on foresight

http://xkcd.com/582/

Peak All

It matters somewhat whether fossil fuels are used up before or after really major climate change cuts in. Peak oil seems to be in our future regardless, but there is some question about peak coal.

Climate change specialists in my experience scoff at the concept, but there is some talk here and there that we will run out of coal somewhere not too far in excess of the 500 ppmv that climate folks are hoping to see as the peak. (Yes, we are still saying 450, but you can discount that a tad.)

Here's the picture from somebody called the Energy Watch Group. (Sorry for the excruciating colors. I can't help noticing that fuel people have a uniformly dreadful sense of graphic design.)



In the Oil Drum report, Shaun Chamberlain of the Lean Economy Connection points out that, as with oil, the energy required to extract the material increases over time, but, as is less true of oil, the quality of the material also varies dramatically. Accordingly, the mass peak of coal happens some time after the energy peak. The peak energy extraction appears to be only 25 years in the future.

I have zero expertise to bring to bear on the question. It seems plausible either way.

After all, I've seen several arguments that holders of oil resources are motivated to exaggerate their reserves. (Kunstler's Long Emergency, which seems excessive in many places, is pretty compelling on this score.)

Actually, I hope this scenario is true, because rather than science having to convince the world to avoid scenarios that they have a hard time imagining, those scenarios simply wouldn't be accessible.

The upshot would be the same: we have to move off of carbon as quickly as possible.

The only case where the delayers have anything useful to say is the one where greenhouse sensitivity is extremely small compared to the conventional wisdom and where coal supplies are large compared to the conventional wisdom. So this possibility of peak coal just further weakens the argument against getting in gear to make the shift.

The Great Relaxation Revisited

I have tried to make the case that an economic slowdown properly handled can be a good thing on balance, even though it will be certainly stressful in the short run for people who are unprepared for it. I proposed repackaging the whole business, dropping the depressing words "depression" and "recession" in favor of "relaxation", on the presumption that the level of activity in the most advanced economies is already excessive.

There's a pair of related articles that recently appeared on the Oil Drum by Nate Hagens The first, called "It's the Ecology, Stupid" (aargh, why didn't I think of that one!) Hagens summarizes the situation elegantly:

Our current socio-ecological regime is founded on a worldview that emerged during a period—the early Industrial Revolution—when the world was still relatively empty of humans and their built infrastructure (33). Natural resources were abundant, social settlements were sparser, and inadequate access to infrastructure and consumer goods represented the main limit on improvements to human well-being. This set of circumstances has been called an ‘‘empty’’ world (34). In an empty world, it made sense to ignore relatively abundant ecosystem goods and services, and to favor the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few so that it could be invested and focus solely on increasing the consumption of market goods and services, which were relatively scarce. If wealth had to be concentrated in the hands of the few where it would be invested to fuel future growth, rather than distributed to the many where it would be consumed at the cost of growth, this was a sacrifice the present had to make for the future.

Our current worldview of what is desirable and what is possible was obviously forged in this empty world context. For example, ‘‘recession,’’ our word for economic decline, is defined as two or more consecutive quarters in which the GDP does not grow. Unending physical growth of the economy is only possible within a system unconstrained by any biophysical limits. Our current institutional and technical approach is also an extension of a long-term trend of adaptation to an empty world. Western society has increasingly favored the institutions that promote the private sector over the public sector, capital accumulation by the few over asset building by the many (35, 36), and finance over the production of real goods and services.

...

Our current [worldview is] failing to meet our needs in a changing world. Anthropogenic climate change, peak oil, biodiversity loss, rising food prices, pandemics, ozone depletion, pollution, and the loss of other life-sustaining ecosystem services all pose serious threats to civilization. These crises can be traced back to one, albeit complex problem: we have failed to adapt our current socioecological regime from an empty world to a full world. The aspects of our regime that no longer serve us in a full world can be grouped under two interrelated themes: a belief in unlimited growth, and a growing and unsustainable complexity.

