Steve Corneliussen's topics this week:
- a Washington Post op-ed in which a prominent Republican builds on an earlier commentary in pleading for his party's members to stop denying human-caused climate disruption,
- a front-page New York Times feature article about a Nobel laureate's controversial astrophysics experiment,
- a science vs. anti-science op-ed battle in Pakistan concerning an American research program,
- a Washington Post profile feature on the full-speed-ahead energy-technology advocacy of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and
- a communication strategist's Washington Post commentary that suggests ways to engage conservatives on climate disruption (and that extends the not entirely voluntary climate-wars involvement of the American Geophysical Union).
Boehlert appeals to fellow Republicans on climate science
In the 19 November Washington Post op-ed "Science the GOP can't wish away," Sherwood Boehlert, former Republican chairman of the House Science Committee, grants that there's "a natural aversion to more government regulation," but asserts that this aversion should be addressed "in the debate about how to respond to climate change" rather than being used "as an excuse to deny the problem's existence."
Boehlert calls on his "fellow Republicans to open their minds to rethinking what has largely become [their] party's line: denying that climate change and global warming are occurring and that they are largely due to human activities."
As a factual basis for that summary view, he cites the Ron Brownstein National Journal commentary "GOP Gives Climate Science A Cold Shoulder." Here are excerpts from that October piece:
Virtually all of the serious 2010 GOP challengers have moved beyond opposing cap-and-trade to dismissing the scientific evidence that global warming is even occurring. . . . With sentiments among rank-and-file Republicans also trending that way, it's no coincidence that two Republicans who affirmed the science—Rep. Michael Castle in Delaware and Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska—were defeated in Senate primaries this year. . . . Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, says that although other parties may contain pockets of climate skepticism, there is "no party-wide view like this anywhere in the world that I am aware of."
Boehlert declares that Republicans have assumed "a stance that defies the findings of our country's National Academy of Sciences, national scientific academies from around the world and 97 percent of the world's climate scientists." He says he "can understand arguments over proposed policy approaches to climate change," but what he finds "incomprehensible is the dogged determination by some to discredit distinguished scientists and their findings."
He appeals to Republicans' business sense:
While many in politics—and not just of my party—refuse to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change, leaders of some of our nation's most prominent businesses have taken a different approach. They formed the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. This was no collection of mom-and-pop shops operated by "tree huggers" sympathetic to any environmental cause but, rather, a step by hard-nosed, profit-driven capitalists. General Electric, Alcoa, Duke Energy, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler signed on. USCAP, persuaded by scientific facts, called on the president and Congress to act, saying "in our view, the climate change challenge will create more economic opportunities than risks for the U.S. economy."
Later he expands his appeal:
The new Congress should have a policy debate to address facts rather than a debate featuring unsubstantiated attacks on science. We shouldn't stand by while the reputations of scientists are dragged through the mud in order to win a political argument. And no member of any party should look the other way when the basic operating parameters of scientific inquiry—the need to question, express doubt, replicate research and encourage curiosity—are exploited for the sake of political expediency. My fellow Republicans should understand that wholesale, ideologically based or special-interest-driven rejection of science is bad policy. And that in the long run, it's also bad politics.
Boehlert concludes by invoking the name of Ronald Reagan, who "didn't deny the existence of global environmental problems but instead found ways to address them."
Physics, Sam Ting on NY Times front page
In the feature article "A Costly Quest for the Dark Heart of the Cosmos," Dennis Overbye and the 17 November New York Times highlight a controversial impending venture of physics Nobel laureate Sam Ting.
"After 16 years and $1.5 billion of other people's money," Overbye begins, "it is almost showtime" for NASA and for Ting. His "eight-ton assemblage of magnets, wires, iron, aluminum, silicon and electronics," which is "one of the most ambitious and complicated experiments ever to set out for space," is scheduled for launch via the shuttle Endeavour in February.
Overbye predicts that Ting's cosmic-ray-sifting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer—"if it succeeds" as an experiment aboard the space station—"could help NASA take a giant step toward answering the question of what the universe is made of." He predicts also that it could "confer scientific glory on both the International Space Station and a celebrated physicist reaching one last time, literally, for the stars," and that if "it fails, it will validate critics who think it a scandal the experiment was ever approved."
