Musing's musings

"Go and make disciples of all nations"

That's not an exact quote from Al Gore's address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting this evening, but that's the take-home message I'm distilling from his remarks.

This will be a short post, as I'm meeting friends for dinner in half an hour, but I'll either come back and update it later or do another one. I'm going to make one brief remark about politics and history, and then it's on to Gore's address. That remark is this: If he had been able to display the level of conviction and engagement during the 2000 presidential campaign that he displayed in front of this audience tonight, the last eight years would have looked considerably different. Quel dommage!

The gist of Gore's remarks is that we are facing a historic moment: not just for our nation, not just for a coalition of allies, but rather for the whole human race. We have three interconnected and interrelated crises going on at the moment: one is economic, one involves national security, and one involves the environment. That's the bad news. The good news is, we have three interconnected and interrelated crises going on at the moment: economic, national security, and environment.

(Again, those weren't Gore's exact words, that's my spin on them.) We have, to quote The American President, serious problems and we need serious people to solve them. But the magnitude of the crises facing us, and the literally global consequences of the decisions we make in response to those crises, are rapidly moving toward a critical mass such that we can find the political and social will to do the very hard things that need to be done very quickly if there is, literally, to be a tomorrow.

And that's where the "Go and make disciples" quote popped into my head, as Gore started his concluding remarks. The facts are known, by and large, and the science behind them is, again by and large, irreproachable and conclusive. What we need now is for scientists, and people who work with scientists, to blend their working lives and their social lives more effectively and completely. There can't be an "office mentality" and a "home" or "cocktail party mentality" that are virtually wholly separate and distinct from one another. Gore quoted an African proverb that says if you want to go quickly, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together. And the problem, as Gore himself pointed out, is that we have to go very far very quickly. So all of us who work in or around science have got to do our part to get the word out and to help combat the propaganda (my word) coming from those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

An interesting tidbit from Gore's remarks, made as he was showing a slide of one of the Apollo 11 astronauts standing on the surface of the moon facing an American flag. Cheers went up, he said, in Mission Control in Houston when that image was beamed back from the moon's surface. But the average age of the engineers in that control room in Houston in 1969 was 26. That means that when President Kennedy issued his call to put a man in that very position within a decade, the average age of those engineers was 18. That's a hell of a lot of talent developed and deployed in not a long period of time. Surely we can do it again, even given that the world is a far more complex place, and the state of knowledge is both greater and far more complex and interconnected than it was in 1961.

I think we can. And I'm going to do what I can to help that happen.

Better living through chemistry strikes again

No, not that way!

Two chemists at MIT announced today that they have discovered what appears to be a new kind of catalyst that allows for a process called "water splitting." This process mimics what green plants do as part of the photosynthetic process--they split molecules of water into their component hydrogen and oxygen atoms and then store energy in the bonds holding the hydrogen and oxygen molecules together until that energy is needed, at which point the plant cell catalyzes the reduction of hydrogen and oxygen back into water. Ridiculously easy to do inside a plant cell. Tremendously difficult to accomplish anywhere else--at least as long as you insist on the reaction happening at normal or ambient conditions and in a neutral or relatively mild environment.

Perhaps not anymore. The chemists, Matthew Kanan and Daniel Nocera, published a paper today in the online edition of Science (which means it's got legs--Science rejects something like 98% of the papers submitted to it for publication) announcing such a catalyst that is apparently a complex of cobalt and phosphorus, with a little potassium thrown in for good measure. (If you have a subscription to Science, you can read a news brief about the discovery or the full paper.) If you're not able to get access to Science, there are stories at the Boston Globe, Forbes, and Science Daily, among other sites.

There are still bugs to work out with this discovery, and the discoverers themselves aren't entirely sure how or why it works--but it does work, at least on a laboratory scale. And unlike the constant whining from the Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer about drilling for oil offshore, this discovery does seem to have the potential to do something about ameliorating our energy issues. Imagine what we might now be seeing if the Hedgemony hadn't been so eager to slash alternative energy research funding in order to give even more corporate welfare to Big Oil. I find it ironic that this discovery was announced on the same day that ExxonMobil reported second-quarter profits of $11.68 billion and a 14% rise in income over last year. Funding for the National Science Foundation, on the other hand, has been effectively flat for the last three years. Seems to me that we have our priorities in the wrong place.

