February 2009 Archives

The value of volcanic monitoring

More than a year ago, in a presidential campaign TV ad critical of a Congress that was "spending like a drunken sailor," then presidential candidate John McCain singled out a solid scientific study of bear DNA in Montana as an example of the wild spending. The bear DNA project, as it turned out, was a unique and efficient way to determine the size of the state's grizzly bear population, and McCain was hammered by scientists for singling out the research.

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, while giving the Republican response to President Obama's 24 February speech before Congress, did McCain one better. Jindal, giving examples of what he thought was wasteful spending in the nearly $800 billion stimulus package, went after "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.'" Instead of monitoring volcanoes, "what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington," Jindal said. In articles in the Washington Post and the Daily Beast scientists responded with significant heat.

"I would give the honorable governor poor marks for his education," Mark Brandon, a geologist at Yale, said in the Daily Beast article. "Volcanic monitoring right now is absolutely essential for protecting lives and property."

David Applegate, the US Geological Survey's senior science adviser for earthquake and geologic hazards, told the Washington Post the money will provide for upgrades of seismic monitoring equipment that is too slow in providing information. "One of our big statutory mandates is to deliver robust information on landslides, and one of the biggest challenges we've got is that a lot of our aging equipment isn't able to deliver information in real time," he said. The stimulus money "is a big shot in the arm in terms of our ability to monitor these networks."

Some scientists and cable TV commentators have wondered aloud if Jindal would have had the same reaction had the money been aimed at "hurricane monitoring" instead of volcanoes.

A science stimulus

Other than Jindal's misstep into volcanology, the science news that dominated the week came from the release of the fiscal year 2009 budget and the concurrent release of the blueprint for the 2010 budget. The federal budgets have been mired in partisan bickering for the last few years of the Bush administration, and now the 2008 continuing resolution is bumping into both the draft of the 2009 budget and Obama's 2010 budget proposal.

The 2010 document was just a blueprint, but 2009 has numbers. The American Association for the Advancement of Science analysis of the 2009 budget, adjusted to take out overhead and administrative costs, is widely regarded as the most realistic and accurate projection of numbers available anywhere. AAAS budget analyst Kei Koizumi has been so good at analyzing the federal numbers that he has just taken a job as assistant director for federal research and development at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Breakdowns of the budget numbers can also be found on Physics Today's partner website FYI: The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News.

In sum, the budget numbers for science were decent, which was good coming on the heels of the huge boost in science spending that came last week in the stimulus package. The National Institutes of Health gets a 3% increase for 2009, NSF gets 7%, and the Department of Energy's Office of Science gets a huge boost of 20%.

A federal appeals court told the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its standards on pollutants. The ruling, reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, said that the Bush administration standards for pollutants like soot are "contrary to law and unsupported by adequately reasoned decision-making." A lawyer for Earthjustice said the decision was "a victory for the breathing public."

The Obama administration is also considering new national rules for regulating greenhouse gas emissions for the transportation sector. Administration officials were meeting with car companies, environmental groups, and representatives from California, which has the toughest emission standards in the country. "The hope across the administration is that we can have a unified national policy when it comes to cleaner vehicles," Carol Browner, assistant to Obama for energy and climate, was quoted as saying in a Washington Post article.

While Browner was concentrating on vehicle emission standards, representatives from 140 countries gathered in Washington to commit to an agreement to reduce global mercury pollution. The agreement, according to the Environmental News Network, was "propelled by the United States' reversal in policy, which also influenced policy reversal for other countries, including China and India." Susan Egan Keane, a policy analyst for the National Resources Defense Council, said the agreement was "great news for reducing mercury pollution around the world, and shows a commitment from the Obama administration to international environmental issues."

In the midst of the celebrations at the offices of various environmental organizations in Washington, however, came another story from the Environmental News Network titled "The Climate Change Lobby Explosion." The article said that a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Senate lobbying disclosure forms shows "that more than 770 companies and interest groups hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence federal policy on climate change in the past year." That number, the article notes, is an increase of more than 300% over the number of climate change lobbyists five years ago. Lobbying expenditures on the issue last year, the center estimates, were more than $90 million.

As the lobbyists jockeyed for office space on K Street, word was leaking out from administration officials that Obama's third pick for the secretary of commerce job would be former Washington State governor Gary Locke. Locke "would bring to the position a strong expertise in business relations with China, knowledge of the clean energy sector, and a familiarity with the high tech industry," according to a report in CNET News.