Overbye writes:
If they are lucky, scientists say, the Alpha spectrometer could confirm that mysterious signals recorded by other satellites and balloons in recent years are emanations from that dark matter, revealing evidence of particles and forces that have only been theoretical dreams until now.
Even if dark matter won't ever become the ultimate diet—eat it and disappear—knowing what nature is made of could be useful someday in ways nobody can dream. Einstein's curved spacetime, equally elusive to the senses, proved crucial to the function of GPS devices that were invented decades after Einstein's death.
Or the device could find even something weirder.
"Real discovery is outside the ring of existing knowledge," said Samuel Chao Chung Ting, the 74-year-old Nobel laureate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and leader of the cosmic ray project, in his laboratory at CERN outside Geneva in August.
Overbye characterizes Ting as "one of science's great control freaks and worrywarts," who "has spent his life commanding armies of physicists," and who in 1974 "discovered a particle that would revolutionize physics." Overbye of course means the J/psi; maybe the Times editors didn't want to confuse readers of a physics article with too much physics.
In any case, Overbye continues by noting that Ting "took so long checking for errors and looking for more particles that another lab found it and he wound up splitting the Nobel." The unnamed other lab was of course the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; the other laureate was Burton Richter.
The piece recounts in some detail the two-decade history and technopolitics of the impending experiment, including the nearly fatal delay caused by the 2003 shuttle Columbia catastrophe, and including the controversial evolution of the experiment's scientific goals.
Overbye ends by quoting Barry Barish of Caltech, who called the experiment's approval process "apparently flawed," but said the experiment should still fly—and also declared, "I wouldn't bet against Sam."
Literally world-class bogus science
The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) operates an ionospheric research facility in Gakona, Alaska.
What do you do if you're a prominent physicist in Pakistan, and your famous countryman Atta-ur-Rahman—a fellow of the Royal Society, no less—writes that "it has been alleged" that this American program "aims to control the weather by manipulating the ions in the ionosphere, and thereby control the world"?
What do you do if this countryman adds that HAARP "may also affect plate tectonics causing earthquakes, floods through torrential rains and trigger tsunamis"? What if he asks his readers, "Is the HAARP then, a harmless research tool—or a weapon of mass destruction far more lethal than nuclear weapons?"
Dr. Rahman wrote all of this in a commentary this fall in Dawn, Pakistan's leading English-language newspaper.
What do you do? If you're Pervez Hoodbhoy, you publish a counter-commentary under the headline "A case of bogus science."
Professor Hoodbhoy teaches physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. Among his scientific colleagues around the world are the editors at Physics Today who published his 2007 feature article "Science and the Islamic World—The Quest for Rapprochement." He has often criticized Dr. Rahman in the past, though usually on science policy, not bogus science.
Hoodbhoy's counter-commentary begins by pointing out that Rahman heads Comstech, "the Organization of Islamic Countries' highest scientific body," which "has received millions of dollars from OIC countries" and has an "opulent headquarters" in Islamabad. Although Comstech's performance "has been consistently mediocre," Hoodbhoy charges, "the organization has now descended to an all-time low."
To substantiate that charge, Hoodbhoy must treat Rahman's effusions as if they are serious and possibly credible:
Given Dr. Rahman's prominent place in Pakistani science, and that he is Fellow of the Royal Society, one must consider seriously his claim that HAARP can cause earthquakes and floods. But even the briefest examination makes clear his claims make no scientific sense.
Methodically, Hoodbhoy disposes of the notion that HAARP could be "a secret military project conceived by evil and diabolical minds" and debunks the idea that any conceivable transmitter power in Alaska could affect weather or plate tectonics. An excerpt:
Does the good doctor believe in magic and demons? How else can massive tectonic plates be moved by radio waves? Will HAARP tickle a sleeping subterranean monster that awakes and sets off earthquakes? This kind of thinking was what irate and ignorant village mullahs used after the 2005 Pakistani earthquake. They blamed cable television, after which followers smashed thousands of television sets.
