I just attended the president’s science adviser’s science and policy keynote here at AGU in San Francisco. So did several hundred other people.

Interestingly, some news was made–sort of. Holdren announced that with regard to the long awaited scientific integrity guidelines his office was tasked to produce in early 2009…guidelines he’s been criticized for not yet releasing….he’s almost there and they should be out this month.

To quote Holdren, producing the guidelines–to cover scientific integrity practices across agencies of the U.S. government–”has been a more challenging task than expected, it has taken much longer than it was supposed to.” Holdren continued by stating that he had hoped to announce the guidelines in his AGU talk but “didn’t quite make it–but we are very close.”

How close? Holdren’s powerpoint put up the date “12-10″ for their release–e.g., this month. I’m sure that will be a relief to many.

Besides this nugget, Holdren’s talk was basically a vast compendium of all of the things the administration is doing to promote science and its relation to policy. And it really is quite a set of accomplishments (the integrity guidelines problem notwithstanding). Listening to it all inspired me to write a longer post comparing Obama-Holdren with Bush-Marburger, so stand by for that.

For now I’ll leave you with what was arguably Holdren’s most striking quote about Obama and science: “No president has ever talked as much about science, technology, and innovation as this president has.” Or as Holdren closed his talk, the “lynchpin” to having science positively impact the country is “a committed president. And fortunately, we have one.”

I’ll have more on Holdren’s talk soon.

Dan Vergano at USA Today has done a piece about congressman Adrian Smith’s attempt–which we’re now calling “citizen Googling” here at “The Intersection”–to involve members of the public in determining which peer-reviewed NSF grants are a “waste.” Vergano sets the endeavor in the context of misguided attacks on government research that go all the way back to Sen. William Proxmire’s infamous “Golden Fleece” awards.

As Vergano notes, it pretty much always seems that when some politician slams a government scientific grant, the research actually turns out to be quite important and the pol is simply misinterpreting its meaning. (Hmmm, I wonder why that is?) Sure enough, that already appears to be the case with the two grants picked out by Smith. As Vergano reports:

So, as you might expect, when we asked the National Science Foundation about the two grants that Smith mentioned, we learned a little more about them. (more…)

See here, video courtesy of “Planet Foward”:

What do people think? The Sputnik analogy comes up frequently in connection with where we stand now in science and innovation, vis a vis the rest of the world.

Is it a fair analogy?

As Nick Baumann points out, the real prize in this midterm election is redistricting:

“Forget the Senate and House. That’s short-term thinking. The real prize in Tuesday’s midterm elections is the power to draw congressional seats and determine the country’s balance of power for the next decade.”

“If either party can achieve what politicos call the ‘trifecta’ — control of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature — in a given state, it will be able to draw congressional districts within that state unencumbered by any need to compromise with the other party. That’s the kind of power that creates electoral maps like the one former GOP Majority Leader Tom Delay helped bring to Texas in 2003 — a map that pushed four of the state’s Democrats out of their seats.”

Today’s election is big folks… Go vote!

(H/T Taegan Goddard)

Miller-McCune has an article, featuring me a lot, about why the Obama administration failed (not through any fault of its own, really) to restore science to Washington, as the president pledged in his inaugural address. Instead, we’re on the verge of having a new army of climate deniers in Congress.  My first quote about this situation evinces general shock at how far we’ve tumbled, and how fast:

“I did not feel then,” Mooney said, thinking back on the last election, “the sense that it would derail this quickly, this badly.”

What happened? Well, ClimateGate happened. Then the Tea Party happened. Climate science got stronger, but the issue became highly politicized and resistance became stronger than ever. I’m quoted on this, too:

“I think there’s no clear relationship between an increase in scientific knowledge and increasing public acceptance, if the issue is controversial. They can completely go in the opposite direction, and in fact climate change is a great example. We need to give up on the idea that truth finally triumphs because science figures something out. It triumphs within science, but that’s very different from having it triumph within society.”

So now what? Get ready for a different kind of war on science–fought against an administration, rather than by an administration, as occurred in the Bush years:

[Mooney] predicts that the ensuing scene, a bottom-up “war on science” driven by grassroots conservative anger, will look different from the top-down “war on science” that existed during the Bush administration. Then, the political meddling was largely a public relations push to align the government’s scientific output with the president’s position on climate action (or his supporters’ position on contraception or stem cell research.

This time, Mooney said, scientific skeptics are not trying to control the administration’s message, but to derail an administration’s goal. Instead of quietly rewritten climate reports, we may get theatrical congressional hearings investigating scientific research.

May? I’d say we will get them, unless the polls are radically wrong about the way the election is shaping up. It’ll be Ken Cuccinelli all over again, but in Congress this time.

Where does this leave us? Not a good place, but we’ve got to learn something from what happened. Now’s a time for figuring out where the rails of rationality were when we left them.

“Basically,” Mooney concluded, “we’re all in a huge state of introspection about what the hell didn’t work.”

Unfortunately, fewer women are expected to vote in this election cycle:

Last night I was honored and humbled to share a small round table dinner discussion with Bill Clinton. I can confirm that in person, he’s exceptionally charming and extraordinarily brilliant. I’m amazed not only at the level of understanding he demonstrates on a very wide breadth of topics–from peace negotiations to elevating the status of women around the world–but also by his ideas toward solutions.

It was the first evening of the Clinton Global Initiative and I asked our former President about how we might broaden public awareness on energy issues to follow through on boosting both clean energy and the economy. I’ll have a lot more to say about that once I can compose a longer detailed post, but this morning I’m back at CGI for day 2 and do not want to miss a thing.

In the mean time, I would like to direct readers to Taegan Goddard’s latest at Political Wire. We sat together last night (Thanks to Taegan for the photo above!) and he’s already got details up on his question:

At an intimate policy discussion on the eve of the Clinton Global Initiative meetings in New York City, I asked former President Bill Clinton if he saw similarities between today’s Tea Party movement and the supporters of Ross Perot during his presidency.

Go read his response…

Following on this post, I want this to be the topic of a future Point of Inquiry show.

My question: Who’s the guest? Who’s best equipped to speak to this?

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

I enjoyed reading Dana Milbank rip of Glenn Beck’s huge “civil rights” rally being staged at the Lincoln Memorial here in DC today.

It just so happens to be the 47th anniversary of King’s “I have a dream” speech in the same location.

The breathtaking gall of this is something Alexander Zaitchik discussed on my previous hosted episode of Point of Inquiry; now here’s Milbank: (more…)

I’ve just contributed a piece for NRDC’s OnEarth about what to make of the snuggly relationship between Republicans and oil interests in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster–and how to get beyond oil politics in general. Here’s an excerpt:

Republicans, oil, climate change inaction: Whether you’re talking about conservative think tanks, lobbyists, politicians, or political action (527) groups, the correlation between funding source and position is impossible to mistake. GOP candidates have received almost three times as much money in oil industry campaign donations as Democrats from the 1990 election cycle to the present — nearly $108 million versus $39 million. In turn, many of the candidates and think tanks supported by Big Oil gladly regurgitate an anti-regulatory and fossilized fuel ideology — including opposition to strong action on climate change.

But if the GOP-oil relationship is well known and predictable, staring too closely at it can also blind us. It can make us overlook Democratic complicity, the increasing diversity of industrial interests, and most of all, the need for new grassroots ways of shaking up our political system….

You can read the full piece here.