Category Archives: Science And Society

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space and Campaign 2008, Technology and Society

Change!

6 Comments

…and hope!

Well, not really. The Obama campaign has released its new space policy, and there’s not much breaking with the status quo in it. It’s basically sticking with the current plan, at least in civil space, but promising (as in all areas) to spend more money. While one suspects that Lori Garver must have played a major role in it, it also reads as though it was written by a committee, or different people wrote different sections, and then it was stitched together, like Frankenstein’s monster.

For instance, in one section, it says:

Obama will stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate spaceflight capabilities. NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services is a good model of government/industry collaboration.

But later on, in a different section, it says:

Obama will evaluate whether the private sector can safely and effectively fulfill some of NASA’s need for lower earth orbit cargo transport.

If COTS is a “good model,” why is such an “evaluation” necessary? Isn’t it already a given? I also like the notion that Obama himself would do the “evaluation.” As if.

It’s got the usual kumbaya about international cooperation, of course, which I think has been disastrous on the ISS. There are also implied digs at the Bush administration, about not “politicizing” science (as though Jim Hansen hasn’t done that himself) and opposing “weapons” in space. It also discusses more cooperation between NASA and NRO, ignoring the recent rumblings about getting rid of the latter, and the problems with security that would arise in such “cooperation.”

Also, interestingly, after Senator Obama called McCain’s proposed automotive prize a “gimmick,” the new policy now explicitly supports them. So are they no longer “gimmicks”? Or is it just that McCain’s idea was (for some unexplained reasons) but Obama’s are not?

Overall, my biggest concerns with it are more on the defense side than on the civil space side. This is utopian:

Barack Obama opposes the stationing of weapons in space and the development of anti-satellite weapons. He believes the United States must show leadership by engaging other nations in discussions of how best to stop the slow slide towards a new battlefield.

Sorry, but that horse is out of the barn, and there’s no way to get it back in. No anti-satellite weapons treaty would be verifiable. It is good to note, though, that the policy recognizes ORS as a means to mitigate the problem. That’s the real solution, not agreements and paper.

In any event, it’s a big improvement over his previous space policy, which was not a policy at all, but rather an adjunct to his education policy. Now it’s time for the McCain campaign to come up with one. I hope that he gets Newt to help him with it, and not Walt Cunningham.

[Mid-morning update]

One of the commenters over at NASA Watch picks up on something that I had missed:

Sen. Obama names COTS and several other programs by name, but not Ares or Constellation. He mentions “the Shuttle’s successor systems” without specifying what they might be.

That does give him some options for real change. I also agree that a revival of the space council would be a good idea. I hope that the McCain campaign doesn’t oppose this purely because the Obama campaign has picked it up.

[Afternoon update]

One other problem. While it talks about COTS, it has no mention of CATS (or CRATS, or CARATS, or whatever acronym they’re using this week for cheap and reliable access to space). It hints at it with COTS and ORS, but it’s not set out as an explicit goal. I hope that McCain’s policy does.

[Update a few minutes later]

Bobby Block has a report at the Orlando Sentinel space blog.

This part struck me (and didn’t surprise me):

Lori Garver, an Obama policy adviser, said last week during a space debate in Colorado that Obama and his staff first thought that the push to go to the moon was “a Bush program and didn’t make a lot of sense.” But after hearing from people in both the space and education communities, “they recognized the importance of space.” Now, she said, Obama truly supports space exploration as an issue and not just as a tool to win votes in Florida.

I’m not sure that Lori helped the campaign here. What does that tell us about the quality and cynicism of policy making in the Obama camp? They opposed it before they were for it because it was George Bush’s idea? And does that mean that space policy was just about votes in Florida before this new policy? I know that there are a lot of BDS sufferers who oppose VSE for this reason, and this reason alone, but it’s a little disturbing that such (non)thinking was actually driving policy in a major presidential campaign.

George Bush greatly expanded federal involvement in education and expanded Medicare. Are they going to shrink them accordingly? I’d like to think so, but I suspect not.

Administrative, Science And Society

Good For Me

But bad for the Gulf coast. All of the models for Fay have shifted the track west, and it now looks unlikely that it will hit southeast Florida, so I probably won’t have to put up the shutters on Monday. Still need to keep an eye on it, though.