Weather change simply cannot be caused by HAARP's radio waves. The effects of a puny 3.6 MW radio transmitter on the ionosphere can only be detected with sensitive instruments. Even these are almost completely washed out by a constant stream of charged particles from the sun that hit the earth during daytime. To see HAARP's effects would be like trying to see a candle a mile away in blazing sunlight.
Hoodbhoy also methodically disposes of Rahman's bogus sources. For example:
Yet another quoted "authority" is the arch conspiracy theorist, Michel Chossudovsky, a retired professor of economics in Ottawa. In Dr. Rahman's pantheon of "experts", none has published a scientific paper in a reputable science journal that demonstrates a connection between ionospheric physics and any weather or subterranean phenomenon. In short, Dr. Rahman's claims about HAARP are based on pseudo-science promoted by conspiracy theorists who blame America for all grief in the world.
Professor Hoodbhoy's conclusion requires quoting too:
Once science loses its objectivity and becomes enslaved to any kind of ideology or political opinion, it becomes useless. Quack science does not just cost money. It also confuses people, engages them in bizarre conspiracy theories, and decreases society's collective ability to make sensible decisions. One must therefore seriously question whether a pseudoscience organization like Comstech deserves lavish funding from poor Pakistanis. We have better things to spend our money on. As for the world of science: it will not even notice Comstech's demise.
America's "green energy chief"
The front page of the Sunday, 14 November, Washington Post business section carried a fairly lengthy article on the efforts of Secretary of Energy—and physics Nobel laureate—Steven Chu.
The piece paints him as America's "green energy chief," an energetic advocate for energy progress. Though the reporter, Steven Mufson, dutifully shows hints of journalistic distance from his subject, he seems mainly sympathetic to the Chu agenda.
The headlines reinforce the tone. Online, the key word is sprint: "Energy Secretary Chu in sprint to put stimulus to work on renewable innovations." On paper, the key word is race: "For energy chief, race is on to find fuel alternatives." Photos contribute to the tone. One on the front page and another after the jump show Chu on his way to work in shorts, T-shirt and bike helmet, and pedaling—sorry, can't avoid this adverb—energetically.
A sentence from the opening paragraph: "Then it's a 20-minute sprint—breaking the [Capital Crescent Trail's] speed limit—to downtown Washington."
Mufson goes on to describe Chu's tenure as energy secretary as "a sprint of sorts," reporting that the stimulus bill gave his agency "an extra $36 billion for grants and low-interest loans to jump-start new technologies and greater energy efficiency. "
He follows Chu on a day trip involving three site visits: to a small entrepreneur planning to manufacture thin-film solar cells for embedding in construction materials, to Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where the Energy Department is investing $122 million over five years to make an energy hub.
Mufson calls the hub concept "dear to Chu, who seems to pine for his years at Bell Labs, where scientists have won a total of seven Nobel Prizes and one team invented the transistor."
He also describes Chu's participation in the Gulf oil-spill crisis. And he focuses on Chu's continuing campaign against human-caused climate disruption:
"We may not currently understand all the bumps and wiggles, but we understand the overall trend," [Chu] says. "What's going to happen is it's going to warm up." Chu points to a study about Greenland's climate and glaciers. "This is remarkable data," he says. "The world is changing." Concern about global climate change helped bring Chu out of the physics lab and classroom and into public policy.
Mufson continues:
At Princeton, [Chu] projects photos of scientists—such as Enrico Fermi and J. Robert Oppenheimer—who were among the fathers of the atom bomb during World War II. He says climate change poses a new threat to rally against. "Scientists have come to the service of our country in times of national need," he says. ... His biggest disappointment, he says, is that "two or three years ago I thought America and the world [were] really going to break forward and recognize that climate change is important, and now they are backtracking on that. The world economic recession has something to do with that, but the people who are against [climate action] have also tried to muddy the waters."
In this article about energetic techno-advocacy, Mufson emphasizes that Chu's
sense of urgency is something he has tried to infuse in others. One day in 2009, after biking to the office, he met with a handful of top officials awaiting their swearing-in ceremony. "Be nice, but don't be patient," he told them.
