Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

As I write this on Tuesday afternoon, Hurricane Sally has parked itself, barely moving, in the Gulf Of Mexico, bashing a length of coastline from the Florida panhandle through Alabama and Mississippi all the way to Baton Rouge. Because it's stationary, the weather forecasters had to up the possible maximum rainfall totals from up to 15 inches to up to 30 inches or more. The residents in multiple areas may even be assaulted by not the usual one storm surge but two. Do I hear three? The coastline is low level to begin with. Would I live in such a place? No. But millions of my fellow humans, such as they are, do. Judging from their voting patterns, those fellow humans don't believe climate change is a problem. What it's gonna take is anybody's guess. It doesn't help that the politicians they elect tell them climate change is a hoax and there's nothing to panic about, or, as the idol of republicans everywhere says, "Science Doesn't know."

The freakish all but stationary Hurricane Sally is only a Category 1 hurricane and it's causing mega damage. What happens when a category 4 or 5 storm acts the same way as Big Bad Girl Sally? That's bound to happen sooner or later. Even a Category 3 will dump even more rain and it will do it with the added characteristic of action like God's own magnificent giant new power sander, leaving nothing, nada, zippo in its wake. That day is coming. The only thing science doesn't know is which day on the calendar that is. But, not to worry. No need to panic. It may come, but one day, like a miracle, it will disappear. And so will a lot of things; land, businesses, cars, boats, people... but not psychopathic and sociopathic scumbag politicians.

Does A President Actually Need To Know Anything... About Anything?

Smarter Than Trump by Chip Proser

Justin Amash plans to run for president on the Libertarian line. I wish he would have stayed in Congress but there's a strong chance he would have lost his seat. Jesse Ventura may run too (as a Green, no less). And Trump continues his real time meltdown in public. Or, as The Guardian's Arwa Mahadawi put it-- he's unravelling so badly that even his supporters can't ignore it. She wrote that she doesn't know "what kind of disinfectant he's been injecting, but the man does not appear to be well. The president’s lethal medical musing has turned him into (even more of) a global laughing stock and the widespread ridicule has clearly bruised his fragile ego. While Trump has never been a paradigm of calmness or competence, he has become increasingly irate and erratic in recent days. Now even his diehard supporters seem to be cooling towards him."

On a more serious note though, perhaps there are still some Republicans who have enough faith in science and reason to have had not with Trump. Historically, he's the most anti-Science president ever-- and that didn't start with his horrific and catastrophic response-- if you want to call it that-- to the pandemic. The NY Times' Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer reminded their readers that he never tires of reminding everyone what a scientific genius he is. And that despite a signature "disregard for scientific advice... a defining characteristic" of the Trumpanzee regime.

As the nation confronts one of its worst public health disasters in generations, a moment that demands a leader willing to marshal the full might of the American scientific establishment, the White House is occupied by a president whose administration, critics say, has diminished the conclusions of scientists in formulating policy, who personally harbors a suspicion of expert knowledge, and who often puts his political instincts ahead of the facts.

“Donald Trump is the most anti-science and anti-environment president we’ve ever had,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. The president’s actions, he said, have eroded one of the United States’s most enviable assets: the government’s deep scientific expertise, built over decades. “It’s extraordinarily crazy and reckless,” he said.

...Well before winning the presidency, Mr. Trump had publicly questioned science by expressing skepticism about vaccines and suggesting climate change was a hoax fabricated by China.

Once in office, Mr. Trump’s administration quickly began work on one of its most far-reaching policies-- the systematic downplaying or ignoring of science in order to weaken environmental health and global warming regulations. Automakers, farmers and others had sought regulatory relief, saying that more flexible rules would still ensure progress on environmental protection while avoiding bureaucratic mandates. However, in implementing the rollbacks, the administration has marginalized key scientists, disbanded expert advisory boards and suppressed or altered findings that make clear the dangers of pollution and global warming.

More recently, as the coronavirus outbreak engulfed the nation, Mr. Trump has repeatedly clashed with his own public health experts.

He was slow to react to early internal warnings to take the outbreak more seriously and has promoted the use of various drugs to fight the virus even as scientists said there was no proof they would be effective. On Thursday, he suggested that injecting disinfectants might help defeat Covid-19, drawing global condemnation and ridicule.

And last week Mr. Trump publicly downplayed a warning by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration’s most visible medical expert, that the United States still lacked adequate capacity to test for the coronavirus. “I don’t agree with him on that, no,” Mr. Trump said. “I think we’re doing a great job on testing.”

The president also suggested that the virus might be gone by the fall, a line that was immediately countered by Dr. Fauci, who said: “We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that.”

Historians and foreign policy experts said the administration’s disregard for scientific expertise-- combined with the nation’s broader retreat from international trade agreements and cross-border defense alliances like NATO-- is diminishing the nation’s status on the world stage. “America’s friends feel like they don’t even recognize us,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization.

Other critics noted that Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, a 2015 pact among nations to combat climate change, has left the world adrift on one of the biggest challenges to face humanity. And now, amid a sweeping global pandemic, Mr. Trump has said he will halt funding for the World Health Organization.

Part of what elevated America after World War II, Dr. Schake said, was that “we represented modernity in all its advantages,” whether by creating a polio vaccine or landing a man on the moon. “It will be a real struggle to restore the admiration for the United States that is such an important part of our power in the world,” she said.

The administration faces immense challenges in navigating the coronavirus outbreak. Shutdowns nationwide have already pushed 26 million people into unemployment. But health experts have converged on a broad agreement that sending people back to work too soon, before measures like a robust testing system are in place, risks causing a surge of new infections, deepening the crisis.

In many cases, the administration’s guidance broadly follows that scientific understanding. But experts have also warned that Mr. Trump’s frequent exhortations to quickly reopen the economy threaten to muddle a vital public health message at a precarious time.

“It’s precisely because we’re in this uncertain and perilous moment that it’s all the more important to rely on the best scientific advice,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of public health law at Georgetown University.

Mr. Deere, the White House spokesman, said any suggestion that Mr. Trump hasn’t consulted and relied upon health experts and scientific advisers “is just false.” On Friday Mr. Trump announced a phased approach to reopening the economy that the White House said is “based on the advice of public health experts.”

Past administrations have, to varying degrees, disregarded scientific findings that conflicted with political or policy priorities. For example, the Reagan administration was criticized by health experts for being slow to respond to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. And in 2011, President Barack Obama’s top health official overruled Food and Drug Administration scientists who had found that over-the-counter emergency contraceptives were safe for minors.

But within the Trump administration, the attacks on science and expertise have been far more broad.

