finances.
But there may be some good news for one project called eMerlin, a network of seven giant astronomy dishes. The president of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), Michael Rowan-Robinson, told the audience in Belfast he understood the project was now no longer threatened.
California, 17 other states sue EPA over greenhouse gases
Sacramento Bee: Attorney General Jerry Brown joined officials in 17 other states Wednesday to demand that the federal Environmental Protection Agency release its internal finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health.
The move comes after EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson wrote last week that he plans to open a months-long public comment period on greenhouse gas emissions, a procedure critics say serves to delay action on emissions until after President Bush leaves office.
The states, joined by environmental groups, filed their legal demand Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, asking that EPA release the finding within 60 days.
NPR: Projections for the evolution of green technologies to help curb greenhouse gas emissions are overly optimist, according to researchers writing in Nature. They say policymakers will need to implement stronger measures to reverse global warming.
SciAm.com: Radiation monitors at U.S. ports cannot reliably detect highly enriched uranium, which onshore terrorists could assemble into a nuclear bomb says Thomas B. Cochran and Matthew G. McKinzie
An interview with NASA's new science chief
An interview with NASA's new science chief
Space News: Ed Weiler, the salty, straight-talking astrophysicist who left NASA headquarters in 2004 to take the helm of the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center, is returning to Washington to replace NASA science chief Alan Stern, an equally straight-talking scientist who abruptly resigned March 25 after less than a year on the job.
Weiler talked to Space News staff writer Brian Berger about the leadership transition ahead for NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD).
NPR: Along Florida's "Space Coast," people are worrying about what the end of the shuttle program will mean for workers and the region's economy.
For many who live and work here, the looming end of the space shuttle brings back memories of the 1970s. Within just a few years of men landing on the Moon, the workforce at the Kennedy Space Center was cut from 25,000 employees to less than half that.
The ripple effects from those layoffs, Koller recalls, devastated Florida communities from Titusville to Melbourne.
The replacement for the space shuttle, Constellation, and the other future NASA programs at Cape Canaveral will require far fewer people than those needed for the space shuttle.
Lynda Weatherman, of the area's economic development commission, says it's important that Florida's Space Coast diversify its aerospace industry and the role it plays in the nation's space program.
"We don't want to rely on launch. We can't afford to rely on launch," she says.
CNN: NASA officials have directed the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) program to cut $4 million dollars from its $approximately 20 million dollar budget this year, and principal investigator Steve Squyres tells CNN that will likely mean science operations will have to be suspended for Spirit. The rover would be put in hibernation mode, and if all goes well it could be reactivated in the future in the event funding is restored.
Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
NASA Headquarters spokesman Dwayne Brown confirmed the budget directive has been issued. He said the reason behind the cut is to offset cost overruns with the Mars Science Laboratory, a follow-on rover set to launch next year.
Congress increasing the number of academic earmarks
Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required): Two-thirds of academic earmarks ($1.6-billion) was directed to scientific research at almost 500 institutions says a new report from the Chronicle of Higher Education. For 2008, the median earmark was $462,000, down from $497,000 in 2003.
Since 2003, it has been harder to win peer-reviewed federal research grants as the budget of the NIH and NSF declined in real terms. In 2008 each agency expects to approve about one in five grant applications, down from one in three in 2001. The drop has made earmarks more attractive to institutions says Chronicle reporters Jeffrey Brainard and JJ Hermes, who report on a 25-percent increase in the number of colleges and universities receiving earmarks compared to the last time the newspaper ran a similar survey in 2003.
The numbers and names show "a system that's out of control," says Michael S. Lubell, director of public affairs at the American Physical Society.
Were the correct reentry models used in deciding to shoot down spy satellite?
Space Review: Two letters in Space Review debate whether the risks associated with the hydrazine fuel tank were fully understood by the public and the US Defense Department (DoD) before the US Navy shot down a disabled US spy satellite (see Broken spy satellite hit by US missile). The US was concerned that the fuel tank might survive reentry into the atmosphere and contaminate a wide area with the toxic hydrazine fuel.
Andrew Higgins of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, suggests that critics of the decision to shoot down the satellite, have not fully grasped hydrazine's burn rate at the pressure contained in the tank or calculated the tank's reentry survivability.
In independent computer simulations of the reentry of the USA 193 satellite, Geoff Forden of MIT and Higgins, found that the maximum deceleration of the tank would have been about 8 to 10 g’s. "This is similar to the g-loading the fully fueled tank is designed to withstand upon launch," says Higgins. "Thus, it is unlikely that a similar loading would have destroyed the tank on reentry."
Yousaf Butt of the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University points out that questions should be raised about the overall quality of the DoD's reentry simulation models, because the DoD did not predict the hydrazine explosion that occurred during the interception.
"It would serve NASA/NRO/DoD well to immediately publicize the unclassified portions of their studies so that the US public can ascertain whether the putative public health concern of the hydrazine surviving reentry was indeed well-founded," says Butt. "As technical details of hydrazine tanks are freely available online, it is difficult to comprehend what is so classified about these studies."
