Science, Politics, and Chris Mooney

Chris Mooney once again has some advice for scientists in getting their message across to the public: listen to the concerns of the people you’re talking to.

That’s good enough advice, although hardly revolutionary; it can be found in most self-help books going back to Dale Carnegie and probably ancient Greece. But I think it misses an important point.

Science is based on the idea that some truths about the world are knowable in unambiguous ways, and that methods have been developed for finding those truths. Further, on that assumption that some truths are knowable and using those methods, we have built quite a nice and comfortable world for many of us on this planet. Further, we have expanded our mental horizons and opened the way to further improvements. These successes prove the validity (or at least the usefulness) of that assumption and those methods.

That’s a bit of an unfashionable viewpoint these days, pre-postmodern. But having electricity in your house, along with the appurtenances it runs, like the computer you’re looking at now, are some of its results. Automobiles, the veggies you buy at the farmers’ market, bicycles and running shoes, all are results. So are the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the leukemia of the downwinders from atmospheric nuclear tests, and the tens of thousands killed in the United States in automobile accidents every year. Some good and some bad, but we know and can understand them through science.

Mooney is working in what physicists might call a different reference frame, though. His main focus is how scientists can sell their message in a world with many different messages.

One the one hand, the nonscientists appear almost entirely impervious to scientific data that undermine their opinions and prone to arguing back with technical claims that are of dubious merit. In response, the scientists shake their heads and lament that if only the public weren't so ignorant, these kinds of misunderstandings wouldn't occur.

As Joe Romm points out, if you’re going to sell a message, it helps if you have as much money as the others who are selling their message.

So one may talk about tactics and money and listening, and all of that makes sense. But if you believe that there are unambiguous truths, and that those truths underlie what we might call the mechanics of the world, how things work, then if you want real solutions to your problems, there is only one way to get to them, and that is to find those truths and work with them.

And it appears that Mooney is willing to conclude more than his data allows. For example,

For one thing, it's political outlook -- not education -- that seems to motivate one's belief on this subject. According to polling performed by the Pew Research Center, Republicans who are college graduates are considerably less likely to accept the scientific consensus on climate change than those who have less education. These better-educated Republicans probably aren't ignorant; a more likely explanation is that they are politically driven consumers of climate science information. Among Democrats and independents, the relationship between education and beliefs about global warming is precisely the opposite -- more education leads to greater acceptance of the consensus climate science.

Let me try to move that back into my reference frame, the one with unambiguous truths. Mooney’s first sentence is his conclusion.

For one thing, it's political outlook -- not education -- that seems to motivate one's belief on this subject.

But wait a minute. For the Republicans, that is true, because their political outlook causes them to take beliefs that contradict those unambiguous truths. Democrats and independents are more likely to align their beliefs with those truths as they have more education, which would be what one might expect. So (my conclusion), for Republicans, ideology overrides demonstrable truth, moreso as their education increases, while Democrats and independents increase their understanding of how the world works with increased education.

This changes the nature of the problem: what is it that is motivating Republicans to reject their education in favor of ideology? Further, they must have totally rejected the methods that have served science and society well. We may also ask how to change their minds, and Mooney is correct: it appears that factual evidence plays no part in their thinking.

But Mooney takes those results to mean that all people are more influenced by politics than they are by fact, and John Horgan echoes him in a collation by Andy Rivkin of various shiny objects from people in his contact list.

I think it is true that people have different agendas and that this needs to be considered in communicating science. Perhaps it is useful to put aside that history of science’s ability to determine some kinds of truth and the methods, however successful, in order to look at those agendas. But I think that the example I’ve given undercuts Mooney’s conclusions and may suggest a different approach: namely, political defeat of a party that prizes ideology over understanding. Such parties have done a great deal of damage in the past. Such a strategy need rely very little on science communication, but rather on the usual tools of politics. Then Romm’s comments about balancing the funding of the two messages become a full explanation of what is needed.

Apparently there is a much longer report of which Mooney’s op-ed is just the executive summary. I’ll read that report tonight and perhaps have more to say tomorrow.

The Age of (Non)Ideology

You’ve been in-country quite a few years now. You’ve got a spouse, kids, a house. Although it took some arguing with the higher-ups to put the house in your own name. Whoever heard of a safe house owned by someone in Moscow? And that’s not all, the required transmissions so often go wrong.

