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NNadir
NNadir's Journal
NNadir's Journal
October 3, 2020
My spell checker is always acting smarter than I am, so I beat the crap out of it.
I typed "highly sulfonated quinolindinium/benzyloxazolidinium copolymeric catalyst" in a note to myself and the sucker choked.
I sometimes get tired of its smart assed spelling and grammar corrections. It's like that spelling bee winner in the fifth grade who liked to stick her tongue at you.
It's probably sulking somewhere in its solid state silicon brain.
October 3, 2020
They suggest the data to which they fit their model represents a loss of ice amounting to around 6,000 billion tons of ice per century, 6 trillion tons during the Holocene, which is the current post glacial era in which civilization arose. Using their model, they predict that Greenland will lose between 8,000 billion tons to 35,000 billion tons in the 21st century, greatly exceeding any value recorded in the last 12,000 years.
For those lacking access to the full paper, I'll offer a few excerpts and graphics. From the paper's introduction:
A few excerpts from additional sections:
Some pictures from the text:
Fig. 1: Domain for the ice-sheet model and moraine record of past GIS change in SW Greenland:
The caption:
Fig. 2: Increased and variable GIS mass loss during the Holocene.
The caption:
In figure 3, notice the vertical line on the extreme right of the large graphic. This would be an excellent time to tell me all about how many "Watts" of solar cells are installed in California. Please avoid, since we live in the age of the celebration of the lie, using units of energy, GigaJoules - which matter - in favor of units of peak power - which mean zero at midnight in California.
The annual weekly minimum for carbon dioxide concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa was likely reached last week. The data hasn't been posted, but as I follow these data points weekly, I expect it will come in at about 411.0 ppm +/- 0.2 ppm. In 2010, the annual minimum was reached in the week beginning September 26, 2010. At that time, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere was 386.77 ppm. Read the caption and choose your dot on the vertical line that represents the 21st century, the age of "renewable energy will save us" aka, in my mind, the age of the lie.
Fig. 3: Exceptional rates of ice-mass loss in the twenty-first century, relative to the Holocene.
The caption:
Fig. 4: Substantial change in surface elevation of the GIS over the twenty-first century.
The caption:
Some additional text from the paper:
As of 2018, the humanity was consuming 599.34 exajoules of primary energy per year. 81% of that energy came from dangerous fossil fuels, as opposed to 80% of 420.19 exajoules that were being consumed in the year 2000. Things are getting worse, not better.
Every year, quantities of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere as dangerous fosssil fuel waste amounts to more than 35 billion metric tons. Land use changes, including those involved in providing so called "renewable energy" - for example the destruction of the Pantanal for ethanol farms - add about another ten billion tons.
To provide about 600 exajoules of primary energy each year, would require, assuming 190 MeV/fission, ignoring neutrinos, completely fissioning about 7.5 thousand tons of plutonium each year. The density of plutonium, in at least one allotrope, is about 19.9 g/ml, depending on the isotopic vector. The size of a cube containing 7.5 thousand tons of plutonium - which could never be assembled as such owing to criticality constraints - is less than 8 meters on a side.
I am often informed by people that "nobody knows what to do with (so called) 'nuclear waste.'" In saying this, it is very clear that these people have never in their wildest imagination ever considered what to do with hundreds of billions of tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste, which is choking the planet literally to death. Of course, their considerations are weak, because the best evidence is that these people can't be bothered to open a scientific paper or a science book on the subject of any kind of waste. Somehow people expect me to be impressed by rote statements reflecting, to my mind, a total lack of attention or at least a very lazy selective attention to statements from equally lazy and equally misinformed people, often journalists or "activists" of a type that have never passed a college level physical science course. Ignorance, we know, runs in circles, scientific and engineering ignorance as well as political ignorance.
I have been opening science books and reading scientific papers for the bulk of my adult life. A huge percentage of them are about waste and so called "waste." Perhaps, I'm the "nobody" about whom these people speak, since I know perfectly well what to do with so called "nuclear waste." It contains, I'm convinced, enough plutonium (as well as americium and neptunium) to save the Greenland Ice Sheet, and in fact, the world.
Tears in Rain.
I wish you a safe and pleasant weekend.
Rate of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet will exceed Holocene values this century.