(Hat-tip to litho at Big Orange.)

Trying to do the right thing

Every so often, I get sent surveys, or see questions popping up on blogs or in e-mails that friends forward to me, pertaining to being more "green" in terms of how I live my life. And while I lack the time, the knowledge, the means, and the impetus to become a true granola-crunching environmentalist living totally off the grid, I do what I can. And when you get right down to it, I think that's probably true of most people. The trouble is, unless you've got all the time and/or money in the world, and you're lucky enough to live someplace other than a small city in the rural Midwest, there's really not an awful lot you can do.

Let's take the famous "carbon footprint" issue that several wingnuts and extremists have been using to swiftboat Al Gore (and, more recently, to criticize the Live Earth concerts we just saw this past weekend). The idea is to put as little carbon into the cycle as possible. If you do something that adds a lot of carbon, you're supposed to try to offset it by taking an equal or greater amount out. One of the more common suggestions for reducing your carbon footprint is to cut down on the amount of driving you do.

Well I don't personally know anybody who's doing truly superfluous driving. The days when the family would hop into the station wagon and go cruise around the countryside of an evening or a weekend afternoon pretty much disappeared after 1973 and the first Arab oil embargo, if the culture of the late '60s and early '70s hadn't killed them off before then. I drive to and from work every weekday, and to and from church on Sundays. Every once in a while, often on my way home from work, I stop in to visit my folks. Every couple of weeks, often on my way home from church on Sunday, I go shopping for groceries and whatnot. Otherwise, my car is sitting parked outside my apartment or near my office. Exactly which of those activities am I supposed to cut out? Carpooling isn't really an option, because (a) I live in an area that's fairly inconvenient for most people who work where I do, and (b) since I'm also going to graduate school in addition to working a professional job, I don't always go into the office or come home from the office at the same time. Heck, there are some days/weeks/months when I never know when I'll be going home, or maybe it just seems that way.

But when I bought a new (to me) car last year, I did try to get a model that got better gas mileage than the one I was getting rid of. A hybrid would have been wonderful, but there was no way I could swing the payments unless I managed to win the lottery or to get on Jeopardy! and win some truly big bucks. Am I therefore supposed to feel guilty because I live in a country that decided, a generation before I came onto the scene, that it needed the wide open spaces? The nearest, well, pretty much anything, from my apartment is at least half a mile away--and there are no sidewalks such that I could walk to those places, and walking along the side of a major state highway, particularly in inclement weather, is too big a risk to take just to get some toilet paper or a jug of milk.

When I'm in France, I can see how having a car might be superfluous. But they designed their cities and towns that way--each neighborhood has its own bakery, cheese shop, butcher shop, greengrocer, etc., and public transportation is, while not ubiquitous, at least far more readily available than it is here. I simply can't pick up what I need to make dinner every night on the way home, and there is no public transportation that serves the area where I live--and even if there were, it would likely only run on a very limited schedule such that it would almost certainly not fit my needs.

Or how about the thing that got me on this kick in the first place? As my regular readers know, I'm currently in Los Angeles at a professional conference through this weekend. The conference hotel, as with virtually every hotel I've stayed at in the last 10 years or more (and that's quite a few of them, in multiple countries), has little signs posted in its guest bathrooms stating that, as part of an effort to reduce the amount of water and detergent consumed in the world every day, they'd appreciate it if you'd consider using your towels more than just once. I like that idea, and everywhere I see those signs or stickers posted, I always hang my towels up on the rack like it says to do if you don't want them changed. And every time I come back to my room after the housekeepers have been through, I find my hanging towels gone, and fresh ones inserted into the holders in their places. Do I have to write a little note telling the maids not to change my towels, or are the hotels just putting out those signs to make their customers think they give a damn about the environment?