Montclair, New Jersey, is a nice place to raise kids. The neighbors are friendly, they like the way you pamper your hydrangeas. What would it be in Moscow? Scrambling for a bigger apartment, graffiti in the hallways, no place for the kids to play, constant traffic jams, air pollution.

Not a bad assignment at all. It was really good of Uncle Ivan to recommend us for this through his FSB connections. Little progress on meeting the right people, but how many atomic scientists did they think lived in Montclair, for God’s sake? Puff up the reports to sound as good as possible. It’s a long-term assignment, they’re not going to pull us back for any little thing.

***

Meanwhile, in Moscow, the reports are received and deciphered by a small group in a back office at the SVR. Salaries are paid regularly, reports are distributed to the proper offices and filed properly. It’s an easy job. As long as everyone keeps their heads down, it will continue. It is in the long-range category.

***

The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty put inspectors from the United States and the Soviet Union in each other’s countries. A colleague at the Hercules missile factory outside Salt Lake City told a story about the Soviet inspectors when they arrived. Their American escorts showed them the places they needed to know about. When they reached the well-stocked supermarket, the Soviets couldn’t stand it any more.

“We know that you have to show us the front stores. Now take us to the real stores, the ones that everyone uses.”

It took some persuasion to convince the Soviet inspectors that this was the real store. They were accustomed to Soviet shortages of food and the government’s claims that it was worse in the United States. When the inspectors returned to the Soviet Union, they took television sets and other consumer goods with them. My Hercules colleague felt that the information they brought back was a factor in the fall of the Soviet Union.

Spies sent to the United States in the nineties would have had better information about both the United States and Russia, and that information would have improved with their longer stay. Did they decide they had a good enough thing that they tried not to rock the boat?

[With some help from MC.]

Profit, Loss, and Proliferation

Russia’s Americanized Russians

by Molly Cernicek and Cheryl Rofer

No sooner does Russian President Dmitry Medvedev return home from his visit to Silicon Valley as part of the reset in Russian-American relations, than the arrest of eleven Russian spies seems to return to the Cold War. President Medvedev must be wondering how Russia might have done a better job of integrating Russians into America to learn the secret recipes, handshakes, and processes of one of America’s most prolific and prized treasures – its high tech industry – and then getting them back into Russia to use that knowledge. While Russian spies may have provided information of interest, it is doubtful that information sent back to the motherland has provided any value…economic value that is.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, many Soviet government assets were handed out to Friends of Boris and Friends of Vladimir before anyone had an idea of what Russia had of value beyond oil and metals and what potential human talent was available. Little investment went into Russia’s flailing education system or its archaic infrastructure. The country whose scientists designed and built nuclear weapons, supersonic jets, and sophisticated satellites and were renowned globally in theoretical physics and mathematics focused entirely on exploiting natural resources and building a service economy. The theory was that once Russia became economically viable through natural resource trade, the government would focus on investing and building a globally competitive economy. But meanwhile Russian experts in scientific and engineering fields took advantage of opportunities in the West and in Asia, leaving a significant void in Russia. The United Nations estimates that between 1990 and 2002 the number of individuals involved in research and other academic activities decreased by 55.2 percent, or 1,072,500 technical employees. (UNESCO Science Report 2005 p.139).

Today, President Medvedev wants to improve education and build a high tech economy. Thus his interest in Silicon Valley – the model so many want to duplicate around the world. He went to Silcon Valley to find potential investors and business partners to support one of his pet projects – Skolkovo, Russia’s innovation city being developed outside of Moscow to incubate scientific ideas into profitable companies. He left Silicon Valley with one big opportunity – a commitment from CISCO to build offices in Skolkovo, including their second global headquarters for emerging technology and a $1 billion investment in R&D and business development. This is a very big deal for a plan that that will depend heavily on something Russia has very little of – successful high tech entrepreneurs.

