Policy
cmooney | February 7, 2007
Jonathan Adler, a specialist in environmental law at Case Western who contributes to the Volokh Conspiracy blog, has written a lengthy and thorough, if pretty critical, review of The Republican War on Science for the journal Regulation.
I am here posting a reply to Adler's review, but first, a few comments about why I'm doing this. When the book first came, out there were so many reviews I couldn't even begin to tackle or process them all. Meanwhile, some negative reviews were so nasty, misrepresentative, and lacking in substance that I didn't want to dignify them with any response…
clock | February 5, 2007People ask me that question often. Many assume that it is because Obama constantly invokes God in his speeches, while Edwards never does. But I know that religiosity is important in American politics today. Hopefully one day it will not be, or even better, overt religosity will become a handicap, i.e, being viewed by voters with suspicion. But that is not the reason why I made my choice the way I did.
My response to people who ask me this question is to explain how the GOP over the past 20-30 years systematically moved the entire political discourse in the USA to the Right. What used to…
j7uy5 | February 4, 2007It is looking as though the Colts are going to win this one.
Another interception, this time with the Bears on the losing end.
You just can't win if you keep throwing things away.
Over the past hour or so, I put plastic over two windows, because I was
throwing away heat. The winter here has been uncharacteristically
warm up until now, so I didn't bother with the usual insulation
ritual. But now it is 18 below zero (C).
There has been a lot of atypical weather this year in the USA.
Global warming? Could be, but it is very difficult to ascribe any
single event to any single cause. How…
pharyngula | February 3, 2007When will the Democrats learn? We are in an unpopular and failed war, and what a successful presidential candidate has to do is openly and uncompromisingly slam this unjust travesty and the incompetents who initiated it, yet Clinton and Edwards are enabling war fever, if not directly feeding it. Face it, war with Iran is off the table. It is not an option, unless we want to ruin our military and our economy; and the nuclear option is evil and unconscionable, and would utterly destroy our fast-fading moral standing. I wish we had a candidate who would just come out and say that.
I hate to say…
cmooney | January 31, 2007A very interesting issue--discussed in comments here and here--has arisen over one aspect of Roger Pielke, Jr.'s testimony yesterday. In that testimony (PDF), Pielke suggested that Waxman's committee had cherry-picked science with the following statement in a memorandum (the original of which I have not been able to locate):
". . . recently published studies have suggested that the impacts [of global warming] include increases in the intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms, increases in wildfires, and loss of wildlife, such as polar bears and walruses."
The above statement on hurricanes…
cortex | January 31, 2007Over at Slate, Gregg Easterbrook argues that the President's recent proposal to increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard by 4 percent a year is a brilliant and bold policy that will "reverse [oil] consumption trends". He blames the liberal media for not giving Bush the credit he deserves.
I'm skeptical. While I'm glad Bush has agreed to strengthen CAFE standards, I also think that CAFE standards are relatively useless. There are simply too many loopholes. Automakers can avoid CAFE standards by building trucks and SUV's - Bush wants "to extend the current Light Truck Rule…
tfk | January 30, 2007I like to joke that in Kansas, biology is political science. Even when I'm doing job interviews outside of this grand state, people usually get the joke, or need only slight prompting to get it. I take this to be a sad commentary on the state of politics in Kansas.
There is no doubt that the discovery of Tikaalik plays into political battles over creationism in schools. I have even less doubt that the discoverers of that "fishapod" would still have been just as excited by that discovery without the political issues. It's a fascinating discovery, as are the results in thousands of articles…
integrityofscience | January 30, 2007The reports from today's hearing, "Political Interference with the Work of Government Climate Change Scientists," are coming in. Hosted by Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing will be the first of many such investigative hearings. Part of the story is that documents demanded from the Council on Environmental Quality were not delivered on time, and then failed to meet the criteria of documents that were requested. So, in short, the Administration got off on the wrong foot ...
We're still digesting everything that happened today…
tfk | January 29, 2007Every few weeks, we gather the finest of Kansan and Kansas related bloggery. This week, a series of recipes.
Modern science: Drop an apple on Isaac Newton, wait until he realizes that the laws of nature apply to the whole universe. Use those laws to fly missions around the Moon, as described by Paul Decelles, and to produce cover art for one of rock's greatest albums.
Brussels Cockaigne: Wash and cut in half a dozen of honorary Kansan Bill Farrell's brussels sprouts. In a skillet, brown a couple cloves of garlic in a couple tablespoons of butter and an equal amount of olive oil. Remove…
j7uy5 | January 27, 2007...the
USA has not gotten all of its highly-enriched uranium back.
As reported in a special report in the Chicago Tribune, the
USA had a program in the '50's and 60's called "Atoms
for Peace." Initially, we supplied low-grade uranium fuel to
countries that pledged to not develop nuclear weapons. But at
some point, the policy shifted, and we began shipping the high-grade
stuff. The idea was that we would get it back when it was no
longer useful as fuel.
href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-061209atoms-day1-story,1,7163234.htmlstory">
href="http://www.…
pharyngula | January 24, 2007Grrr. This story pisses me off beyond all reason. It's a trumped up contretemps generated by one of our local Minnesota Republican hacks, griping about a UM faculty member using her campus email.