"It is unclear what the impact will be on EPSRC's future ability to fund computing research," says Steve Furber of the British Computer Society. "The government seems to be signalling to potential science applicants that computing research is not accorded a high priority."
The EPSRC scale-back is expected to lead to job losses,and comes after the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council announced funding cuts of around £80 million and a 25% reduction in grant money.
States’ Battles Over Energy Grow Fiercer With U.S. in a Policy Gridlock
New York Times: Utility executives in Kansas were shocked last fall when a state environmental official rejected two coal-fired power plants because of the millions of tons of carbon-dioxide emissions they could produce. In a state where coal generates 73 percent of the electricity, the pro-coal forces were unable to work their will.
That ineffectiveness will be underscored as early as Friday if Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as expected, vetoes an effort by the Kansas State Legislature to ensure the plants are approved. A handful of lawmakers seeking a new energy policy are blocking the attempt to override.
The struggle over those plants is an example of a growing trend in climate-change politics. In the absence of clear federal mandates for emissions from smokestack industries, states that have been proving grounds for new environmental approaches to energy are becoming battlegrounds as well
Pentagon spends at least $520 Million on space weapons research
Wired: Trying to pin down how much the Defense Department is spending on space combat research -- and on what projects -- is difficult. The programs are spread across at least a dozen different accounts; much of the technology involved is "dual use" -- meaning, it could help with another military matters, too; and that's before you get into the Defense Department's "black," classified budget.
According to the Center for Defense Information, the Pentagon will spend at minimum $520 million in the 2009 budget on research that could lead to arms in space.
EPA closure of libraries faulted for curbing access to key data
Washington Post: A plan by the Environmental Protection Agency to close several of its 26 research libraries did not fully account for the impact on government staffers and the public, who rely on the libraries for hard-to-find environmental data, congressional investigators reported yesterday.
The report by the Government Accountability Office found that the EPA effort, begun in 2006 to comply with a $2 million funding cut sought by the White House, may have hurt access to materials and services in the 37-year-old library network.
USA Today: President Bush has failed to back up his broad vision to revive the nation's interest in space exploration with adequate funding or even public support, a leading scientist told lawmakers.
"The money that was promised to execute the mission has not been provided, and it's hard to say that the vision has generated much excitement, particularly among the young, who are expected to benefit the most," said Lennard Fisk, chairman of the National Research Council Space Studies Board.
President Bush intervenes to weaken ozone regulation
Washington Post: The Environmental Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush, according to documents released by the EPA.
EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA's scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.
The president's order prompted a scramble by administration officials to rewrite the regulations to avoid a conflict with past EPA statements on the harm caused by ozone.
According to the Washington Post, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement warned administration officials late Tuesday night that the rules contradicted the EPA's past submissions to the Supreme Court, according to sources familiar with the conversation. As a consequence, administration lawyers hustled to craft new legal justifications for the weakened standard. On Friday, EPA Press Secretary, Jonathan Shradar said in a statement "EPA is unaware of either Paul Clement or anyone else in the Solicitor General's office ever stating or advising that "the rules contradicted the EPA's past submissions to the Supreme Court" as the Washington Post article today asserts."
Also on Friday US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called on EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to explain why he overruled the recommendation of scientific advisors, and decided to issue a weaker standard for air pollution. Feinstein chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies. Feinstein also asked Johnson to address the White House's role in the matter, given the reports which suggest that it may have influenced a key part of his decision regarding ozone standards.
An unsigned editorial in the New York Times calls the move "permanently devalue the role of science while strengthening the hand of industry."
Reuters: China will tolerate experiment failures by its scientists to ease pressure, encourage innovation and cut the chances of fraud, a top official said on Thursday.
Worried about being left behind in global technological advances, China has launched a campaign to pour more resources into scientific research to boost "home-grown innovation".
Several high-profile cases of cheating in state-paid research programs have shocked the country in recent years, tarnishing the image of a sector already plagued by scandals of plagiarism and corruption.
Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang blamed the fraud cases partly on mounting pressure to succeed in a "high-risk" area that cannot guarantee 100 percent positive results.
36% of scientists at NASA are Indians says Indian government
The Times of India: As many as 12% scientists and 38% doctors in the US are Indians, and in NASA, 36% or almost 4 out of 10 scientists are Indians says India's science minister D Purandeshwari. The minister was defending the country's higher education system and the state of research to the Indian parlament. Purandeshwari said that although a lot needed to be done to encourage research, it was wrong to run down the country's higher education system since most Indians who excelled abroad were products of Indian institutions.
The minister also listed initiatives taken to encourage research, especially in science. Apart from creating 1,000 positions of research scientists at various levels, she mentioned preparations to create 10 networking centres in basic sciences in leading departments of universities. These new centers would help in promoting collaborative research and give access to advanced facilities.