I guess what I'm saying with all this is that (a) global warming isn't entirely my fault, and (b) I don't think I should have to feel guilty because I'm not doing more to help the environment. I use my towels more than once at home, and would be happy to do so when I travel, if only I could discover the secret signal that the housekeepers need. I hang up my shirts to dry, both out of habit from the days when I was saving quarters to do laundry in laundry rooms or laundromats, but also because they last longer and don't fade as much if I do that. (Same reason I wash most of them in cold water, now that I have my own washer and dryer and don't have to wait until I'm out of clothes to do the laundry.) I always use the lowest water setting on the washer that will allow the laundry to move about properly. I don't run the faucet when I'm brushing my teeth, or doing dishes by hand. I stop my dishwasher when the washing cycle is done and let the dishes air-dry. I had my landlords install a programmable thermostat in my apartment, so it doesn't run as much when I'm not there, and I don't turn the temperature way up in the winter or way down in the summers--just enough to keep it comfortable, bearing in mind that in winter I can always put on a sweatshirt or pull up an afghan or a lap rug if my feet get cold, and that fans also help cool me down in the summers. Whenever possible, I leave the furnace or the air conditioning off altogether, and rely on the atmosphere to help. I turn off lights when I'm not in the room mostly, and if I do leave them on, it isn't for long.

All of that means that while my carbon footprint is probably bigger than it could be, it's not as big as those of many other people. Am I supposed to feel guilty because it isn't zero? If so, then I'm sorry to have to say that's not going to happen. I'm doing what I can, and frankly, that's more than a lot of people can say. Not to mention the fact that several of the people I work with at the university are either trying to get a better handle on climate change and how it works, or are actively working on ways to make alternative energy sources both practical and marketable. How much is one person expected to do?

This would be funny under normal circumstances

As it is, I'm afraid Pat Oliphant may have hit a little too close to home (or comfort) for a lot of people under the gun on the Gulf Coast during this, the sixth year of the Shrubbery:

My thoughts and prayers go out to all those whose blood pressure readings probably just went up a few points. The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season starts today, and the forecasts are anything but encouraging. William Gray at Colorado State (who has a pretty good track record) expects 17 named storms and nine hurricanes, half of which are expected to be major. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is calling for 13 to 16 named storms, eight to 10 hurricanes, and four to six in the "major storms" category (Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale).

I was a little peeved to hear an executive for an insurance company on NPR this morning. He was griping that insurance companies needed a break to recoup their losses from the last few hurricane seasons, which saw record numbers of storms--and attendant damage claims. A nice attempt at a plea for sympathy, but I'm afraid I'm not buying it. Not only did insurance firms bring in record profits last year (of $45 billion, nearly a 20% increase over the previous year's profits), but the firms that do most of the homeowners policies in Florida are either doubling their premiums or dumping clients.

In other words, if you live on the Gulf Coast, lube up and bend over. You're undoubtedly going to get screwed this year, whether by the government or by your insurers. Maybe both. If you're lucky, that's the only pain and suffering you'll have to endure this season. But I wouldn't bet on that.

Good luck.

Shooting the messenger...again

No, Big Dick didn't get out his shotgun again. This time it's the Republican-dominated Congress, a committee of which today recommended the abolition of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA):

WASHINGTON, April 27 — The Federal Emergency Management Agency was so fundamentally dysfunctional during Hurricane Katrina that Congress should abolish it and create a new disaster response agency from scratch, leaders of the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee said today.

[edit]

The senators met to discuss the committee's recommendations for a new agency, which would still be part of the Department of Homeland Security. It would be more powerful, with additional components that would give it a budget twice as big as FEMA's, according to the committee report's draft recommendations. It would assume functions spread throughout the department, like preparing for disasters or terrorist attacks, protecting the nation's infrastructure and distributing grants to state and local governments.

And during major catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina, the agency's director would report directly to the president.

FEMA today has a budget of $4.8 billion, and 2,600 full-time employees.

Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the stench of a Rovian. (Plot, that is.)

First the good news

Gale Norton is resigning at the end of the month as Secretary of the Interior. The bad news is, of course, that the Worst. President. Ever. (Now at a new low in popularity!) will get to appoint her replacement and will undoubtedly choose someone equally unqualified, despicable, clueless, and in bed with the corporate interests that own the Bush White House lock, stock, and barrel.