Locke would come into the job just as a report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation reveals that the competitive edge of the US economy has eroded sharply over the last decade. The report, covered in a New York Times article, said the US ranked sixth among 40 countries and regions, based on 16 indicators of innovation and competitiveness. Worse, the American economy placed last in terms of progress made over the last decade. The report disagrees with a Rand Corporation paper of last year that said the US was in "no imminent danger" of losing its competitive advantage in science and technology.

Jim Dawson

President Obama told a joint session of Congress last night in a 52-minute sobering speech that the US would recover from the deepening recession through focusing on "three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future": energy, health care, and education. "We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history — an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology."

"What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more," Obama said. "[A] day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here. Now is the time to act boldly and wisely — to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity."

""The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth," said Obama.

"Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more."

Along with a renewed call to provide universal health care, Obama pledged that by 2020 he wanted the US to lead the world again in the proportion of college graduates. Currently the US is 13th on the list with Canada at number 1.

Obama called again for doubling in under three years the amount of electricity produced by renewable energy. This target seems achievable based on the latest Department of Energy report on US electricity capacity which shows renewable energy growing each year by 9-10% without the additional stimulus the Obama administration wishes to apply. The report, which was released in January, says that in 2007, for the first time, "renewable energy sources, other than conventional hydroelectric capacity, accounted for the largest portion of capacity additions." Of this new capacity wind power, at 5,186 MW, accounted for most of this new capacity (natural gas accounted for 4,582 MW). Only 2.5% of the electricity produced in the US is from renewable energy (excluding hydroelectricity). Coal, natural gas, and nuclear power provide 89.5% of all capacity.

"We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before," said Obama. However, according to the Department of Energy, US oil imports peaked in 2006 and have continued to decline as the global recession deepened.

'Green' energy

Obama stated that renewable energy such as solar, wind, and biofuels, along with "clean coal" and more efficient vehicles, would require investments of $15 billion a year from the federal government along with additional investments from the private sector. Obama said that he hoped by introducing large-scale "green" energy projects, that renewables become a "profitable kind of energy."

He emphasized how leadership in energy is directly tied to national security and leadership in the global political arena: "We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we've fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea [Note: Obama is referring to the Telsa electric car]."

"Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don't either. It is time for America to lead again."

The comment on China, although technically true, is layered with the complexity of China's governance structure. The Chinese central government has put in place fuel economy standards for cars that are higher than those of the US (but not of Europe), and has set new standards for energy efficiency for home appliances that are comparable to European and US standards, and compared to the rest of the region, are high environmental standards. However, the local and regional governments sometimes ignore or delay the introduction of national standards, and type of coal found in China contains high quantities of sulphur, a bad pollutant. Few Chinese coal power plants have pollution scrubbers (under 15%) or work at high efficiencies and at least one new coal-fired power plant comes online in China every three days. However, strengthening US leadership in this area also strengthens the likelihood that the US can influence the next set of international climate talks in March.

Smart grid

President Obama also referred to streamlining the regulations regarding building a smart electrical grid that would send power where its needed, and limit the probability of another national brown-out that happened in 2003.

"We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines," Obama said, in addition to vowing to help make "our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills."

Obama asked Congress to send him legislation on only two issues, one of which was on energy: "I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America," he said. "That's what we need."

Paul Guinnessy

With the 17 February signing by President Obama of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the attention turned to how the tens of billions appropriated for clean energy research, development, and demonstration, and billions more allocated for science, will be spent. The Department of Energy (DOE) is among the federal agencies that will be getting the most from the stimulus legislation, a total of $38 billion in new funding, including

—$4.5 billion in direct spending to modernize the electricity grid with smart-grid technologies.
—$6.3 billion in state energy-efficient and clean-energy grants and $4.5 billion to make federal buildings more energy efficient.
—$6 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy systems, biofuel projects, and electric-power transmission facilities.
—$2 billion in loans to manufacture advanced batteries and components for applications such as plug-in electric cars.
—$5 billion to weatherize homes of up to 1 million low-income people.
—$3.4 billion for fossil energy research and development, including carbon capture and storage.

DOE also receives $1.6 billion to add to the basic research programs that are administered by the Office of Science. And the legislation provides $400 million to start up a new DOE office, dubbed the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Its mission will be to provide support to high-risk energy research projects that could pay off big for US energy security.

