The Obama draft stimulus legislation is circulating around D.C. (see the ScienceInsider blog for some breakdowns overall and by agency).  This is a separate pile of money from the second half of the TARP money approved by the Bush Administration.  Scientific research (in contrast to other science and technology intensive programs) is slated to get $13.3 billion, primarily for research and infrastructure spending.  This is a funding spike, so anyone assuming these increases will persist is in denial.  An important point that I’ve only seen in Kei Koizumi’s analysis at the AAAS website (H/T ScienceInsider) is that the stimulus is looking for the research equivalent of ’shovel-ready’ projects.  The key language:

“The bill requires nearly all of the funding to be awarded within 120 days of when the President signs the bill into law, with staggered deadlines of 30 days for formula funds, 90 days for competitive grants, and 120 days for competitive grants in brand-new programs, with the intention of spending the funding as quickly as possible to provide immediate economic stimulus. Nearly all of the money is designated as FY 2009 money, with agencies allowed to obligate funds until the end of FY 2010, but there are numerous ‘use it or lose it’ provisions in the bill to ensure that the funds are awarded, obligated, and spent as quickly as possible.”

If this bill is signed by the President’s Day recess (the current goal, slipping from Inauguration Day), funds will need to be awarded (not applied for), depending on the program, as soon as the middle of March, and at the latest by the middle of May.  The rationale here is that the stimulus needs to be quick, and the money dispersed into the economy quickly.  I can see that for the infrastructure investments, but I’m not convinced that the multiplier effect of research spending either increases with speed, or expresses itself in anything resembling the short term.

Last month I posted a strong criticism of Munich Re for issuing a press release that I asserted went “over the line” of scientific credibility in its discussion of the connections of human-caused climate change and disaster losses. Munich Re has graciously provided a formal response to that post. The response, authored by Eberhard Faust, follows.

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The Scientist is running an excerpt (H/T: Science Progress) from the forthcoming memoir of Dr. Harold Varmus, former National Institutes of Health Director, Nobel laureate, and future co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  The book will be called The Art and Politics of Science, and covers the bulk of his career.  The excerpt focuses on the funding challenges – particularly in setting research priorities – that any NIH Director faces.  While Varmus doesn’t use the language, the excerpt describes several instances where advocates for particular trees (diseases) weren’t concerned with the other parts of the forest that could help fight their cause.  Pieces of the excerpt after the jump.

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A reporter just wrote me to ask for reactions to this new “analysis” by the good folks at DeSmogBlog, which reports that from 2007 to 2008 blog mentions of combinations of “global warming” plus terms like “hoax” and “lie” and “skeptic” have doubled, suggesting, according to DeSmogBlog,

a very significant upswing in online activity. This trend should be troubling to US policymakers and campaigners wanting to implement new greenhouse gas reduction strategies.

Here is my response:

I just searched “global warming” + pizza and came up with the following:

2007 — 11,168
2008 — 24,907

Maybe there is a connection with secret Domino’s funding?

Social science this is not.

All the best,

Roger

There is indeed a lot of junk on the internet. Be careful out there.

Yesterday I commented with a slightly raised eyebrow at comments made by Steven Chu, President-elect Obama’s choice to head DOE, on the future of coal. Dr. Chu’s comments seemed to reflect a much more conciliatory tone toward coal as a key part of America’s energy future. Today’s raised eyebrow comes after reading some comments by Henery Waxman, (D-CA), new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as reported in the E&E ClimateWire:

As the coal industry awaits the first global warming hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee today, many of its members are asking, “Which Henry Waxman will show up?”

Will it be the Beverly Hills liberal who pushed for a moratorium last year on new coal-fired generators unable to capture their greenhouse gas emissions? Or a moderate willing to shift policy gears in his new role as chairman of the committee that is expected to write the next climate bill in the House?

In recent days, the California Democrat has been sounding more like a centrist than a fossil-fuel fighter as he prepares to gavel the energy committee’s first hearing on the topic today.

“Everything is on the table about coal,” Waxman said on Capitol Hill yesterday.

That statement followed comments last week in which he said he expected coal to “play an important role in our overall sources of energy” in the future. Asked yesterday whether those comments signaled a move to the center, he said he wants to start the chairmanship with a clean slate and “doesn’t have a position yet to change.” . . .

Many environmental groups continue to express optimism about the path Waxman will take and argue that his seemingly coal-friendly comments won’t change his advocacy for blocking new electricity generators that don’t control carbon output.

“The bottom line is that Waxman always has been a strong champion against global warming,” said Bruce Nilles, director of the national coal campaign at the Sierra Club. “Just because he says there is a future for coal doesn’t mean he’s suddenly opposed to a moratorium on power plants.”

Yet some political scientists familiar with Waxman’s style say he is one of the most politically shrewd politicians around, and that he recognizes the need to bring in members of the committee from coal states in order to get a climate bill passed. Among those Waxman will need is Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), who wants to pump money into a CCS extra-governmental fund by charging utilities a fee.

Bruce Cain, director of the University of California’s Washington Center, predicted that Waxman might follow the path of Vice President-elect Joe Biden on the coal issue. During the presidential campaign, Biden said there would be no new coal plants in America, but changed his rhetoric to match the Obama agenda after an industry outcry.