[Late morning update]

That was the 2 AM runs. The 8 AM model update has it coming back slightly to the east, over the Florida peninsula, with GFDL just to the west of us, which is a little too close for comfort. But still, no decision before Monday.

Science And Society

Here Comes Fay

1 Comment

The circulation finally closed this afternoon, but the storm is going to have to fight its way through the mountains of Hispaniola. It seems to have gone directly from a low to a storm, without the usual intermediate tropical depression (does that mean that TD 6 remains available for the next one?). Unfortunately, even though the chances that it will actually hit Boca Raton aren’t high, I’ll probably have to shutter up on Monday, just in case.

The good news is that most of the models are taking it over Cuba as well, which will keep it from intensifying much. If it comes up here, the only chance for strengthening will be in the open water over the Straight of Florida (where it would beat up the Keys). If it stays at tropical storm force, as SHIPS is currently predicting, I may be able to get away without shutters, as we did with Ernesto two years ago. Only one of the 2 PM model runs (HWRF) has it coming through town. The tracking models are probably going to get better now that there’s a definite center of circulation to use as a starting point. Unfortunately, I’m kind of in the middle of the spectrum. By Monday, it should be more clear where this thing is going.

Sigh…

I prefer earthquakes. You don’t have any false alarms with them.

[Update about 6:30 PM EDT]

Jeff Masters confirms my own thoughts:

If Fay does hit South Florida, the storm is likely to be a tropical storm or Category 1 hurricane, since it will not have enough time over water to reorganize much. I think the models are overdoing the intensification of Fay once it does pop off the coast of Cuba. We saw in 2006 that Ernesto popped off the coast of Cuba as a weak tropical storm, and took a full 36 hours to get its act together. If Fay misses South Florida and veers either to the east or west of the Peninsula, the storm could easily reach Category 2 status before a potential landfall either on the Gulf Coast or in North Carolina/South Carolina.

So if it’s a major storm, it won’t be one here. But we won’t really know until late Sunday or Monday.

Administrative, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Time To Dig Out The Shutters?

I’ve been keeping an eye on that disturbance in the Atlantic for a few days, but it’s starting to look like there’s a chance of a hurricane here early next week. The models are all showing it curving to the north off the coast, and missing Florida, but the models aren’t to be trusted this far out. I may have to shutter up on Sunday.

[Update early afternoon]

This morning’s model runs have it heading across the top of the greater Antilles, and then tearing up through the Bahamas. Except for GFDL, which has it heading right up the Florida east coast, starting in northern Palm Beach County, and then right up to the Cape, four and a half days from now (i.e., late Monday). Despite my earlier musings on the palliative effects on space policy from a Kennedy Center hurricane, I hope it’s wrong.

Science And Society, Technology and Society

One Less Thing To Worry About?

7 Comments

Is the Yellowstone caldera fizzling out?

This adds to suggestions that the plume has disconnected from its heat source in the Earth’s core. If this is true, it means the plume could be dying – and that the sequence of mega-eruptions could come to an end. “If it doesn’t have clear source, as it rises eventually the plume will die out,” says Schutt.

Let’s hope so. A Yellowstone explosion could be a civilization-ending event, and there’s not much we can do to prevent it, at least with current technology.

Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Science As A Religion

13 Comments

And a fundamentalist one, at that:

When Salon interviewed me about my new book, “Saving Darwin,” I suggested that science doesn’t know everything, that there might be a reality beyond science, and that religion might be about God and not merely about the human quest for a nonexistent God. These remarks got me condemned to whatever hell Myers believes in.

Myers accused me of having “fantastic personal delusions” that could actually lead people astray. “I will have no truck with the perpetuation of fallacious illusions, whether honeyed or bitter,” Myers wrote, “and consider the Gibersons of this world to be corruptors of a better truth. That’s harsh, I know … but he is undermining the core of rationalism we ought to be building, and I find his beliefs pernicious.”

Myers’ confident condemnations put me in mind of that great American preacher, Jonathan Edwards, who waxed eloquent in his famous 1741 speech, “Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God,” about the miserable delusions that lead humans to reject the truth and spend eternity in hell. We still have preachers like Edwards today, of course; they can be found on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. But now we also have a new type of preacher, the Rev. PZ Myers.

And they don’t even recognize it in themselves. Dawkins and Myers and Hitchens are doing more harm than good for science in their evangelizing, I think.