Physics Today: Millionaire physicist Bill Foster may be the only democrat candidate running for Congressional office that has had an entire section of his campaign web site devoted to the particle accelerators and superconducting magnets. More remarkably, he just won a closely fought election by 53% to 47% in what is a republican stronghold.
Foster defeated businessman and dairy magnate Jim Oberweis in a special election in Illinois to replace Republican representative Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, who announced his retirement on November 26, 2007. Foster's campaign was supported by Illinois Senator Barak Obama, an endorsement that helped boost democratic turnout for the special election.
“Back in the laboratory, this is what we’d say was a pretty successful experiment,” said Foster, in a victory speech at a banquet hall in Aurora. “You sent a clear message to everyone in Washington. You demanded change, and you are demanding it now.”
Foster, who founded a successful national theater lighting company and has a 22-year career at Fermilab as a high energy physicist, worked on the collider detector that discovered the top quark and is the co-inventor of Fermilab’s antiproton recycler ring. Fermilab is near the heart of his congressional district, and has had to lay off 10% of its staff due to the decimation of the high energy physics budget for 2008.
Foster won’t have much time to become established in Washington political circles as the seat is up for grabs in November. He is sworn in on Thursday, when official certification of the election results are sent to Congress.
NSF delays three projects to get better handle on costs
Science: After a decade of making their case to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), scientists planning a major project for remote monitoring of the oceans thought they had cleared the final hurdle in December. That's when an external panel blessed the $331 million venture, called the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), and told NSF officials "to enter into the detailed design and construction phase" to build it. "We were ready to go, and the reviewers agreed," says Steven Bohlen of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, D.C., which is managing the project.
So Bohlen and his colleagues were shocked last month when NSF omitted building funds for OOI and two other long-running projects on the verge of construction--the $100 million National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and the $123 million Alaska Region Research Vessel (ARRV)--from its 2009 budget request to Congress. It's part of a new policy aimed at eliminating cost overruns that occur after construction is under way. Those overruns have not only forced NSF to borrow from other accounts, but they can also lead to last-minute changes that weaken a project's scientific capabilities. Under the previous policy, a project was approved based chiefly on its scientific merit; it might be years before NSF arrived at a final price based on all relevant factors. Now, NSF is requiring a firm cost estimate before asking Congress for construction funds
Science: NASA says it is willing to fly a $1.5 billion experiment designed to detect antimatter. But Congress would have to come up with as much as $4 billion to make it happen, the agency says. Supporters of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) dispute those cost estimates but face an uphill struggle to get the 7000-kg probe into orbit.
In a 17-page report to Congress that was released two weeks ago, NASA paints a sobering picture of what it would take to attach the instrument to the international space station. Samuel Ting, the physics Nobelist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who has championed the project, says the 16-nation AMS collaboration has no money to buy another ride into space.
Two DOE Undersecretaries refuse to attend House S&T subcommittee hearing
Science Progress: Dr. Raymond Orbach, Undersecretary for Science at the DOE and C.H. Albright Jr., Undersecretary of Energy at the DOE snubbed the House Committee on Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Energy and Environment hearing at the last moment on Wednesday, suggesting that the subcommittee unfairly changed its protocol to allow outside experts at the budget hearing, a policy not approved by the DOE.
The Guardian: The UK's world-class network of radio telescopes run by the Jodrell Bank observatory is facing closure as last minute efforts failed to find the £40m needed to run it. Its future was thrown into doubt earlier this week when the UK's main physics funding body announced it may have to cut funding for the telescopes to help plug an £80m hole in its budget.
Work at Jodrell Bank, based at the University of Manchester, has put the UK at number two in the world for the study of stars and planets.
Why the US is unlikely to have a coherent energy policy
Newsweek: Although energy is proving to be an important topic in the US presidential elections, it may be a "vain hope" for a new administration to implement a unified energy policy writes David Victor in Newsweek. Previous experience shows that the coalition of groups urging for a change, national security analysts, environmentalists, and labor groups, is too diverse to sustain a concentrated two-decade program of change across all the government departments that impact energy policy says Victor. Both Europe and Asisa suffer from similar structural problems he adds, but the effort to combat global warming might change this pessimistic iron rule of energy policy as the environmental community that is the core of the coalition in support of global warming policy is becoming much stronger and has shown some staying power. Says Victor, "For the moment, however, that is a hypothesis to be proved."
Science: When NASA science chief Alan Stern last month announced that the space agency is backing a mission to collect rocks and soil from Mars and bring them back to Earth, many planetary researchers reacted with dismay rather than joy after looking at NASA's 2009 budget. According to budget documents released last month projected spending on Mars would be cut by half over the next 5 years. As a result, many scientists fear that NASA is abandoning a carefully plotted and extraordinarily successful research endeavor on the Red Planet in exchange for promises of an expensive mission far in the future.
