January 2010 Archives

At a press conference held in New Delhi in India yesterday, Xie Zhenhua, China's leading negotiator on climate change, while stating that global warming was a "solid fact," expressed doubts on the basic premise that climate change is being caused by human-made emissions because of "disputes in the scientific community."

Xie had been meeting with representatives from India, Brazil and South Africa—the so-called BASIC bloc that formed after the Copenhagen climate talks—over what emission limits to send to the UN. Countries are supposed to submit their proposed cuts at the end of the month.

Xie—who is vice-chairman of China's National Development and Reforms Commission—statements were based on two events: the so-called "climategate" emails and a correction to the glacial chapter of the fourth assessment report from the United Nation's InternGovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"The major reason of the climate change is the unconstrained emissions of developed countries during the industrialization process," says Xie. "That's the mainstream view, but there are some uncertainties."

Xie said that it was important to include as many views as possible "to be more scientific and to be more consistent."

"There is a view that climate change is caused by cyclical trends in nature itself," said Xie, "we have to keep an open attitude."

A storm in a teapot

The "climategate" emails were from a number of leading climate researchers that were obtained by someone who hacked into the University of East Anglia's mail server and made public last month.

The IPCC recently acknowledged a claim in one paragraph that Himalayan glaciers could disappear within three decades which went into one of their reports was not based on scientific fact but a speculative comment made by Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain in an interview with New Scientist magazine ten years ago.

Non-peer reviewed literature can be used in IPCC reports, but all such data is supposed to be checked and verified for authenticity. "That’s where the failure took place," said IPCC chairman R K Pachauri to the Business Standard. "That failure should never have happened."

Hasnain never published this speculation in a peer-reviewed journal and has recently stated that the Himalayan glaciers are not receding as fast as to disappear by 2035.

Jeffrey S. Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona confirms this interpretation. "It is physically not possible to melt so much ice so quickly at such high alpine elevations," he said. "Even with rapid global warming."

"The melting rates are fairly typical of the rapid melting rates seen widely through the world," Kargel adds. "But they are not so rapid as to cause himalayan glaciers to disappear by 2035."

In fact, it will take at least 300 years for global warming to melt the glaciers.

Although the "climategate" hacked emails did not contain any material that disputed the basis of climate change, the conversations between the researchers did not leave a positive impression to those who read them of the scientists behavior towards climate skeptics.

A calculated stance?

Xie's comments at the BASIC bloc's press conference is being widely interpreted as a way of gaining concessions in the Obama administration's proposal to fund voluntary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Both India and China would prefer for their greenhouse gas emission "intensity" to be reduced rather that have their emissions capped in order for their economies to continue to rapidly develop.

Under Obama's proposal—which is being negotiated separately from the official UN climate talks—developing countries would receive billions of dollars to switch towards more efficient energy technologies and negate the impact of climate change but countries would have to agree to capping their emissions. The fund is supposed to collect $100 billion by 2020.

The BASIC block, which called for both sets of talks to be merged into one legally binding agreement yesterday, confirmed at the press conference it would give its part of the US$10 billion expected to be raised this year, under informal agreements signed at the Copenhagen climate talks.

Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, called on the developed countries to quickly meet their pledge to contribute to the fund as a sign of "sincerity."

Meanwhile, an analysis of the Copenhagen agreements of what would happen if they were to be followed suggest that average global temperatures would rise above 3°C, by 2050 much higher than the 2°C target.

Paul Guinnessy

A committee of individuals drawn from all sides of the ongoing debate over free access to the peer-reviewed scientific literature has urged each federal agency that funds research to quickly develop and implement its own policy for providing the material to the public for free. In a consensus report commissioned by the House Committee on Science and Technology, the group known as the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable left the divisive issue of "embargoes"—the post-publication period when journals restrict access to scholarly articles to their subscribers—and their duration, up to individual agencies. While an embargo of up to 12 months will suffice for journals in many science disciplines, the committee said, a longer duration may be needed for those of other fields, particularly for humanities and social sciences.