One of Skolkovo’s first projects announced this spring is an effort in cloud computing, computer speech recognition, and sending three-dimensional images through the internet. It is backed by seed funding and enthusiasm. And there is someone to lead this effort who has world-class credentials. Serguei Beloussov has experience in a number of high performance computing areas, including cloud computing as CEO of Parallels, a global leader in virtualization and automation software. His background as an innovator and entrepreneur is spectacular. The only complication, he lives in the Seattle area. He plans to spend time in Russia getting this demanding venture going in an environment with many challenges while juggling his growing American company that made over $100 million last year.

As the United States and Russia fret over the spy story, we’re wondering whether President Medvedev wonders what would have happened had Russia had sent many more spies to Silicon Valley to learn about high tech companies and then return to Russia to build ventures of their own rather than sending citizens to fit into American life in the Northeast in order to dig for bits and pieces about US government protocols, plans and policies. What if programs like Skolkovo had been implemented in the 1990s in Russia instead of a frantic grab for natural resources?

Instead, America profited by having Russians like Beloussov come to the United States with ambitions to build companies that have created thousands of high paying jobs. Russians like Sergei Brin, co-founder of Google ( $25 billion in revenue last year); or Valentin Gaponstsev, CEO of IPG Photonics in Massachussetts, a global leader in lasers, bringing in an annual revenue of $191 million. Or the many Russians who have started smaller companies, not to mention the thousands employed throughout America’s high tech sector. Their contributions to our economy far out shadow whatever those 11 alleged spies may have taken. Surely something President Medvedev must be lamenting as he looks for help from both Russians and Americans.

Concern Trolling and Gender Confusion

Kathleen Parker does the first today, severely undermining Michael Gerson's argument. It's always fun to see the wingers at the Post messing with each other's heads.

Ooooh, it's all right to be like a woman, Parker assures us far too many times in comparing Obama's style to something that isn't red-blooded male, talky like a woman. "I say this in the nicest possible way," she simpers. But then her male colleague, Michael Gerson, suggests that we have an Ugly Party, which indulges in invective and an Adult Party, which

in my experience, is more like a seminar at the Aspen Institute -- presentation by David Broder, responses from E.J. Dionne Jr. and David Brooks -- on the electoral implications of the energy debate. I am more comfortable in this party for a few reasons: because it is more responsible, more reliable and less likely to wish its opponents would die.

Words, words, words! as Parker would probably agree with Liza Doolittle.

Maybe we can see a few rotten tomatoes tossed between these two. Unless they're both members of The Adult Party.

Yucca Mountain's Application Can't Be Withdrawn

A panel of administrative judges ruled that the administration can't withdraw the application for a permit for Yucca Mountain, that it is up to Congress. (Decision document here)

This is likely to leave Yucca Mountain in limbo; the administration has requested no funding for the project. It does leave the option open to consider Yucca Mountain in the future, and it may make some difference in the deliberations of the panel charged with reviewing what to do with nuclear waste.

It may also provide fodder for some on Congress to criticize the administration for trying to shut down Yucca Mountain.

Testy Journalists

Lara Logan is the latest of the Official Journalists to weigh in on the McChrystal article by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone. Matt Taibbi responds, impolitely.

There's been a spate of journo indignation lately: that Hastings dared to write what he actually heard from McChrystal and company, instead of keeping it within the family; Logan joins David Brooks, most notably, but there are others arguing that if you want access, you have to play the game. Which says far more about their practices and how much the public can depend on them than it does about Michael Hastings.

And then there was the uproar at the Washington Post about un-toilet-trained bloggers from, presumably, more of those Official Journalists, as Dave Weigel was outed by an anonymous member of an off-the-record e-mail list who decided to break those rules (an Official Journalist, perhaps?).

And, a week or so back, James Risen's obscenely-expressed fury at bloggers who dare to question an Official Journalist's story.

It's the summer, supposed to be lapsing into the unofficial August vacation for Official Journalists known as the Silly Season. But the world seems to keep ticking on, as do the bloggers, and the future of the news business remains very much up in the air. So it's not surprising that those who consider themselves part of that elite profession might be getting testy.

It's an unruly world out there. Journalists are supposed to explore it. But it looks like some of them have been all too protected for far too long.

Meanwhile, the blogosphere shows them up once again. We can contrast this to Risen's tantrum or to the propensity of newspapers to hide corrections in small print on an interior page. The serious bloggers I know are not afraid to say they were wrong.

