Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Bits and Pieces - April 5, 2011

Helmut and I were talking about how badly research funds are needed to develop better energy technologies and to evaluate possible mitigation schemes for global warming. I mentioned the great research boom of the 1960s, in which government led the way. During the 1980s, that approach was destroyed by greedy corporations who said they could do all that, much better than the government. And now we see the results. Ezra Klein has a nice graph illustrating the collapse of research funding. He uses it to make a different point, which I'll address later in this post. I'm wondering if that research boom is tied to the good economics of those times. Any economists who want to tackle this with me, leave a comment or e-mail me.

Ezra is bitching about how President Obama never does what Ezra and many other pundits, bloggers, and just plain gripers want him to do: get in the middle of the fight. Or maybe duck into a phone booth and emerge as Super-Prez! Sorry guys, cellphones have eliminated phone booths. I've maintained that 1) the Prez is leaving the work of citizens up to us and 2) he doesn't want to make every issue about him, which would happen if he intervened as much as the gripers want. It seems to me that I've seen more articles lately suggesting that we citizens need to be making our support (or not) clear to our elected representatives as they make fools of themselves and us, but I've been distracted and haven't collected those links.

Part of this gripe is that Obama isn't getting stuff done. At the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference last week, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon listed all the things relating to Obama's Prague speech on eliminating nuclear weapons that have been done in the two years since then. Today is the anniversary of that speech. Scott Sagan gives an accounting here. And the dumbest idea in missile technology has been left behind: loading ICBMs with conventional explosives, so that a recipient country wouldn't know if it was being nuked.

Back at Fukushima, it appears that the report of an isotope beloved of those pushing the "re-criticality" meme was mistaken. As I've pointed out, basing a theory on one measurement is pretty silly in a chaotic situation like this.

I would also take this with a grain of salt. There are a couple of vu-graf sets out there of what some people think, with a bit of modeling, may have been the sequence of events at Fukushima. Like the "re-criticality," this is largely speculation based on far too few data points. "Nuclear forensics" sounds very CSI, cool and accurate, but a friend who has been looking at the iodine isotope data much more closely than I have says that it just doesn't make sense. That could be because the data are bad, or because things we don't understand are happening.

Don't get on George Monbiot's bad side. He's looked at Fukushima and decided that the evidence is that nuclear energy is safe. He's posted two op-eds on that subject in the Guardian and now is taking on Helen Caldicott. I heard her speak a few weeks back and managed to identify some of the problems that Monbiot documents exhaustively. There's more I'd like to write on this subject, too, but I have to get back to BEIR VII.

7 comments:

nader paul kucinich gravel mckinney said...

Fukushima Internal Emitters

An ill wind comes arising
Across the cities of the plain
There's no swimming in the heavy water
No singing in the acid rain

Absalom Absalom Absalom

Phila said...

I've maintained that 1) the Prez is leaving the work of citizens up to us and 2) he doesn't want to make every issue about him, which would happen if he intervened as much as the gripers want.

I could live with this, if it were simply a matter of being above the fray and letting surrogates fight certain battles. But some of his actions (and refusals to act) and his rhetoric (and refusals to speak) have actively demoralized the citizens in question. These tactics may have political benefits, but they also carry some pretty huge risks.

Maybe they shouldn't. Maybe people on the left shouldn't have unreasonable expectations, or get impatient, or sit out elections when things don't go their way, or tie themselves to the mast of a single issue. But they do, inevitably. In some cases, I may see it as posturing, or an alibi for inaction, or a projection of their own lack of commitment and courage onto him, or the worst sort of glibertarian "individualism." But the fact remains that people get angry and disappointed when they feel like they've been let down. Expecting them not to feel that way is no more politically realistic, IMO, than expecting Obama to smash capitalism and beat swords into plowshares.

Also, if we're expecting people to do "the work of citizens" in any sort of progressive sense, I don't think we can fault them for being idealistic.

Phila said...

...adding, that some of my frustration is not about what the Administration hasn't accomplished, but how poorly it communicates what it has accomplished, especially given the unprecedented number of tools available for doing so.

I like to think it'd make a difference, but I could be kidding myself.

Cheryl Rofer said...

I'll agree that the administration could do a much better job of communicating what it has accomplished. Seems to me that that would help to undermine the Republican nonsense and encourage the troops. I was really impressed to hear Tom Donilon enumerate all the accomplishments toward decreasing the emphasis on nuclear weapons, and I've been following that subject.

And, speaking of Republican nonsense, I'm rethinking yesterday's other post. Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter is much more good-natured, and Alice is much more sensible than pretty much anyone in today's Republican Tea Party.

Phila said...

I'll agree that the administration could do a much better job of communicating what it has accomplished. Seems to me that that would help to undermine the Republican nonsense and encourage the troops.

One would think. I mean, I actually know people who are only aware of certain Administration policies or decisions because I mentioned them on my barely functioning blog. That's completely insane, IMO.

Thirty years ago, the nuclear stuff would have been a pretty huge deal on the left. Now? Crickets, by and large. I don't get it. In some ways, the filtering of information is almost as bad as it is on the right.

Cheryl Rofer said...

I'm not sure it's filtering, but rather just not saying much except in obviously sympathetic and somewhat obscure venues, like Carnegie. Interestingly, there weren't as many reporters at this conference as there were at previous conferences.

Just think if Obama gave something like Donilon's speech, or if it were in a more "newsworthy" venue. The Republican noise machine would be all over him for unilateral disarmament and selling out the country. Jon Kyl spoke at the conference, and that's pretty much how he sees it, even if what is being done is far from unilateral disarmament.

That would make it all about our untrustworthy president at a much higher, and possibly more credible, level than the current birther nonsense.

So it's up to us to get the word out, Phila. It's too bad that so many of the more trafficked blogs are so busy whining about not getting everything they may have wished and wanted. We're the ones who have to make it huge.

Phila said...

I'm not sure it's filtering, but rather just not saying much except in obviously sympathetic and somewhat obscure venues, like Carnegie.

I meant filtering among ordinary people, as in "I won't listen to anything positive 'cause I'm angry at Obama" and "I won't listen to anything negative 'cause I like Obama." In other words, that whole tendency to use opinions to assess facts, instead of vice versa.

That would make it all about our untrustworthy president at a much higher, and possibly more credible, level than the current birther nonsense.

Maybe. On the other hand, anything Obama and the Democrats do, or don't do, or might arguably consider doing or not doing in any conceivable universe, is going to crank up the noise machine. And I think the last few years have shown that most of this stuff really only resonates with the same crowd of lunatics (who would be portrayed by the media as a potent force even if there were only 12 of them left in some Deep South nursing home).

The last presidential election was remarkable for the amount and type of slander coming from the right, but Obama won anyway because he seemed reasonable, and McCain and Palin seemed out of touch and stupid and crazy and horrible.

If anything, that basic distinction is clearer now than it was then. I think good decisions, and a stronger defense of good decisions, would go over well regardless of what the right says about them. Before the election, the right scraped the bottom of the barrel so avidly that they reached the earth's core. What more can they say, really? And what good did pussyfooting around do in 2010?

I know there's a lot of truth to what you say, but I also know that there's a fine line between staying out of the mud, and letting the right define the narrative virtually unopposed. And the WH hasn't always been on the correct side of that divide, IMO, in terms of its communications and (sad to say) its policies.

Some of the calculations I can understand, regardless of whether they please me. Some of 'em, I just don't get at all.

None of which should be taken to imply that I regret voting for Obama. In fact, the reasons I voted for him and the reasons I'm irked with him both come down to my assessment of the danger the right poses to...well, pretty much everything.