Opinion

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Science and the media: 23 - 29 April

APR 29, 2011

Steve Corneliussen’s topics this week:

The growing public discussion about the reportClimate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate
Newt Gingrich’s conservative support for science funding
A prominent biodiversity scientist’s perspective on environmentalism, climate and energy
The nuclear industry’s future prompts discouraging views in the New York Times
Disagreement between Wall Street Journal opinion writers and a teachers’ union leader on education reform

Matthew Nisbet’s controversial climate report

As many in the physics community know, Matthew C. Nisbet holds faculty positions in both communication and environmental science at American University in Washington, DC. Here’s a collage of excerpts from the already voluminous public discussion, mainly online so far, of his new report , Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate.

‘So now greens are in the post-mortem stage, and, not shockingly, it’s a sensitive subject,’ wrote Bradford Plumer, an associate editor at the New Republic, in the 21 April article ‘Blame Game: Has the green movement been a miserable flop?’ Plumer continued:

Matthew Nisbet ... [has] released a hefty 84-page report trying to figure out why climate activism flopped so miserably in the past few years. Nisbet’s report is already causing controversy: Among other things, he argues that, contrary to popular belief, greens weren’t badly outspent by industry groups and that media coverage of climate science wasn’t really a problem.

Ezra Klein’s Washington Post blog quoted Plumer, and then said of Nisbet’s report, ‘Reading through it, I started to wonder if there was another option worth considering. Maybe none of the theories about what went wrong are correct. It’s quite possible that climate activists basically did a competent job: After all, they did get a big, complicated bill to the 20-yard-line in a legislative body that rarely passes big, complicated bills—and they just got unlucky.’

Nature‘s 21 April editorial ‘Home truths: A new report offers useful insight into the continuing stalemate over global warming’ declared that the Nisbet report ‘shines light on some uncomfortable truths’ and ‘should be essential reading for anyone with a passing interest in the climate-change debate.’ The editors emphasize that it ‘effectively dismantles three of the most common reasons given by those who have tried, and failed, to garner widespread support for policies to restrict greenhouse gases.’ The editors continued:

First—the failure of the US Senate to pass a cap-and-trade bill in 2010 cannot be blamed directly on the financial lobbying muscle of the conservative movement and its allies in industry. In 2009, the report says, although a network of prominent opponents of cap and trade, including ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, spent a total of US$272 million lobbying policy-makers, environmental groups in favour of cap and trade mobilized $229 million from companies such as General Electric and other supporters to lobby for environmental issues. Indeed, the effort to pass cap and trade, Nisbet notes, ‘may have been the best-financed political cause in American history’.

Second—most of the mainstream media coverage of climate change gets it right. During 2009 and 2010, Nisbet writes, around nine out of ten news and opinion articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN’s online site reflected the consensus scientific position. The Wall Street Journal regularly presented the opposite view in its opinion pages, but eight out of ten news items still backed the science.

Third—conservative media outlets such as Fox News and controversies such as the coverage of e-mails hacked from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom have a minimal impact on public attitudes to climate change, because such influences tend to only reinforce the views of those who already hold doubts.

The failure of cap and trade in the United States, Nisbet concludes, was not down to poor communication, but was due to framing the issue of greenhouse-gas emissions as a problem that could be solved by a specific policy. More useful, he says, would be to present climate change as an issue that needs to be addressed at many levels, similar to public health or poverty. Those, of course, are far from ideal models—but we live in far from ideal times.

At the New York Times‘s Dot Earth blog, Andrew Revkin has now offered two postings about the report and the discussion surrounding it.

He begins the first posting , ‘Beyond the Climate Blame Game,’ by reporting that on ‘the tiny patch of American public discourse reserved for the global warming debate ... a week of blogitation over a sprawling report examining failed efforts to pass a climate bill has started to give way to constructive discussion.’ Revkin explains that Nisbet’s report ‘explores who had the biggest advantage—in money and media spin—in the fight over a cap-and-trade climate bill, along with cultural issues, like the deep liberal tilt among scientists, that flavor how such battles are waged.’ He links to several other blog discussions, quotes the views of several formal reviewers, mainly from academe, and offers what he calls ‘a few overarching observations about the report, the fate of the climate bill, American attitudes on energy and the influence of environmental and anti-regulatory forces in Washington.’