“Scientists tell them inconvenient things,” said Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center, a centrist research organization, and former climate change denialist who now advocates for the acceptance of climate science. “Whether we’re talking about the E.P.A. or we’re talking about climate change broadly speaking, or we’re talking about the coronavirus, his administration is constantly engaged in magical thinking.”

Critics of the administration’s actions both on environmental matters and the virus say that federal policy has been shaped to favor short-term economic gain at the expense of public health.

With much of the nation sheltering at home from the coronavirus-- bringing commerce to a halt, sending unemployment skyrocketing and causing turmoil in the financial markets-- the motivations to restart the economy are powerful. But Mr. Taylor of the Niskanen Center said that some conservatives were incorrectly diagnosing the stay-at-home orders as the main driver of the nation’s woes rather than the virus itself.

Mr. Taylor likened it to the argument that government action to fight climate change would be too costly in various ways-- an argument that overlooks the significant costs of inaction. “If we leave the underlying problem unattended,” he said, “the economic cost will be far greater.”

Meanwhile, the pandemic hasn’t slowed the administration’s environmental rollbacks.

Over the past month the Environmental Protection Agency has issued several deregulatory policies, including on mercury pollution and automobile emissions, overruling advice from the agency’s own independent advisory board that such findings lacked scientific rigor. The E.P.A. also refused to tighten air quality standards, despite preliminary research suggesting that long-term exposure to dirty air could exacerbate the risk of death from the coronavirus.

The administration has maintained that it can safeguard health and the environment while loosening restrictions on industry. Andrea Woods, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said, “We have never ignored the science in making the very tough policy decisions required of the agency.”

The parallels between the administration’s environmental rollbacks and its coronavirus response are not exact. When it comes to the coronavirus outbreak, there is still an important counterweight to many of Mr. Trump’s impulses, most notably Dr. Fauci. Asked last week if he felt that experts at the National Institutes of Health were unable to speak their minds or oppose Mr. Trump, Dr. Fauci was unequivocal. “Absolutely no,” he said.

That stands in contrast to the administration’s approach on issues like climate change, where officials who have spoken out have found themselves sidelined.

In July, Rod Schoonover, a State Department intelligence analyst, resigned in protest after the White House blocked his discussion of climate science in Congressional testimony. In other instances, the administration has promoted climate denialists’ work and allowed them to insert misrepresentations of scientific facts into federal documents.

Still, there have been some prominent staff shake-ups at health agencies.

Before the pandemic began, the C.D.C. had reduced its staff in Beijing from approximately 47 to 14 under the Trump administration, a move that critics have said may have complicated its ability to confront the outbreak earlier. An agency spokesman said it had been done to focus more on “technical collaboration” with China, which requires fewer people.

In February, Nancy Messonnier, a top C.D.C. official, was removed from overseeing the agency’s coronavirus response. Dr. Messonnier had warned that Americans need to prepare for a “significant disruption” at a time when Mr. Trump was insisting that the virus was “very well under control in our country.”

Last week, Rick Bright was dismissed as the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the agency involved in work on coronavirus treatments. Mr. Bright said he had been removed after urging caution in expanding access to hydroxychloroquine, the controversial treatment embraced by Mr. Trump. He also said the administration had put “politics and cronyism ahead of science.”

Mr. Trump has said he “never heard” of Dr. Bright. Mr. Deere, the White House spokesman, accused critics of waging a campaign “to criticize this president for discussing anything that might provide hope to the American people.”

That said, this brief e-mail came from a sharp-witted and much-loved congressman last night:

What kind of moron begins an e-mail solicitation with "Hey there?"

This kind of moron:

"Hey there. I’m Joe Biden, and I’m writing to you about a truly special moment in our campaign.

This afternoon, Secretary Clinton announced she's endorsing us. I’m so proud to have her support."

The entire freakin’ world economy is collapsing, U.S. COVID-19 deaths equaled U.S. deaths in the war in Vietnam today, and this jerk is touting an endorsement from Ms. Yesteryear.  (Are you still famous if your husband left office 20 years ago?)

I just can’t stand it.

New Method Forecasts Near Term Climate Change; Results Not Good

Illustration from Popular Mechanics, March 1912 (source). Who knew we'd be in trouble? Everyone who bothered to look.

by Gaius Publius

This is more climate news roundup than anything more deeply analytical. The changes we're seeing, which by now almost everyone on the planet is noticing, are here to stay. Whatever natural variability people hoped might boomerang from these hot years down to the average of the last 20 ... doesn't exist.

We appear to have crossed a line, at least in the near term; the hot years will be here for a while. From Agence France Presse:

Brace for extra-warm weather through 2022: Study

PARIS (AFP) - Manmade global warming and a natural surge in Earth's surface temperature will join forces to make the next five years exceptionally hot, according to a study published on Tuesday (Aug 14).

The double whammy of climate change and so-called natural variability more than doubles the likelihood of "extreme warm events" in ocean surface waters, creating a dangerous breeding ground for hurricanes and typhoons, they reported in Nature Communications.

"This warm phase is reinforcing long-term climate change," lead author Florian Sevellec, a climate scientist at the University of Brest in France, told AFP.

"This particular phase is expected to continue for at least five years."

What's notable about this study is the new methodology, which separates the "noise" of natural climate variability from the "forced trend" of global warming itself. From the Abstract (emphasis added):

A novel probabilistic forecast system predicting anomalously warm 2018-2022 reinforcing the long-term global warming trend

In a changing climate, there is an ever-increasing societal demand for accurate and reliable interannual predictions. Accurate and reliable interannual predictions of global temperatures are key for determining the regional climate change impacts that scale with global temperature, such as precipitation extremes, severe droughts, or intense hurricane activity, for instance. However, the chaotic nature of the climate system limits prediction accuracy on such timescales. Here we develop a novel method to predict global-mean surface air temperature and sea surface temperature, based on transfer operators, which allows, by-design, probabilistic forecasts.[...]

The language is dense and academic, so I've highlighted key ideas. "Interannual" means year-to-year predictions, as opposed to century-length predictions. The reason is that there are a lot of chaotic inputs — natural variability from various sources — in addition to the relentless march of the greenhouse effect.

On timescales of 100 years, the chaotic variability (the "noise") gets smoothed out and the greenhouse trend is more visible. The problem is, people alive to day want to know what's going to happen to them in a year or two. So the authors have devised a novel method to predict air and sea surface temperature that factors out that "noise."

The Abstract states that this probabilistic method of prediction was tested against the so-called "pause" that occurred after the El Niño-spike year of 1998 and it passed; that is, its analysis predicted the pause from the data available.

