In fairness to Jim Hansen, I have an obligation to post this follow up email to his list serve related to his super El Nino prediction that I discussed earlier this week (for those interested in a copy of the revised paper or to get on Hansen’s email list, which I’d recommend, I suggest contacting him directly at jhansen@giss.nasa.gov):

(more…)

For you local folks (from Bobbie Klein):

Dr. Frank Press, science advisor to President Jimmy Carter 1977-1980, will be the final speaker in the year-long lecture series “Policy, Politics, and Science in the White House: Conversations with Presidential Science Advisors.” He will speak tonight, April 11, at 7 pm in MCD Biology Room A2B70 on the CU-Boulder Campus. The event is free and open to the public. For more information visit the series website.

A recipe for effectively using science to advance political aims:

(more…)

In yesterday’s Daily Camera (our local newspaper here in Boulder) Todd Neff had a good article on a complicated subject – academic earmarks. Earmarks are directed spending by members of Congress to their district. Earmarks are typically not a large amount when compared to the discretionary budget, but they have been growing in recent years and have caught the attention of a number of members of Congress. Historically, earmarks have been an acceptable and important mechanism for members of Congress to “bring home the bacon” to their districts. Earmarks have to be taken out of existing programs, and thus represent a reshuffling of spending priorities from that originally authorized by Congress. For some programs, like those related to transportation, earmarking is expected and fairly typical (although there are exceptions).

“Academic” earmarks refer to directed spending on research and development programs. Many researchers oppose such earmarks because they circumvent most institutional mechanisms of peer review and thus place politics above merit. In addition, academic earmarks can materially affect the performance of government research programs if the money for the earmark comes from an existing research program. From the perspective of a government program manager, an academic earmark looks very much like an unexpected budget cut. None of this is to say that good work can’t be done under an earmark, only that it introduces a very different mechanism for resource allocation than a merit-based, strategic-focused approach that is difficult enough under ordinary circumstances.

Back to Boulder. It turns out that some of the budgets of NOAA labs here in Boulder are being earmarked, effectively resulting in cuts to programs core to the NOAA mission. In the Daily Camera article I am quoted suggesting that universities need to take a greater role in policing academic earmarks, or else they should not be surprised when in some situation scientific excellence is subsumed to jobs and money. Here is an excerpt:

(more…)

The Albuquerque Journal published an op-ed of mine last weekend titled “Science, Politics and Press Releases,” and it is now online Thanks to each of you who provided comments on an earlier version.

I’m not really sure what to make of this, other than there is a dark line being drawn in the sand by NASA’s Jim Hansen and colleagues (PDF):

(more…)

After I sent an email to factcheck.org yesterday they responded with an email and modified their online story. I am happy to learn of their commitment to accuracy. However, they don’t have it right yet, so I have followed up with them.

The modification reads,

(more…)

FactCheck.org has a story up on global warming which has some major errors in citing our work on hurricanes. It states,

One dissenter from the consensus view, Roger Pielke Jr., says perceptions regarding hurricanes in particular are skewed by recent major storms, and adds:

Pielke : Claims of linkage between global warming and hurricane impacts are premature . . . (and) any future changes in hurricane intensities will likely be small in the context of observed variability.

Pielke directs the University of Colorado’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and maintains the Prometheus science policy web log.

This is wrong on two counts as readers here know well:

1) I accept the consensus view of the IPCC WG I on the science of climate change.

2) Our hurricane work that they cite comes from a peer reviewed paper (in BAMS) which presents research that is well within the range of current scientific discussion on climate change. By suggesting that there is a consensus and dissenting view on hurricanes Factcheck.org gets it wrong.

Brad Allenby, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at of Arizona State Univeristy, where he holds an affiliation at CSPO, has a brilliant essay online at GreenBiz titled “Nightmare Science.” Every scientist should read it closely. Here is an excerpt:

We have, as scientists, established the validity of science through adoption of a process that institutionalizes observation, and thus grants us privileged access to truth, at least within the domains of physical reality. In doing so, we have destroyed authority as the source of privileged knowledge — and, concomitantly, assumed much of the power that used to reside in the old elite (e.g., the Church).

But now suppose that scientists become increasingly concerned with certain environmental phenomenon — say, loss of biodiversity, or climate change. They thus not only report the results of the practice of the scientific method, but, in part doubting the ability of the public to recognize the potential severity of the issues as scientists see them, become active as scientists in crafting and demanding particular responses, such as the Kyoto Treaty. These responses, notably, extend significantly beyond the purely environmental domain, into policies involving economic development, technology deployment, quality of life in many countries, and the like.

In short, the elite that has been created by practice of the scientific method uses the concomitant power not just to express the results of particular research initiatives, but to create, support, and implement policy responses affecting many non-scientific communities and intellectual domains in myriad ways. In doing so, they are not exercising expertise in these non-scientific domains, but rather transforming their privilege in the scientific domains into authority in non-scientific domains. Science is, in other words, segueing back into a structure where once again authority, not observation, is the basis of the exercise of power and establishment of truth by the elite. But the authority in this new model is not derived from sacred texts; rather it is derived from legitimate practice of scientific method in the scientific domain, extended into non-scientific domains. Note that this does not imply that scientists cannot, or should not, as individuals participate in public debate; only that if they do so cloaked in the privilege that the scientific discourse gives them they raise from the dead the specter of authority as truth.

Why is this nightmare science? Precisely because it raises an internal contradiction with which science cannot cope. In an age defined by the scientific worldview, which is the source of the primacy of the scientific discourse, science cannot demand privilege outside its domain based not on method, but on authority, for in doing so it undermines the zeitgeist that gives it validity. When demanding the Kyoto Treaty as scientists, it is themselves, not their opponents, that they attack.

Read the whole thing, several times.

Autumn Fiester, from the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, has a provocative essay on genetically modified pigs at AJOB. Here is an excerpt:

The new omega-3 pig is the perfect example of what is terribly wrong with American animal biotech research: scientists pursue whatever interests them, and then they try to find a problem for which their results can be hailed as the solution. Instead of having the animal biotech agenda driven by the public’s true needs and values, we have an agenda-less agenda, with individual research teams expending vast resources on frivolous projects the public doesn’t want or need. The backdrop here is that Americans are, at this point, overwhelmingly opposed to this science, and much of this research is federally funded, so the American people actually pay for the research through their tax dollars. We need a biotech strategy that serves the public’s collective interests and conforms to their values.

Dr. Fiester concludes,

All of this is not to say that animal biotechnology can never be morally justified. There may be great good that can be accomplished with a reflective, cautious approach to this science. But instead of the default position being “anything goes,” it ought to be “proceed only with extreme caution.”

This does sound to me a lot like the objections that some have to stem cell research. How should we decide, whether it is genetic modification of animals or human stem cell research, what research is to be allowed and which is not?