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Good stuff to know if you are interested in the course of science under the Obama administration at ScienceInsider.

This is the first I’ve heard about asking the Chinese to shuttle our astronauts to space. I wonder where this came from…or if Holdren was just speaking off the top of his head. But why the Chinese when we have a number of home grown outfits, like SpaceX, looking to do the job? Why the Chinese over the Russians, who are particularly good at getting people safely to orbit?

The other question I have is about nukes. I don’t believe we necessarily need new nuclear weapons, but is that the job of the science advisor to decide and not, say, the military? Of course, as Holdren points out, our national labs have a broad research portfolio, not just nukes.

But that’s just one bit of the interview, its fairly in-depth and well worth the read.

And, in other Holdren news, AP is reporting that he has an interest in geoengineering .

I’m a little nervous about fiddling with the global climate, especially before we know exactly how everything plays out. What if we make matters worse? Why not wait until the damage is done? I don’t believe in irreversibility, that just doesn’t make sense…not on a geological scale, at least, but maybe that’s only irreversible on a human scale.

Here’s my plan, millions of acres of space solar panels. We’ll block out a fraction of the sunlight reaching Earth and generate safe, clean power. Sure, you say, we’d never be able to build the x gazillion solar panels we’d need to block the sun. Maybe they don’t have to all be solar panels, maybe its just a few gazillion acres of some sort of dimming fabric…in addition to the solar panels. Think of all the stimulus money that could be spent on the solar/space industry!

And will it keep postdocs for asking my advice about careers in science writing? Crom, I hope so.

The NIH is slated to get $10 Billion. That’s American dollars and, roughly, three times what they were originally slated to get in the stimulus bill. Thanks to Arlen Specter, that’s not a problem anymore. (Go Arlen, I told all my hyper-Dem friends that he was worth keeping around, for the sake of Pennsyltucky, at least!)

The NIH famously doubled its budget a few years back, but then the budget stabilized and, in fact, failed to keep up with inflation. I have heard said that it would have been better if the doubling hadn’t happened, since so many institutions invested heavily in new programs and infrastructure that a level NIH budget just couldn’t sustain.

So now the question is, I guess, what the hell will they do with all this money? How much of this will go to fulfilling research grants? How sustainable will this be…or should the scientific community just take this and run with it best they can knowing that this will be a one-time respite from their regularly scheduled budget woes?

A quick note on the National Change Event. I want to say, outright, that I am looking forward to the return to right-wing conspiracy theories in the popular culture. Not that I believe any of the stuff, but the 90s wackadoo backlash against Clinton and his perceived agenda gave us X-Files, Roswell Nostalgia, Black Helicopters and Art Bell. Good stuff.

Sure, the left woo (and these are imprecise terms, people) was active then…but that was when the New Age movement took hold..all about alternative healing, angels, crystals and black t-shirts covered in wolves, bears and/or Native Americans. (I liked the music, I admit. Enya. Those chanting monks. Crap with pan flutes and dolphins humping that they used to sell at World of Science. Good stuff.)

The mainstream culture embraced both in a woo-nami that tempered the worst of either side (Art Bell quickly shut up about New World Order nonsense after McVeigh) and kept the kitsch. It was, in hindsight, a golden era when we knew who the kooks were and what they thought.

What did the The Bush Era get us? Warmed-over preachy message movies and documentaries about current events. Michael Moore documentaries with the subtlety of a day-glo sledgehammer. Bill Maher monologues with the subtlety of a Michael Moore documentary. (And don’t get me started on the Bill Maher documentaries!) The right didn’t do much better, mind you. With their guy in power, it became all about Intelligent Design, bad Pelosi jokes and other low-level, completely ignorable nonsense.

Perhaps the difference was the tone and clarity of the message. The 90s conspiracy nuts frothed about the UN teaming with UFOs to take your guns and bibles. It was fun like your favorite uncle and you couldn’t take it seriously, like your favorite uncle who wears a tinfoil beanie.

The mainstream 2000s conspiracy nuts, however, froth about Big Oil, Drug Companies, Katrina, Global Warming and Dick Cheney, none of which were fun at all. The truth is, I don’t fear corporations or Dick Cheney. The woo left always whined about such things, but I need oil and I need pharmaceuticals. Katrina, in retrospect, the Federal response might not have been as horrible as we thought at the time. Global Warming concerns me, but I’m the kind of guy that sees how technology and reasoned, sane discourse will do more good than hysteria. Dick Cheney, I could do without, of course, but he shot a guy and looked like Burgess Meredith’s Penguin.  If it weren’t for starting wars, the Bush Administration would have been enjoyably surreal.

In fact, the anti-Bush conspiracy nuts were notable not just for their unoriginality, but for the surprising way people who should know better latched on to the malevolent Bush conspiracy notion. Its one thing when late night talk radio twits rant about Clinton creating a third term for himself, but it is quite another when the intellectual (and celebrity) elite honestly believe that Bush was going to declare martial law if Kerry won in 2004. (I’m looking at you, Gore Vidal.) So prevalent are such beliefs, that Congressman John Olver of Massachucetts had no qualms about suggesting Bush was going to declare martial law in 2008.  For some, the 2000 election was just triggered something in their brains and they were never able to accept that history tumbled along on its own sloppy path without the aid of a cabal of Neo-Conservative puppetmasters.

Then there were the 9/11 Truther films and websites. They are on a class of their own: outside the mainstream paranoia, and on a completely different level and with shading of anti-semitism. So far out there, in fact, that they can’t be loathed on a absurdly comedic level like any of the Clinton Era New World Order material still floating around the Internet. They are as every bit as religious as creationists. But with creationists, you know the boundaries of the debate. With truthers, however, there are no boundaries, anything is game for their delusions.

So, its a brand new era. Will we see a return to 90s nostalgia? (And, why not, considering who’s in power in Washington!?!) Or will the right wing wooists take on the venom of the truther crowd? Let’s hope not. So far, the best the right can do about Obama is question his birth certificate, his associations with 60s radicals and his Secret Muslim past. At least they aren’t saying he killed Vince Foster…

As I mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of politics…and I’m not a huge fan of when politics gets involved in the sciences. What I am a fan of is government doing its duty to support our infrastructure. That’s why I am…dare I say…hopeful when Obama included this paragraph in his speech:

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

I come from a family full of engineers — including my wife — so I will instinctively applaud the use of government money to fix our ailing roads, bridges and highways.  Same too, with energy, provided he includes nuclear and (please) space solar power in the mix (a long shot, for sure).

Continue Reading Holding him to it…