The American Geophysical Union and the climate wars, cont.
High visibility in the climate wars for the American Geophysical Union continues in the Sunday, 14 November, Washington Post commentary "How to stop global warming—even if you don't believe in it." The piece begins this way:
In the global-warming debate, scientists are, admirably, still trying to save the day. Last week, the American Geophysical Union announced plans to mobilize about 700 climate scientists in an effort to improve the accuracy of media coverage and public understanding of their field.
The author, a communication strategist named Meg Bostrom, isn't referring to last week's misreporting by other newspapers about the AGU's plans for participation in the national discussion of climate science.
Instead she's citing—and the online version of her commentary links to—the 10 November AGU press release "Climate question & answer service ready for journalists' questions." The release explains that scientist volunteers "will field questions about climate science (not policy) that are e-mailed to [email protected]."
Science, not policy. Bostrom herself, however, has come to discuss not only politics and policy, but political communication strategy for climate scientists and others who fear human-caused climate disruption.
The Post identifies her as a contributor to a 2009 "framing guide" for climate-wars participants. She now writes, "The idea that global warming is a hoax is no longer a fringe perception but a part of the Republican Party brand." And: The "debate increasingly turns more on political belief than on scientific fact." And: "The issue has become so politically polarizing that it would be nearly impossible for [Republican leaders] to retreat from their stance." Moreover, she says, the unceasing "spectacle of dueling scientists confuses people," making it "fairly easy" for citizens "to dismiss climate change as an open question and cross it off the list of things they need to worry about."
She also describes a related problem:
People are already overwhelmed with worries about unemployment, economic insecurity, federal debt and even terrorism. We should not expect them to start worrying about whether the Earth is warmer, glaciers are melting, or floods and droughts will become more common. A global warming crisis simply can't compete with the long list of crises average Americans already face.
The impediments to continued civic discussion of climate science cause communication-strategist Bostrom to advocate focusing "less on arguing the scientific reality and more on building support for specific solutions that all sides can agree on." There's "good reason," she asserts, "to think that those who are worried about climate change would make greater progress" that way. Though "efforts to educate the public about warming" are "critical," she declares, "we must stop thinking that these efforts are a necessary precondition for getting anything done on this issue."
Her solutions? Bostrom asserts that people "can support the transition to a carbon-free energy future without believing, or even knowing, that it might influence glaciers, coral reefs or Arctic ice." Citing poll results, she professes belief that "strong majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents firmly support" fuel-efficiency mandates, increasing federal energy research, spending more on mass transit, "raising efficiency standards for homes and other buildings," requiring "more energy from renewable sources" and even "limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases—just as long as they are seen as anti-pollution measures, not 'caps.'"
In other words, government mandates, government limits, government spending increases.
Bostrom doesn't say or imply much about how, for example, the editors of the Wall Street Journal would respond to her list, whether or not it leaves climate science undiscussed.
The Washington Post placed her Sunday commentary online on Saturday morning. By early afternoon, it had accumulated online lots of comments, mostly anonymous—and mostly hostile. Probably the hostility proves little about the possible merit of Bostrom's communication strategy. Nevertheless, two examples seem worth reporting:
Someone assuming the identity "daylight1452" wrote (verbatim):
Who is The American Geophysical Union? What is their agenda? They involve themselves in "political action" by supporting a whole list of legislative initiatives: http://www.agu.org/sci_pol/pending_legislation/#AppropriationsMS Bostrom how about doing a little "investigative" repo0rting and find out if your sources are legitimate or publically funded and tax payer sponsored left wing radicals posing as real people? Tell us who these organizations are and then we can decide if their information is real or just some more of the Al Gore exaggerations. You have a computer - let's do a bit of home work.
And in a long, articulate comment, someone assuming the identity "AGWsceptic99"—maybe an anthropogenic global warming skeptic from the UK?—begins with this sentence: "One of the best methods of convincing more people that the catastrophe predictions are not well founded in science is to have public relations flacks like this author publish obvious propaganda pieces."
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are collected each Friday for "Science and the media." He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.