Bill Clinton Joins The Crowd

in calling for the Navy to "blow up the well" in the Gulf of Mexico that is gushing oil.

I think I've figured out why people might think that this is a solution. They see that there is a path (the well) from the reservoir to the surface. Take away that path, they reason, and the gusher will stop.

But that path is only part of the problem. Oil accumulates underground because it reaches an impermeable layer of rock. Oil is lighter than water and rock, so it tends to migrate upward. The problem that is not solved by "blowing up the well" is the breach in that impermeable layer, also the well.

Explosives won't seal that breach. They will fracture a lot of rock and break up the path to the surface so that it will be tortuous rather than the relatively straight and potentially more controllable wellbore. They may even fracture the impermeable layer still further. The result could well be multiple seeps or even blowouts with no means of control other than drawing down the reservoir. Which will take a lot more time than drilling relief wells.

Oh No...

As unconfirmed reports of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities pick up steam in the Middle Eastern media, a US-based strategic intelligence company has released a chart showing US naval carriers massing near Iranian waters. (via)

Arrogance and Rules of Thumb

Exactly what is it that irritates me so much lately about what I’m seeing in various poorly informed discussions of scientific and engineering issues? I think it’s the arrogance. That arrogance comes in several forms.

Hey, you science guys! You’ve got something wrong!

I’ve figured out a solution for a problem that other people seem to find difficult.

No, I didn’t have to check what’s been done before.

And there are more.

These assertions are indicators that the person behind them doesn’t know what s/he is talking about.

That’s one of my rules of thumb. Scientists have a lot of rules of thumb, which sometimes makes them seem arrogant.

“I’ve found a way to run your car on water instead of gasoline.”

“Bosh.”

One of my favorite sources of rules of thumb is thermodynamics. It doesn’t tell you how to do things or how fast you can do them, but it tells you whether something, like running your car on water, is impossible.

Most people know that there are three laws of thermodynamics: energy can neither be created nor destroyed; you can’t break even except at absolute zero, but you can’t reach absolute zero. Adding some chemical specifics gives very useful rules of thumb. Engineers have other rules of thumb, from thermodynamics and practical experience.

I’ll give a few examples of those rules. They become so engrained if you do science or engineering for a while that you don’t think of them, they become a sort of common sense, different from everyday common sense. So when someone says something that contravenes them, a scientist is likely to reply sharply that that’s wrong.

Rule #1 (no significance to the numbers): Carbon dioxide and water are products, not reactants. The system hydrocarbon plus oxygen has more energy in it than water plus carbon dioxide. So all the schemes to run your car on water are bosh. No, you can’t use a catalyst to turn it around; catalysts only speed up reactions that are allowed thermodynamically. You have to add energy to do anything chemically with carbon dioxide and water.

Rule #2: Stuff mixes. I’ve recently been engaged in a discussion with a person who has convinced himself that the science on the CFC ban was a devious preview of scientists plotting to take over the world through anthropogenic global warming. His reasoning is that you can pour out gaseous CFCs in a stream because they are heavier than air; therefore they must fall out of the atmosphere and never reach the ozone layer. The Second Law says that things tend toward maximum disorder, which means they mix. Once mixed, stuff doesn’t unmix. Have you ever seen the sugar jump out of a cup of tea and form one of those nice little cubes? Gases mix even more easily.

Rule #3: Everything takes more energy than you think. I’ve seen, far too many times, the lament that our current electrical generating plants “waste” one-third of the energy in their fuels. Welcome to the Carnot cycle! It’s one of the first things thermodynamics students calculate, a sequence of energy generation and use. And the result that those students get is that about a third of the input energy goes to entropy, not usable. There are other cycles and other ways to use energy that are more efficient, but if you’ve got a Carnot cycle, the most common cycle for power plants, you’re stuck with that one-third entropy.

Scientists and engineers have built a world with definitions of words like force and energy that differ from the common definitions, and precisely-defined concepts like mass that is often confused with weight. It is frequently not possible to extrapolate from everyday experience to the behavior of molecules or the flow velocities and phase activity at the top of the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer. Not at all possible to extrapolate from computer games.

