The new Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, addressed the national labs in an all-hands video transmission today. I was not there, but my colleague and friend Rob Roser at Fermilab was there, and sent me a very nice bulleted summary. So, you are getting this second hand, and people who were there can add nuances in the comments, but here goes:
Energy is the defining issue of our time.
Addressing the environment is the major reason Chu took on this job.
These problems provide a tremendous opportunity for the DOE, but it comes with a burden: we can not fail.
The DOE is the principal supporter of physical sciences in the US, and the physical sciences are the conernstone of prosperity for the US future.
The DOE should endeavor to replace the great industrial labs that no longer exist as they once did.
The DOE will be the “go to” organization for a multitude of key problems — will depend on all labs to help.
The DOE can quite literally “save the world” by developing a sound energy policy going forward, and invent new science that will provide new technologies.
Our current use of energy not sustainable — have to move forward.
We are facing something society has never been asked to do before: to deal with ominous problems with climate change. If half of the things climate science tells us are half true, we have a huge problem on our hands and the DOE has to work to provide those solutions.
The Obama administration is creating a new Energy and Climate Change Council which will serve as a coordinating body including all stake holders in this arena. DOE is first and formost in this but Interior, Agriculture, Treasury and Defense etc. all play a role.
The DOE is the science and technology “arm of energy”.
There is a core of truly oustanding scientists at the national labs, and these labs have trained many successful scientists.
The national labs are “crown jewels that the US doesn’t want to lose”.
Restimulation of the economy is #1 on the priority list. DOE will get considerable funds in the stimulus package, not just to get the economy going but to provide a long term path for the US.
We can’t be completely overwhelmed by the short term economic woes; we need to still find a path to solve our long term problems. The DOE has to invent transformative technologies that will allow us to get to the next level of energy independence.
Chu sees a lot of young and middle age scientists shifting careers to deal with energy, and the DOE is optimistic to capture the best and brightest to work on these issues.
I am truly awed by the vision presented by Chu here, and so hopeful that we can get our country back on a path to long term prosperity by supporting research in the physical sciences. At least half of our present economy relies on the knowledge gained in the 20th century about our physical world…one can only imagine the revolutions to come.
Tuesday morning I woke up well before the sun did. Got on a train. Then stood in line for over three hours in below-freezing weather, shoulder to shoulder with millions of my fellow citizens. All to see this:
This is a photo of Bush leaving the building, a few minutes after Obama was sworn in. The transition is surprisingly emphatic. I managed to clamber on top of a raised platform meant for TV cameras, leaving me with an essentially direct and unobstructed view of Obama taking the oath of office.
It is hard to describe the feeling of participating in such a historic moment. The general camaraderie and good feeling and excitement was like nothing I have ever experienced.
After a long afternoon trying to restore feeling in my toes, I put on a tux (which is by no means a familiar sartorial choice), and joined in congratulating Obama in the somewhat more intimate confines of the Midwestern Inaugural Ball.
Doesn’t he look happy and relaxed? It was an historic and magical day. But, as Obama tells us, now it is time to remake America. And it won’t be easy.
Many scientists have been actively supporting Obama. This support stems, in part, from a feeling that any change from the past eight years can only be an improvement. But there has also been a belief that Obama fundamentally understands how science works. That he appreciates its relevance to the key issues of the day. And that he will actively solicit input from the scientific community, and that this input will appropriately inform his decisions. All of this has been primarily hypothetical, based mostly on somewhat vague statements and sound bites. Today Obama gave his weekly radio/YouTube address, and it was exclusively devoted to science and technology. In addition to Steve Chu and John Holdren, he has now added Harold Varmus and Eric Lander as co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He has assembled a scientific dream team, including two Nobel Laureates, and a host of eminent scientists with public-policy experience. A President is not expected to master the scientific issues at stake. A President’s effectiveness depends solely and crucially on their choice of appointments. These appointments are thus the first and most important scientific decision Obama will make, and he has done an extraordinary job. Of course, the next most important aspect will be whether or not Obama listens to their advice. This will be an extremely difficult group to ignore. In his weekly address Obama announces the appointments, but then articulates his concerns:
Whether it’s the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create twenty-first century jobs—today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation.
…
Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States—and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.
This is a wonderful holiday gift to the scientific community. We no longer have to hope that Obama will do the right thing. We now know he is doing the right thing.
The movie “Milk” opened last weekend. It tells the story of Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay politicians in the United States. Although I have not seen the movie, without a doubt the story of Harvey Milk is a tragedy of epic proportions. He fought prejudice, and overcame tremendous odds to get elected. Ten months later he was gunned down, along with the Mayor of San Francisco, by a former colleague. The murderer was Dan White, an ex-policeman who admitted to shooting both men in cold blood, and was subsequently given a light sentence in the infamous twinkie defense. White served five years, and within a couple of years of being released from prison committed suicide. As if all this were insufficiently “Hollywood”, the events are strangely intertwined with the mass suicide at Jonestown (the second largest loss of civilian American lives, after 9/11).
We are tempted to think of all of this as ancient history, and irrelevant to our more enlightened times. But here we are 30 years later, and in the very state where Milk lived and died a (slight) majority of voters have gone out of their way to inscribe into the state constitution a measure explicitly depriving gays of civil rights. This is known as Proposition 8, and Sean has a nice post on why it’s an appropriate issue for a science blog.
As it happens, one of the largest individual donations to support Proposition 8 came from John Templeton. Of course, Cosmic Variance readers are familiar with the Templeton Foundation, as my esteemed co-blogger Sean has tangled with them previously. Templeton, when he’s not spending his money taking away the rights of his fellow citizens, has a predilection for spending money on scientists. Historically I’ve been uncomfortable with the Templeton Foundation because of their attempts to conflate religion and science. However, their Foundational Questions Institute appears to be a genuine effort to generate cutting edge science. Although I’m sure there is much I would disagree with in a conversation with Templeton, his support of basic science is to be applauded. Arguably the United States has been immeasurably strengthened by both the separation of church and state and the separation of church and science (the latter is not to be taken for granted; think of Galileo, or Bush’s incursions into stem cell lines and global warming). That even Templeton recognizes that science works best when it is unfettered, as much as possible, by external preconceptions is an encouraging sign. We can only hope that he spends more money on science, and less on politics. We thus wish Sean the best of luck in winning the $10,000 jackpot, a prize he will no doubt share with his co-bloggers.
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday — I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially… They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
Many have been asking: who won our famous Presidential Prediction Contest? The task, you will remember, was to predict how the popular vote would be distributed between the two major candidates, throwing away third-party votes and ignoring the electoral college altogether, expressed as a percentage of votes for Obama. So if the total number of votes for Obama is VO , and the total number for McCain is VM , the number you were predicting is
We’ve been delaying the announcement of the results, as the entries were tightly bunched and it takes time for votes to trickle in. Indeed, Alaska still seems to be problematic, but patience is thin and it’s time to declare a winner! Visit here to be reminded of who had staked out which bits of territory. Here are the vote totals as of today:
Who, I am guessing, may have mistyped their name. But when you have mad prediction skills like that, who cares about typographical irregularities?
Here were the distribution of predictions near the right value:
It’s interesting to note that the contest was announced in late June, just when Obama was hitting his summer peak of popularity (which was not as pronounced as his fall peak of popularity). I wonder how the predictions would have gone had we done the contest in September?
Vote for a sensible science policy. Vote for restoring America’s credibility in the world. Vote for opportunity for all Americans. Vote for restoring America’s respect for her own constitution. Vote for hope over fear. Vote for change.
Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