The paper I'll discuss in this post is this one: Rate of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet will exceed Holocene values this century (Jason P. Briner, Joshua K. Cuzzone, Jessica A. Badgeley, Nicolás E. Young, Eric J. Steig, Mathieu Morlighem, Nicole-Jeanne Schlegel, Gregory J. Hakim, Joerg M. Schaefer, Jesse V. Johnson, Alia J. Lesnek, Elizabeth K. Thomas, Estelle Allan, Ole Bennike, Allison A. Cluett, Beata Csatho, Anne de Vernal, Jacob Downs, Eric Larour & Sophie Nowicki, Nature volume 586, pages 70–74 (2020))
So called "renewable energy" hasn't saved the world; it isn't saving the world; it won't save the world. I have nothing more to say about the literally pyrrhic apparent triumph of the antinukes than what it says on the AAAS t-shirt distributed this year says: Facts are facts.
Since this paper which is a modeling paper, suggests, by fitting the model to the best historical data on the Greenland Ice Sheet what the future of the ice sheet will be, given that we have deliberately chosen not to do anything effective about climate change:
The abstract of the paper is available at the link.
For convenience, an excerpt:
The Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) is losing mass at a high rate1. Given the short-term nature of the observational record, it is difficult to assess the historical importance of this mass-loss trend. Unlike records of greenhouse gas concentrations and global temperature, in which observations have been merged with palaeoclimate datasets, there are no comparably long records for rates of GIS mass change. Here we reveal unprecedented mass loss from the GIS this century, by placing contemporary and future rates of GIS mass loss within the context of the natural variability over the past 12,000 years. We force a high-resolution ice-sheet model with an ensemble of climate histories constrained by ice-core data2.
They suggest the data to which they fit their model represents a loss of ice amounting to around 6,000 billion tons of ice per century, 6 trillion tons during the Holocene, which is the current post glacial era in which civilization arose. Using their model, they predict that Greenland will lose between 8,000 billion tons to 35,000 billion tons in the 21st century, greatly exceeding any value recorded in the last 12,000 years.
For those lacking access to the full paper, I'll offer a few excerpts and graphics. From the paper's introduction:
The GIS lies within the rapidly warming Arctic, and its contribution to sea-level rise has recently accelerated1. The increased rate of GIS mass loss since the 1990s is substantial, but the lack of data on long-term GIS mass change makes it difficult to evaluate this short-term phenomenon within the context of natural variability5,7. Efforts to quantify rates of ice-mass loss through time have relied on historical climate data and image analysis, contemporary airborne and satellite observations, and numerical ice-sheet simulations5,8,9. Combined, these approaches reveal that the GIS was roughly in neutral mass balance during the nineteenth century, experienced variable mass loss in the twentieth century, and has undergone a substantial increase in mass loss in the past 20 years1,5,10. The future of GIS mass change is uncertain, but projected warming combined with feedbacks in the coupled ice-sheet–climate system will lead to continued losses9,11,12. Given plausible future climate scenarios, the GIS may be entirely gone in as few as 1,000 years13...
A few excerpts from additional sections:
The GIS’s past...
...Geological observations of GIS change are most abundant during the Holocene14. For this reason, the Holocene has been targeted as a timeframe for simulating GIS history15,16,17,18,19,20. Model simulations so far have been used to assess spatiotemporal patterns of GIS retreat and to constrain its minimum size. Simulated changes in ice volume are largely the product of climatic forcing; palaeo-mass balance is typically modelled using one of the ice-core ?18O time series from central Greenland, which is converted to temperature and precipitation, and scaled across the ice sheet15. Some approaches improve model performance with geological constraints, but climate forcing is still scaled from limited ice-core data, sometimes using prescribed Holocene temperature histories to improve model–data fit16,17. One recent study19 used data averaged from three ice-core sites to adjust palaeotemperatures from a transient climate model, and scaled precipitation from one ice-core accumulation record. All these estimates of mass-loss rates during the Holocene provide important context for projected GIS mass loss, but they have not been extended into the future, making quantitative comparisons uncertain...