Scientists also have different social rules. When a scientist has a great idea, the first reaction is to ask whether it fits with the rules of thumb and whether it’s been done before. If it goes against any of that, a scientist’s reaction is “what did I get wrong?” not “that’s the way it ought to be.”

I had a boss once – a physicist in a project that was mostly chemistry – who believed that creativity depended on not knowing too much about a subject. This is a view taken by many physicists and too many of those proffering solutions to the Deepwater Horizon blowout. My boss would come around with a great idea, we would tell him what was wrong with it, and then he’d let it go. It wasted time, which is why I prefer some base of subject knowledge as a takeoff point for creativity, but he put the process of science into play and lived by it: peer review. There are a lot of ways to check out a new idea: ask other people; repeat the experiment; check the literature. The important thing is to give it up once someone shows you it’s foolish. Not like this guy.

BP’s blowout at Deepwater Horizon is particularly difficult to comprehend because of its scale. We are not accustomed to thinking of the pressures under a mile of water, nor gases flashing out of the liquid as the petroleum bursts from the pipe, the enormous pressure behind it, the five-story blowout preventer. The construction of the well is not easily visualized, particularly if you’ve never learned how a well is constructed, now with an unknown degree of damage. I’ve dealt with drillers, had the business of mud described to me, and I can’t describe it now in any detail myself. Which is why I offer links to visuals as I find them.

So extrapolations from experience in watering the garden are unlikely to provide solutions. Heck, if you think that the well can just be buried, plant a hose in the ground shooting full force upward and try to cover it with dirt.

Rule #4: If it’s an obvious idea, chances are that someone’s thought of it before and there’s a good reason why it won’t work. This is not a reason to give up, but rather a guide to checking the idea out.

One of the most basic things that a scientist learns is that his/her own mind is the first place that mistakes will be made. It’s too easy to bend facts in your mind toward what you want, to determine a conclusion and then figure out how it has to be done; even more so when the conclusion you want is guided by politics, like the guy who thinks that banning CFCs was a scam. That’s why my boss checked out his ideas and shut up when they had killer flaws. You can’t get creative if you stick with a loser idea.

Rule #5: Input for a product should be water and air. Other things cost more. KISS: Keep it simple, stupid. Also: Occam’s razor.

The first is a chemical engineering rule of thumb. The others are more general. They are nice tests of an idea: how cheap and easy is it? How could it be cheaper and easier? This doesn’t necessarily lead to cutting corners. Simpler and cheaper is frequently better, as well.

There are more. Maybe the ongoing nature of the BP blowout, leading to repeated rebuffs of all those suggestions that aren’t likely to work, will teach some of the public that such rules of thumb exist and are useful. Steve Benen debunks Rand Paul’s idea of an “underground electric fence” by asking for some evidence that such a thing exists; peer review at work. And Mark Morford takes a step back and laughs at those who are predicting that the blowout will be the end of the world, or something like that. A few people are starting to get it.

Jambul or Jamun or Java Plums

Dreaming Up Creeds

This pretty much gets at why I've never jumped into the going atheists-vs-religionists fray or even thought it was terribly interesting.

The most boring question to ask about religion is whether or not the whole thing is “true.” It’s a measure of the banality of recent discussions on theological matters that it is precisely this issue which has hogged the limelight, pitting a hardcore group of fanatical believers against an equally small band of fanatical atheists...

The tragedy of modern atheism is to have ignored just how many aspects of religion continue to be interesting even when the central tenets of the great faiths are discovered to be entirely implausible. Indeed, it’s precisely when we stop believing in the idea that gods made religions that things become interesting, for it is then that we can focus on the human imagination which dreamt these creeds up. We can recognize that the needs which led people to do so must still in some way be active, albeit dormant, in modern secular man. God may be dead, but the bit of us that made God continues to stir.

Alain de Botton (via)

Bits and Pieces - June 27, 2010

Alas, it took only one listserv participant to bundle up Weigel’s archived comments and start leaking them outside the group. The result is that Weigel lost his job. But the bigger loss is The Post’s standing among conservatives.

From the WaPo ombudsman. Evidently he hasn't been reading the editorial page lately: Krauthammer, Will, Parker, Thiessen...

Samantha Joye is posting again, with a nice set of questions on the BP blowout.