In fact, I wish I had written pretty much the whole thing.

the task is huge and will take a concerted and sustained effort if we hope to make the transition a relatively smooth one. It will require a whole systems approach at multiple scales in space and time. It will require integrated, systems-level redesign of our entire socio-ecological regime, focused explicitly and directly on the goal of sustainable quality of life rather than the proxy of unlimited material growth. It must acknowledge physical limits, the nature of complex systems, a realistic view of human behavior and well-being, the critical role of natural and social capital, and the irreducible uncertainty surrounding these issues. It is also important to recognize, however,that a transition will occur in any case, and that it will almost certainly be driven by crises. Whether these crises lead to decline or collapse followed by ultimate rebuilding, or to a relatively smooth transition depends on our ability to anticipate the required changes and to develop new institutions that are better adapted to those conditions.

Hagen's followup is to call attention to an article by Jay Hanson that most people, myself included, would find excessive. Like the Unabomber tract, there are interesting ideas buried in the madness and it's not unworthy of your attention, though I would like to make clear that I don't think it's remotely ethically sound and so it's fortunate that it's impractical as well.

But I did like the idea that we should replace "avarice" with "sloth" as the key vice of our age. "Lazy is good" needs to be our motto. "Shoddy is better than nothing". Or how about "Less fear, more beer." In times of shortage, laziness is immoral. In times of glut and surplus, ambition is immoral. It's the common good that requires us to scale back our ambitions.

Jay Hanson (no relation to Jim Hansen, presumably) has been talking doom at www.dieoff.org for some time. Like most peak-oilers he is infected with a truly wretched sense of design as well as a sort of apocalyptic vocabulary, but he makes more sense than you might want to admit.

On a related note I finally had a chance to actually confront an economist today about some of this stuff. She had given a talk to the Ethical Society of Austin about the roots of the economic crisis; you know, credit swaps, excessive mortgages, and all. The word "resources" never appeared.

Of course, I, member in good standing of the Virtual Club of Rome, raised the issue of limits to growth. The response was telling. It was nonsensical to talk about limits, since they were so abstract and obviously so far into the future. Substitutability. Outer space. Technology. Bla bla bla. This was all to be expected and all eventually came up.

But the strangest comment was the first one: "Why would you want to limit growth?" As if the laws of physics represented a political position! Talk about "head-slappingly false".

I think the tautology is pretty obvious, but it's outside the box for economists. I mentioned it to her and she seemed to hear it, but she didn't find it germane to her interests or as providing a realistic constraint to her models and theories.

We are just not talking their language. It's like trying to bring the hockey rule of the blue line into a conversation on swine flu.

Ultimately, it seems there are people who have tremendous faith in technology who don't really understand or care about the principles of thermodynamics. I suspect if you could catch Jeffrey Sachs in an unguarded moment he might admit to getting it. Other than the ecological / environmental economics fringes, though, you will have a hard time finding another economist who cares very much about the earth as a physical system, not even the most down-to-earth ones, like Stiglitz or DeLong or Krugman.

The most mind-boggling thing was that the economist I was talking to thought our problems were because politicians weren't paying enough attention to economists. It's really like these people live on a different planet.

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Image from The Non-Consumer Advocate from a related article called "In Defense of Non-Productivity"

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Waxman-Markey Bill

It's interesting how none of the proponents of Waxman-Markey would point to the text, but it's not hard to find. It's linked here and is officially called the "American Clean Energy and Security Act".

Although it is one of those things intimidatingly described as being over 600 pages long, it was very amusing to discover that the margins and font size match what you'd expect for a nine-year-old's primer. There are about 200 words per page at most. So, though inhumanely formatted, the entire thing is only about 120,000 words. Not an easy thing to read but not overwhelming either.

Where did this come from? Waxman and Markey's staffs? Lobbyists? Anyway it is proportionally less mysterious at 200 words per page than at the 1000 or so I imagined. (This is the first time I ever looked at draft legislation.)

The claim for the legislation is as follows:

The American Clean Energy and Security Act will create millions of new clean energy jobs, save consumers hundreds of billions of dollars in energy costs, enhance America's energy independence, and cut global warming pollution. To meet these goals, the legislation has four titles:

• * A clean energy title that promotes renewable sources of energy, carbon capture and sequestration technologies, low-carbon fuels, clean electric vehicles, and the smart grid and electricity transmission;
• * An energy efficiency title that increases energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy, including buildings, appliances, transportation, and industry;
• * A global warming title that places limits on emissions of heat-trapping pollutants; and
• * A transitioning title that protects U.S. consumers and industry and promotes green jobs during the transition to a clean energy economy.