Associated Press: The US Navy must abide by limits on its sonar training off the Southern California because the exercises could harm dozens of species of whales and dolphins, a federal appeals court ruled. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday night rejected the Navy's appeal of restrictions that banned high-powered sonar within 12 nautical miles of the coast and set other limits that could affect Navy training exercises to begin this month.
Freeze in US-Russian relations hits civil nuclear pact
Washington Post: Nearly two years ago, President Bush decided to open a new era of civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia. The two governments negotiated an agreement and initialed it last summer. A senior Russian official came here last month for what some thought would be a signing ceremony, only to have the administration pull back. Now the nuclear pact, once a symbol of closer U.S.-Russia ties, has stalled amid a quiet struggle in Washington over whether to trust Moscow.
House Panel Berates Science Adviser on 2009 'Shortfall'
Science: Last week, both Democratic and Republican members of the House Committee on Science and Technology complained in one voice that President George W. Bush has fallen short on his promise to bolster U.S. innovation in his 2009 budget request.
Various: The US has successfully hit USA 193, a 3-ton out-of-control spy satellite that failed 1.5 days after its launch in December 2006. Earlier this week the US announced plans to destroy the satellite because of the risk to humans over the toxic fuel the satellite was carrying. In a press conference held after the collision, General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he was very confident that they had hit the satellite and that the hydrazine fuel tank was destroyed. "Thus far we've seen nothing larger than a football among the debris," he said. At least 552 pieces of the satellite have been spotted by amateur satellite watchers.
The decision to destroy the satellite has caused controversy within the public arms control community and by the Russian and Chinese governments, because of the low-risk associated with the public coming into contact with parts of the satellite. China is calling on the US to release more information about debris from the strike, and Russian diplomats are calling the incident a anti-satellite weapons test, a charge denied by US government officials. China tested its own anti-satellite weapon early last year, an action that was publicly protested by the US.
Earlier this week the US refused to discuss a proposed treaty by China and Russia to ban space-based anti-satellite weapons. According to Liu Jianchao, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, "The Chinese side is continuing to closely follow the US action, which may influence the security of outer space and may harm other countries." Bruce W. MacDonald and Charles D. Ferguson say that the action taken over USA 193, may lead to a new arms race.
More doubts surface over Pentagon's explanation for shooting down spy satellite
Physics Today: Updated 2/18/2008 An out-of-control spy satellite called USA 193, which was launched in December 2006 but never reached its correct orbit, will be shot down by the US Navy with a Aegis SM-3 missile before the satellite re-enters Earth's atmosphere, says Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman James Cartwright. The decision, ordered by President Bush, is causing controversy in the wake of China's shooting down a weather satellite last year (see Physics Today articlesChina Raises Stakes on Space Arms Race March 2007 and Space debris October 2007) and because of the reasons given by the Bush administration for destroying the satellite. In a Pentagon press conference held with deputy national security advisor James Jeffrey and NASA administrator Michael Griffin this afternoon (14 February 2008), Cartwright said the highly toxic hydrazine fuel that the spy satellite uses is a significant risk to human health, so dispersing the fuel before re-entry would be safer. USA 193 would be hit “just prior to its hitting the Earth's atmosphere,” Cartwright said. It would be the first time a tactical missile has been used to take out a satellite instead of another missile. Not everyone is convinced however by the Pentagon's explanation (more).
Panel Cites Drop in U.S. Attention to Nuclear Arsenal
The Washington Post: The Defense Department is displaying a "precipitous decrease in attention" to the security and control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, according to a Defense Science Board task force that examined the broader causes behind the U.S. flight in August of a B-52 bomber that inadvertently carried six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads.
Florida's new science curriculum under threat from creationists
Wired: Charles Darwin was born 199 years ago Tuesday, but the debate he ignited about the origins of species rages on. Florida's department of education will vote next week on a new science curriculum that could be in jeopardy, because some conservative counties oppose it.
Reuters: Research into producing electricity from low-emission coal and nuclear plants saw big funding boosts in the 2009 budget request submitted by the U.S. Energy Department on Monday, along with experiments in basic energy sciences.
Nature: A post-cold-war US programme that pays nuclear weapons scientists from the former Soviet Union to prevent them working for 'rogue' states has come under fire in Congress, after a governmental investigative report questioned its usefulness.
Scientists plan to influence the next President's space plan
Science: An inadequate budget and daunting technical challenges will force the next U.S. president to rethink current plans for a postshuttle NASA. Space scientists are offering input on what those changes might look like.
DOE's Disappointing Budget Makes It Harder to Stick to the Basics
Science: An unexpectedly lean 2008 budget for the Department of Energy's Office of Science has forced its Basic Energy Sciences program to cancel a competition that would have given academic and lab-based researchers a chance to apply their knowledge to real-world energy problems.