The panel's membership included librarians, university provosts, academic researchers, and publishers (including Fred Dylla, executive director of the American Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics Today), and was chaired by John Vaughn, executive vice president of the Association of American Universities. The roundtable report also reaffirmed the necessity for peer review, and emphasized that the various public-access databases should be built to be interoperable from the outset. The Office of Science and Technology Policy should guide the development of federal-wide standards to ensure development of interoperable navigation tools and other applications, and an advisory committee on public access should be created to guide OSTP.

Withheld endorsement

The roundtable's consensus, however, was marred by the decision of two of its 14 members to withhold their endorsement. Mark Patterson, director of publishing for Public Library of Science (PLoS), a publisher of open-access online journals, said the report "stops far short of recognizing and endorsing the opportunities to unleash the full potential of online communication to transform access to and use of scholarly literature." Patterson argued that the public should get "comprehensive public access to the research that they paid for, with no delay and no restrictions on reuse." The other dissenter, Y.S. Chi, vice chairman of publishing giant Elsevier, complained that the recommendations included "an overly expansive role of government."

Since April 2008, all peer-reviewed articles that are published from research funded entirely or in part by the National Institutes of Health are required to be made available for free no later than one year after their publication in a scientific journal. That work is deposited in the PubMed Central database operated by the NIH's National Library of Medicine. The open-access mandate was enshrined in an NIH appropriations bill after a years-long struggle between journal publishers and open-access proponents. The requirement has not yet spilled over to apply to research that is funded by other agencies, such as NSF, Department of Energy, NASA, or Department of Defense.
Many scientific societies depend on their journal publishing for much, or most of their revenues. They have argued, with limited success, that libraries would likely drop their subscriptions if they could simply obtain the articles from the free repositories that are operated by federal agencies. Open-access mandates, of course, would apply only to that body of work that is publicly funded.

House S&T Committee chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) said the roundtable's recommendations "strike a good balance by allowing public access to the results of research paid for with federal funds, while preserving the high quality and editorial integrity of scholarly publishing so critical to the scientists and seasoned science writers on whose expertise we all depend." A committee staffer said a hearing on open access could be held in the spring. But the panel's attention has turned to renewing the America COMPETES Act, the multifaceted 2007 law that aims to restore US competitiveness, which is set to expire on 1 October.

The roundtable released its work a few days before the 21 January close of a public comment period on OSTP's own review of the open-access issue. Officials at OSTP said that once they have completed their analysis of the more than 400 comments that were submitted, their findings will be presented to an OSTP-led interagency committee on information and innovation. That group could then develop policy recommendations calling for agency actions. The officials did not provide a timescale for the completion of that process.

OSTP's review occurs in the context of Obama's directive—issued on his first full day in office—for agencies to take steps wherever possible to improve openness and transparency in their operations.

In the Senate, a bill called the Federal Research Public Access Act (S. 1373), introduced in July 2009 by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) would require that agencies provide free access to the articles from research they sponsor within six months of their publication in a journal. But that bill has yet to have had a hearing, despite having been referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which Lieberman chairs. No comparable measure has been introduced in the House.

David Kramer

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is embarking on a five-year, $1-billion effort with no less ambitious a goal than reversing the decades-long decline of US manufacturing.

Regina Dugan says to do so, DARPA will attempt to replicate the successful model of the US semiconductor manufacturing sector in other industries, ranging from pharmaceuticals to micromechanical devices to gradient-index optics.

"DARPA wants to do for US manufacturing what it did for the communications and IT industries with the Internet," Dugan told the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) on 7 January. The key, as she described it, will be transferring the semiconductor manufacturing paradigm, in which product design companies outsource the manufacturing of their products to so-called foundries, which don't make products of their own. That model has created a more efficient manufacturing process, compared to the vertically integrated model typically found among US manufacturers, in which the foundries are able to distribute their costs over thousands of semiconductor products, while so-called fab-less design firms can use the nimble and flexible foundries for their fabrication needs, from prototypes through high volume production.