The Abstract then says we're pretty much in for a ride for the next five years:

The post-1998 global warming hiatus is well predicted. For 2018–2022, the probabilistic forecast indicates a warmer than normal period, with respect to the forced trend [the global warming input]. This will temporarily reinforce the long-term global warming trend. The coming warm period is associated with an increased likelihood of intense to extreme temperatures.

The fact that these calculations can be done on a laptop instead of a Cray supercomputer means real-time analysis becomes more and more possible: "The important numerical efficiency of the method (a few hundredths of a second on a laptop) opens the possibility for real-time probabilistic predictions carried out on personal mobile devices."

The good news: People may become motivated a lot sooner than if the disaster just crept up on them. We'll see if it works out that way. Me, I'm hopeful.

Hothouse Earth

Next, another recent study looks at the likelihood of tipping points sending the planet into a state they've cleverly dubbed "Hothouse Earth":

This summer people have been suffering and dying because of heat waves and wildfires in many parts of the world. The past three years were the warmest ever recorded, and 2018 is likely to follow suit. What we do in the next 10-20 years will determine whether our planet remains hospitable to human life or slides down an irreversible path to what scientists in a major new study call “Hothouse Earth” conditions.

Hothouse Earth is an apocalyptic nightmare where the global average temperatures is 4 to 5 degrees Celsius higher (with regions like the Arctic averaging 10 degrees C higher) than today, according to the study, “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene,” published Monday [August 6] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Sea levels would eventually be 10-60 meters higher as much of the world’s ice melts. In these conditions, large parts of the Earth would be uninhabitable.

These are the key paragraphs from the study itself (linked citations at the source; my emphasis):

The Anthropocene represents the beginning of a very rapid human-driven trajectory of the Earth System away from the glacial–interglacial limit cycle toward new, hotter climatic conditions and a profoundly different biosphere (2, 8, 9) (SI Appendix). The current position, at over 1 °C above a preindustrial baseline (10), is nearing the upper envelope of interglacial conditions over the past 1.2 million years (SI Appendix, Table S1). More importantly, the rapid trajectory of the climate system over the past half-century along with technological lock in and socioeconomic inertia in human systems commit the climate system to conditions beyond the envelope of past interglacial conditions. We, therefore, suggest that the Earth System may already have passed one “fork in the road” of potential pathways, a bifurcation (near A in Fig. 1) taking the Earth System out of the next glaciation cycle (11).

Translation: The day of the ice age is gone for a good long while.

More importantly, the rapid trajectory of the climate system over the past half-century along with technological lock in and socioeconomic inertia in human systems commit the climate system to conditions beyond the envelope of past interglacial conditions. We, therefore, suggest that the Earth System may already have passed one “fork in the road” of potential pathways, a bifurcation (near A in Fig. 1) taking the Earth System out of the next glaciation cycle (11).

Note the twin causes the authors identify above — "technological lock in" and "socioeconomic inertia in human systems." This is science-speak for "the CO2 we've emitted already" and "letting ourselves be ruled by people who won't let us act."

What's new about this study is the wide range of feedbacks it studies. The chart below gives a good indication of that range. Yellow indicates which systems will be affected first; orange-coded systems will be affected next; then red-coded systems.

Fig 3. Global map of potential tipping cascades. The individual tipping elements are color-coded according to estimated thresholds in global average surface temperature (tipping points) (12, 34). Arrows show the potential interactions among the tipping elements based on expert elicitation that could generate cascades. Note that, although the risk for tipping (loss of) the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is proposed at >5 °C, some marine-based sectors in East Antarctica may be vulnerable at lower temperatures (35–38). [click to enlarge]

We're already seeing major disruptions in the yellow systems — Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, Arctic sea ice, glaciers and coral reefs. Nothing new there, except that we may be ahead of schedule.

What's alarming is disruption to one of the orange-coded systems — the jet stream. It's fragmenting already. Note the arrow from Arctic ice collapse to the jet stream, showing causality. Arctic ice collapse may be well ahead of schedule, disrupting the jet stream earlier than the authors' projected schedule indicates.

Also coded orange is the Thermohaline circulation — the Atlantic Gulf Stream and all of the other important circulating oceanic water currents. The Gulf Stream keeps northern Europe from freezing like eastern Canada in the winter. If the Gulf Stream weakens or fails to move as far north as it currently does, Europe will become an exit point for climate refugees, not an entry point.

The good news here is the same as the good news above: The faster a collapse begins to be apparent, the more likely it is that people will react early in the process and mitigate it. My parallel here is the Great Depression, which mobilized people in great and united numbers behind FDR and the New Deal.

In that respect, the "ahead of schedule" systems noted above should make things apparent to the many — unlike polar bears on ice flows, which apparently made things apparent only to the few.

Electric Air Travel

Finally, some better good news. Last year I wrote that "All-electric air travel is not an impossible dream," that air travel, in other words, doesn't have to be tethered to oil and gas. There are developments on that front:

The electric plane startup backed by Boeing and JetBlue just sold 100 planes and the deal could spark a new era of air travel in the US

...Zunum, the electric plane startup backed by JetBlue Technology Ventures and Boeing HorizonX, revealed that JetSuite will take up to 100 planes with deliveries expected to commence in 2022. The financial terms of the deal have not been released.

Granted, 2022 is pretty late in the game for converting our air fleet, and I'll have more to say in a bit about the need for energy rationing in order to convert the whole economy. (For a hint about the need for rationing, see this excellent long-form comic about Buckminster Fuller's thought about energy and energy source conversion.) Still, it's good to see doors that seemed locked start to open up.

GP
 

New Study Evaluates Climate Models — Best Ones Also Show the Most Global Warming

"Climate models that simulate the current climate the best [also] tend to project the most global warming." See text below for explanation of the chart.

by Gaius Publius

This is a climate story with two pieces.

The first piece is the by-now-obvious "Everything's happening faster than anyone thought it would" observation, of which the immediate corollary is, "OMG we're still screwed."

It's true that everything is happening faster than anyone thought it would (anyone who had a prominent public voice, that is). This part of the story is, as noted above, "by now obvious." Changes are happening a lot faster — big storms are more frequent than anticipated, even by those who anticipated them; wildfires are burning hotter and later in the season (December?!) than even those who predicted more and hotter wildfires; and the cost to insurance companies of climate-caused damage is rising faster than insurance companies anticipated — and anticipating increasing costs is their whole business model.

But those of us without power have already gotten that message. The real resistance to that message is among people who do have power, but also have money to protect from that message as well.

