Ch. . Ch. . Ch. . Ch. . Changes,
I've decided it's hard to blog. Take today, which is a lot like most every other day. I took the kids to swim. For an hour I throw the eight-year-old boy up out of the water while I'm keeping close tabs on the 20 mo old. By the evening when I have free time after the kids are in bed, say 10ish, I'm usually disinclined to think about writing 'cause I'm beat. If this is what 40 feels like. . . .
I need to headline every entry with an easy to see subject header. My interests, now, tend to be future oriented. Kids factor into that, but it's always been my nature. So, I won't be blogging about my ancestors, which is my Dad's hobby. But I will be thinking lots about how technology and nature and values are developing in ways that are re-making the world and re-making us.
In college, I was trained by some very good historians. Historians are averse to saying that changes are "radica." Usually, they are not. When talking about change, do you mean change of degree, or change in kind. Is change of a qualitative nature? What is the baseline for measuring change?
Tonight, the subject is otherworldly, literally. One of the most awesome things about being alive at this juncture in history, and I do mean awesome in its fulsome sense, is that you and I can be sure that the universe is full of worlds beyond our own solar system. As of this posting, the official roster of NASA-JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) exoplanets is 453. But, the discoveries are happening so fast now that another site lists 464 planets.
The rate of planet detection will dramatically accelerate in the coming months thanks to the Kepler mission. The observatory was launched last year and uses photometry, a new detection method. Super sensitive light-gathering instrumentation focuses on a star and looks for the minuscule dimming that occurs in starlight when a planet in orbit transits in front of its star. The Kepler team recently released data on the mission's first 43 days. In that time it had observed 156,000 stars. The result was about 400 "objects of interests" that will get increased scrutiny in coming days. It is estimated that about half of this number will turn out to be confirmed planets. At this rate, by the time the mission ends, Kepler could add thousands of worlds to the list.
The big picture is that planetary star systems like our own are typical and they are abundant. The next question that's just in the offing -- do any of these worlds harbor life? Such a discovery would be a change of kind. The confirmation of simple organic life on an extrasolar planet would have staggering scientific and philosophical implications.
The planets heretofore discovered are poor candidates for life as we understand it. They are almost all supermassive gas giant worlds with orbits that bake or freeze them. The smaller, rocky worlds like Earth and Mars with stable orbits in the star's habitable zone have, before Kepler, been beyond the means of detection. Kepler will change that, once the data is analyzed. It will find planets whose size and orbits commend them to future missions.
The Europeans Space Agency is preparing that mission. More on ESA's Darwin mission in a future post.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
We've Seen this Movie Before
If you like following the punditocracy, and really, who doesn't, you run the risk of believing that they know something. How many times was health care legislation all but dead? The climate-energy bill is following a similar script. (What creature will the process birth this time, assuming there is a delivering?) Reid announced that the Senate was going to move forward with a bill that must be comprehensive, that is, not just be an energy-only bill. So what momentous events happened to, ostensibly, embolden Senators to carbon reduction? Naturally, they caucused together.
They did what?
David Roberts at Grist writes:
Another observer this week said that they must have had one of those trust-building sessions where there were motivational speaks and people caught their mates as they stood on chairs and fell backwards.
From here to . . . .
Who knows where this goes. And what again of the White House? Is this proof that "we will find the votes for a bill?" The President is meeting with the G8 and a leaked document fails to follow up on previous G8 promises to phase out subsidies to fossil fuel producers that, worldwide, receive $550 billion. There's little the President or the G8 could do that would be more helpful to move the ball forward than to end these subsidies, yet the language in the draft talks about voluntary cuts as individual members see fit. Throw another Maldives on the barby mate.
If you like following the punditocracy, and really, who doesn't, you run the risk of believing that they know something. How many times was health care legislation all but dead? The climate-energy bill is following a similar script. (What creature will the process birth this time, assuming there is a delivering?) Reid announced that the Senate was going to move forward with a bill that must be comprehensive, that is, not just be an energy-only bill. So what momentous events happened to, ostensibly, embolden Senators to carbon reduction? Naturally, they caucused together.
They did what?
David Roberts at Grist writes:
On Thursday, the Senate Democratic caucus held a meeting and everyone emerged giddy as schoolchildren. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) called it "one of the most motivating, energized, and even inspirational caucuses that I've been a part of." Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) called it "absolutely thrilling." Said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), "It was really very, very powerful. It was inspirational, quite frankly."
Another observer this week said that they must have had one of those trust-building sessions where there were motivational speaks and people caught their mates as they stood on chairs and fell backwards.
From here to . . . .