...Geological observations of GIS change are most abundant during the Holocene14. For this reason, the Holocene has been targeted as a timeframe for simulating GIS history15,16,17,18,19,20. Model simulations so far have been used to assess spatiotemporal patterns of GIS retreat and to constrain its minimum size. Simulated changes in ice volume are largely the product of climatic forcing; palaeo-mass balance is typically modelled using one of the ice-core ?18O time series from central Greenland, which is converted to temperature and precipitation, and scaled across the ice sheet15. Some approaches improve model performance with geological constraints, but climate forcing is still scaled from limited ice-core data, sometimes using prescribed Holocene temperature histories to improve model–data fit16,17. One recent study19 used data averaged from three ice-core sites to adjust palaeotemperatures from a transient climate model, and scaled precipitation from one ice-core accumulation record. All these estimates of mass-loss rates during the Holocene provide important context for projected GIS mass loss, but they have not been extended into the future, making quantitative comparisons uncertain...
GIS modelling
We place today’s rates of ice loss into the context of the Holocene and the future using a consistent framework, by simulating rates of GIS mass change from 12,000 years ago to AD 2100. We use the high-resolution Ice Sheet and Sea-level system Model (ISSM), which resolves topography as finely as 2 km (refs. 21,22,23). Our simulations are forced with a palaeoclimate reanalysis product for Greenland temperature and precipitation over the past 20,000 years2. This reanalysis was derived using data assimilation of Arctic ice-core records (oxygen isotopes of ice, and snow accumulation) with a transient climate model (Methods). We account for uncertainty in the temperature and precipitation reconstructions by creating an ensemble of nine individual ISSM simulations that have varying temperature and precipitation forcings2 (Methods). Sensitivity tests using a simplified model in the same domain24 suggest that the range in plausible palaeoclimate forcing, which we use, has a larger influence on simulated rates of ice-mass change than do model parameters such as basal drag, surface-mass-balance parameters and initial state. We compare our simulated GIS extent against mapped and dated changes in the position of the GIS margin3,4...
We place today’s rates of ice loss into the context of the Holocene and the future using a consistent framework, by simulating rates of GIS mass change from 12,000 years ago to AD 2100. We use the high-resolution Ice Sheet and Sea-level system Model (ISSM), which resolves topography as finely as 2 km (refs. 21,22,23). Our simulations are forced with a palaeoclimate reanalysis product for Greenland temperature and precipitation over the past 20,000 years2. This reanalysis was derived using data assimilation of Arctic ice-core records (oxygen isotopes of ice, and snow accumulation) with a transient climate model (Methods). We account for uncertainty in the temperature and precipitation reconstructions by creating an ensemble of nine individual ISSM simulations that have varying temperature and precipitation forcings2 (Methods). Sensitivity tests using a simplified model in the same domain24 suggest that the range in plausible palaeoclimate forcing, which we use, has a larger influence on simulated rates of ice-mass change than do model parameters such as basal drag, surface-mass-balance parameters and initial state. We compare our simulated GIS extent against mapped and dated changes in the position of the GIS margin3,4...
Some pictures from the text:
Fig. 1: Domain for the ice-sheet model and moraine record of past GIS change in SW Greenland:
The caption:
a, Map of the present-day GIS, showing commonly used domains (as labelled) and our model domain (outlined in red). NO, north; NE, northeast; NW, northwest; CW, central–west; SE, southeast; SW, southwest. b, WSW Greenland (boxed in a), showing widely traceable moraine sequences3. JI, Jakobshavn Isbræ; KNS, Kangiata Nunaata Sermia. c, Cosmogenic–nuclide exposure-age chronologies of all moraines between the ocean and the GIS4 (boxed in b); 1? age uncertainties are listed; moraine lines are dashed where uncertain. Base-map topography from BedMachine37.
Fig. 2: Increased and variable GIS mass loss during the Holocene.
The caption:
a, Simulated cumulative change in WSW GIS ice mass from 12,000 years ago to AD 1850, for nine model simulations (Methods). b, Simulated position of the WSW GIS margin in the Holocene, for the transect shown in Fig. 1c. Black circles represent independent observations of ice-margin position based on mapped and dated moraines (with one-standard-deviation age uncertainty); the red circle is the present-day GIS margin. c, Bar plot showing the mean rate of ice-mass loss from 12,500 to 7,000 years ago; vertical lines and shading show moraine age and one-standard-deviation uncertainty for every moraine between Baffin Bay and the present-day ice margin4; asterisks mark the five centuries with the highest rates of mass loss.