The second piece of this story is much more interesting — it's about how the message we all understand to be true is now supported. A group of climate scientists have published a paper (subscription required) that puts statistical data round the observation that things are happening faster than most models predict.

In other words, they're analyzing the models statistically in order to see which models are making the best predictions. Instead of waiting for events to prove which climate models (projections) ended up being right because events proved them right, this study looks at models and figures out ahead of time which ones are most likely to "get it right" in advance of the observational data.

In other other words, all models are not created equal, so taking the average of a large set of models tells us less that looking at the best models first. The study attempts to identify those models.

How did the researchers test which models were best? They looked for models that made the most accurate statements in the past about the earth's energy imbalance — models that most correctly anticipated the difference between energy-in (from the sun) and energy-out (radiation of that energy back into space).

Our whole problem is that difference — too much energy-in relative to energy-out, and the planet heats. So models that made predictions about the energy imbalance that turned out to be right are likely to be right about the effects of that imbalance, such as the amount of increased global warming.

From the website of the lead researcher, Patrick Brown:

The study addresses one of the key questions in climate science: How much global warming should we expect for a given increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases?

One strategy for attempting to answer this question is to use mathematical models of the global climate system called global climate models. Basically, you can simulate an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in a climate model and have it calculate, based on our best physical understanding of the climate system, how much the planet should warm. There are somewhere between 30 and 40 prominent global climate models and they all project different amounts of global warming for given change in greenhouse gas concentrations. Different models project different amounts of warming primarily because there is not a consensus on how to best model many key aspects of the climate system.

To be more specific, if we were to assume that humans will continue to increases greenhouse gas emissions substantially throughout the 21st century (the RCP8.5 future emissions scenario), climate models tell us that we can expect anywhere from about 3.2°C to 5.9°C (5.8°F to 10.6°F) of global warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100. This means that for identical changes in greenhouse gas concentrations (more technically, identical changes in radiative forcing), climate models simulate a range of global warming that differs by almost a factor of 2.

The primary goal of our study was to narrow this range of model uncertainty and to assess whether the upper or lower end of the range is more likely.

RCP8.5 is the IPCC's worst-case climate scenario; it's roughly the same as "business as usual" forever with respect to emissions. It's the red line in the chart below:

The IPCC's four "representative concentration pathways" or RCP (source). The red line is RCP8.5. These four scenarios represent four "stories" of future concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, not outcomes or results in the form of warming itself. That's what the models do.

Back to Brown (my emphasis):

So, what variables are most appropriate to use to evaluate climate models in this context? Global warming is fundamentally a result of a global energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere so we chose to assess models in their ability to simulate various aspects of the Earth’s top-of-atmosphere energy budget. We used three variables in particular: reflected solar radiation, outgoing infrared radiation, and the net energy balance. Also, we used three attributes of these variables: their average (AKA climatological) values, the average magnitude of their seasonal variability and the average magnitude of their month-to-month variability. These three variables and three attributes combine to make nine features of the climate system that we used to evaluate the climate models (see below for more information on our decision to use these nine features).

And the finding:

We found that that there is indeed a relationship between the way that climate models simulate these nine features over the recent past, and how much warming they simulate in the future. Importantly, models that match observations the best over the recent past, tend to simulate more 21st-century warming than the average model. This indicates that we should expect greater warming than previously calculated for any given emissions scenario, or it means that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than previously thought to achieve any given temperature stabilization target.

In even plainer English, those models that best represented the energy imbalance were also the models that projected the greatest future warming.

The RCP8.5 Example

Brown has an extended discussion of the models that use RCP8.5 as a base from which to predict warming, which is explained by the chart above, taken from the paper linked earlier. So let's take a look at that chart and what it tells us.

First, note the "envelope" starting around 2015 that surrounds the red line and the blue dashed line. Together these show the range of predictions for the RCP8.5 emissions scenario for every model studied. Quite a range.

Next, ignore the difference between the blue part of the data envelope and the purple part. That's not relevant to the point made here. Look instead at the very thin pink sliver that sits on top of the entire envelope; it's labeled "Observationally-informed projections." Models in this sliver "got it right" in the past with respect to the earth's energy imbalance.

What this paper is saying is that, if we stay on the RCP8.5 business-as-usual emissions path, the best models predict (a) a very narrow range of warming outcomes, and (b) the worst warming outcomes.

Why This Matters

This matters for two reasons. One, it adds to the certainty that we're cooking the planet — a truly serious matter. But two, it also gives a science answer to the warming deniers' and delayers' counter charge, "But look at the uncertainty. Look at the range of predictions. These models are all over the place. How can you trust them?"

This important paper shows that that "range of predictions" can be narrowed considerable, from a broad fat funnel of outcomes to a tiny, toothpick-wide sliver of them. Goodbye "uncertainty."

GP
 

Transparent Solar Cells: The Future of Energy Production

This is a solar energy cell (source)

by Gaius Publius

The news about solar energy has been getting better and better for a decade or more. As storage schemes improve, so does the potential for completely replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.

The latest information about solar energy cells, however, seems like a game-changer. In a nutshell, it's now possible to harvest and use the energy of the sun, not just as it strikes opaque surfaces, but also as it passes through transparent ones. Considering the number of transparent surfaces in the country — and in fact in the world — the potential for integrating light-harnessing energy cells into our lives and infrastructure, all of it invisibly, has increased by many orders of magnitude.

Consider that every pane of glass in every office building, house and apartment, every "gorilla glass" screen on every smart phone, every windshield of every car. and every other glass surface you can imagine — windows inside office buildings? mirrors? — can now be used to harvest energy from light and send it to be used or stored.

Then consider how much fossil fuel use that can replace. The developers of this technology say, eventually all of it. The story via Newsweek:

A new generation of see-through solar cell technology could soon be used to harvest the massive energy potential of building and car windows, cell phones as well as other objects with a transparent surface.

Scientists at Michigan State University detailed in a paper in the journal Nature Energy how highly transparent solar applications could “nearly meet U.S. electricity demand” and drastically reduce reliance upon fossil fuels.

“We will see commercial products become available over the next few years,” Richard Lunt, an associate professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at MSU, tells Newsweek. “We are just beginning to hit performance metrics that make sense to scale up.” ...

The untapped electricity potential of this energy source, the researchers note, is vast. An estimated 5 billion to 7 billion square meters of glass surface in the United States could be used to meet 40 percent of the country’s energy demand, or “close to 100 percent” if energy storage is improved.

That journal article is here (subscription required).

The trick involves collecting the energy from non-visible wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, of which visible light is just a part. In this case, the energy is collected from ultraviolet and "near infrared" wavelengths. Light from these wavelengths is then "guided to the edge of the surface they are on [and] converted into electricity by thin strips of photovoltaic solar cells."