These criteria are good ones to apply to any science article...or any news article.

How enriched was Y-12's WWII uranium?

Imagining a liberal Supreme Court.

It's been said before, but obviously needs to be said again: what's wrong with Congress from someone who's been there.

A stacked deck for a conservative economic outcome, and the people want something different.

Oops!

When "Cheater's Risk" was released by the Stimson Center, I didn't pay a lot of attention. I don't do computer games, except solitaire. It seemed gimmicky to me, but what the heck, something for everyone, maybe it would emphasize how difficult it really is to get a nuke.

But apparently that isn't the case. Both Robert Farley and Thers have gotten pretty far down the proliferation path. Commenters claim the same.

This will probably make the game more popular, with the takeaway message that it's easier for nations to get nukes than you might think.

And it will undermine the pretty-good summary that Barry Blechman and Alex Bollfrass provide of their reasoning in today's Washington Post. It's their book that "Cheater's Risk" is based on.

Bits and Pieces - June 25, 2010

I'm finding this Dave Weigel business very confusing. If you work for the Washington Post, you can't say anything bad about Matt Drudge, even in private? Julian Sanchez's rant makes more sense to me than anything else I've seen on the subject. Added later: Emptywheel finds some contradictions in another WaPo story.

A partial lunar eclipse for those in the western US early tomorrow morning, and check out the many possibilities for seeing the space station. I saw it one evening, quite delightful. (h/t to RG)

Is Bobby Jindal playing up the sand berm solution in order to mask his reluctance to mobilize the National Guard?

Bits and Pieces - June 24, 2010

Republicans want the economy to fail. Surprised?

Russia's President, Dmitry Medvedev, has started a Twitter feed for his trip to the United States.

The Oil Drum has prepared a fact sheet and FAQ on the BP blowout.

Australia has its first female Prime Minister.

More about Central Asia.

Added later: A response to the now-infamous DougR post at The Oil Drum.

More Bits and Pieces - June 23, 2010

Utah Senate Hopeful Supports CTBT. Good luck to this Republican candidate.

Iran seems determined to, um, get people's attention. For the MSM, I calculate that there is 3.4 kg of U-235 in 17 kg of 20% enriched uranium.

What to look for in the G-8/20/whatever summit.

Another drilling disaster: Indonesian mud volcano still spewing after four years. It was a badly constructed natural gas well that seems to have started this.

Profit, Loss, and Proliferation

Russia's Continuing Defense Modernization Plan

by Molly Cernicek and Cheryl Rofer

This spring, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced a plan to modernize at least 30 percent of Russian military weaponry by 2015. According to Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, only 10 percent of his military’s equipment is up to date, and he plans to spend $43 billion to fix this problem.

Although Russia neglected its military financially in the 1990s, that has not been the case in the past decade. Military spending has risen significantly in an attempt to modernize the army and its armaments. In 1988, the Soviet Union’s military budget was about $33 billion. By 1997, it was one-tenth of that.

Since 2000, Russia has been authorizing more funding to modernize its military, including moving it towards a professional army model and upgrading its weapons systems. In summary, Russia’s military budget climbed from $7 billion in 2000 to close to $50 billion in 2009.

So where did all of the funds go over the past 10 years? Did they buy new weapons systems and technology and transition the Russian army into a professional model with higher salaries and decent housing? How could only 10 percent of the military equipment be up to date after billions of dollars were allocated to new procurements? Either the funds were misused or Medvedev’s current $43 billion plan to modernize 90 percent of his military armaments is far too little. More likely it’s both.

It’s to be expected large sums of budgeted funds would be misspent or ended up in personal bank accounts. The Russian government realizes 1 out of 3 rubles in the economy falls victim to corruption, and many Russians think it is much closer to 1 out of 2 rubles.

But the bigger worry for Medvedev is that orders were placed, despite corruption problems, to the defense industry for modernized equipment and have not been filled year after year. After President Putin privatized much of the massive, inefficient Soviet defense industry in 2006 and 2007, 30 percent of the nearly 400 organizations privatized are facing bankruptcy proceedings. Defense contracts keep these inefficient organizations alive but not producing.