On the other other hand, this could be the first sign that the smarter Republicans are beginning to think about abandoning the SS Lame Duck now that the iceberg has hove into view, if it hasn't already opened up a 300-foot gash below the waterline. Even assuming for the sake of argument that Bush gets to complete his second term (which, frankly, I think is an open question at this point, though not the virtual certainty that it should be and which I would very much like it to be), with his popularity slipping to new lows with seemingly every poll that's released, it's difficult to conceive of how sticking with what is clearly destined to become a very lame lame-duck presidency is going to redound to the credit of those who see it out unto the bitter end.

Sure, they'll get bonus points for their fidelity, but they aren't going to have much in the way of accomplishments with which to burnish their résumés, and they may well get caught up in one of the myriad of breaking scandals that seem ready to overwhelm what is left of the Shrubbery after Katrinagate, Plamegate, Portgate, DeLaygate, and Abramoffgate have taken their respective tolls. It's hard to argue why some fatcat should put you on his payroll at a cushy salary for not much work after you've had to serve one to five years in a medium-security prison for influence-peddling or what have you.

More on Bush's plan for destroying national parks

On Saturday, I wrote about an under-the-radar plan from the Shrubbery to shred the mission of the National Park Service. I'm encouraged today to see that the Paper of Record is on the case. Quoth the New York Times editorial board:

Mr. Hoffman's rewrite would open up nearly every park in the nation to off-road vehicles, snowmobiles and Jet Skis. According to his revision, the use of such vehicles would become one of the parks' purposes. To accommodate such activities, he redefines impairment to mean an irreversible impact. To prove that an activity is impairing the parks, under Mr. Hoffman's rules, you would have to prove that it is doing so irreversibly - a very high standard of proof. This would have a genuinely erosive effect on the standards used to protect the national parks.

[edit]

There are other issues too. Mr. Hoffman would explicitly allow the sale of religious merchandise, and he removes from the policy document any reference to evolution or evolutionary processes. He does everything possible to strip away a scientific basis for park management. His rules would essentially require park superintendents to subordinate the management of their parks to local and state agendas. He also envisions a much wider range of commercial activity within the parks.

In short, this is not a policy for protecting the parks. It is a policy for destroying them.

The Interior Department has already begun to distance itself from this rewrite, which it kept hidden from park service employees. But what Mr. Hoffman has given us is a road map of what could happen to the parks if Mr. Bush's political appointees are allowed to have their way.

It is clear by now that Mr. Bush has no real intention of living up to his campaign promise to fully finance the national parks. This document offers a vivid picture of the divide between the National Park Service, whose career employees remain committed to the fundamental purpose of leaving the parks unimpaired, and an Interior Department whose political appointees seem willing to alter them beyond recognition, partly in the service of commercial objectives.

Suddenly, many things - like the administration's efforts to force snowmobiles back into Yellowstone - seem very easy to explain.

(Emphasis mine.)

I know we're all thinking and praying and worrying about the folks in Katrina's way--and we should be. But if you've got a few moments to spare, do please write your Congress-critters about this issue. We need to keep the heat on.

"Because there's stuff we haven't got yet"

That's the only remotely plausible explanation I can find for the Shrubbery's decision--below the radar, of course--to revise the mission of the National Park Service. According to the Los Angeles Times:

The potential changes would allow cellphone towers and low-flying tour planes and would liberalize rules that prohibited mining, according to Bill Wade, former superintendent at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

Larry Whalon, chief of resource management at Mojave National Preserve, said the changes would take away managers' ability to use laws such as the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act to oppose new developments in parks.

What if you signed a climate agreement and nobody noticed?

Maybe I'm just way too cynical of late. But to paraphrase the old joke, just because I'm inherently suspicious of every move made by the Bush administration and their corporatist media lapdogs doesn't mean there isn't a conspiracy between them.

There could also be a simpler explanation. The media have gotten incredibly lazy lately. They'd much rather lollygag around the newsroom, for the most part, and wait for the GOP to come knocking on the door with a nice, fresh set of talking points. Either way, it's not a pretty picture.