The work is being done by a team at Michigan State University, which has previously published on this technology.

A few things to keep in mind. First, these cells don't replace glass, but fit over glass surfaces without reducing their transparency. In the announcement published by MSU, these cells are described as see-through "solar materials that can be applied to windows." This means already-installed windows won't have to be replaced in order to benefit from this technology.

Second, efficiency is obviously a factor in the amount of energy the technology provides: 

Compared to traditional solar cells, the transparent technology still has some catching up to do. Rooftop solar panels typically have an efficiency of between 15 and 18 percent, whereas the see-through solar cells record efficiencies of around 5 percent. However, Lunt says he expects to see a three-fold improvement in efficiency of the transparent solar cells.

Finally, the project is financed by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education (interestingly, not the Department of Energy). If this story gets wider attention and the potential of this technology becomes more publicly appreciated, will Betsy Devos' DoE pull funding for the project? That aspect is worth paying attention to as this exciting research starts making even more news.

GP
 

Jason Westin Officially Announces His Run For The Houston Seat Held By Reactionary Republican John Culberson

I spent yesterday at City of Hope, taking in-- literally-- some of the glories of the advanced medical treatment that keeps me alive and blogging. My doctor is one of the country's foremost specialists in cancer research. When I mentioned to her that I've been talking with another renowned cancer specialist, Dr. Jason Westin in Houston, she was very excited because they're both working on the one of the most advanced immunotherapy treatment protocols for cancer, CAR-T, and will be together in a couple weeks. Jason will have to take off from his campaign for Congress-- which officially begins this morning.

All through this TrumpCare saga, Jason's been a reliable source of analysis about how Ryan, Price, Pence and the Trump Regime in general have been deceiving the public with their phony "healthcare" bill. You can read his comments here. His opponent is an entrenched knee-jerk GOP hack, John Culberson whose brand of politics is at odds with a blue-trending district that Hillary won last year.

Yesterday, in a post at The Hill about scientists running against Republican congressmen, Lisa Hagen kicked off her story using Jason as the example. Jason Westin works in Texas at one of the country’s top cancer hospitals," she wrote, "but on Wednesday he’ll ditch his lab for the campaign trail and an upstart congressional bid."

Westin, a cancer research doctor at Houston’s renowned MD Anderson Cancer Center, is launching his campaign Wednesday against Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas). Culberson is the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science that oversees NASA and the National Science Foundation.

...Westin said his splash into politics has been a big sacrifice. The father of three young children said he’ll need to give up his role leading the research team to focus on his congressional bid.

“I think the U.S. House is where I feel I can make my greatest impact on things like healthcare, science funding,” Westin said.

Jason seems like an excellent candidate. Blue America is in the middle of getting to know him better, not just about his work as a scientist but in a way that will give us a clue to what kind of a congressman he'd be. Remember, Bill Foster (D-IL) is often touted as how glorious it is to elect scientists to Congress. But Foster is-- at best-- a mediocre member, a New Dem with a ProgressivePunch lifetime crucial vote score of 61.30-- an "F." That's what happens when you look at a candidate through one prism. Most EMILY's List candidates are just awful because their only criteria is to elect women. Two of the very worst Democrats in the House-- Sean Patrick Maloney (NY) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)-- are pushed by LGBT groups because they're gay. They're also devoted servants of Wall Street banksters and both have overall "F" rated voting records. His work as a scientist should weigh heavily in Jason Westin's favor, while his overall vision of governance and what he can offer to TX-07's working families will determine whether or not he winds up on the Blue America endorsement page.

Hagen's piece about scientists mentions Joseph Kopser as a candidate running against science denier Lamar Smith in TX-21. Kopser, a wealthy, conservative "ex"-Republican is the worst kind of candidate anyone could ask for but he's passing himself off as a "scientist," which he isn't, and finding support from foolish people. On the other hand, Hagen seems to have left out Hans Keirstead, a gigantically successful stem cell researcher in Orange County who is about to launch his campaign against Dana Rohrabacher. Let's not give in to making scientists just another opportunity for out-of-touch, lazy Democrats to play their identity politics game.


UPDATE: Westin's official announcement

He went right for the jugular immediately: "As a doctor, I know firsthand the risks people here in my district and throughout the country will face if Donald Trump and John Culberson have their way. Their plans to kick hard-working Americans off their health insurance are callous and dangerous. Texans in our district deserve better. I’m not a career politician, I’m a cancer research doctor and I’ve spent more than 15 years tackling life and death issues for my patients. As a physician, I took an oath to first do no harm. For too long, career politicians like John Culberson have tried the same failed partisan prescriptions, leaving our community worse off than if they’d done nothing at all. It’s time for a new treatment for what ails Washington and that starts with listening to the people in our district and using facts and evidence to find real solutions, not partisan soundbites, to the problems we face."

Happy Earth Day-- But Not To Señor Trumpanzee And Not To Texas Crackpot Lamar Smith

Today was the March for Science. It's kind of embarrassing we even need a march like that. But as Bill McKibben wrote in the NY Times this week, The Planet Can't Stand This Presidency. "Trump’s environmental onslaught," he wrote, "will have immediate, dangerous effects... [T]here’s an extra dimension to the environmental damage. What Mr. Trump is trying to do to the planet’s climate will play out over geologic time as well. In fact, it’s time itself that he’s stealing from us. What I mean is, we have only a short window to deal with the climate crisis or else we forever lose the chance to thwart truly catastrophic heating... [E]ven when we vote him out of office, Trumpism will persist, a dark stratum in the planet’s geological history. In some awful sense, his term could last forever."

The Intercept carried a piece today that mentions Micahel Mann, a climatologist and geophysicist, has pioneered computational models based on patterns of the past 600 years of climate changes. He said he marched today because "Science and scientists are now under attack in this country." Mann is one of the favorite targets of climate deniers, particularly the witch-hunter Ryan placed at the head of the House Science Committee, Texas dangerous crackpot Lamar Smith. "When congressional Republicans are denying basic science,” Mann said, “and the Trump administration-- run largely by polluting interests-- is trying to revoke policies to protect our health and our environment, more than ever we need to hear the voices of scientists, loudly and clearly."

