Every few months, if you pay close enough attention, you'll discover new and exciting ways the Bush administration is gumming up the machines of scientific inquiry. This will happen basically every time the likely results of a particular line of inquiry will be at odds with public policy as determined by the Bush administration. It's an elegant system.
And as a result, there's a quick and dirty way to find examples of meddling. For instance, while you're unlikely to find meddling in biotechnological research (non-stem cell), most government-funded environmental research will eventually be sabotaged in some way. That's the basic pattern.
The latest example comes to us from the good people at The New York Times:
An effort by the Bush administration to improve federal climate research has answered some questions but lacks a focus on impacts of changing conditions and informing those who would be most affected, a panel of experts has found ...
[T]he report cited more problems than successes in the government's research program. Of the $1.7 billion spent by the [Climate Change Science Program] on climate research each year, only about $25 million to $30 million has gone to studies of how climate change will affect human affairs, for better or worse, the report said ...
Only two of the program's 21 planned overarching reports on specific climate issues have been published in final form; only three more are in the final draft stage. And not enough effort has gone to translating advances in climate science into information that is useful to local elected officials, farmers, water managers and others who may potentially be affected by climate shifts, whatever their cause, the panel found ...
A major hindrance to progress, the panel's report said, is that the climate program's director and subordinates lack the authority to determine how money is spent.
And so on. And so on. And so on.
Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 7:23 am
14 Sep 2007
The social scientists are whining because there's not enough of those millions being wasted on stupid papers like "Impacts of Climate Change on the Bicyling Activities of Western Montanans" and other stuff that a sixth grader could write.
Nope, that dumb old Bush Administration chose to spend the money on real physics and computers and weather behavior and all the hard stuff that takes real brains to figure out.
John Bailo
Sutext:
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JMG Posted 7:46 am
14 Sep 2007
3. CLIMATE RESEARCH: HOW WILL CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECT PEOPLE?
A National Research Council Report released yesterday, says that's the big unanswered question. The report laments that, "The loss of existing and
planned satellite sensors is perhaps the greatest single threat" to climate research.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Sam Wells Posted 8:51 am
14 Sep 2007
The Climate team did good on the technical recommendations, if you read the article closely. However, they did not offer any insights for regional planners, how to achieve reductions on many different scales, any policy implications, or anything that could be used by the general public to grapple with possible weather and flooding impacts. That was the whole point of the article.
In other words, after spending billions of taxpayer dollars, they have little to show for their efforts, aside from settling some very technical questions (e.g., "Is the PBL getting warmer?"). I thought you would have praised the article for trying to push science into applications that can be used by people, rather than just theory for its own sake. /sammie
Onward through the fog
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