Who knows where this goes. And what again of the White House? Is this proof that "we will find the votes for a bill?" The President is meeting with the G8 and a leaked document fails to follow up on previous G8 promises to phase out subsidies to fossil fuel producers that, worldwide, receive $550 billion. There's little the President or the G8 could do that would be more helpful to move the ball forward than to end these subsidies, yet the language in the draft talks about voluntary cuts as individual members see fit. Throw another Maldives on the barby mate.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
White House Course Correction on Climate?
"Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth." --Øystein Dahle, former Vice President of Exxon for Norway and the North Sea.
Among those concerned about climate change, the President, from what I can discern, is not very popular. He's not meeting expectations. He is not speaking the ecological truth. In his public pronouncements, especially in his much awaited and much criticized speech on energy, Mr. Obama is accused of lacking leadership and vision. Both The Atlantic and The New York Times took aim at the President's leadership, or lack thereof, on the energy climate bill now sausaging its way through the Senate. Writes the Times: "Mr. Obama must stress, explicitly and emphatically, that a conventional energy bill will not do -- and that attaching real costs to older, dirtier fuels now dumped free of charge into the atmosphere is the surest way to persuade American industry to develop cleaner fuels." Failure to price Carbon, says the Atlantic, "is a recipe for toasting the planet." Indeed, climate change is an existential threat. If we don't rapidly transition out of a carbon intensive energy economy we all but guarantee a path toward the collapse of the biosphere that supports us.
One of the questions before us in the U.S. this hot summer is, as Sting says, "Is there a political solution to our troubled evolution?" Politics failed at the global level in Copenhagen last year. Will it do so at the national level this year? Is President Obama proving inadequate to the singular challenge of his presidency, indeed, to the greatest challenge of his generation? (Or, of any generation. Climate change is believed to have destroyed discreet civilizations, but never Civilization itself. That's ahistoric. There really is no comparison)
The question on my mind today is what is the role of the White House this year on climate?
The president has officially said that he will "find the votes" to get a comprehensive climate and energy bill through the Senate. But, today's addition of Climate Wire reports that there is no longer the momentum in the Senate for a price on carbon. This echoes reporting elsewhere. The fall back position, if that is indeed what it is, is to price carbon from a single sector, electric generation. David Roberts of Grist has a really good synopsis of why this could be seen as a desirable half-a-loaf position, if it were to be done right.
But, is that enough? And, should the President be publicly talking about climate change? Of climate, says Roberts, it has, from the White House's point of view, become that which must not be named. Should the White House be speaking "openly, frequently, and forcefully about the challenge of global warming," as one critic put it, or should the politics of the moment dictate another course? If so, what is that course?
Among those concerned about climate change, the President, from what I can discern, is not very popular. He's not meeting expectations. He is not speaking the ecological truth. In his public pronouncements, especially in his much awaited and much criticized speech on energy, Mr. Obama is accused of lacking leadership and vision. Both The Atlantic and The New York Times took aim at the President's leadership, or lack thereof, on the energy climate bill now sausaging its way through the Senate. Writes the Times: "Mr. Obama must stress, explicitly and emphatically, that a conventional energy bill will not do -- and that attaching real costs to older, dirtier fuels now dumped free of charge into the atmosphere is the surest way to persuade American industry to develop cleaner fuels." Failure to price Carbon, says the Atlantic, "is a recipe for toasting the planet." Indeed, climate change is an existential threat. If we don't rapidly transition out of a carbon intensive energy economy we all but guarantee a path toward the collapse of the biosphere that supports us.
One of the questions before us in the U.S. this hot summer is, as Sting says, "Is there a political solution to our troubled evolution?" Politics failed at the global level in Copenhagen last year. Will it do so at the national level this year? Is President Obama proving inadequate to the singular challenge of his presidency, indeed, to the greatest challenge of his generation? (Or, of any generation. Climate change is believed to have destroyed discreet civilizations, but never Civilization itself. That's ahistoric. There really is no comparison)
The question on my mind today is what is the role of the White House this year on climate?
The president has officially said that he will "find the votes" to get a comprehensive climate and energy bill through the Senate. But, today's addition of Climate Wire reports that there is no longer the momentum in the Senate for a price on carbon. This echoes reporting elsewhere. The fall back position, if that is indeed what it is, is to price carbon from a single sector, electric generation. David Roberts of Grist has a really good synopsis of why this could be seen as a desirable half-a-loaf position, if it were to be done right.
But, is that enough? And, should the President be publicly talking about climate change? Of climate, says Roberts, it has, from the White House's point of view, become that which must not be named. Should the White House be speaking "openly, frequently, and forcefully about the challenge of global warming," as one critic put it, or should the politics of the moment dictate another course? If so, what is that course?
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