That lunatic freak and earth-wide villain Grand Inquisitor Lamar Smith issued a statement today-- dripping in irony: "I support the right of science supporters to gather and march this weekend. Opening new frontiers of scientific knowledge, on Earth and beyond, will pave the way to a better, more secure future for the next generation. I will continue to support scientific research that furthers our national interest and is of the highest intellectual merit. In the last few months, the Science Committee has enacted three bills that highlight this commitment: the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017, and the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017. The Committee also has worked to help ensure new opportunities for the next generation of scientists and engineers by enacting the Inspiring the Next Space Pioneers, Innovators, Researchers, and Explorers (INSPIRE) Women Act and the Promoting Women in Entrepreneurship Act. I look forward to continuing to promote scientific integrity and a healthy, transparent and vibrant research and technology environment in the United States." Smith is ceratinly among the most dangerous and harmful dozen members of Congress. Please help Tom Wakely replace him as the representative for TX-21.

After we saw Smith's statement we called Tom and asked him what he could make of it. He told us that Smith "never ceases to amaze and astound" him. "The press release he sent out today in response to the March for Science, is nothing more than a meager attempt to portray himself as 'pro-women.' By supporting the Next Space Pioneers, Innovators, Researchers, and Explorers (INSPIRE) Women Act and the Promoting Women in Entrepreneurship Act he is hoping his constituents will forget how he really feels about women. His support of these two bills  belie the fact that he has consistently, over his thirty year career in Congress, voted against women. He voted NO on reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. He voted to defund Planned Parenthood. As far as his anti-science schtick goes, his policy positions and statements are not only wrong-headed but extremely dangerous. Lamar seems to relish in the thought that by turning back the clock we will somehow be the better for it. Maybe he thinks if we all smoked a little from the Mary Baker Eddy Christian Science pipe we would see the world as he does. This man represents the Texas we all want to forget, the Texas that has consistently been found by the federal courts to discriminate against minorities. I truly believe that Smith wants to return to the days of 'no dogs, no Mexicans allowed' and to days where teaching evolution in our schools was a crime."

This morning cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff explained to his followers that "the enormous role played by science-- especially government-sponsored science-- in our everyday lives is barely appreciated." Trump and Trumpists are at war with Science. They have to be stopped.

Start with modern medicine. We, the public, paid for it through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and research universities where the medical researchers, surgeons, doctors and nurses were trained, and where tools like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) developed. Modern drugs were also developed through basic research sponsored by NIH. Modern medicine is the dividend of our investment over decades in medical science.

Next, computers. Computer science didn’t just appear. It was developed through grants from National Science Foundation (NSF) and Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARP). The Internet was developed by the Defense Department. It was originally called the Arpanet. Satellites were developed through NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Defense Department, with vast amount of new science: rocket fuels, physics, new materials for rocket shells, advances in radio communication, and aerial photography.

Cell phones and GPS systems depend on a system of satellites run by the Defense Department, with four satellites accessible from any point on earth, electromagnetic waves traveling at the speed of light and requiring the physics of relativity, and switching equipment able to receive and pass on signals within nanoseconds-- billionths of a second. A millionth of a second off and your cellphone call is hundreds of miles off. Cellphones are required by business all over the world. American science is supporting not just personal communication but the economy of the world!

And then there is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): No more ozone hole. No more acid rain. The air in Los Angeles is very much cleaner than it used to be. The EPA’s information is valuable beyond measure.

It has scientifically measured and tracked lead in the water -- not just in Flint, but in many cities. It has measured mercury levels in the oceans and in fish. It has alerted us to the effects of global heating, effects that arise from the systemic complexities of the global ecology. Effects like droughts, floods, monster storms, and extreme temperatures. It has monitored poisons in our air and water put there by corporations that have been irresponsible, greedy, and just plain inefficient and careless. Those poisons threaten our food supply because they kill bees that are responsible for 1/3 of our food supply. Mercury in our oceans makes many fish dangerous to eat.

EPA regulations issued and, until recently, enforced, are all that affords us protections from man-made poisons. Every regulation eliminated is a major loss of protections for the public. The administration’s plan for eliminating regulations would wipe out most protections from poisons and other threats.

The Defense Department has issued a report that cites global heating via the use of oil, gas, and coal as a major national security threat. Why? Droughts, and oil, and rising seas start wars. Global heating is matter of life and death in all sorts of ways. It is the moral crisis of our age. Reversing it requires science more than ever!

The positive effects of science on our lives are everywhere. And the needs for more and more responsible science are also everywhere.

Notice science!

And how it has made possible so much of contemporary American life.

Then march for science-- because it is under political threat like never before.

The Republican War On Immigrants Melds Perfectly Into Their War On Science

And a delightful dining companion

One of the brilliant innovations of the Trump phenomenon has been the turning of expertise into a class issue. Formerly, scientists were political liabilities only insofar as their work clashed with the teachings of TV Bible-thumpers. Now, any person who in any way disputes popular misconceptions-- that balancing a budget is just like balancing a checkbook, that two snowfalls in a week prove global warming isn't real, that handguns would have saved Jews from the Holocaust or little kids from the Sandy Hook massacre-- is part of an elitist conspiracy to deny the selfhood of the Google-educated American. The Republicans understand this axiom: No politician in the Trump era is going to dive in a foxhole to save scientific research. Scientists, like reporters, Muslims and the French, are out.

That was from Matt Taibbi's essay in Rolling Stone this week, Trump The Destroyer, which we discussed in some depth earlier. When I read it I thought of a guy I only met a couple of times, a medical researcher in the field of molecular microbiology, Samuel Stanley, Jr., who I met a couple years ago, after he had been appointed president of SUNY, Stony Brook, where decades ago I was an undergraduate. In recent posts I've mentioned how pretty recently Stony Brook had decided to honor two donors with a dinner, myself and... a reclusive local man now known throughout the world as the financier behind the Trump Regime curtain, Robert Mercer. It always a cute little story about how I suggested it would be an uncomfortable match and how Stony Brook had decided to have two separate dinners instead. This morning I noticed that Dr. Stanley had penned a guest post for Scientific American, one I'm going to guess isn't going to endear him to the Mercers or any other Trumpists.


Anti-Immigration Rhetoric Is a Threat to American Leadership
-by Dr. Samuel Stanley, Jr.,
President, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Our embrace of international students and faculty has given the U.S. a leg up on all other countries in the race to lead in innovation and discovery.

Iranian-American engineer and entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari was a co-sponsor of the Ansari X-Prize for private spaceflight

America’s universities are the best in the world. The quality of the students, faculty, teaching, infrastructure, the commitment to academic freedom, and the extraordinary research opportunities attract the best and brightest people from around the globe to the United States. And our nation is far better for it.