Adoption of that model led to "a period of explosive growth" in the semiconductor design business, Dugan told the PCAST. "When the means by which we produced became rapid, cost-effective and seamless in the semiconductor industry, hundreds of designers became tens of thousands of designers," she said. Among those fab-less design firms is Akustica, which was founded by former DARPA program manager Kaigham Gabriel to design microelectromechanical (MEMS) devices used in consumer electronics. Dugan, who also did a stint as a DARPA program manager before founding an explosives detection business, said that she and Gabriel, who is now the agency's deputy director, "both know on a visceral basis how difficult it is to make new products." The two, she said, have concluded that the fundamental technical challenge confronting US manufacturers of all types is "the seams between each stage of development; between design and prototyping, early production runs, limited, and large-scale manufacturing." Those seams, she continued, "create extensive rework and are the source of production delays, surprises, and cost overruns."

In December, the White House released its plan for helping US manufacturers to restore their competitiveness. That "framework for revitalizing American manufacturing" outlined actions the Obama administration will take to mitigate seven "cost drivers" for manufacturers. That plan does not include making changes to the manufacturing process itself; most of the drivers identified were external factors, such as labor costs, trade policy, regulation, tax policy, access to markets, and business investment in intellectual capital.

A DARPA spokeswoman could offer no details of Dugan's plan, but said the agency is currently working to "integrate and synthesize the structure of" the more than 20 existing programs that are manufacturing related. Funding for those programs currently totals about $200 million annually.

Dugan left no doubt that she means business. "We have our sights set on the synthesis of these ideas into an integrated whole. The results we think in time eventually will be massive growth in new industries driven by real capabilities for defense and for the nation," she told PCAST. "At DARPA we are ruthless about our product focus. It's not enough to know of a problem, or even enough to know that solving it would have a profound impact. We must have an idea of how we might accomplish such revolutionary advances. Today at DARPA we have the seeds for this sea change in US manufacturing already growing. We intend to nourish these ideas further and to synthesize them into whole, integrated efforts."

But one PCAST member, Richard Levin, president of Yale University, challenged Dugan's vision, asserting that decoupling the product design process from the manufacturing process would provide a greater incentive for US nondefense companies to move their manufacturing operations abroad, where labor costs are lower. While acknowledging that process could occur, Gabriel told the committee that growth would occur in product design, where entry costs would be slashed. "When you lower the barrier for people to prototype, and for people to become part of the manufacturing and design process, you go from tens or hundreds of people to tens of thousands of people who can take part," he said.

David Kramer

Physics Today: Citing a more "hopeful state of world affairs" in relation to the twin threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) is moving the minute hand of its Doomsday Clock one minute further away from midnight. It is now 6 minutes to midnight—the symbolic end of civilization. The decision by the BAS Science and Security Board was made in consultation with the Bulletin’s board of sponsors, which includes 19 Nobel laureates.

In a statement supporting the decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock, the BAS board said:

"For the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear weapons states are cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material. And for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike are pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable. These unprecedented steps are signs of a growing political will to tackle the two gravest threats to civilization—the terror of nuclear weapons and runaway climate change."

"...By shifting the hand back from midnight by only one additional minute, we emphasize how much needs to be accomplished, while at the same time recognizing signs of collaboration among the US, Russia, the European Union, India, China, Brazil, and others on nuclear security and on climate stabilization."

Created in 1947 by the BAS, the Doomsday Clock has been adjusted only 18 times prior to today, most recently in January 2007 and February 2002 after the events of 11 September 2001.