Revkin says that his second posting , ‘Two Views of Climate Cause and Effect,’ is ‘for anyone wishing to dig in deeper on missteps and next steps on the climate challenge.’ He offers replies received from Nisbet and from Joe Romm of the Climate Progress blog, whom Revkin calls ‘one of Nisbet’s staunchest critics.’ The replies address questions from Revkin ‘related to the overall question of influence, effort and outcomes after nearly a decade aimed at producing a comprehensive climate bill centered on carbon trading.’

Conservatives for science funding, cont.

As reported in January, the conservative columnist George F. Will, addressing kindred spirits concerning the federal budget, cited the National Academies’ Gathering Storm reports and declared that federally funded research has become ‘what canals and roads once were—a prerequisite for long-term economic vitality.’ Shortly later he wrote in support of STEM education. Now a Wall Street Journal columnist, David Wessel, has likened the conservative Newt Gingrich to President Obama when it comes to support for science.

Wessel’s 28 April column , headlined ‘Republicans Split Over Research Spending,’ reports that Gingrich is accusing Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), ‘chairman of the House Budget Committee and leader of the quest to shrink government . . . of a big mistake: Spending too little on medical and scientific research.’ He quotes Gingrich on the lack of wisdom in scanting science: ‘It’s essentially like saying I want to save money on your car [so] we’re not going to change the oil. And for about a year I can get away with it, then the engine will freeze, and we have to change the engine.’ Wessel emphasizes: ‘In making the case for more government investment in research, [Gingrich] sounds like Barack Obama.’

Wessel joins in with his own support as well when he asks readers to ‘ponder these facts':

Federal spending on payments for individuals (everything from housing subsidies to health care) has doubled over the past 30 years, as a share of the economy. Defense spending fell when the Cold War ended, but has been climbing for a decade.

Yet everything else—including all spending intended to pay off in the future—has been flat, setting aside the temporary Obama fiscal stimulus. Of the $3.5 trillion the federal government spent in 2010, only 1.6% went to non-defense physical capital, R&D, education and training, the White House budget office says. That’s half the size of the share for this spending in the early 1970s.

Wessel also invokes business leaders’ support of federal science funding:

Many corporate executives side with Messrs. Gingrich and Obama. Along with calling for lower taxes and less regulation, they’ve been arguing—to quote a recent statement signed by the Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs—for ‘federal investment to prepare our children with world-class educations and to support the scientific and technology research and innovation infrastructure that enable the private sector to create jobs.’

The columnist sums things up this way: ‘It’s a reminder that in the debate over government-spending priorities, the differences aren’t exclusively between the two parties, but sometimes within them.’

Jesse Ausubel’s environmental outlook

Please consider the environmental reconnaissance projects that Jesse H. Ausubel has contributed or helped contribute to biodiversity science, and then please consider his outlook on environmentalism—including energy and climate—overall. The four projects:

1. The Census of Marine Life has completed a ten-year investigation of diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life.
2. The International Barcode of Life project has collected more than a million specimens and has defined the DNA bar codes for more than 95 732 species.
3. Edward O. Wilson’s Encyclopedia of Life calls itself a ‘global partnership between the scientific community and the general public’ with the goal of making ‘freely available to anyone knowledge about all the world’s organisms.’
4. The Deep Carbon Observatory is a ‘multidisciplinary, international initiative dedicated to achieving a transformational understanding of Earth’s deep carbon cycle'; it ‘deploys ships to drill deep holes, runs a fleet of helicopters to install instruments on every volcano on earth, and develops new apparatus to test the deep physics and chemistry of carbon.’

Ausubel, of Rockefeller University, serves as vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation of New York, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Nicholas Wade profiled him on the front page of this week’s Science Times section in the New York Times.

Ausubel, Wade reports, believes that technology will, in general, protect rather than harm the environment. Wade continues:

Over the long run, [Ausubel] notes, the economy requires more efficient forms of energy, and these are inherently sparing of the environment. Cities used to use wood for heat and hay for transport fuel. But the required volumes of wood and horse feed soon led to more compact fuels like coal and oil.

Coal in turn is giving way to natural gas in a process that Mr. Ausubel calls decarbonization, the replacement of carbon-rich fuels with hydrogen-rich ones. The ultimate fuel source, in his view, is nuclear power, with reactors set to produce electricity by day and hydrogen, the fuel for battery-powered cars, by night. He sees little that might thwart the mighty process of decarbonization, even given setbacks like Japan’s nuclear crisis. ‘The energy system absorbs shocks even as big as Fukushima,’ he says.