The process envisioned by the committee is as follows:

The Energy and Commerce Committee will complete consideration of the legislation by Memorial Day. The preliminary schedule follows:

• Week of April 20: Energy and Environment Subcommittee Hearings
• Week of April 27: Energy and Environment Subcommittee Markup Period Begins
• Week of May 11: Full Energy and Commerce Committee Markup Period Begins

So this thing is well on its way. My biggest concern is that it is a bundle of good intentions with nonobvious flaws that the drafters of the bill will not have the time to see but that the impacted industries will have ample time and motivation to discover and exploit. This is the reason to always err on the side of simplicity.

First impression: This is not a cap and trade bill. This is a big pile of conventional wisdom bill. The trouble with conventional wisdom is that it may not be consistent. Inconsistent legislation leads to incoherent behavior, which makes things worse. I can't understand why something of this importance needs to be rushed. Yes, the present congress needs to act, but they have another year to iron out the kinks and promote the product.

The argument for rushing, aside from the usual naive confusion about the time scales of the climate problem (and probably about the time scales of the "green economy" and surely about the economic tradeoffs of it) amounts to "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush", and the argument for cap and trade over a tax amounts to "it's pretty much the same thing but the teabaggers won't put up with it if we call it a tax". On the latter point, sorry but nobody is being fooled, teabaggers included.

On the arguments from urgency, wouldn't it be better to 1) take the time to think things through and 2) try to exert some leadership so that the public understands and supports the endeavor? These suggestions appear alien to the present governing class and lobbying classes, which means that not much has changed yet.

And, though it's always a bit baffling to see Republicans attacking Wall Street, don't they have a point here?

Barton and Walden are now pressing the EPA about why the case took so long to prosecute, the apparent leniency in sentencing, and the reported prosecution cost of $80 million. They're also probing the accuracy of EPA comments indicating there may be a raft of other fraud cases that haven't been investigated.

Legislators also point to alleged fraud in the European Union emissions trading market. Under the program, companies are allowed to offset their emissions by investing in projects like high-efficiency power plants that cut greenhouse gas emissions. These projects are often located overseas where verification is difficult, if not impossible.

Environmental groups alleged, and EU officials acknowledged, that much of the offsets weren't legitimate. "Billions of dollars have been transferred from taxpayers to undeserving project developers and a growing army of carbon brokers and consultants," said environmental organization Friends of the Earth.

Such examples are also raising fears about the next U.S. market, which will be far more complicated and much larger than both Reclaim and the EU emissions program.

"All of the evil things that Wall Street will do to an unregulated financial commodity market, they will try to do in spades to this carbon market," said Mark Cooper, head of research at the Consumer Federation of America.

Yes, of course Barton will oppose a tax just as vehemently, but will he have as cogent an argument?

We already have the example of well-intentioned major legislation on corn ethanol backfiring spectacularly. Nobody said this was going to be easy.

Can we have the same level of intellectual rigor about legislation as we do about science or medicine or engineering? Where did the Waxman-Markey text come from, and what makes anybody think that three weeks of markup will be enough, given the corporate interests' decades of followup looking for profitable loopholes, never mind weaknesses in enforcement.

I want some reassurance that years of critical thought went into this document. As far as I know it sprung into existence this year as a direct consequence of existing political constraints and not much else. Please tell me I am wrong.

I suppose I have to try to read it now. Groan.

The Two Cultures

Living in Austin is fun, but sometimes you wonder if you can actually participate in anything important if you don't live on one of the coasts, something I have peculiarly never managed. This weekend, I am just beside myself with frustration that I can't possibly attend the New York Academy of Sciences meeting reprising C P Snow's famous "Two Cultures" lecture. I guess we can hope that it's captured and logged somehow. Who knows?