In figure 3, notice the vertical line on the extreme right of the large graphic. This would be an excellent time to tell me all about how many "Watts" of solar cells are installed in California. Please avoid, since we live in the age of the celebration of the lie, using units of energy, GigaJoules - which matter - in favor of units of peak power - which mean zero at midnight in California.
The annual weekly minimum for carbon dioxide concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa was likely reached last week. The data hasn't been posted, but as I follow these data points weekly, I expect it will come in at about 411.0 ppm +/- 0.2 ppm. In 2010, the annual minimum was reached in the week beginning September 26, 2010. At that time, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere was 386.77 ppm. Read the caption and choose your dot on the vertical line that represents the 21st century, the age of "renewable energy will save us" aka, in my mind, the age of the lie.
Fig. 3: Exceptional rates of ice-mass loss in the twenty-first century, relative to the Holocene.
The caption:
The mean rate of ice-mass change each century, from 12,500 years ago to AD 2100, is shown by the black line. The light grey bars indicate the ice-mass change in each of the nine simulations. For the 1900s, simulated rates are shown in dark grey. For the 2000s, rates of ice-mass change for various RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 simulations are shown as blue and red circles (see legend in inset). The histogram on the right incorporates all (n = 1,125) Holocene rates of ice-mass change. The inset shows simulated rates of ice-mass change in annual timesteps from AD 1850 to AD 2100.
Fig. 4: Substantial change in surface elevation of the GIS over the twenty-first century.
The caption:
a–c, Simulated change in surface elevation of WSW GIS (metres per century; colour scale) for the centuries in the Holocene with the highest mass-loss rate (a, c) and during the cold event 8,200 years ago (b), from model experiment 9. d–f, Simulated change in surface elevation (metres per century; colour scale) over the twenty-first century under the MIROC RCP2.6 (e) and RCP8.5 (f) scenarios, compared to the twentieth century (d). g, Comparison of the mass-loss rate for WSW GIS (right axis, red) and for the entire GIS (left axis, black), from AD 1972 to AD 2018, based on observations5 (r2 = 0.82, where r is the correlation coefficient). h, Comparison of the mass-loss rate for WSW GIS (right axis, red) and for the entire GIS (left axis, black), from AD 2015 to AD 2100, from our simulation using the MIROC RCP8.5 climate forcing (r^(2) = 0.97).
Some additional text from the paper:
The substantial increase in rates of GIS mass loss in the past two decades is exceptional in the context of estimates of mass loss in the historic interval5,8,9,35. If the rates of mass loss observed over the past two decades were to remain constant for the rest of the twenty-first century, the total rate of mass loss over the twenty-first-century would be around 6,100 Gt per century for WSW Greenland5. This value is within the low end of our simulated range of mass-loss rates during the early Holocene. However, 6,100 Gt per century may vastly underestimate the rate of mass loss for the twenty-first century, because climate is projected to become increasingly unfavourable for maintaining even the current levels of GIS mass balance6. Our simulations of twenty-first-century WSW GIS mass loss, using an identical model and model set-up, address the limitation of extrapolating observed rates of mass loss and yield century-average mass-loss rates of 8,800–10,600 Gt per century for RCP2.6 scenarios and 14,000–35,900 Gt per century for RCP8.5 scenarios (Methods, Fig. 3).
As of 2018, the humanity was consuming 599.34 exajoules of primary energy per year. 81% of that energy came from dangerous fossil fuels, as opposed to 80% of 420.19 exajoules that were being consumed in the year 2000. Things are getting worse, not better.
Every year, quantities of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere as dangerous fosssil fuel waste amounts to more than 35 billion metric tons. Land use changes, including those involved in providing so called "renewable energy" - for example the destruction of the Pantanal for ethanol farms - add about another ten billion tons.
To provide about 600 exajoules of primary energy each year, would require, assuming 190 MeV/fission, ignoring neutrinos, completely fissioning about 7.5 thousand tons of plutonium each year. The density of plutonium, in at least one allotrope, is about 19.9 g/ml, depending on the isotopic vector. The size of a cube containing 7.5 thousand tons of plutonium - which could never be assembled as such owing to criticality constraints - is less than 8 meters on a side.