As a program officer with the National Academy of Sciences, Mr. Ausubel worked with senior scientists who had broad experience in running international environmental programs. He was involved in planning the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting but has viewed the panel’s subsequent reports with reserve. Climate change went from being a small to a major issue. ‘And then the expected happened,’ he said. ‘Opportunists flowed in. By 1992 I stopped wanting to go to climate meetings.’

Because of decarbonization, Mr. Ausubel believes that the growth of carbon dioxide emissions will be limited. ‘The computer models of the climate system aren’t good enough and never will be. I tend not to be frightened because I think the natural evolution of the energy system is away from carbon,’ he said.

Wade explains that it was Ausubel’s ‘belief that technology is generally relieving the pressure on the terrestrial environment that led to his interest in marine life’ and the oceans—because they seemed to be being left under pressure. When Ausubel started the Deep Carbon Observatory in 2009, Wade writes, he had long been interested in the idea ‘that oil and gas are produced by deep-earth microbes feeding on natural sources of methane,’ which led to the idea ‘that oil wells might be naturally replenished from vast sources of carbon deep in the planet.’ This line of thinking originated with the Cornell University physicist Thomas Gold.

Wade continues:

Whether Dr. Gold’s ideas are correct, the behavior of carbon in the deep earth is an issue of considerable scientific moment. The deep earth is full of microbes that lead a largely independent existence from those on the surface. This dark world, flourishing but largely unknown, could have been the origin of life on earth and may influence it in many other ways. There is reason to think the deep earth contains hidden reservoirs of carbon—meteorites of the type that formed the primitive earth are 3 percent carbon, but the detectable abundance of carbon is only 0.1 percent. Discovery of a hidden carbon reservoir in the deep earth, especially if it is connected with the origins of oil and gas, could change estimates of energy supplies.

At the end of the profile, Wade sums up by noting that Ausubel ‘does not belong to the Jeremiah school of environmentalists who prophesy imminent doom unless their words are heeded.’ He quotes Ausubel: ‘The credibility of the environmental movement as a whole is less than its members wish it to be, and a lot of that has come from overdoing it on various issues.’

New York Times sees nuclear slowdown

Under the headline ‘Despite Bipartisan Support, Nuclear Reactor Projects Falter,’ the New York Times reports that six years after Congress authorized $17.5 billion in loan guarantees for new reactors, market conditions and the Fukushima Daiichi disaster have stalled the nuclear industry, and nearly half of the fund remains unclaimed.

‘Even supporters of the technology,’ writes Matthew Wald, ‘doubt that new projects will surface any time soon to replace those that have been all but abandoned.’ He cites Neil Wilmshurst, a vice president of the Electric Power Research Institute, who ‘said the continued depressed price of natural gas had clouded the economics of new reactors’ and ‘predicted that construction activity would ‘go quiet’ for two to five years.’ Wald reports that of ‘the four nuclear reactor construction projects that the Energy Department identified in 2009 as the most deserving for the loans, two have lost major partners and seem unlikely to recover soon.’

The situation also involves the politics of carbon dioxide emissions, Wald says:

The initial $17.5 billion was approved during the Bush administration, but President Obama has also embraced the idea of marrying nuclear power to solar, wind and ‘clean coal’ to reach his administration’s goal of generating 80 percent of American electricity from those sources by 2035. Mr. Obama’s call for new loan guarantees came when the administration was seeking Republican votes in the Senate for a limit on carbon dioxide emissions, but he has stuck with the loan guarantees even after prospects for such legislation died after last fall’s midterm elections.

Wald does report some optimism in the federal government:

Officials at the Energy Department, which administers the loans, said they were confident that other developers would come forward and apply for the guarantees. Jonathan M. Silver, the executive director of the loan programs office, said, ‘There is a significant queue of nuclear power plants in house that we will and are working on.’

‘They may just go forward under a different time frame,’ he said, but he declined to estimate how many years it would be before the government could reach its goal of providing loan guarantees to six to eight reactor projects.

Mr. Silver said that by the time a reactor could be finished and brought on line, market factors might be more in the industry’s favor. ‘There are so many variables in this equation, taking a snapshot may be less relevant than watching the whole movie,’ he said.