(Chris Mooney, who is not only attending but is on the panel (jealous fume) recently said it had not yet filled up. Not sure if this is still true, but if you are in commuter train range of the City, you might want to consider attending.)

This comes to mind because of two photoblog windows that happen to be open in the usual smattering of attention deficit evidence on my desktop. (Hmm... We live in a time when desktops have windows...)

From the wonderful thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com (which is largely about text as art), we have this quote: "There is no way to draw anything wrong."

And from the marine biology blog Guilty Planet, which I discovered via an alarming bit of historical fumetti about fish catches in the Keys, we have this in Jennifer Jacquet's blurb:

"As a kid, she read 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth and would come to discover that while those 50 things were indeed simple, saving the Earth was not."

Which to me says this: in the arts, there is respect for every opinion while in the sciences there is disrespect for every opinion. Accordingly, in a society where, as Paul Murray recently pointed out, almost everyone who understands science is a scientific professional, the encouraging, positive, go along-to-get-along relativism of the arts is considered social adept while the challenging, skeptical, everything-you-know-is-wrong absolutism of the sciences is considered maladroit, arrogant and offensive.



So, last night, I managed to meet my old friend King of the Road, who showed up among the In It readership a few months back, for dinner at a little barbecue place halfway to Houston. (Again, the blog habit makes my life better while holding down a fringe science job just seems to get in the way.) I guess we had chatted on the phone once in the twenty years intervening since we last met, but it was interesting to see how quickly patterns of an old friendship reassert themselves sometimes. Anyway, Rob's (King's) take on all this is something like "the world is put together in a certain way, and science tries to be put together that way, so there can't be a better way to understand the world". He also said that if you just want to eat, sleep and play guitar, he could perfectly understand that, but then you probably should defer to people who like to think when you put together your opinions.

Anyway, that's the choir; there are many more blogs addressing this group (I mean teh science group, not the guitar group) than our population would presently warrant. Why do we talk to each other and not the world? Because we like to think. Because we do not know how to talk to the rest of the world very effectively. Because the world isn't very interested. Because most people form ideas and then look for evidence to support those ideas rather than looking for evidence to shoot their ideas down. Because most people are taught to trust their intuitions while we are taught to treat them with the deepest suspicion.

What's really at issue is the gap in cognitive style. People simply do not accept that some people are much better at thinking about certain subjects than most everybody else; even though they are quite content to have basketball superstars and guitar heroes.

Paul Murray has quoted one member of the Texas Board of Education as saying "If I don't understand it, it isn't science".

This person's opinion is consequential; he was deciding on the next decade of science education in Texas and indirectly of many of the rural states that follow Texas's lead.

So my view of the two cultures isn't science vs the arts; it's science vs. everybody who doesn't get science. Most politicians, lawyers and business people are included in the "don't get it" group.

As things become overwhelmingly complex, what we need is a society in which intellectual humility is tied to respect for scientific process. When I was a boy, I thought it obvious that this was emerging, but my intuition, alas, was wrong.

So finally, Mr. Obama is increasing the profile and the budget for science. Rob and I discussed what this would amount to. I moaned about all the ways the scientific enterprise itself is broken (partly due to the decades of neglect, partly due to its own internal contradictions). Rob quickly picked up with the question of whether a sudden influx of resources would help very much; indeed, whether there was all that much of use that science could do. I think if the influx is quasi-permanent (which is to say, that the collapse of the republican coalition is permanent) it may attract some of the people science has been losing to such unproductive pursuits as law or finance, but that's a very slow process.

If Obama wants to support science, shoveling money into grant programs may not be the way to do it. There are very serious problems in the way science is designed, conducted and communicated. Business as usual with a few extra bucks may return the halcyon days of the 50s and 60s for a short while. We could re-establish the PhD mill for a few years but isn't sustainable. Science cannot go back to growing, as a professional enterprise, faster than society as a whole. It's that growth rate/sustainability thing again. There is a limit to how many people can be paid to do science.

The main point, though is this. There is no way to draw anything wrong. But there is only one way to think anything right.

I think science desperately needs improvement on two fronts. The first is science that is less effective at writing publications and more effective at reading them, doubting them, testing them and making the winners accessible.