Last year six recipients of the Nobel Prize were working at American universities: the three winners of the prize in physics, the two winners in economics, and one of the three winners in chemistry. All six were foreign born. Bob Dylan was the only Nobel laureate last year born in the United States. And 2016 was no fluke. In all, 42 percent of the Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 2015 went to individuals working/living in the United States, and nearly one third of those recipients were born outside the U.S. Our ability to attract the world’s leading scientists to our universities has helped us maintain global leadership in innovation and discovery, a tremendous component of our economic strength and national security.

But it is not just faculty that have come to U.S. universities to pursue their research. We also have been the destination of choice for outstanding graduate and undergraduate students from around the world. At Stony Brook University and many other top research universities, the majority of our graduate students in STEM fields are international students. Many of these talented students stay on after their education and become contributors to innovation and economic development in our country. The economic impact of international students on the U.S. economy was nearly $36 billion dollars in 2015, with $4 billion in New York State alone. Just on my campus, roughly 10 percent of the startup companies at our business incubator are led by foreign born scientists with much of the workforce coming from recent international doctoral students. And the impact of international students on our campus is not just economic, they add to the diversity of culture and ideas on our campus, broadening the experience of every student at Stony Brook University and better preparing them for the 21st century world.

But now this is all at risk. New immigration policies, coupled with xenophobic rhetoric and actions both before and after the election, are undoing the compact between the United States and those seeking opportunity from around the world. The first executive order nearly resulted in the deportation of the President of Stony Brook’s Graduate Student Organization, a former Fulbright Scholar, who had been studying in the United States for 10 years. The campus was dramatically unsettled, with an initial loss of the sense of security and welcoming inclusive environment that we have worked so hard to establish.

Lamar Smith & Darrell Issa, worst of both worlds

And the impact is not just local. Research uni-versities are seeing an immediate effect on the recruitment of international faculty and students. Stony Brook University has seen a decline of roughly 10 percent in international applications for graduate school this year, a figure that seems to be on a par with the decline seen at other institutions. The reasons for these declines may not be solely based on anti-immigration policies and rhetoric, but some accepted applicants to Stony Brook, especially from countries targeted by the first Executive Order, have stated explicitly that they will choose a Canadian or Australian university instead, based on the uncertainty of U.S. immigration policy and the fact that they are being singled out based on their country of origin, not on their academic credentials. And the recent suspension of expedited processing of H1-B visas, which is of significant concern to the Technology Sector, could also have a chilling effect on the ability of Universities to attract outstanding international faculty and scientists to help sustain our research and educational missions.

Rather than creating pathways to citizenship like DACA, the anti-immigration rhetoric, and now acts of violence against immigrants to the United States, is sending a message to the world that the United States, and by implication, our universities, no longer will be a welcoming and safe environment for international students and faculty. “They” should look elsewhere, and, unfortunately for us, they will.

It may not be too late to make this right. Policy needs to be based on facts, not fear. Recent data from Homeland Security on the relative risks posed by recent immigrants to the U.S. vs those who have been residents for years should be incorporated into our approach to security. Continuing DACA and moving to a policy that “staples a Green Card” on to the diploma of graduates of U.S. universities would go a long way to helping address our workforce issues in technology and reassuring the world that we do still want best and the brightest to study and work in the United States of America.

Our embrace of international students and faculty has given the U.S. a leg up on all other countries in the race to lead in innovation and discovery. We augment our extraordinary homegrown talent with future leaders from around the world. But time is short, the new policies and rhetoric are taking their toll, significant damage is being done, and if we surrender our global edge in innovation and discovery, we may never get it back.

Stop the presses! What shade(s) of orange do you suppose extraterrestrial Donald Trumps might be?

"Now we have seven Earth-sized planets to expand our understanding. Yes, we have the possibility to find water and life. But even if we don't, whatever we find will be super interesting."

-- University of Liège "exoplanet researcher" Michaël Gillon

by Ken

So here I was, wrestling with a post that would take off from a cluster of one upcoming and two just-forgotten birthdays, and last night's Real O'Neals and The Middle, so good that you have to wonder how they survived interference by the Disney-ABC network suits, and the whole consuming business of "fitting in" or not.

That combined with -- as an afterthought or maybe overthought -- a piece by Nathaniel Rich in the March 7 NYRB, "Joan Didion in the Deep South" (copyright by the author, curiously; note that the full piece is available only to subscribers or purchasers) about Joan Didion's about-to-be-published book South and West, which apparently consists of her actual notes for never-written pieces gathered during a month traveling the Gulf Coast in summer 1970 and a 1976 visit to San Francisco (in, of course, her native California) covering Patty Hearst's trial for Rolling Stone.

I'd already decided that probably it would have been split into two sure-to-be-riveting posts, when whap!, along comes this breaking news, and naturally all that other stuff has to be put on hold. I know that these seven planets aren't in our solar system, or anywhere near (note that the description of Trappist-1 as an "ultracool dwarf" isn't a value judgment but a description of the 39-light-years-distant star's temperature and size), but still, seven "Earthlike" planets? Get out of here! Just think, somewhere out there in space there could be seven officially extraterrestrial Donald Trumps! Do you suppose they would all come in the same shade(s) of orange?

Speaking of Science
Scientists discover 7 ‘Earthlike’ planets orbiting a nearby star

By Sarah Kaplan | February 22 at 1:00 PM

[SEE VIDEO CLIP ABOVE]
Three planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system resemble Earth in terms of size, mass, and the energy they receive from their star. (Reuters)

A newfound solar system just 39 light-years away contains seven warm, rocky, Earthlike planets, scientists say.

The discovery, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, represents the first time astronomers have ever detected so many terrestrial planets orbiting a single star. Researchers say the system is an ideal laboratory for studying distant worlds and could be the best place in the galaxy to search for life beyond Earth.

“Before this, if you wanted to study terrestrial planets, we had only four of them and they were all in our solar system,” said lead author Michaël Gillon, an exoplanet researcher at the University of Liège in Belgium. “Now we have seven Earth-sized planets to expand our understanding. Yes, we have the possibility to find water and life. But even if we don't, whatever we find will be super interesting.”

The newly discovered solar system resembles a scaled-down version of our own. The star at its center, an ultracool dwarf called TRAPPIST-1, is less than a tenth the size of the sun and about a quarter as warm. Its planets circle tightly around it; the closest takes just a day and a half to complete an orbit, the most distant takes about 20 days. If these planets orbited a larger, brighter star they'd be fried to a crisp. But TRAPPIST-1 is so cool that all seven of the bodies are bathed in just the right amount of warmth to hold liquid water. And three of them receive the same amount of heat as Venus, Earth and Mars, putting them in “the habitable zone,” that Goldilocks region where it's thought life can thrive.