And near the end, Wald paraphrases Michael J. Wallace, a former nuclear industry executive: ‘With a carbon tax no longer appearing likely, he said a new kind of help, like a federal ‘clean energy’ standard that would set a quota for nuclear and renewable electricity, might be needed.’

But overall, Wald conveys doubt about nuclear industry prospects.

Randi Weingarten’s hard month at the Wall Street Journal

Followers of—and participants in—the education wars might want to know that Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers since 2008, has been having a hard time on the Wall Street Journal opinion page.

In a 26 March ‘Weekend Interview’ article under the headline ‘Weingarten for the Union Defense,’ a member of the WSJ‘s editorial board presented her as a hard-core opponent of good sense. He noted that recent documentaries have ‘highlighted how teachers unions block or stifle education reforms to the detriment of the low-income minority kids who populate the nation’s worst schools.’ He charged that donations from the unions ‘go overwhelmingly to Democrats, and the role that member dues play in the wider liberal movement can be seen in teachers union support for everything from abortion rights to single-payer health care to statehood for Washington, D.C.’ He wrote:

And so it goes. Ms. Weingarten insists that teachers unions are agents of change, not defenders of the status quo. But in the next breath she shoots down suggestions for changes—vouchers, charter schools, differential teacher pay and so on—that have become important parts of the reform conversation. She seems to conceive of her job as the one William F. Buckley Jr. ascribed to conservatives in the 1950s: To stand athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’

A few days later, two letters to the editor appeared. The shorter letter complimented ‘the vast majority of America’s teachers [as] both highly competent and highly dedicated.’ The longer letter began, ‘Jason L. Riley’s ‘The Weekend Interview With Randi Weingarten’ (March 26) is truly frightening. As long as Ms. Weingarten leads the teachers union and speaks for any sizeable cross-section of teachers, our public education system will get worse before it gets better.’

Early this week Weingarten asserted her own voice directly, via an op-ed under the headline ‘Markets Aren’t the Education Solution.’ Though ‘market-based reforms’ have been ‘promoted by the so-called reformers in the United States,’ she wrote, they have little in common with policies in educationally successful nations. She charged that ‘the evidence clearly shows that a heavy reliance on charter schools, performance pay, overuse of standardized tests and ignoring poverty won’t adequately prepare our children for college, career and life.’

She added: ‘With supreme certainty and blind zeal, market-based reformers are doubling down on an agenda that has failed to produce the transforming gains they promised. They disparage and delegitimize any gains that traditional public schools as well as their teachers (and their unions) have delivered for kids.’ She cited a Stanford University study’s discouraging findings on charter schools and a Vanderbilt University study’s discouraging findings on merit pay. She endorsed ‘countries like Finland, Singapore and South Korea,’ which ‘emphasize teacher preparation, mentoring and collaboration’ and ‘revere and respect their teachers’ rather than ‘demonize them.’ In a comment sure to gather special notice from some of the WSJ‘s opinion-page readers, she expressed admiration for countries that ‘offset the effects of poverty through on-site wraparound services such as medical and dental care and counseling’ in public schools.

A few days later, four letters appeared under the headline ‘Accountability Is the Crux of Serious School Reform.’ All four criticized Weingarten.

The first came from Joel Klein, who served as chancellor of New York City public schools from 2002 to 2010. He wrote, in part:

Top-performing countries revere teachers because they get great results (that’s why they’re top performing). Those countries recruit teachers from the top of their graduating classes, insist on excellence and don’t protect underperformers. America does precisely the opposite, largely recruiting from the bottom half of our graduates and protecting even the worst of them. . . . As long as unions continue to protect low-performing teachers, the solution for America’s families is to give them choices so they can escape dead-end schools staffed by poor teachers.

The other three complete Weingarten’s hard month at the WSJ. Here is one excerpt apiece:

1. ‘Let’s examine why U.S. spending on elementary and secondary schools is 50% more than in Finland and Korea—two countries which Ms. Weingarten claims have things to teach us—while our kids are learning less.’
2. ‘The real demon is the union-backed tenure system which keeps bad teachers in the classroom.’
3. ‘Instead of a one-scale-fits-all pay approach, teachers, at least the good ones, should benefit from a more competitive labor market in which school administrators could offer salaries commensurate with expected student performance rather than being determined by an arbitrary salary scale.’

Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are collected each Friday for ‘Science and the media.’ He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.