The second, and this is even more important, is to take science education and science promotion and amateur science seriously. That is, people need to reassess the relationship between opinion and fact such that fact wins.

I'll try to make this case to Obama's RFC. We don't, for the most part, need more science. We need better science, and we need better connections between science and the rest of the world.

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Picture from Jerry Mikeska's Barbeque at I-10 exit 698. (in Texas of course; does anybody else have an exit 698?) Turn your sound volume down before clicking, or don't say I didn't warn you. Jerry stopped by our table said hi. Like any small business type in Texas, he is a very nice man, but in the interest of scientific accuracy I have to say his brisket is nasty. Stick with the sausage which is fine.

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Cap & Trade vs Emissions Tax

A nice effort to untangle the cap and trade vs carbon tax mess at Yale Environment360, interviewing eight experts.

There was disagreement on many points, but on one issue most concurred. As Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, said, imposing some sort of price on fossil fuels “is a big improvement over the do-nothing status quo.”

If this is the best they can do, I find the cap-and-trade arguments very unconvincing both in themselves and by comparison with those advanced by carbon tax proponents.

This (from Fred Krupp of the EDF) seems to be the crux of their argument:

From an environmental point of view, the advantage of an emissions cap over a carbon tax is clear: A cap puts a legal limit on pollution. A tax does not. Guessing what level of tax might drive the pollution cuts we need to avert runaway climate change is a risk we simply can’t afford to take. Only a cap with strong emissions reduction targets — and clear rules for meeting them — can guarantee that we achieve the environmental goal.

That is the sort of argument you get from people who are not telling you their real motivations. The time constant of the problem is thirty years; the time constant of a tax rate is what? The Fed adjusts the prime several times a year. It's an argument without foundation in reality, and yet all the proponents quoted here are flogging it very hard. As usual when people advance ideas that seem obviously wrong to me, I wonder how they are motivated to convince themselves of this.

Compare to, say, Jeffrey Sachs's argument:

Cap-and-trade emissions trading seems to politicians to be the ideal solution. It is “market-based,” does not require the T-word (taxes), and can be worked out with special-interest groups in back-room negotiations. For the rest of us, however, cap-and-trade seems a funny way to do business.

A straightforward carbon tax has vast advantages. It can be levied upstream at a few dozen places — at the wellhead, the mine face, and the liquid natural gas depot — rather than at thousands or tens of thousands of businesses. A carbon tax covers the entire economy, including automobiles, household use, and other units impossible to reach in cap-and-trade. A carbon tax puts a clear price on carbon emissions for many years ahead, while a cap-and-trade system gives a highly fluctuating spot price. A carbon tax raises a clear amount of revenue, which can be used for targeted purposes (R&D for sustainable energy) or rebated to the public in one way or another, while the revenues from a cap-and-trade system are likely to be bargained away well before the first trade ever takes place.

As usual, Sachs makes sense to me. You?

Update: Joe Romm, to me unsurprisingly, falls into line, but very much to his credit allows and attracts extensive discussion in the comments to his posting. I found some of the comments very interesting indeed. There is, in particular, some very pointed criticism of the Waxman bill itself from Laurie Williams, with a link to a detailed analysis, and this very cogent comment from Dan Galpern:

Serious shortcomings in the Waxman-Markey (W-M) measure, some of which you have illuminated, coupled with the nature of the climate crisis, which you have done so much to publicize, easily could lead persons to support an alternative. While your ear may be finely tuned to Washington-insider realpolitik, it is not true that every proposal not already supported by this administration is off the table. Indeed, the W-M draft retains gaping holes with respect to auctioning, use of revenues, and so on. A full-throated debate about this legislation remains necessary and relevant.

Also, this comment on an article on DailyKos:

First, I agree that we've simply ignored this for far too long. However, I'm also concerned that the recent doom-mongering is yet another iteration of the Shock Doctrine - an attempt by the Wall Street set to push through policies which have not been very successful in curbing carbon emissions, but merely create yet another phony market for speculators to siphon off the labor of the productive. Without a doubt, a carbon tax will be more successful in achieving these goals with a lower economic cost, yet we're told: "Don't worry about that! Don't think! We have to pass cap-and-trade immediately, or we're all doomed!"