A University of Minnesota professor has come under fire for sending a message using her university e-mail account to help comedian Al Franken with his likely U.S. Senate candidacy.
Sally Kenney, director of the Center on Women and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, sent an e-mail last week from a "umn.edu" address to an undisclosed number of…
tfk | January 23, 2007There's a lot of excitement about ethanol lately, and the President will undoubtedly tell us more about ethanol tonight. But stopping the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases will take more than just changing how we fuel our cars.
A paper published in 2004 by Pacala and Socolow lays out a range of options for carbon reduction. The options span several major categories: promoting energy efficiency and conservation, shifting from coal to natural gas for electricity production, technological capture and storage of carbon dioxide, expanding energy production from nuclear fission, switching…
nisbetmc | January 20, 2007
Science issues are lining up to be a big part of the political jockeying by the 2008 presidential hopefuls. Plans are in the works to make Framing Science the-go-to-site for news and insight tracking the candidates' strategies and positions. So stay tuned...but today, an update on the GOP side.
Former MA Gov. Mitt Romney has emerged as a hot ticket on the GOP fundraising trail, reportedly raising millions, and accumulating top staff to join his Boston HQ. Meanwhile, Washington buzz is that he is already the candidate of choice among Christian conservatives, based on his strong anti-…
j7uy5 | January 20, 2007Under-the-Radar PoliticsI sure hope this doesn't sound too alarmist, gevalt,
over-the-top, whatever, but I noticed a post on Integrity of
Science that woke me up a little bit - before my coffee was
finished brewing.(The coffee, by the way, is Trader Joe's Tarrazu; it's made in
a co-op in Costa Rica. It's worth a try, if you can find it.)The post is this one:New
Oversight Policy Bad for Science-based DecisionmakingPosted
on: January 19, 2007 2:44 PM, by Ian HartPresident Bush
signed a whole heap of bad yesterday. Amendments to a Clinton-era
executive order will substantially increase the…
integrityofscience | January 19, 2007President Bush signed a whole heap of bad yesterday. Amendments to a Clinton-era executive order will substantially increase the influence of the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) over federal agencies such as NASA, the EPA, and the FDA. From Greenwire (subscription required):
Under revised Executive Order 12866, each agency must install a presidential appointee as its "regulatory policy officer," reporting to the agency head and involved "at each stage of the regulatory process." The Clinton order created the policy officer post but did not specify what type of agency…
tfk | January 18, 2007While Presidential gamesmanship is all the rage, with even Kansas trying to move its primaries earlier to get a bite of that apple, major moves are under way lower down on the ballot.
Perhaps most significantly for Scienceblogs readers, Bill Wagnon, current chairman of the Kansas Board of Education and the representative for most of the Lawrence area, has announced that he will not be running again. A successor to this moderate seat shouldn't be hard to find in the Lawrence area, but we need to start early. Moderates Carol Rupe and Sue Gamble will also be up for re-election if they choose…
mixingmemory | January 17, 2007So RPM of Evolgen and I were sitting around, chattin' about science blogging, when we suddenly realized that more and more, what science bloggers blog about is dictated not by science, but by anti-science. Creationists, global warming skeptics, anti-vaccine nuts, people who think the moon landing took place in New Mexico, etc. are increasingly in the science blogging driver's seat. We recognized, of course, that the anti-science people are largely to blame science bloggers dealing with anti-science, because they're the ones who keep touting their anti-science agendas, often publicly. This…
evolgen | January 17, 2007Do you consider yourself a Science Blogger? You could be a hard blogging scientist, science journalist, student of science, or just a member of the general public with an interest in the scientific process. If you identify with any of these, I've got a challenge for you.
It boils down to this:
One week of science blogging and only science blogging.
At least one post a day of pure science content.
No blogging about anti-science -- no creationism, no anti-vaccination, no global warming denialists.
Just Science from February 5 through February 11.
More information can be found here or…
tfk | January 16, 2007The National Research Council rejected proposed rules on assessing chemical risk:
Echoing concerns raised by scientists, consumer groups and agency heads, the council -- part of the congressionally chartered National Academies -- told the OMB to limit itself to outlining guiding principles and leave details to experts in the nation's scientific agencies.
Interesting concept, letting experts handle the specialized work. Doing that would allow regulators to take special account of populations like children and pregnant women, and would also allow regulators to prevent harm, not just respond to…
clock | January 15, 2007Yes! It is finally here! What you have all been waiting for, impatiently, for three weeks! The Science Blogging Anthology is now for sale. Go to Lulu.com by clicking here (or click on the picture of the book to your right) and place your order! You can choose to buy a PDF to download (but do you really want to print out 336 pages!?) or order the book with its pretty cover - it takes only a couple of days to arrive at your doorstep.
You can see here how it all got started, just three weeks ago, smack in the middle of the holidays when nobody was online and traffic was down to a third of…