"To keep America competitive into the future, we must trust in the skill of our scientists and engineers and empower them to pursue the breakthroughs of tomorrow," he said. "Last year, Congress passed legislation supporting the American Competitiveness Initiative, but never followed through with the funding. This funding is essential to keeping our scientific edge."
Bush also referred to the "creative genius of American researchers and entrepreneurs" and asked Congress to "empower them to pioneer a new generation of clean energy technology." His request is based on reducing U.S. dependence on oil for national security reasons by investing in "clean coal" technology, renewable energy and nuclear power plants. Bush also asked for further investment into transportation research regarding biofuels and battery technology, and the creation of a new $2 billion international clean technology fund, to help countries such as India and China use energy more efficiently.
The speech also mentioned completing an international agreement on greenhouse gases, despite the lack of enthusiasm by other nations at the recent climate talks for the U.S.-led proposal.
The full transcript of his science-related remarks is available after the jump.
Photonics.com: With federal funding for high energy physics in the US unexpectedly reduced by $94 million for 2008, officials at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) said the lab may have to lay off about 10 percent of its work force next spring(see earlier news picks such as Fermilab to cut 200 jobs, staff forced to take unpaid days off, Budget blow to US science, Federal cuts may doom Fermilab's bid for ILC). The lab also announced this week that rolling furloughs will begin Feb. 1 for all of its nearly 2000 employees. Argonne National Laboratory said the budget shortfall has shut down its neutron-scattering facility and will mean job cuts.
Los Angeles Times: On the night of Jan. 31, 1958 -- less than 90 days after JPL was given the go-ahead -- Explorer 1 lifted off the pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The story of JPL's 90-day miracle became the stuff of scientific legend. "It's an attractive story," JPL historian Erik Conway told Los Angeles Times reporter John Johnson Jr. "The problem is, it's not true."
Global Advances Challenge U.S. Dominance in Science
The New York Times: The United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the National Science Board said Tuesday in its biennial report on science and engineering.
ScienceNow: These have been trying times for Raymond Orbach, the undersecretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)--and for the U.S. physical scientists who depend on funding from his department.
JPL scientists win court appeal, keep jobs, for now
San Francisco Chronicle: A federal appeals court barred the Bush administration Friday from looking into the personal lives of NASA scientists and engineers who have no access to classified information, saying the probes are intrusive and unrelated to national security.
Presidential candidates: Where do you stand on climate change?
Physics Today: In the third quarter of 2007, Physics Today asked all the presidential candidates a series of questions related to science policy. Despite repeated quests by the online Physics Today staff, all the candidates declined to comment. In response Physics Today has collected material from the candidates web site, and quotes from the candidates public speeches on six related science policy issues: science education, teaching evolution, nuclear weapons, science investment, energy policy and climate change. This new campaign 2008 site will track the candidates views on science policy throughout 2008.
Presidential candidates: Where do you stand on climate change?
Virtually all reputable research supports the conclusion that global warming is a growing crisis caused, at least in part, by the burning of fossil fuels. Would you propose mechanisms to control and reduce carbon emissions through a carbon tax, a "cap and trade: system, or some other regulatory program? Would you favor a moratorium on coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester CO2? Should a U.S. program to limit CO2 emissions depend on what other countries do?
Presidential candidates: Where do you stand on science investment?
Physics Today: In the third quarter of 2007, Physics Today asked all the presidential candidates a series of questions related to science policy. Despite repeated quests by the online Physics Today staff, all the candidates declined to comment. In response Physics Today has collected material from the candidates web site, and quotes from the candidates public speeches on six related science policy issues: science education, teaching evolution, nuclear weapons, science investment, energy policy and climate change. This new campaign 2008 site will track the candidates views on science policy throughout 2008.
Presidential candidates: Where do you stand on science investment?
As expressed by several recent national studies and reports, there is ongoing concern in the scientific and industrial communities that the U.S. is losing its world leadership in science. Do you support a significant boost in federal funding for basic research across the sciences, and how would you pay for such an increase? In an era of tight budgets and man y worthy programs, what priority would you give science education and research?
Presidential candidates: Where do you stand on nuclear weapons?
Physics Today: In the third quarter of 2007, Physics Today asked all the presidential candidates a series of questions related to science policy. Despite repeated quests by the online Physics Today staff, all the candidates declined to comment. In response Physics Today has collected material from the candidates web site, and quotes from the candidates public speeches on six related science policy issues: science education, teaching evolution, nuclear weapons, science investment, energy policy and climate change. This new campaign 2008 site will track the candidates views on science policy throughout 2008.
Presidential candidates: Where do you stand on nuclear weapons
The U.S. currently maintains its arsenal of about 10,000 nuclear weapons through the Stockpile Stewardship program, Given the concerns about nuclear terrorism and the proliferation of nuclearwepaons in other countries, is there an immediately need to change the .S. nuclear arsenal? Should the reliable replacement Warhead, or another smaller, "tactical" nuclear weapon be developed? Under what circumstances would you support the resumption of nuclear testing? Do you support the reduction in size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal?