Have we really not yet learned to disregard media-driven hysteria and think rationally?

I don't think that's what motivates David Roberts or Joe Romm, but it's worth a ponder whether it's what's pushing the congress away from a simple tax/dividend scheme.

Meta: This little throw-away item has legs. Energy Collective picked it up, and David replied to it (among others, but I think I may have been the prverbial straw and David the respective camel) not only on Grist but also on Huffington.

Since this is all over the place, I need to follow up. Here is what I wrote on Grist. Huffington invariably loses my comments so I'll post it here instead.

Since we've been so far from any legislative action until now, I hadn't thought much about the exact form that action would take. So I'm a novice to this part of the debate, looking for cogent arguments. I am not yet trying to stake out a position; I am just reporting my initial reactions to the positions presented in the Yale article.

All I have heard from cappers so far, other than the argument that cap and trade creates a cap better than a tax does, is counterarguments to the arguments for the tax, and arguments from expediency ("the document already exists") indifference ("it should be quite possible to reach pretty much the same result from either direction") and failure of leadership ("the general population will not tolerate a tax but may be fooled briefly by a policy that is not called a tax, which raises energy prices and creates federal revenue").

So I have four problems:

1) Frankly, it is dishonest to create a Rube Goldberg contraption that is effectively a tax, call it somehting else, and deny that any taxation is involved. It continues the behaviors that make people distrust politics and politicians and the process that keeps the population confused about cause and effect.

2) It starts from complexity, leaving it impossible to advocate for simplicity and transparency.

3) It is presented as a fait accompli, but I have no idea where it came from. Where was the public consultation? Where was the effort to bring the public on board?

4) It smacks very much of business-as-usual, lobbyists, earmarks, etc. Businesses with Washington insider status get huge giveaways. Startups whose skills are actually in energy technology are placed at a distinct disadvantage.

In short, all the advantages you propose seem tactical rather than substantive. Even presuming those tactical advantages are true, the origins of the tactical advantage are deeply obscure from where I am sitting. It just feels like something elaborate and unclear is being sprung on me, and that most of the people supporting it are more interested in politics than in science.

Kevin Drum's rebuttal to Sachs is typical. It states pretty much that if you put the right ingredients into cap-and-trade it can act a lot like a tax. Your caliing Sachs "head-slappingly false" really doesn't seem to follow from that. If you put the right ingredients into a soup it can taste a whole lot like a chocolate cake, but that is still not what I want you to put my birthday candles in.

So again: it's easy to understand what a simple carbon tax would look like and how it could be tuned to achieve desired objectives. A compelling argument would address the follwoing:

1) What is cap and trade? Is it better in principle than a tax, and if so, why?

2) What exactly is the 700 page bill you are putting up as an alternative? (preferably with a link to the text and another link to a plain-english pointwise summary)

3) Where did it come from? Who drafted it? When? What interests are accounted for?

4) How are new ideas balanced against established interests? Specifically, given that existing interests are given permits, doesn't it systematically promote large institutional and corporate interests while suppressing startups and innovation? This is a clear weakness: what compensates for it?

Again, I am just starting to think about this. Honestly, I am nowhere near committed. Although the "head-slappingly" thing seems contrived to wedge me away, I am not entirely decided yet. Maybe all these questions are answered. All I say is that based on the Yale piece, I am becoming nervous that the answers are not going to be very compelling.

Administration RFC

From the Office of Science and Technology Policy:

Presidential Memo on Scientific Integrity: Request for Comment

On March 9, 2009, the President issued a memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies on the subject of scientific integrity, stating that “science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues.”

The memorandum requires the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to craft recommendations for Presidential action to ensure scientific integrity in the executive branch. We hereby seek public input to inform the drafting of those recommendations.

Comments from the public will help the OSTP determine what should be included in these recommendations. Over the next six posts on this blog, we will seek your comments, as they may pertain to each of the six different principles outlined in the memorandum. To provide some seeds for thought, we have asked one or two framing questions after each principle. Feel free to respond in other ways to the principle, or even to other comments. You may want to consult the Fact Sheet for the Memorandum before commenting.