Still, “Earthlike” is a generous term to describe these worlds. Though the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system resemble Earth in terms of size, mass, and the energy they receive from their star, there's a lot that makes our planet livable beside being a warm rock. Further observation is required to figure out what the TRAPPIST-1 planets are made of, if they have atmospheres, and whether they hold water, methane, oxygen and carbon dioxide — the molecules that scientists consider “biosignatures,” or signs of life.

“You can bet people will be rushing to take those measurements,” said Elisabeth Adams, an exoplanet researcher at the Planetary Science Institute who was not involved in the study. “That's going to be fascinating to see.”


An artist's conception of the view from the surface of the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) [Note: Click to enlarge. -- Ed.]

Whatever secrets it may harbor, the TRAPPIST-1 system will surely be a sight to behold. Though the star is small, its nearness to the planets means that, from their perspective, it appears about three times as large as our sun. The outermost planets enjoy the daily spectacle of their neighbors passing across the sky and in front of their shared sun, each world a large dark spot silhouetted against the salmon-colored star. Its dim glow, which skews toward the red and infrared end of the light spectrum, bathes the planets in warmth and paints their skies with the crimson hues of a perpetual sunset.

[There's more, ohsomuch more, which all you astronomy nerds out there can read onsite. -- Ed.]

WHEW! HOW EXCITING IS THIS?

Now, maybe Friday we can get back to the business originally plann for today.

#

Can "Institutional Inertia" Save the EPA from Scott Pruitt and Donald Trump?

In Trump World, an example of unsound science (source: National Academy of Science)

by Gaius Publius

Is it an emergency yet?

Trump's plans for changes to and at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been leaked to a site called "Axios" and outlets like New York Magazine are treating the information as viable. We will as well.

From NYMag's writeup (my emphasis throughout):

Anyone laboring under the impression that the new Trump administration will be all bark and no bite when it comes to overturning long-established bipartisan policies should watch Team Trump’s assault on the Environmental Protection Agency closely. Aside from appointing Scott Pruitt, who is mainly familiar with EPA as a hated adversary in court, to be in charge of that agency, plans for an initial regulatory wave and budgetary policies amount to a 180-degree turn in environmental enforcement, as reported today by Axios. They include the complete elimination of climate-change programs; a half-billion-dollars in funding cuts for EPA grants to state and local governments; an immediate halt to Clean Air Act regulations affecting new and existing power plants; an about-face on auto emissions standards; and a general defanging of EPA’s crucial ability to overrule federal and state regulations that pose environmental dangers.

That’s probably just the beginning, because these plans were formulated by Trump’s EPA transition director, Myron Ebell, mostly famous as a climate-change skeptic, but more generally active as a policy wonk at a very prominent libertarian-ish think tank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, financed mostly by a rogue’s gallery of fossil-fuel industries and right-wing foundations.

That's quite a wish-list.

From the Axios article by Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen (bolded emphasis mine):

We got a sneaky look at the Trump transition team's EPA "agency action" plan. It's the guiding (aspirational) document written by Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. One of the striking aspects of the document was its language about the agency's use of scientific research and economic analysis to justify its actions. A section titled 'Addendum on the problems with EPA science' leads with this paragraph:

EPA does not use science to guide regulatory policy as much as it uses regulatory policy to steer the science. This is an old problem at EPA. In 1992, a blue-ribbon panel of EPA science advisers that [sic] 'science should not be adjusted to fit policy.' But rather than heed this advice, EPA has greatly increased its science manipulation.

The document goes on to recommend what can be done to "improve the use of science by EPA":

• EPA should not be funding scientific research

• If EPA uses scientific data for regulation, that data must be publicly available so independent scientists can review it

• EPA's science advisory process needs to be overhauled to eliminate conflicts of interest and inherent bias

• Science standards need to be developed and implemented to ensure that science policy decisions and epidemiological practices are based on sound science

If you look again at the italicized paragraph (quoted from the leaked document), you can see the Orwellian "up is down" basis for the statements in the bullets, the unsupported assertion that the EPA engages in "science manipulation." From that "given" follows the rest: The first bulleted item is plain, no more science for you, EPA. The second hinges on the word "independent" (refer again to the quoted paragraph to see what kind of "independence" Trump's team is looking for). The third turns on the meaning of "inherent bias." The fourth turns on the meaning of "sound science" (as determined by the Administrator).

One person's "overhaul" is another person's "gutting." Looks like the EPA is headed for a gutting.

Institutional Inertia

I asked a person I know who was formerly high up at the EPA, a career civil servant, not a political appointee, about the effect of Pruitt on the EPA. This person advised me that it takes more than 20 months (almost two years) to overturn rulings and programs in an organization as big and complex as the EPA, which oversees laws, regulations and processes that are themselves very complex. I call that slow rate of change "institutional inertia."

Can institutional inertia save the EPA, at least for a while? We'll see. The writers at Axios are asking the same question and turned to a "tipster" for some context:

A tipster gives us three important contextual points regarding the executive orders:

• They may be able to implement some of them administratively, but there will be discomfort amongst some Republicans and it will cost the Administration political capital.

• It is not a binary process. In other words, they can't just overturn them, it may take some time if they are already in the process of being implemented and opponents will have legal recourse to challenge some of the actions.

• There are huge, entrenched bureaucracies at these agencies, and especially at EPA, which is filled with true believers on the environmental movement, climate change, clean water and air. These thousands of people will dig in and make it very difficult for the thin layer of political appointees atop these agencies to move quickly to undo their years of work to put these things in place.

Take the prejudicial description — "true believers" — as showing the tipster to be a climate-denying Republican source. As to people "digging in," I suspect they'll do more than that. The "thin layer of political appointees" is very thin indeed, with extremely experienced career employees heading up each of the arms of the huge agency, with nothing but career employees beneath them. Will they revolt by pouring virtual molasses into the already-slow-moving gears of change? We'll see.

If they do, Trump and Pruitt are likely to respond by developing enemies lists within the organization — civil servants and career employees they want to fire for (trumped up) cause. Or they may do this anyway, proactively. This could very well spark retaliation on the part of the rest of the employees. In other words, war, of a bureaucratic sort.

Stay tuned — as a spectator sport, this should be interesting. And as a spectacle with huge environmental and climate implications, read "interesting" in the sense of the Chinese curse.

Also, watch what happens at NASA and NOAA, agencies also deeply involved — as you've seen here many times — in both responding to and creating the science around climate change. I'm sure they're next to be "overhauled," if that isn't happening already.

Is it an emergency yet? If it is, what do you suggest we do to prevent it? Don't despair; humans are resourceful. I'm sure someone will come up with an response.

GP