I am often informed by people that "nobody knows what to do with (so called) 'nuclear waste.'" In saying this, it is very clear that these people have never in their wildest imagination ever considered what to do with hundreds of billions of tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste, which is choking the planet literally to death. Of course, their considerations are weak, because the best evidence is that these people can't be bothered to open a scientific paper or a science book on the subject of any kind of waste. Somehow people expect me to be impressed by rote statements reflecting, to my mind, a total lack of attention or at least a very lazy selective attention to statements from equally lazy and equally misinformed people, often journalists or "activists" of a type that have never passed a college level physical science course. Ignorance, we know, runs in circles, scientific and engineering ignorance as well as political ignorance.
I have been opening science books and reading scientific papers for the bulk of my adult life. A huge percentage of them are about waste and so called "waste." Perhaps, I'm the "nobody" about whom these people speak, since I know perfectly well what to do with so called "nuclear waste." It contains, I'm convinced, enough plutonium (as well as americium and neptunium) to save the Greenland Ice Sheet, and in fact, the world.
Tears in Rain.
I wish you a safe and pleasant weekend.
October 2, 2020
I will state, for the record, that I regard the rote political position of our party, my party - that so called "renewable energy" will save the world - to be dangerously wrong headed, since so called "renewable energy" has been failing miserably at addressing climate change for several decades: The situation is getting worse not better, but I do believe that science - which is a human activity and begins with theory, some of which are biased - does demand experimental proof, and the failure of the anti-nuclear "renewable energy will save us" experiment has unmistakable results, and one does see growing recognition of this.
But no matter, since Biden can think and Trump cannot, he will at least take the issue seriously and hopefully bring young fresh minds into the discussion.
Personally, I am a big supporter of robotic instruments in space, human space travel, not so much...but that's just me...
Having an ignorant racist for a President is clearly extremely dangerous in science - as well as many other areas - because science is in fact international and we disconnect from the world at our peril.
Biden is sure to be a huge improvement, a vast improvement, in fact an improvement on an almost infinite scale, since essentially he'll be starting from zero or less than zero.
Anyway...
I felt that the Obama administration was, overall, the best administration for science in my adult life, particularly in the first term.
President Biden and Vice President Harris will have huge issues to address, many of them involving science and engineering issues, and if nothing else, we can be sure that without a President Biden and Vice President Harris, science will suffer greatly, as it is doing now, at the expense of hundreds of thousands (actually millions) of lives.
Nature: What a Joe Biden presidency would mean for five key science issues.
The following appears in the "News" section of the major scientific journal Nature:
What a Joe Biden presidency would mean for five key science issues (Amy Maxmen, Nidhi Subbaraman, Jeff Tollefson, Giuliana Viglione & Alexandra Witze, Nature News October 1, 2020.)
I believe the article is open sourced and anyone can read it.
Some Excerpts:
Election Day in the United States is a little more than a month away, and scientists are watching the outcome of the presidential race closely. President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, actions to downplay climate change and perpetuation of misinformation have horrified many scientists. “We face a national crisis unlike any we have witnessed,” says a statement of concern about the state of democracy in the country, drafted by US scientists and signed by more than 3,400 supporters in response to Trump’s leadership...
...But what does Biden, a six-term senator from Delaware who served as vice-president under former president Barack Obama, stand for science-wise? Nature interviewed current advisers to Biden, advisers who served during Obama’s presidency and policy analysts about actions the former vice-president might take in five key science areas if he’s elected. (The Biden campaign did not respond to questions from Nature.)
Pandemic response
If Biden wins the election on 3 November, he will inherit not only a country in the throes of a pandemic that’s destroyed lives and livelihoods — but also one in which public opinion is deeply divided over the true extent of the coronavirus outbreak and the measures taken to abate it. Despite public-health agencies counting more than 200,000 COVID-19 deaths in the country, some Trump supporters feel that the impact of the virus has been exaggerated in an effort to control the populace.
Why the United States is having a coronavirus data crisis
Biden would also inherit a haphazard pandemic response, researchers say. “The problem with our whole response is that we’ve been changing the response since day one,” says Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association in Washington DC...
... Coming in with a strong response plan and the ability to adapt to an evolving situation will be crucial for steadying both the outbreak and the US economy, he adds.
Biden’s pandemic plans — which his team has been preparing since March, say sources close to the campaign — promise to ramp up the country’s test-and-trace programmes; address racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 infection rates and outcomes; and rebuild pandemic-readiness programmes cut by the Trump administration.