This comment period will end on May 13th. Thank you in advance for your input.

Here's more on the memorandum:

Today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation. It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology." - President Barack Obama

• * Today, President Obama is signing a Presidential Memorandum on scientific integrity. This memorandum helps to implement one of the President’s key campaign commitments on science policy, which was to "restore scientific integrity in government decision making."
• * Science and technology are essential to achieving a broad range of national goals: driving economic growth and job creation; allowing Americans to live longer, healthier lives; developing clean sources of energy that reduce our dependence on foreign oil; protecting our environment for future generations of Americans; strengthening national and homeland security; and more.
• * Realizing the potential of science and technology to help achieve all of these goals requires that the Administration’s decisions about public policy be guided by the most accurate and objective scientific advice available. The public must be able to trust that advice, as well, and to be confident that public officials will not conceal or distort the scientific findings that are relevant to policy choices.
• * Accordingly, the President is assigning to the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) the responsibility of ensuring the highest level of integrity in all aspects of the executive branch’s involvement with scientific and technological issues.
• * Within 120 days, the Director of OSTP must develop a strategy for ensuring that:

1. - The selection of scientists and technology professionals for science and technology positions in the executive branch is based on those individuals’ scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, and experience;
2. - Agencies make available to the public the scientific or technological findings or conclusions considered or relied upon in policy decisions;
3. - Agencies use scientific and technological information that has been subject to well-established scientific processes such as peer review; and
4. - Agencies have appropriate rules and procedures to ensure the integrity of the scientific process within the agency, including whistleblower protection.

H/T @timoreilly

Transition Town Austin

Hello, Central Texas! (Is this thang on?) Howdy y'all!

Now don't get me wrong. I like the people who have been showing up at the early meetings of Transition Town Austin. But it's not enough.

We need to see a critical mass of upbeat, creative and technically adept folks. Valuable as local production is, the transition to a post-fossil-fuel world isn't just about turnip farming.

That special Austin energy is just the kick in the butt that the Transition movement needs. Let's see if we can't make it happen.

A great opportunity to kick off a bright green approach to Austin's future happens next week at a reorganization meeting for Transition Austin.

I made y'all a little web page to make the case. Go have a look.

Check out the recent coverage of the transition movement in the NYTimes magazine. And please come join the meetup on the evening of Tuesday the 12th.

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As far as I can tell, the excellent logo appears in only one undistinguished place on the net: www.green-e.org/news/Green-eNewsSummer2007.html The anonymous artist deserves better.

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Tonight: Why Earth Science is Under Attack in Texas

Paul Murray is an oil man and a self-avowedly conservative voter. His slide above reads "There is an anti-science coalition in our country. They are in denial or misrepresenting their views." Paul is active in the resistance to the injection of religion into the school science curriculum. (photo credit: me and my iPhone)

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“Caught in the Crossfire: Why Earth Science is Under Attack in Texas”
by Paul E. Murray

7 PM Monday May 4

Building 130: The Bureau of Economic Geology
10100 Burnet Road
Austin, Texas 78758

The Texas State Board of Education is completing its decadal revision to the science standards for K-12 schools in Texas. This year features the addition of standards for the proposed capstone course in Earth and Space Science (ESS) for a 4th year high school science credit. The headlines around the world regarding the Texas science standards have focused on the debate over the teaching of evolution in biology class, but the same forces on the State Board who wish to weaken biology have now turned their sites on the ESS curriculum as well. It is a tale of subterfuge, deceit and political maneuvering that has implications not just for Texas students, but for the textbooks and science standards across the entire nation. This talk is intended to be a primer on the issues, a cautionary tale, and a call to action for geoscientists in Texas .

Paul E. Murray, Vice President, Texas Citizens for Science

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Update: I thought Paul had the audience wrapped around his finger, but he tells me there was some kicking back after the event. Anyway, he's an excellent and convincing speaker, and he and some audience members painetd a grim picture of resurgent superstition being exported not only to other parts of America but to other countries as well, so don't y'all feel so smug about Texas, thanks. Two of his main points that stick with me:

- The group of people who understand science is not substantially different from the group of people who do science for a living.

