If the title of this post seems familiar, that is because you have seen it here not long ago. Inexplicably, NCAR has once again decided to cut costs by downsizing its social science efforts, this time by cutting its Center for Capacity Building and laying off all of its staff. Suprisingly, among the layoffs is NCAR Senior Scientist Mickey Glantz, who is a fixture of the climate impacts research community and a 34-year employee of NCAR. Here is a copy of the email that NCAR’s Director Eric Barron sent around (co-signed by UCAR President Rick Anthes) explaining the terminations:

Subject: message to staff
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 15:03:14 -0600
From: Eric Barron
To: XXXXXXX@ucar.edu (All UCAR Staff)

To All Staff,

The two of us travelled to Washington, DC on July 23 to discuss and review NCAR budget scenarios for FY09 with NSF. NSF and NCAR continue to face significant financial challenges. FY09 budget projections remain at 0% level over FY08 on top of 2004-2008 subinflationary NCARbase increments and NSF priority program requirements. There is also a high probability of a continuing resolution well into FY09, which beginsOctober 1, 2008. In this budget environment, NCAR and UCAR management must continue to take measures to plan for budgets based on NCAR and NSF strategic priorities. The dissolution of the Societal-Environmental Research and Education Laboratory (SERE) was part of our effort to reduce costs in this very difficult funding environment. Unfortunately, based on our most recent analysis, additional actions must be taken, and thus we are eliminating the NCAR Center for Capacity Building (CCB) program. This will save immediate and recurring direct and indirect costs. We very much regret the impacts this has on staff.

We have scheduled NCAR town meetings later this month so that we can discuss the financial, programmatic and scientific challenges and opportunities we will face together in the coming year. We welcome your ideas and contributions.

Eric Barron and Rick Anthes

I’ll end this heavy week of blogging with an award for the bonehead move of the week. There is in fact a tie for the award between NASA’s James Hansen and UK environmental activist Jo Abbess.

James Hansen has undertaken a pressure campaign, apparently orchestrated with Friends of the Earth, on a publisher for some statements on climate change that he disagreed with within a high school textbook. Hansen had the bright idea of engaging this pressure campaign using his official NASA letterhead and thus presumably while being paid by taxpayers. Smart move.

Not to be outdone, Jo Abbess was able to successfully lobby BBC reporter Roger Harrabin to modify a story on climate change to be more to her liking. Abbess had the bright idea to announce her success to the world, including republishing her full email exchange with Mr. Harrabin. Smart move.

Well, if nothing else both of these episodes will surely keep the blogosphere agitated and engaged!

Like anyone needs a longer personal blogroll, but here are two that might be worth a look.

William Briggs is a statistician, a delightful writer, and provocatively skeptical about all sort of subjects in exactly the way that scientists should be skeptical. His new blog is extremely thoughtful. For example, he has a post up today titled, “Is climatology a pseudoscience?” and provides a nuanced, and yes, provocative answer.

A new group blog called Science Policy Development has just started up on the heels of the recent NAS Science and Technology Policy Graduate Student Forum. There is plenty of room in the blogosphere for more discussions of science policy and I am hopeful that this group maintains an active presence in science policy discussions.

After this wise move, what more could you possibly need to know?

Academic blogging is an interesting medium. On the one hand it “flattens” the world of communication and facilitates the public engagement of experts with everyone else. But it also has some strong negatives, on display this week over at Chris Mooney’s blog.

Chris, and fellow blogger American University’s Matt Nisbet, recently wrote two pieces for Science and The Washington Post, in which they engaged in a little Science Studies 101, pointing out that how issues are framed influences how they are received. Seems pretty straightforward. But in their piece they suggested, correctly in my view, that how some atheists advance their agenda on the back of science may actually backfire in political debates. For their trouble Chris and Matt have been lambasted by the agitprop blogosphere.

One particularly clueless commentator — a professor with a Harvard degree — went so far as to suggest that Mooney and Nisbet are in fact creationists! This strategy of allowing absolutely no nuance is the main tool in the agitprop toolbox. Why else would Matt and Chris criticize Richard Dawkins unless they are really creationists at heart?! Such drivel is extremely irritating, as Chris and Matt’s reactions indicate and there is really no effective response to it. Here at Prometheus I routinely hear from trolls and others with bad intent and that I must be a Republican (or a Republican sympathizer) since I have advanced some views that some Republicans think make sense. (Outside the blogosphere actually convincing people of the merits of your arguments is viewed in a positive light!;-)

The issue, not surprisingly, is one of framing. The professor alleging the creationist in Mooney and Nisbet describes religious people as his “enemies” suggesting that we are at war with them. Mooney for his part disavows such nonsense:

“Attack”? Those are your words.

“Enemies”? Those are also your words.

I don’t see it that way.

We were trying to make a very serious point about how scientists need to rethink communication strategies. We saw Dawkins as a prominent example to use. He is, after all, prominent.