Still, it will take time to bring the pandemic under control in the United States, says Kavita Patel, a physician who advises on health policy for Harris but is not currently advising the campaign. Biden’s staff members, she says, “need to hit the ground running” in order to turn the US response around...
...If elected, Biden has committed to supporting the World Health Organization (WHO), which Trump began to withdraw the United States from in July. As well as providing badly needed funds to the WHO to fight the coronavirus, polio and other diseases globally, reinstating the United States’ commitment to the organization would pave the way for joining its international COVAX facility, which aims to accelerate the search for and manufacture of coronavirus vaccines...
Climate change
...The coronavirus pandemic isn’t the only divisive issue that Biden would face if elected — he would also be confronting climate change. Trump has moved to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate treaty, rolled back a suite of regulations intended to reduce greenhouse-gas regulations and called global warming a hoax.
In contrast, Biden is now campaigning on the most aggressive climate platform ever advanced by a US presidential nominee in the general election. Addressing the demands of an increasingly vocal liberal base, his US$2-trillion plan calls for massive investments in clean-energy research and development and low-carbon infrastructure, such as public transit and energy-efficient buildings. It also calls for the United States to generate 100% clean electricity by 2035 and to produce “net-zero emissions” by 2050. The question facing Biden and his team, if they win in November, is how to make it happen...
...But what does Biden, a six-term senator from Delaware who served as vice-president under former president Barack Obama, stand for science-wise? Nature interviewed current advisers to Biden, advisers who served during Obama’s presidency and policy analysts about actions the former vice-president might take in five key science areas if he’s elected. (The Biden campaign did not respond to questions from Nature.)
Pandemic response
If Biden wins the election on 3 November, he will inherit not only a country in the throes of a pandemic that’s destroyed lives and livelihoods — but also one in which public opinion is deeply divided over the true extent of the coronavirus outbreak and the measures taken to abate it. Despite public-health agencies counting more than 200,000 COVID-19 deaths in the country, some Trump supporters feel that the impact of the virus has been exaggerated in an effort to control the populace.
Why the United States is having a coronavirus data crisis
Biden would also inherit a haphazard pandemic response, researchers say. “The problem with our whole response is that we’ve been changing the response since day one,” says Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association in Washington DC...
... Coming in with a strong response plan and the ability to adapt to an evolving situation will be crucial for steadying both the outbreak and the US economy, he adds.
Biden’s pandemic plans — which his team has been preparing since March, say sources close to the campaign — promise to ramp up the country’s test-and-trace programmes; address racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 infection rates and outcomes; and rebuild pandemic-readiness programmes cut by the Trump administration.
Still, it will take time to bring the pandemic under control in the United States, says Kavita Patel, a physician who advises on health policy for Harris but is not currently advising the campaign. Biden’s staff members, she says, “need to hit the ground running” in order to turn the US response around...
...If elected, Biden has committed to supporting the World Health Organization (WHO), which Trump began to withdraw the United States from in July. As well as providing badly needed funds to the WHO to fight the coronavirus, polio and other diseases globally, reinstating the United States’ commitment to the organization would pave the way for joining its international COVAX facility, which aims to accelerate the search for and manufacture of coronavirus vaccines...
Climate change
...The coronavirus pandemic isn’t the only divisive issue that Biden would face if elected — he would also be confronting climate change. Trump has moved to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate treaty, rolled back a suite of regulations intended to reduce greenhouse-gas regulations and called global warming a hoax.
In contrast, Biden is now campaigning on the most aggressive climate platform ever advanced by a US presidential nominee in the general election. Addressing the demands of an increasingly vocal liberal base, his US$2-trillion plan calls for massive investments in clean-energy research and development and low-carbon infrastructure, such as public transit and energy-efficient buildings. It also calls for the United States to generate 100% clean electricity by 2035 and to produce “net-zero emissions” by 2050. The question facing Biden and his team, if they win in November, is how to make it happen...
I will state, for the record, that I regard the rote political position of our party, my party - that so called "renewable energy" will save the world - to be dangerously wrong headed, since so called "renewable energy" has been failing miserably at addressing climate change for several decades: The situation is getting worse not better, but I do believe that science - which is a human activity and begins with theory, some of which are biased - does demand experimental proof, and the failure of the anti-nuclear "renewable energy will save us" experiment has unmistakable results, and one does see growing recognition of this.