- If you comb through the data to select evidence to support your point of view, no matter what you think about science, what you are doing is not science by definition.

Steady State Economy

There's an outfit called the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Here is its position statement, which has some notable signatories.

In my articles of last week and future followups I have been trying to decide if there might be some way to thread the needle: i.e., keep the necessary forms of growth to avoid disruption of the administrative processes we have developed in a growth economy, while avoiding further growth in impact and indeed allowing a slow scaling back. As far as I know I am the only person trying to articulate such a position, if it is feasible. If I become convinced it is infeasible, I will sign on to the CASSE position.

Via Tommy T, here is a recent open letter from the organization's executive director:

The evidence continues to mount. The way we run the economy around
the world is damaging the life-support systems of the planet. We are
treading water in a sea of profound environmental problems (like
climate disruption, species extinctions, and deforestation to name a
few). At the same time, our financial systems have entered a crisis
mode in the midst of increasing unemployment and a widening gap
between the haves and the have-nots. In the quest for economic growth,
the nations of the world are locked in a tragic competition for the
planet’s remaining natural capital. If economic growth is the best way
to manage our affairs, then why should I be worried about global
warming and losing my job at the same time?

The grow-at-all-costs mindset is at fault. It is time to examine the
irrational assumptions behind this mindset and get busy changing it to
fit the realities of the natural world. The modifier “grow-at-all-
costs” is perfectly applicable. Nations have an acute unwillingness to
explore the costs of growth. Economic growth is simply an increase in
the production and consumption of goods and services, and is indicated
by increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP, therefore, has become
the standard measure of economic progress, even though it was only
intended as an accounting tool. Prompted by banks, governmental
organizations, and the media, citizens generally applaud increases in
GDP. The problem with GDP is that it doesn’t separate costs from
benefits. It simply adds them together under the heading of economic
activity. Even if the costs of growth outweigh the benefits, as the
evidence suggests, we still pursue it.

The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE)
takes a different position. The CASSE position, a document that can be
signed by individuals and endorsed by organizations, recognizes the
conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. It
proposes the steady state economy, characterized by stable population
and per capita consumption, as a desirable alternative to continued
growth.

Many leading sustainability thinkers have signed this position,
including David Suzuki, Vandana Shiva, David Orr, Bill McKibben,
Herman Daly, Caroline Lucas, Gus Speth, and Wendell Berry. Dozens of
organizations have endorsed the position, and it has been used as a
model for professional scientific societies to adopt their own
positions on economic growth. The point is to develop a critical mass
of support behind the idea of prosperous, yet non-growing economy – a
truly sustainable and green economy. Without this critical mass,
politicians will remain stuck in the old paradigm of growth that
continues to erode the foundation of life-support systems on the planet.

To find evidence that our leaders are mired in the old paradigm, we
need look no further than the bank bailouts. Stimulus spending to get
the economy growing is not the change we need. We can certainly strive
for growth in some industries, such as solar energy, but it must be
accompanied by declines in others, such as fossil fuel energy. As we
sift through the rubble of our collapsed financial institutions, we
shouldn’t be looking at how to rebuild them into the same old
apparatus of growth. It’s the incessant growth, mostly in the form of
speculative bubbles, that caused the collapse in the first place.

Many policy changes can help us establish financial systems and an
economy that are sustainable. But the chances of enacting them are
miniscule until we can demonstrate that a broad base of the electorate
recognizes that perpetual exponential economic growth is not the path
to prosperity. Simply put, society has to demand the change before it
can occur. We need to take a position on economic growth and promote
the concept of the steady state economy on the streets of our
communities, in the halls of our governments, and in the corridors of
our businesses. With enough voices, we can jumpstart the transition to
a better economy.

Please sign the CASSE position on economic growth to voice support for
a prosperous, yet non-growing economy.

Robert Dietz,

Executive Director

Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) is
a U.S. nonprofit organization, and our mission is to advance the
steady state economy, with stabilized population and consumption, as a
policy goal with widespread public support.

www.steadystate.org