See the answers at http://blogs.physicstoday.org/politics08/nuclear.html
Presidential candidates: Where do you stand on energy policy?
Physics Today: In the third quarter of 2007, Physics Today asked all the presidential candidates a series of questions related to science policy. Despite repeated quests by the online Physics Today staff, all the candidates declined to comment. In response Physics Today has collected material from the candidates web site, and quotes from the candidates public speeches on six related science policy issues: science education, teaching evolution, nuclear weapons, science investment, energy policy and climate change. This new campaign 2008 site will track the candidates views on science policy throughout 2008.
Presidential candidates: Where do you stand on energy policy?
More than two decades of proposals have not resulted in a comprehensive U.S. energy policy. what incentives or controls would you advocate to improve energy efficiency and conservation? Looking 10 years into the future, what should the U.S. energy mix be, and what role should nuclear energy play?
Fermilab to cut 200 jobs, staff forced to take unpaid days off
Physics Today: Fermilab Director Pier Oddone informed the laboratory's staff Thursday the implications of the proposed FY08 federal budget on the facility. Congress changed Fermilab's proposed budget from $372 million to $320 million--a cut of $52 million. The budget cuts are because of $22 billion in savings Congress had to make in order for the President not to veto the budget.
ScienceNow: The White House and Congress delivered a heavy blow to the hopes of the U.S. science community yesterday as part of a long-delayed final agreement on the 2008 federal budget. As a result, what began as a year of soaring rhetoric in support of science seems likely to end with agency officials and research advocates shaking their heads and wondering what went wrong.
Environmental News Network: Europe toned down a clash with the United States over 2020 climate goals on the final day of U.N. talks in Bali on Friday, raising hopes of a deal to start negotiations on a new global warming treaty.
The Washington Post: The Bush administration likes to boast that it has dramatically cut the size of the nation's nuclear stockpile. Meanwhile, it's busily trying to shore up congressional support for multibillion-dollar proposals to "modernize" the bristling U.S. arsenal. A world that's skeptical about the last superpower's intentions only gets more so when U.S. officials push unconvincing lines about the world's deadliest weapons. So here are a few myths about the U.S. nuclear posture of which the administration seems particularly fond.
BBC: Governments at a key UN climate summit will discuss how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions after the current Kyoto Protocol targets expire in 2012.
The Washington Post: After years of delays, NASA hopes to launch this week a European-built laboratory that will greatly expand the research capability of the international space station. Although some call it a milestone, the launch has focused new attention on the space agency's earlier decision to back out of plans to send up a different, $1.5 billion device -- one that many scientists contend would produce far more significant knowledge.
The Associated Press: The nation's nuclear weapons laboratories need tougher safety oversight to fix a recent track record that includes dozens of lapses, accidents and near misses, according to a government report released Wednesday.
The New York Times: Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, describing climate change as “the defining challenge of our age,” released the final report of a United Nations panel on climate change here on Saturday and called on the United States and China to play “a more constructive role.”
The Washington Post: While wrestling with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon is preparing weapons to fight the next battle from space, according to information in the 621-page, House-Senate conference report on the fiscal 2008 defense appropriations bill.
New York Times: By May 2002, the government’s effort to build a technologically audacious new generation of spy satellites was foundering. The contractor building the satellites, Boeing, was still giving Washington reassuring progress reports. But the program was threatening to outstrip its $5 billion budget, and pivotal parts of the design seemed increasingly unworkable. A panel appointed to review the program stated that the project was far behind schedule and would most likely cost $2 billion to $3 billion more than planned.
Even so, the experts recommended pressing on. It took two more years, several more review panels and billions more dollars before the government finally killed the project — perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects. The New York Times Philip Taubman looks at the failure of the satellite program, and what went wrong.
Politico: A new survey by an environmental group suggests that tackling climate change is an issue republicans can no longer ignore. As Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris report in Politico, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), once a skeptic of global warming, got a hint that the political winds might be shifting when a longtime supporter warned that he might vote against Inglis if he “didn’t clean up his act on the environment.” The warning came from Inglis’ eldest son, Robert Jr., now 22.
Now Inglis believes the science behind global warming, and a number of Republican thinkers are coming to the same conclusion. Environmental Defense, a special interest group pushing for limits on greenhouse gases and other global warming solutions, commissioned Republican pollster Whit Ayres to survey voters in the 49 most competitive House races, and the polling data suggests that independent voters in particular, will hold representatives accountable if not enough is done to combat climate change.
Science Progress: “It is much easier to say we need more scientists and engineers than to talk about equity issues,” explains David Goldston, a visiting scholar at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “We have the largest gap between rich and poor that we’ve had since the Gilded Age,” Goldston said. “How will these policies fit into that?”
Goldston was responding to a question about “Into the Eye of the Storm, a report discussed at a seminar on science and engineering education and workforce demand. The study argues against conventional wisdom to say that U.S. students are improving in performance in math and science and that the number of graduates in science and engineering actually exceeds the available jobs.