NSF also receives a windfall of $3 billion, with $2.5 billion of that to fund additional investigator-initiated research grants. Another $300 million is specified to pay for major research equipment, $400 million is for major research projects awaiting NSF funding, $200 million is for modernizing university research facilities, and $100 million is for education. The National Science Board, the governing body of NSF, will gather next week to begin figuring out how to divvy up all the money, with the only instruction from Congress being to spread the wealth around through all its directorates.

Perennially short-changed NASA will get $400 million for its science programs, $150 million more for aeronautics research, and $400 million for space exploration. NIST will get a $220 million supplement for its research, fellowships, and advanced research measurement equipment and supplies; $360 million to work through some of its renovation and maintenance backlog; and $180 million for a recently initiated program to fund construction of new university research facilities. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is to receive an extra $1 billion for its programs.

Two days after the bill signing, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced a streamlining of DOE's procedures for disbursing the nearly $40 billion in recovery funding that was appropriated to DOE programs in the stimulus act. Chu said the reduction in paperwork and other reforms should permit DOE to begin distributing loan guarantees in late April or early May, under the authority it has had since the 2005 Energy Policy. Loan guarantees authorized in the recovery act should become available in early summer, Chu said. In both instances, he cautioned, applicants may still have to secure their portion of financing or meet other conditions prior to closing.

Chu said that with the reforms, DOE should be able to disburse, by the end of 2010, 70% of the billions of dollars contained in the recovery legislation for agency programs. Chu also announced his hiring of McKinsey & Co. senior partner Matt Rogers to oversee implementation of the reforms and to advise him on the stimulus spending. Rogers has more than 20 years experience in working with the energy industry. The changes Rogers will oversee include rolling out appraisals of applications for loan guarantees, rather than waiting for the application deadline to evaluate them. Loan application forms will be simplified, and the department will speed up loan underwriting by using outside partners.

When President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Tuesday, he said the bill should allow the country to double its use of renewable energy within three years.

Chu said he couldn't specify how much of the renewable energy will come from which sources, but he said that wind is the most mature, followed by solar-thermal and photovoltaics. He noted that the Bonneville Power Administration, the federally owned utility in the Pacific Northwest, has already sited new electricity transmission lines to service wind farms.

Chu told a gathering of Washington energy reporters that he wasn't fully prepared for the energy secretary's traditional role as administration spokesman on the state of the world petroleum market. "I will be speaking and learning more about this in order to figure out what the US position should be and what the president's position is," Chu said.

Meanwhile last week, there were reports that the Environmental Protection Agency will soon announce its decision to begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions by treating them as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency is considering reversing a Bush administration decision not to regulate CO₂ emissions from new coal-fired generating plants.

Scientific publishers were doubtless pleased to see the results of an NSF-sponsored study finding that open access (free) to the scientific literature may not guarantee its wide dissemination. According to an article in Science (not free), when a given article was made available online free after being in print for one year, use of the article increased by 8%. But for online articles for which a payment was required, use increased 12%. The researchers did note that researchers in the developing world were far more likely to cite open-access articles.

David Kramer

Holdren, Lubchenco closer to confirmation

While passage of the economic stimulus bill took up most of the media attention on Thursday, two of President Obama's nominees, Harvard University physicist John Holdren and Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, met members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation for their confirmation hearings (see video). Holdren is Obama's choice for science adviser, and Lubchenco is his nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The packed session heard both candidates state the value of scientific integrity in providing advice to government. Holdren will be the 15th science adviser at the White House and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

In testimony given to the committee, Holdren said, "American investments in science and engineering have driven most of the innovations that underpin our economy today. A wide variety of studies conclude that between 50 and 85 percent of the growth of the U.S. economy over the past half-century--and two-thirds of our productivity gains in recent decades--are directly attributable to scientific and technological advances. In today's time of economic crisis, we must resist the temptation to reduce our investments in these foundations of our prosperity.... I want to give special mention to the importance of R&D in our space program. Maintaining and expanding our capabilities in space is sometimes regarded as a "luxury" we should do less of in the face of more pressing earthbound concerns. But that would be false economy. Space is crucial to our national defense; to civil as well as military communications and geo-positioning; to weather forecasting and storm monitoring; to observation and scientific study of the condition of our home planet's land, vegetation, oceans, and atmosphere; and to scientific study and exploration looking "outward" that is increasing our understanding of the physical universe and our place in it."

The mention of space played particularly well with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who have NASA facilities in their district. Hutchison later asked Holdren whether NASA and science in space will be a priority for the administration. "The short answer ... is yes, it is a priority," Holdren said. "We have been looking at what the best way to resurrect the National Space Council in the White House would be. I think that's going to happen."