But no matter, since Biden can think and Trump cannot, he will at least take the issue seriously and hopefully bring young fresh minds into the discussion.
Research priorities
...As well as tackling the pandemic and climate change, a President Biden would have the opportunity to develop other science priorities for his administration. This process typically includes tapping experts to coordinate science policy and establishing research focuses for the White House. (The actual job of doling out science funding is left to Congress.)
These advisers will be crucial because although Biden and Harris generally support science and its role in crafting public policy, neither has worked extensively on science issues. When he served in the Senate, Biden’s focus was more on foreign affairs and the judiciary, and Harris has a background in criminal justice, including her former position as California’s attorney general.
NASA soars and others plummet in Trump’s budget proposal
If Biden is elected, he should choose a science adviser as quickly as possible to start developing and implementing whatever research priorities do emerge, says Michael Lubell, a physicist and science-policy expert at the City College of New York. That position is currently held by meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier — who did not start until nearly two years into Trump’s presidency...
...Biden’s most obvious research interest has been in cancer science, particularly following the death of his 46-year-old son Beau in 2015 to brain cancer. As vice-president, Biden headed a government ‘cancer moonshot’ initiative that kicked off in 2016, the last year of Obama’s presidency. It aimed to speed up the rate of progress against the disease by coordinating with companies and researchers to share data and results. The initiative later morphed into a non-profit group, which Biden suspended last year after deciding to run for president.
“Biden will want to make sure that any momentum from that effort that began in 2016 has not waned," says Jon Retzlaff, vice-president for science policy and government affairs at the American Association for Cancer Research. He also notes that Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a major influence on the vice-presidential candidate, was a leading breast-cancer researcher who died of cancer...
Space exploration
Under Trump, NASA has pursued an ambitious strategy — named Artemis, after Apollo’s twin sister — to put US astronauts on the Moon four years from now. Space exploration is one of the few areas where the Trump administration has put in significant effort to develop science policy.How Biden, if elected, might alter the course set out by Trump is another unknown. As vice-president, Biden was not deeply involved in space-policy issues — unlike Pence, who has actively worked on Trump’s space initiatives.
President Donald Trump views the Artemis II space capsule
Trump views a space capsule that's part of NASA's Artemis programme, which aims to put astronauts on the Moon by 2024.Credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA/Planet Pix/ZUMA Wire
He did, however, express enthusiasm for space in May, when NASA sent two astronauts to the International Space Station on a privately built spacecraft for the first time. In response, Biden posted his congratulations on the website Medium — and noted that he was vice-president when this ‘commercial crew’ programme began in 2009.
NASA might not dramatically change its course under a President Biden, experts say. The Democrats’ official platform says the party is “committed to continuing space exploration and discovery”, including “NASA’s work to return Americans to the Moon and go beyond to Mars”...
...As well as tackling the pandemic and climate change, a President Biden would have the opportunity to develop other science priorities for his administration. This process typically includes tapping experts to coordinate science policy and establishing research focuses for the White House. (The actual job of doling out science funding is left to Congress.)
These advisers will be crucial because although Biden and Harris generally support science and its role in crafting public policy, neither has worked extensively on science issues. When he served in the Senate, Biden’s focus was more on foreign affairs and the judiciary, and Harris has a background in criminal justice, including her former position as California’s attorney general.
NASA soars and others plummet in Trump’s budget proposal
If Biden is elected, he should choose a science adviser as quickly as possible to start developing and implementing whatever research priorities do emerge, says Michael Lubell, a physicist and science-policy expert at the City College of New York. That position is currently held by meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier — who did not start until nearly two years into Trump’s presidency...
...Biden’s most obvious research interest has been in cancer science, particularly following the death of his 46-year-old son Beau in 2015 to brain cancer. As vice-president, Biden headed a government ‘cancer moonshot’ initiative that kicked off in 2016, the last year of Obama’s presidency. It aimed to speed up the rate of progress against the disease by coordinating with companies and researchers to share data and results. The initiative later morphed into a non-profit group, which Biden suspended last year after deciding to run for president.
“Biden will want to make sure that any momentum from that effort that began in 2016 has not waned," says Jon Retzlaff, vice-president for science policy and government affairs at the American Association for Cancer Research. He also notes that Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a major influence on the vice-presidential candidate, was a leading breast-cancer researcher who died of cancer...