Medvedev should notice that the math is not adding up. For many of the past 10 years, big announcements have been made about the modernization plans of the its military followed by trillions of rubles allocated. But even with those trillions of rubles and global market opportunities for the privatized firms, the defense sector is struggling. In 2009, for $50 billion the government invested in its defense industry, international weapons sales brought in a record $7.4 billion. Not a great ratio of investment to sales.

Medvedev expects this latest modernization program to switch all military communications to digital technologies by 2012. He recently demonstrated an ultramodern prototype radio. A small problem – technologies like this radio and digital technology were designed and manufactured outside Russia. From what country should Russia buy their next-generation secret communication systems and technologies? A topic for a future post perhaps.

Bits and Pieces - Russia Edition

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev arrives in the United States tomorrow. Here's some of the anticipatory coverage. I don't agree with every word of every article, but each has some good points.

John Kerry: The merits of a Russian relationship

Peter Baker in the NYT: Obama Aims to Build Economic Ties With Russia. And the converse, I would suspect.

The Guardian: Russia cuts gas supplies to Belarus by 60%. The gas war is still in progress between Russia and former Soviet republics. At least it's summer.

The Moscow Times: Reviving the OSCE

azatutyan.am: Iran Against U.S. Peacekeeping Role In Karabakh. Russia is working with the United States to help Armenia and Azerbaijan to settle their dispute, and Iran doesn't like it.

Don't Feed The Troll

I know, but this troll managed to get into the New York Times op-ed section today.

If he had been reading The Oil Drum, he would have known that this is a dumb idea. If he posted that op-ed on The Oil Drum, he would have been dismissed as a troll who wasn't keeping up with his reading.

A Navy man who thinks the Navy can do it. Not surprising. Unfortunately, he has no idea of what the Navy has been doing that might achieve his goals.

The Navy also commands explosives experts who have vast knowledge of underwater demolitions. And it has some of the world’s finest underwater engineers at Naval Reactors, the secretive program that is responsible for designing nuclear reactors for nuclear submarines. With the help of scientists in our national weapons laboratories and experts from private companies, these engineers can be let loose on the well.

And they have those nukes in their back pockets! Evidently he hasn't heard that Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has a bunch of experts working on the problem. But not Navy, so I guess it doesn't count.

...the Navy could focus on stopping the leak with a conventional demolition. This means more than simply “blowing it up”: it means drilling a hole parallel to the leaking well and lowering charges to form an explosive column.

Um, there are two relief wells currently being drilled. Parallel and close to the hole would interfere with the oil containment measures now in progress. It's a pretty good bet that the relief wells will do their job. The oil industry has been dealing with relief wells for a very long time.

Upon detonating several tons of explosives, a pressure wave of hundreds of thousands of pounds per square inch would spread outward in the same way that light spreads from a tubular fluorescent bulb, evenly and far. Such a sidelong explosion would implode the oil well upstream of the leak by crushing it under a layer of impermeable rock, much as stepping on a garden hose stops the stream of water.

Several tons? The well bore might reach a couple of feet diameter. How are several tons of explosive going to fit? And the typical direction of force is outward, as our troll says. That means that craters form as rocks get thrown around.

This is where I think our submariner misunderstands what his underwater Navy colleagues have been doing. Many of their explosives are shaped charges. It is possible to build a shaped charge to collapse a pipe. Such shaped charges would have to be fitted around the pipe. Unbolting the blowout protector and installing a cap is easier and more predictable. The reason this hasn't been done seems to be that those in charge believe that the well casing is damaged, and pressure will further damage it.

I am getting really tired of the dumb stuff that the MSM is willing to print.

Bits and Pieces - June 22, 2010

The Gulf oil slick from space. Via.



Life below the slick.

By demanding that Obama show his emotions in public, the critics reinforce the very worst parts of our political culture.

Another view of President Obama's temperament.

Eugene Robinson points out that Joe Barton's apology to BP was part of his prepared remarks. Not a gaffe. Can't repeat this enough.

Joshua Pollock speculates on the source of that xenon from North Korea.


I've always admired Edward Brooke, and he comes through again.

We've still got some good teachers around.

Does the news media spend too much time on news?

Added later: BP is the main developer of oil wells in the Caspian Sea. Russia is worried.

McChrystal's media advisors.