Archive for December, 2008

House Science and Technology Committee Outlines Plans for 111th Congress

December 19th, 2008

Posted by: admin

Yesterday House Science and Technology Committee chair Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tennessee) held a press conference outlining plans for the next Congress.  Given the energy emphasis of Presidential science appointments and the current economic debacle, Rep. Gordon emphasized those issues.  Topics covered included plans to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), science investment recommendations for the stimulus, R & D for possible cap and trade legislation, and a balanced portfolio for NASA.

I’m not sure how instructive Gordon’s comments will be, as it seems that he was jumping on the energy and climate bandwagon driven by the appointment of Dr. Chu as Energy Secretary.  Once subcommittee assignments are finalized in January, the agenda of the committee might become more clear.

Can Hurricane Activity Be Predicted Out to Five Years With Skill?

December 19th, 2008

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

This is the subject of an article today in the Houston Chronicle by Eric Berger on the RMS expert elicitation. It is also the subject of a draft paper that I have begun to circulate for comments. The paper’s title is:

United States Hurricane Landfalls and Damages:
Can One to Five Year Predictions Beat Climatology?

the paper begins as follows:

The answer to the question posed in the subtitle is, unfortunately, no. This paper explains why skillful prediction of United States hurricane landfalls and damages is not possible in the short term, defined here as a time period of one to five years. A “skillful” prediction is one that improves upon expectations derived from the statistics of the long-term historical record.

If you’d like a copy for comment, please send me an email, pielke@colorado.edu.

Universities Ask for Stimulus Package

December 18th, 2008

Posted by: admin

The Science blog on science policy reported last week that the Association of American Universities has sent a letter to Congress requesting that financial aid and research funding be part of any economic stimulus package.  You can read the full letter online at the AAU website (click on the December 17 item).  The specific recommendations are as follows (details in the letter):

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More Policy Neutral Advice From the IPCC

December 18th, 2008

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

Rajendra Pachauri, director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC — an organization with a stated mandate to be policy neutral in its advice — offers the Obama Administration policy neutral helpful advice on not only on U.S. participation in international negotiations in climate polcies (follow Europe’s lead), but also on domestic transportation policies, federalism, energy security, and employment.

Holdren to Be Obama’s Science Advisor

December 18th, 2008

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

My suggestion that Chu’s appointment to DOE meant that Obama would not appoint a physicist/energy expert to science advisor was wrong. Harvard’s John Holdren will be science advisor, Science is reporting.

Strong indications are that President-elect Barack Obama has picked physicist John Holdren to be the president’s science adviser.

A top adviser to the Obama campaign and international expert on energy and climate, Holdren would bolster Obama’s team in those areas. Both are crowded portfolios. Obama has already created a new position to coordinate energy issues in the White House staffed by well-connected Carole Browner, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and nominated a Nobel-prize winning physicist, Steve Chu, to head the Department of Energy. That could complicate how the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which Holdren will run, will manage energy and environmental policy. “OSTP will have to be redefined in relation to these other centers of formulating policy,” says current White House science adviser Jack Marburger.

I agree. Expect some conflicts, a prediction I am more sure of than my science advisor handicapping ;-)

Sarewitz and Nelson on Technological Fixes

December 18th, 2008

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

In this week’s Nature Dan Sarewitz and Richard Nelson discuss three rules for technological fixes and then apply these rules to the air capture of carbon dioxide. In a companion piece, Nature also has a very interesting Q&A on air capture, showing that quietly, the technology is moving forward.

Here are the rules for a technological fix:

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Science and the Recession – Too Early to Detect Some Trends

December 17th, 2008

Posted by: admin

We can surmise some likely science-related outcomes from the current economic recession already.  Government budgets are hit; construction projects wil stop, slow down, or be postponed; endowment performance declines; etc.  Traditionally, many people will return to school, or delay entering the workforce by continuing their schooling, in light of a recession.  Chris Mooney, however, jumps the gun in this Science Progress column by suggesting that the anticipated increases in enrollment haven’t materialized.

The recession ‘officially’ started in the last quarter of 2007, so a boost in entrants for this fall is a possible outcome of the conventional wisdom.  However, that would presume that these applicants were so tuned into the economy that they turned around applications fast enough to be ready to enter by the following fall.  Given how irrational and dysfunctional the current collapses have been, there’s nothing to suggest that rational choices to gain more schooling would necessarily increase.  So why Mooney would expect a boost in enrollment or applicants so soon after the realization of the recession sets in escapes me.

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Evaluation of Near Term Hurricane Loss Predictions

December 17th, 2008

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

UPDATED: FIGURE ADDED BELOW!

Karen Clark and Company has released an interesting report (PDF and covered here) that compares the performance of catastrophe models from AIR (the company that Clark formed and ileft a few years ago), RMS, and EQE over the past three years with their five year predictions of losses. Here is what they’ve found:

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CCSP on Sea Level Rise

December 17th, 2008

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program has released its report on Abrupt Climate Change, and it includes a chapter on “Rapid Changes in Glaciers and Ice Sheets and their Effects on Sea Level” (PDF), written by a team of leading scientists, and whose lead author is director of CIRES (where I work at CU) Koni Steffen.

What does the report say about our ability to predict future sea level rise (pp. 92-93)?

Considerable effort is now underway to improve the models, but it is far from complete, leaving us unable to make reliable predictions of ice-sheet responses to a warming climate if such glacier accelerations were to increase in size and frequency. It should be noted that there is also a large uncertainty in current model predictions of the atmosphere and ocean temperature changes which drive the ice-sheet changes, and this uncertainty could be as large as that on the marginal flow response.

So when asked . . . how high will sea levels rise in the 21st century?

. . . the scientifically correct answer, according to this report, is “we don’t know.” It could be large, but it also could be similar to that of the 20th century (and I am implying nothing of probability here). Of course, such a situation lends itself to cherrypicking and political Rorschaching. So the proper response might be “Well, what do you want it to be?”

Journal to Require Authors to Create Wikipedia Pages

December 16th, 2008

Posted by: admin

Nature News notes an interesting development.  The journal RNA Biology will require authors submitting to a particular section to also submit Wikipedia pages that will summarize the work.  These pages will be peer reviewed by the journal prior to publication.  One such page is already online.  There is no explicit connection on that Wikipedia page between the page and the journal.  Perhaps that is to encourage other people to contribute to the page, which can be edited by anyone.  While some scholars have essentially opted out of the journal publishing system to put their work online, this is a step towards combining, or at least connecting, the two venues for academic publishing.  A question worth pursuing as this initiative moves forward is to track how often these pages are viewed, and what information can be derived about visitors to those pages.