Space exploration
Under Trump, NASA has pursued an ambitious strategy — named Artemis, after Apollo’s twin sister — to put US astronauts on the Moon four years from now. Space exploration is one of the few areas where the Trump administration has put in significant effort to develop science policy.How Biden, if elected, might alter the course set out by Trump is another unknown. As vice-president, Biden was not deeply involved in space-policy issues — unlike Pence, who has actively worked on Trump’s space initiatives.
President Donald Trump views the Artemis II space capsule
Trump views a space capsule that's part of NASA's Artemis programme, which aims to put astronauts on the Moon by 2024.Credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA/Planet Pix/ZUMA Wire
He did, however, express enthusiasm for space in May, when NASA sent two astronauts to the International Space Station on a privately built spacecraft for the first time. In response, Biden posted his congratulations on the website Medium — and noted that he was vice-president when this ‘commercial crew’ programme began in 2009.
NASA might not dramatically change its course under a President Biden, experts say. The Democrats’ official platform says the party is “committed to continuing space exploration and discovery”, including “NASA’s work to return Americans to the Moon and go beyond to Mars”...
Personally, I am a big supporter of robotic instruments in space, human space travel, not so much...but that's just me...
International research collaborations
Scientists widely feel that Trump’s isolationist stance has eroded the position of the United States as a global leader in major scientific collaborations and dimmed its allure as a destination for foreign students and researchers. Biden’s foreign-policy and immigration plans could mend some frayed ties, but science-policy experts warn that the road to recovery will be longer than a single four-year presidential term.
Well before the 2016 election, Trump’s nationalist campaign rhetoric, with vivid promises to build a wall along the US–Mexico border, spooked foreign scientists. And weeks after his presidential inauguration, a ‘travel ban’ executive order targeted at seven Muslim-majority countries stranded international students at airports, sparked protests and sent shock waves through the US research community. “When you don't have certainty over what the future immigration laws of the host country are going to be, you're going to think twice before deciding to uproot yourself and move to another country to pursue your PhD,” says Ali Nouri, a molecular biologist and president of the Federation of American Scientists...
Amid this crackdown, US scientists are concerned about racial profiling against Chinese scientists, and some scientists in China are wary of travelling to the United States for conferences or partnering on projects with US scientists. US funding agencies have denied that the increased scrutiny has caused collaborations to suffer and insist that the US government’s interest is in select cases of unethical or illegal behavior.
Scientists widely feel that Trump’s isolationist stance has eroded the position of the United States as a global leader in major scientific collaborations and dimmed its allure as a destination for foreign students and researchers. Biden’s foreign-policy and immigration plans could mend some frayed ties, but science-policy experts warn that the road to recovery will be longer than a single four-year presidential term.
Well before the 2016 election, Trump’s nationalist campaign rhetoric, with vivid promises to build a wall along the US–Mexico border, spooked foreign scientists. And weeks after his presidential inauguration, a ‘travel ban’ executive order targeted at seven Muslim-majority countries stranded international students at airports, sparked protests and sent shock waves through the US research community. “When you don't have certainty over what the future immigration laws of the host country are going to be, you're going to think twice before deciding to uproot yourself and move to another country to pursue your PhD,” says Ali Nouri, a molecular biologist and president of the Federation of American Scientists...
Amid this crackdown, US scientists are concerned about racial profiling against Chinese scientists, and some scientists in China are wary of travelling to the United States for conferences or partnering on projects with US scientists. US funding agencies have denied that the increased scrutiny has caused collaborations to suffer and insist that the US government’s interest is in select cases of unethical or illegal behavior.
Having an ignorant racist for a President is clearly extremely dangerous in science - as well as many other areas - because science is in fact international and we disconnect from the world at our peril.
Biden is sure to be a huge improvement, a vast improvement, in fact an improvement on an almost infinite scale, since essentially he'll be starting from zero or less than zero.
Anyway...
I felt that the Obama administration was, overall, the best administration for science in my adult life, particularly in the first term.
President Biden and Vice President Harris will have huge issues to address, many of them involving science and engineering issues, and if nothing else, we can be sure that without a President Biden and Vice President Harris, science will suffer greatly, as it is doing now, at the expense of hundreds of thousands (actually millions) of lives.
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