“People behave differently when in positions of leadership than when they’re on the outside,” Cain said of Waxman. “The guy knows how to play the political game and should never be confused with an airy-fairy idealist.”

It is a bit early in the year to staking out a position in the race for boneheaded move of the year in the climate wars, but NASA GISS has done just that but doubling down on its prediction that 2009 or 2010 will be the warmest on record. One might think that the surprising 2008 global temperatures (i.e., surprising to folks making short-term predictions at least) would motivate some greater appreciation for uncertainty. Not so. Here is what NASA GISS says:

. . . in response to popular demand, we comment on the likelihood of a near-term global temperature record. Specifically, the question has been asked whether the relatively cool 2008 alters the expectation we expressed in last year’s summary that a new global record was likely within the next 2-3 years (now the next 1-2 years). . . Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.

Joe Romm takes the startling position that the fortunes of climate policy may well depend on how temperature evolves over that period:

for better or worse, what happens to temperatures in the next few years may well affect just how much climate action that we are going to take

Joe might ask why it is that short-term behavior of the climate system has political meaning. I have some ideas. Offering predictions of the evolution of global temperatures on timescales of years is foolish, (especially so when you also control the dataset used to evaluate the predictions). Explicitly associating the evoloution of temperatures with political outcomes on such a short timescale is also foolish.

Here are some tips for NASA GISS and advocates for action on carbon dioxide emissions:

1) Maybe we can predict the climate over timescales of one to two years, and maybe we can’t. Such forecasts should be viewed as highly experiemental, and the track record of such forecasts is not so good.

2) Accelerating decarbonization of the global economy makes good sense, regardless of the evolution of global temperatures over the next 1, 2 or 10 years. As my father and I wrote in 2006:

There is no greater danger to support for action on important issues of human impacts on the environment than an overselling of what climate science can provide. If the climate behaves in ways that are unexpected or surprising it will be more than just credibility that is lost. Advocates for action should think carefully when gambling with the unknown predictive abilities of climate models. The human influence on the climate system is real, but the climate may not always cooperate.

SEED magazine is running an exit interview with Dr. John Marburger, President Bush’s science adviser, that it held on November 5.  Given the magazine’s endorsement of President-elect Obama was as much against Bush as for Obama, Dr. Marburger took the opportunity to respond to what he considers an endorsement “astoundingly inaccurate in its portrayal of President Bush’s policies, attitudes, and record of accomplishment in science.”  (You can also review my significant problems with the endorsement)  The arguments Dr. Marburger raises will be familiar to anyone who read his op-ed in Physicsworld.com, or at least what I posted about it.

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In his confirmation hearing, Steven Chu, Nobel laureate and next U.S. Secretary of Energy, reverses course on a few glib statements about energy policy.

First, last year Chu told the Wall Street Journal:

Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.

In yesterday’s hearing Chu reflected an apparent new-found concern about the effects of higher energy prices on ordinary folks:

What the American family does not want is to pay an increasing fraction of their budget, their precious dollars, for energy costs, both in transportation and keeping their homes warm and lit.

Similarly, Chu’s statement that coal is his “worst nightmare” has been widely cited. In yesterday’s hearing Chu explained, when asked to clarify that comment, that we are of course going to burn coal, we just have to figure out how to do it cleanly.

But I also have said many times in my talks, that coal is an abundant resource in the world. Two-thirds of the known coal reserves in the world lie in only four countries, the United States, first and foremost, followed by India, China and Russia. India, China, Russia and the United States, I believe, will not turn their back on coal, so it is imperative that we figure out a way to use coal as cleanly as possible. And so for that reason, I think again, my optimism as a scientist, we will develop those technologies to capture a large fraction of the carbon dioxide that is emitted from coal plants and safely sequester them. If confirmed as Secretary of Energy I will work very hard to develop these technologies so the United States and the rest of the world can use them.

Not going to raise the price of energy, huh? And promising clean coal, huh?

Welcome to Washington, Dr. Chu!!

Today the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held its confirmation hearing for Dr. Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy.  There is an archived webcast currently online (the hearing actually starts around the 15 minute mark, and runs roughly 2 hours and 14 minutes from that point).  The same committee has a confirmation hearing scheduled Thursday for Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior.

I have not watched the Chu hearing, and Dr. Chu’s nomination is not considered problematic.  What coverage I have seen on the hearing is one article from The Washington Post indicating that Dr. Chu carefully navigated through questions about climate change and alternative energy.

The graph below shows relative improvements in carbon dioxide emissions for four countries (from the U.S. Energy Information Agency) per national GDP (as measured in PPP terms and reported by Maddison). The data starts in 1991, selected because it is the first year that the EIA reports total emissions for reunified Germany.

The graph shows some interesting, and to me at least, surprising things.

First, even though Japan is very efficient, it has made little to no progress is reducing carbon dioxide per unit of GDP.

Second, Germany and the United States show very similar total gains in reducions of carbon dioxide per unit GDP, though Germany is more efficient in absolute terms. If Europeans climate policies have a signal in emissions per GDP, you certainly can’t see it in this data.

Third, less surprising to regular readers of this blog, China has seen a rapid increase in carbon dioxide per GDP since 2000.

I can share this data for any country since 1980, so if you have requests or hypotheses, please share in the comments or send me an email.