Industry and policy professionals alike have argued that declines in the S&E workforce threaten U.S. economic competitiveness, especially with China and India graduating large numbers of scientists and engineers each year.
Instead, Goldston suggests, the US needs to reorient US science and engineering policy not just on producing more engineers and scientists, but ensure that graduates entering these fields have the opportunity to analyze problems and design solutions that make our economy more dynamic and more equitable.
UK implements extra security checks for foreign students
Nature: The British government has quietly introduced a programme of security checks on foreign students coming to the United Kingdom for graduate studies in the sciences and engineering.
The Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS) began on 1 November. It requires all graduate students from outside the European Economic Area and Switzerland to complete an online questionnaire if they intend to study any of a broad range of scientific disciplines, including biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. The questionnaire, which includes questions about family background, must be vetted and approved by UK security agencies before students are allowed to apply for visas to enter the country. The list of disciplines includes 41 subject areas, and the government estimates that some 23,000 students will be affected.
The New York Times: The Energy Department has not finished plans to consolidate storage of nuclear bomb fuel and other high-risk materials now spread among numerous sites, even though the department said in 2005 that it would do so within about a year, according to a Government Accountability Office report to be released Monday.
space.com: Over a few short months, Japan, China, and India will all have lunar probes orbiting the moon, sparking talk of a new space race in Asia.
China, for one, takes exception at that characterization. On Thursday, a top official in its secretive military-backed lunar explorer program defended the probe launched last week as an innovation that is part of a future wave of cooperation, not competition, in outer space.
"It's all peaceful,'' said Pei Zhaoyu, assistant director of the Lunar Exploration Program Center, when asked whether a space race was on. "The countries involved in lunar exploration are developing an understanding. They're evolving a mechanism for cooperation.''
The San Francisco Examiner: A panel of the National Academy of Sciences urged President Bush on Monday to abandon an ambitious plan to resume nuclear waste reprocessing that is the heart of the administration's push to expand the civilian use of nuclear power.
The Boston Globe: It is a race against the eraser. By the end of the Bush administration, we could all be rubbed out.
Utterly unashamed, the White House heavily deleted yet another major document on global warming. It blanched out the Senate testimony of Julie Gerberding, director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Christian Science Monitor: China launched its first lunar probe Wednesday. Japan sent an orbiter up last month. India is close behind. It's an economic competition with military undertones.
Nature: Climate policy after 2012, when the Kyoto treaty expires, needs a radical rethink. More of the same won't do, argue Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner.
Climate Change Testimony Was Edited by White House
The New York Times: The White House made deep cuts in written testimony given to a Senate committee this week by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on health risks posed by global warming, but the director agreed yesterday with administration officials who said the cuts were part of a normal review process and not aimed at minimizing the issue.
Putin confirms development of new nuclear warheads
Various: Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on state-run television yesterday that Russia is developing a new generation of nuclear weapons in order to combat the US missile defense shield. According to the Guardian and an analyst at a Russian forces blog, the new design is likely to be based on a solid propellant ICBM whose warhead detaches in space into multiple warheads that can maneuver on a final approach to a target to avoid interceptors.
There is also a complete absence of discussion in Russia at the moment of the idea of nuclear disarmament writes Pavel Podvig in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, "Even President Vladimir Putin's opponents are more likely to criticize him for not doing enough to enhance strategic forces rather than question the growing reliance on nuclear weapons," he says.
The New York Times: The federal government should create a commission to promote the free flow of scientific knowledge and researchers from other countries while balancing the threat from enemies, an expert panel said Thursday.
Environmental News Network: President George W. Bush said on Monday his administration's approach of emphasizing voluntary approaches to address climate change was working and he denounced Kyoto-style mandatory caps as "bad policy."
Why the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize is good for science
Various: The award of last week's Nobel Peace Prize in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change is a profoundly positive influence for science says physicist Clifford V. Johnson of the University of Southern California. IPCC chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri agrees and says science has won over skepticism.
“It’s every scientist's dream to win a Nobel Prize, so this is great for myself and the hundreds that worked on their reports over the years. It is perhaps a little deflating though - that one man and his PowerPoint show has as much influence as the decades of dedicated work by so many scientists,” says Piers Forster, of the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment.
More than 2,500 researchers from more than 130 nations provide input into the IPCC reports. The IPCC was set up in 1988 to assess the issue of climate change. "This must be the most maligned institution on earth, in that it’s a very conservative scientific panel which chooses only the science which is rock-solid, and yet it’s often portrayed as an insane radical organization trying to overthrow civilization as we know it," says environmentalist George Monbiot speaking to DemocracyNow's Amy Goodman, "And it’s fought a long, hard battle for the science to be heard, and that battle is now being rewarded."