In political debates the agitprop partisans always have the upper hand, as they can level personal attacks, misrepresent your work, make mountains out of molehills, and nanny-nanny-boo-boo call you names all day long. For academic bloggers who don’t want to themselves become mindless partisans there are only a few choices, develop a thick skin or get out of the fray. David Brooks’ column yesterday on how to handle such people is worth a read (of course, my citing it must be an indicateion my conservative tendencies;-):

. . . they’ll never be open-minded toward you. But the other three-quarters are honorable, intelligent people. If you treat these people with respect, and find places where you can work together, they will teach you things and make you more effective. If you treat them the way you treat the partisans, they’ll turn into partisans and destroy you.

So here at Promethues, until the blogging negatives outweigh the positives, we will stomach those with ill-intent and simply correct the record when necessary and let nonsense stand on its own. The good news, for Matt and Chris and others who find themselves under attack from people who seek to distract from the substance of their arguments is that their arguments must be pretty strong on their merits to attract such passionate attention. So Matt and Chris, keep up the good work, and don’t get too exercised about the noise. Not much you can do about that!

Tom Yulsman, an occasional contributor here and professor of Journalism here at CU, along with colleagues have started a new weblog focused on Environmental Journalism. Check it out here!

Happy New Year everyone! A 2007 office pool for your enjoyment:

1. In 2007 the space shuttle will fly (a) once, (b) twice, (c) 3 or more times, (d) its last mission.

2. Academic earmarks on non-defense discretionary spending for FY2007 will (a) be held to near zero as Democrats hold steadfast to their year-long continuing resolution, (b) will quietly creep up to their FY2006 levels as supplemental spending bills are laden with pork, (c) will not formally appear in appropriations or reports but will somehow appear out of existing agency appropriations as agency officials seek to keep congressional appropriators happy.

3. The number of hurricanes in the North Atlantic will be (a) less than 10, (b) between 10 and 15, (c) 16 to 20, (d) more than 20.

4. The IPCC will be released in three installments in the first half of 2007. The big news story from the IPCC will be (a) actually nothing, as nothing new will be reported, (b) a change in the IPCC and its leaders to an explicit advocacy role, (c) that it spells the end of the climate convention as it presents “dangerous interference” as inevitable, (d) provides much fodder for those wanting to “go slow” on climate policy by presenting an image of climate change far more conservative than found in the media, (e) will totally botch the issue of economic losses from extreme events, and especially hurricanes.

5. Al Gore will enter the 2008 presidential race (a) in the spring with his speech accepting the Oscar for best documentary, (b) in the late summer or early fall following the devastation of southern Florida by Hurricane Jerry, (c) not at all and Roger will owe Lisa lunch, (d) in 2008.

6. The U.S. budget for R&D in FY2007 will (a) represent the first cut in decades as Democrats hold fast to their year-long continuing resolution, (b) increase from FY2006 level through several targeted supplemental appropriations bills, most notable passage of some version of the ACI/PACE legislation, (c) so frustrate some scientists that they will begin speaking of a “Democratic war on science”.

7. The most notable S&T legislation to be passed by Congress in 2007 and vetoed by President Bush will be focused on (a) federal funding for stem cell research, (b) mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions, (c) prohibition of the transfer of nuclear technologies to India, (d) repeal of certain aspects of the Patriot Act focused on surveillance

8. The Supreme Court will rule in EPA vs. Massachusetts that (a) Massachusetts in fact has no standing to file the lawsuit, (b) that EPA has authority to regulate carbon dioxide and leave to EPA’s discretion whether regulation is required, (c) EPA must regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, (d) that some call greenhouse gases a “pollutant” while others simply call it “life”

9. Internationally, the biggest news of 2007 will be (a) the introduction and then termination of carbon rationing cards in the U.K., (b) Germany’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, (c) the announcement by Hugo Chavez that Venezuela will conduct a nuclear test, (d) China’s devaluation of its currency sending the dollar into a tailspin

10. In 2007, here at Prometheus we will see (a) an angel bequeathing a massive endowment to our Center, (b) the blog reinvented at another university far, far away, (c) new authors and new contributors, and an ever-expanding readership (d) enough on climate change already, .and a shift to The Honest Broker.

My guesses below.

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All of us here at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado/CIRES would like to send our readers best wishes for the holiday season and a happy new year!

We greatly value the excellent feedback, comments, suggestions, and contributions from the readers/commentors on our blog, who we believe are the best you will find on any blog on any subject. We look forward to 2007 and a chance to continue to learn from our many substantive interactions with our knowledgeable readers. For our part you can expect that we’ll continue to provide analysis and commentary in the new year, and you can expect that some things you’ll agree with, some you won’t, and sometimes we’ll make really excellent arguments and sometimes we won’t!

Over the holidays we’ll be paying attention, and maybe blogging if the occasion is right. So during the next 10 days or so, if your comment gets held up, just drop us an email and we’ll get it online as soon as we can.

Happy Holidays!!

Here are some thoughts about a number of related op-eds that I came across this Sunday morning.

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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.