The move of the clock's minute hand brought a number of BAS board members to a press conference organized by the BAS earlier today, which included Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss, the cochair of the BAS Board of Sponsors. "We encourage scientists to fulfill their dual responsibilities of increasing their own, as well as the public's understanding of these issues and to help lead the call to action," said Krauss. "We urge leaders to fulfill the promise of a nuclear weapon-free world and to act now to slow the pace of climate change. Finally, we call on citizens everywhere to raise their voices and compel public action for a safer world now and for future generations. Even though we are encouraged by recent developments, we are mindful of the fact that the Clock is ticking."

Jayantha Dhanapala, president of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, said:

"In the saga of human history civilizations have been threatened both by natural causes and by man-made folly. Some have survived by making the necessary rational responses to the challenges. Others have gone under leaving only their ruins. Today it is the entire planet that stands imperiled by the danger of nuclear weapons and the real risk of climate change inexorably threatening our ecosystem. Both impending disasters are within our capabilities to remedy. The opportunity must be seized now out of a recognition that these are global dangers that transcend national boundaries."

Nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy from Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan, said:

"We may be at a turning point, where major powers realize that nuclear weapons are useless for war-fighting or even for deterrence. Threats to security are more likely to come from economic collapse, groups bent on terrorizing civilians, or from resource scarcity exacerbated by climate change and exploding populations, rather than from conflict between nuclear-armed superpowers. Against these new threats, nuclear weapons are a liability."

Paul Guinnessy

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has called for better connections between the worlds of science and politics. He was speaking at a meeting of the InterAcademy Panel which is being hosted by the Royal Society as part of its 350th anniversary celebrations. 

Miliband highlighted the UK's high standing in the worlds of science and diplomacy and commented on how science had already played a significant role in keeping lines of communication open during the cold war.  He also praised SESAME—the synchrotron light source project in Jordan, which brings together scientists from across the Middle East including Israel, Iran, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Authority.

"The scientific world is becoming inter-disciplinary," said Miliband. "But the biggest inter-disciplinary leap we need is across the boundaries of politics and science. On resource conflicts, global inequality, nuclear security and counter terrorism, science is our ally.  I hope this [Royal Society] anniversary opens eyes not just to how far science has come, but what we can do together in the future."  

At the same meeting the Royal Society also published a joint report with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): New frontiers in science diplomacy investigates the valuable role that science can play in international policy making and diplomacy.

Paul Guinnessy

At a speech to members of the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting, NASA administrator Charles Bolden spoke about the major scientific discoveries that NASA facilities had helped produce, but remained quiet on the results expected of the report of the Augustine committee (headed by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine) of the future strategic direction for human spaceflight. The current strategic plan is unsustainable unless NASA's budget is increased dramatically said the Augustine report which provided four options for the Obama administration to consider under different budget scenarios.

"I'm sure all of you would like to know what direction President Obama will choose for the future of the space program," said Bolden. "All I can say for now is that NASA is working closely with the executive office in helping him determine the best path forward."

The result is expected to be an extra $1 billion in funding, but at the cost of canceling the Ares 1 launcher that would take astronauts into space.

Instead NASA will concentrate on building a new simpler heavy lift launcher based heavily on the Shuttle-C concept says Science magazine. Some services, such as supplying the International Space Station, would be contracted out to commercial companies such as Space X, which would use its Falcon 9 medium-lift launcher that is scheduled to fly for the first time in March.

The European Space Agency, which recently confirmed an agreement to work more closely with NASA on lunar and Mars missions, along with other partners such as Japan, may be asked to share costs and provide hardware for joint missions.

A future for space science?

Bolden assured the audience that "the future of human spaceflight will not be paid for out of the hide of the science program," a comment that received cheers and a round of applause.

However, in an interview with Physics Today held last month, associate administrator Ed Weiler who is in charge of NASA's science program, said that the community will soon be faced with "hard decisions" over which programs will receive funding as too many science missions are extended beyond their initial design life, and that the space mission budget would likely be constrained in the near future.

Paul Guinnessy