In fact, as a New York Times editorial points out, "What the citation didn’t mention but needs to be said is that it shouldn’t have to be left to a private citizen — even one so well known as Mr. Gore — or a panel of scientists to raise that alarm or prove what is now clearly an undeniable link or champion solutions to a problem that endangers the entire planet."
"That should be, and must be the job of governments. And governments — above all the Bush administration — have failed miserably..."
In February, the IPCC issued a report increasing the likelihood that human activity is the cause of a global-warming trend in recent decades at 90%, up from 66% in 2001.
"The Nobel committee's recognition affirms that policymakers need to listen to the best available science and act upon it to avoid dangerous climate change," says Peter Frumhoff, a lead author of the IPCC's fourth assessment report on mitigation.
"The IPCC's exceptionally sober appraisal of the threat posed by global warming makes clear how serious this issue is," says Frumhoff, who is science and policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The Nobel peace prize committee is giving climate change the attention that it deserves and Congress and the administration should do the same."
In attempt to combat climate change the European Union imposed greenhouse-gas caps in 2005 and is considering toughening them. Because of the large Republican minority in the Senate, Congress is not expected to pass any cap emission legislation until 2009. According to the Wall Street Journal, "While President Bush campaigned in 2000 on a pledge to seek limits on greenhouse gases, he dropped that after his election. President Clinton signed the Kyoto treaty for the U.S., but President Bush withdrew from participation."
Instead "the administration is negotiating with major developing nations -- India, China and Indonesia -- about joining a successor treaty to Kyoto, whose caps expire in 2012. Also, prodded by the Supreme Court, the Environmental Protection Agency is weighing regulations to curb carbon-dioxide emissions."
However, many corporations, including the Detroit automakers and energy utilities companies are joining the U.S. Climate Action Partnership which calls for a mandatory federal emissions limit in order to have some say on the final legislation that passes the hill, and avoid the situation of U.S. states such as California introducing their own legislation.
Asked Friday if the Nobel award will pressure the administration to adopt more of a more pro-active approach similar to the former Vice President's campaign, White House spokesman Tony Fratto replied: "No."
American Institute of Physics: Over the next few days Physics Today contributing editor Jennifer Oullette will be blogging the Industrial Physics Forum from Seattle, Washington. This year's forum, appropriately enough after last week's Nobel Peace prize award to Al Gore and the IPCC, is devoted to the energy challenge of reducing mankind's carbon dioxide emissions. MIT's Mildred Dresselhaus gave an introductory talk that called for "a Moore's Law" for energy efficiency, e.g. dramatic improvements in energy efficiency every 18 months. In one of her first postings, Oullette looks at the energy costs of transportation, and what manufacturers will have to build to wean consumers away from the gasoline engine.
The New York Times: Sixty-two years after the victorious Allied leaders convened in this stately Prussian town to create the post-World War II world, 15 Nobel Prize laureates assembled here this week for another momentous task: saving the world from global warming.
Clinton Says She Would Shield Science From Politics
The New York Times: In a stinging critique of Bush administration science policy, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York said yesterday that if she were elected president she would require agency directors to show they were protecting science research from “political pressure” and that she would lift federal limits on stem cell research.
Environmental News Network: A new global climate deal should be reachable by 2009, with nations outside the Kyoto Protocol more sympathetic to such a pact, the U.K.'s chief scientific adviser said on Tuesday.
Bush climate plans spark debate, as old paintings help predict the impact of climate change
Various: International attendes of the President's climate change meeting, which looked at creating voluntary caps on cardon dioxide emissions came away disappointed in the US position says the BBC. British climate envoy, John Ashton, said the US seemed isolated on the issue of fighting climate change. "I think that the argument that we can do this through voluntary approaches is now pretty much discredited internationally," he told the Reuters news agency.
Meanwhile the Guardian reports that paintings containing sunsets by artists such as JMW Turner are being analyzed to work out the cooling effects of huge volcanic eruptions. By working out how the climate varied naturally in the past they hope to improve the computer models used to simulate global warming, which in turn will effect discussions at the upcoming post-Kyoto climate talks.
Washington Post: "It's the oldest and most cliched of metaphors, but when it comes to global warming, it's the only one that really works: We're in a desperate race. Politics is chasing reality, and the gap between them isn't closing nearly fast enough," says Bill McKibben in the Washington Post.
At Its Session on Warming, U.S. Is Seen to Stand Apart
The New York Times: The White House convened a two-day conference of the world’s major greenhouse-gas-emitting nations here on Thursday that served to highlight how isolated the Bush administration is on the issue of global warming.
U.S. negotiator describes progress on North Korea nuclear talks
NPR (audio): Ambassador Christopher Hill, lead U.S. negotiator on the dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear arms program, is headed to Beijing this week for talks that will also include Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea.
As Hill tells NPR's Melissa Block, his immediate focus is getting North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear reactor disabled for "many months...maybe a year." He also intends to push for a complete declaration of North Korea's nuclear programs.