Holdren also emphasized the role the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) will play in defense issues. "Science and technology are essential elements of improving our capacity to verify existing arms-control agreements," he said, "as well as to help decide what additional agreements are in our national interest, and OSTP has a role to play in that."

In her opening remarks, Lubchenco called NOAA"the crown jewel of the Commerce Department" and "the premier government agency for applied science." Lubchenco said she wanted to get NOAA's satellite program back on track and create a National Climate Service, modeled after the National Weather Service, that would offer information on the likely local impacts of climate change. "It is an idea whose time has come, and I would like to make it happen."

The only friction in the hearing came from questions from Sen. David Vitter (R-LA). He unearthed statements Holdren had made in 1971 that said some form of "ecocatastrophe" was "almost certain" to overtake the world before the end of the century. "Do you think that was a responsible prediction?" Vitter asked.

In response, Holdren replied, "One of the things I've learned in the intervening nearly four decades is that predictions about the future are difficult." Vitter then cited a 1986 article, attributed to Holdren, that said that global warming could cause the deaths of one billion people by 2020.
"Would you stick to that statement?" asked Vitter.
[Holdren] "Well, again, I wouldn't have called it a prediction then, and I wouldn't call it a prediction now. I think it is unlikely to happen."
[Vitter] "But you think it could happen?"
[Holdren] "I think it could happen."

According to Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV), the two nominations will come to a floor vote soon.

Scientists lobby Congress over stimulus bill

As the Senate voted 61-37 over its version of the stimulus bill, scientists and pro-science organizations were horrified to see the complete gutting of funding that was in the House bill for R&D investments in basic science, including all additional funding for the National Science Foundation.

A strong lobbying campaign resulted in which physicists such as John Miller at the University of Houston wrote editorial opinion pieces for newspapers pointing out how investment in R&D grows GDP. "Every dollar going into a research grant has a multiplier effect as it supports education, small business and human innovation," said Miller. "Studies show increased economic activity, including wages paid, of at least $2.5 for each dollar invested in NSF, resulting in higher tax revenues for state and federal governments."

The Union of Concerned Scientists was one of many organizations that asked its members to lobby Congress through e-mail and phone calls, an action that appeared to pay off on Thursday morning, as details about the compromise bill between the House and Senate versions were leaked from the office of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The summary document implicitly states that the US needs to invest in R&D and education to maintain its role as a world leader in the global economy. The compromise passed the House on Friday afternoon 246 to 183 and later on Friday night 60-38 by the Senate. Highlights include:

"Investing in Scientific Research (More than $15 Billion):

"Provides $3 billion for the National Science Foundation, for basic research in fundamental science and engineering--which spurs discovery and innovation.

"Provides $1.6 billion for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, which funds research in such areas as climate science, biofuels, high-energy physics, nuclear physics, and fusion energy sciences--areas crucial to our energy future.

"Provides $400 million for the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to support high-risk, high-payoff research into energy sources and energy efficiency in collaboration with industry.

"Provides $580 million for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, including the Technology Innovation Program and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

"Provides $10 billion for NIH, including expanding good jobs in biomedical research to study diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, and heart disease.

"Provides $1 billion for NASA, including $400 million to put more scientists to work doing climate change research.

"Provides $1.5 billion for NIH to renovate university research facilities and help them compete for biomedical research grants."

A separate section entitled "Clean, Efficient, American Energy" includes:

"Smart Grid/Advanced Battery Technology/Energy Efficiency:

"Provides a total of $30 billion for such initiatives as a new, smart power grid, advanced battery technology, and energy efficiency measures, which will create nearly 500,000 jobs.

"Transforms the nation's electricity systems through the Smart Grid Investment Program to modernize the electricity grid to make it more efficient and reliable.

"Supports U.S. development of advanced vehicle batteries and battery systems through loans and grants so that America can lead the world in transforming the way automobiles are powered.

"Helps state and local governments make investments in innovative best practices to achieve greater energy efficiency and reduce energy usage.

"Spurs energy efficiency and renewable energy R&D."

Change in Space?

As Congress finally came close to agreement on President Obama's stimulus package, two large satellites in Earth orbit collided 491 miles above Siberia. The collision on Tuesday was between an Iridium communications satellite—which was launched in 1997 and still functioning—and Russian Cosmos 2251 satellite launched in 1993 that had been non-operational for a decade. The debris, spread in two distinct orbits consists of more than 500 pieces more than 1 cm in size, currently threatens some Chinese satellites in a sun-synchronous orbit, and may threaten some US science satellites. Space debris is becoming a significant problem for NASA and other space agencies.

Two years ago, a Chinese test of an anti-satellite weapon led to concern that a new arms race in space was about to break out. The test, and the 2006 US National Space Policy review helped scupper attempts by Russia and China in 2008 to create an international agreement to space-based weapons and the testing of ground-based anti-satellite weapons because of the risks associated with generaitng space debris. Now, it appears that US policy is changing, the Obama administration has a statement on the Whitehouse web site that states that the President is in favor of a "worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites."

Paul Guinnessy

Other news highlights
Obama stalls Bush drilling plans
Big science role is seen in global warming cure
US now sees Iran as pursuing nuclear bomb

Even as federal science agencies and the wider science community tried to absorb the possibility of up to $20 billion in new science funding as part of the stimulus package, battles in the Senate to pare down the $900 billion proposal threatened funding for NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Department of Energy's Office of Science. The science funding differences between the stimulus package passed recently by the House and the scaled-back version on the verge of passage in the Senate were detailed nicely in a piece by Jeffrey Mervis in Science magazine.

Whatever the final numbers, science policy experts are trying to define "shovel-ready" science projects while at the same time get money into the base of science programs so that it will have a long-term effect. "I do think that money of the magnitude being proposed can be spent on useful things," George W. Bush's science adviser, John Marburger, told Mervis. "But it's short-term money. The great danger is creating facilities that no one can afford to operate." Harold Varmus, a former director of NIH and one of President Barack Obama's chief advisers on science, said that, "Not everybody understands that grants create an obligation. So the base is crucial. Obama talked repeatedly during the campaign about gradual and consistent funding for science. Maybe part of this [stimulus] should go into the base."

While the focus this week was on the very partisan fight over the stimulus package, there were some concrete steps by the administration that reversed several of the Bush policies. Obama announced new energy guidelines for household appliances, guidelines that he said would save the equivalent of the energy produced by all coal-fired plants for two years. He called the new standards "a significant down payment" on a clean energy future.

In his remarks, Obama also said he was serious about building a "smarter electricity grid" and leading a "revolution in energy efficiency" by "modernizing more than 75 percent of federal buildings and improving the efficiency of more than 2 million American homes."

Focusing on that theme, RenewableEnergyWorld.com noted that "renewable energy, climate change and green jobs are hot topics around the beltway." The post highlighted discussions around the newly proposed "Markey-Platts Bill," which would boost clean-energy development. The bill would boost renewable energy generation 135 percent above current policies between now and 2025. The Union of Concerned Scientists has a longer posting on the proposed legislation.

The RenewableEnergyWorld piece also details Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer's (D-CA) press conference announcing six broad principles that need to be addressed in upcoming climate change legislation. While climate change legislation is on the agenda, she noted that the timeline is iffy. The goal is to get a cap-and-trade bill passed before the Copenhagen round of climate change negotiations in December.

While Boxer was unsure of how fast climate change legislation could make it through Congress, new energy secretary Steven Chu used a Los Angeles Times interview to warn that if climate change continues unabated, California's agriculture could vanish by the end of the century. "I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he told the paper. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." An article about the interview appeared in the Christian Science Monitor.

The WorldWatch Institute also published a piece about the push for climate change legislation under the headline, "Growing Optimism for U.S. Climate Change Bill." "After years of being the last place on Earth to act on climate change, this is our moment," the posting quoted Massachusetts Senator John Kerry as saying. "The science is screaming at us. There is no time to waste. We must learn from the lessons of Kyoto, and we must make Copenhagen a success."

The US Department of the Interior moved to reverse another Bush policy by cancelling energy leases that would have opened lands near national parks in Utah to oil and natural gas drilling. "I have directed [the] Bureau of Land Management not to accept the bids," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters. Environmental groups hailed the decision, while oil and gas industry representatives expressed concern.

The New York Times ran a piece on Obama's approach to dealing with Iran, saying the administration "may take a tough line with Tehran in coming months even as it signals a willingness to move toward direct talks with Iranian officials." This came after Iran announced early in the week that it launched its first satellite into orbit.

Associated Press writer Barry Schweid notes the apparent restart of the START talks with Russia. "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has notified Congress and her staff that she intends to get started quickly on talks with the Russians, who have voiced interest in recent weeks in settling on a new treaty calling for cutbacks in [the nuclear] arsenals on both sides." The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires at the end of the year. It limited the US and Russia to 6,000 nuclear warheads each.

Jim Dawson