On Consensus

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Andrew Dessler has a great post today on the implications of the recent ozone chemistry discovery for the standard argument that science as an institution is uncomfortable with those who attack consensus:

Overall, the idea that any scientific community is not interested in new ideas is ridiculous. Good new ideas are the fuel that science runs on, and when new ones come out, they are thoroughly investigated by the scientific community. This new result about the ozone hole is a good example.

Daybook

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  • water politics: Looks like Sophie and the guy with the steely set in his jaw are going to stop Caesar’s evil plot to steal groundwater to build subdivisions.
  • water politics II: Looks like Sophie and the guy with the steely set in his jaw may need to head over to Arizona next.
  • water politics III: Drought plus fire seems to have focused Australians’ minds on the question of climate change: “Extreme weather, including a drought that has persisted in some places for six years, has focused the Australian public on climate change, and it is shaping up as a major issue in the general elections that are expected to be called in the next few weeks.”
  • paper of the day: OK, so we’ll grant, for purpose of discussion, that global climate changing is a problem. How much greenhouse reductions do we need to make in response to achieve what sort of result? Weaver et al. tackle the question. Their answer? Lots: “Our results suggest that if a 2.0°C warming is to be avoided, direct CO2 capture from the air, together with subsequent sequestration, would eventually have to be introduced in addition to sustained 90% global carbon emissions reductions by 2050.”
  • music:I’ve always enjoyed Performance Today. Good music, along with great storytelling. But I usually only get 15 minutes of it during my morning drive to work. Turns out there’s this newfangled Internet thingie that allows me to listen any time I want!

I Guess This is One Way to Respond to Drought

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From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

As northern Georgia suffers through a monumental drought and the toughest water restrictions ever imposed, Stone Mountain is using up to 38 gallons of water a minute — for 12 to 18 hours a day for the next month — to make snow.

On the day Gov. Sonny Perdue took the state’s water conservation efforts indoors and declared October “Take A Shorter Shower” month, the park was embarking on a whole new way to burn through the state’s shrinking supply of H2O.

Daybook

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  • reading: Tired of printing out PDF’s, I’m placing my order today for the IPCC Working Group I report
  • paper of the day: “A Method of Approximating Rainfall over Long Periods and Some Results of its Application,” A.E. Douglass, Science, Jan. 3, 1913. Sorry, nothing to link here, you’ll just have to take my word for how cool it is. As near as I’ve been able to determine, it’s the first use of tree rings to do a rainfall reconstruction.
  • music: Milestones The guy’s such an amazingly arrogant asshole, you want to just be done with him, but then he slides in that mute and begins filling in around those moments of quiet and … what can I say. I forgive him. Always have, always will.
  • word of the day: drupe – a fleshy fruit with a pit, like an olive

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Framing Edition

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There’s an interesting framing thing going on here in New Mexico around the Fiscal Year 2008 budget. The House of Representatives is pushing some relatively deep cuts in the nuclear weapons research, development, manufacturing etc. budget. For those not familiar with New Mexico, we’re home to two large nuclear weapons labs. Those cuts would effect a significant number of jobs. That’s been the main frame around this issue, and it is a legitimate frame. But there are also substantive policy questions at stake. One is the question of where and how to manufacture new nukes. In Saturday’s story, I wrote a story that featured that frame:

Should Los Alamos National Laboratory someday become the nation’s “permanent” plutonium bomb manufacturing center?
That is one of the major policy questions behind the fight currently under way in Congress over the lab’s budget.

This is a great practical example, I think, of framing. Both frames are accurate. Both raise legitimate issues. One’s been getting all the attention, and I just felt as though it was important to offer up the other.

Further reading:

  • Weapons Behind LANL Fight, Albuquerque Journal, Sept. 29 2007
  • Discussion of the story, LANL blog (you’ll also find a lot of other discussion there, some thoughtful, some not so much, about these two frames – jobs and nuke manufacturing)
  • Framing science, Matthew Nisbet’s blog about the framing issue and other interesting poli-sci sorts of things

Inland Desalination: The Regulatory Side

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Staci Matlock has a good story in this morning’s Santa Fe New Mexican outlining the regulatory dilemma facing New Mexico related to Sandoval County’s hunt for brackish water for desalination:

This new, deep source of water poses a regulatory challenge to the state engineer, who is charged with overseeing New Mexico’s increasingly precious water resources. Under current law, brackish water found at least 2,500 feet below the ground — and proven unconnected to upper aquifers bearing potable water — can be pumped without a permit from the state engineer.

The kicker at the end of Staci’s story nails down the fundamental problem – if the water is truly disconnected from surface water, that means that, by definition, it’s going to run out:

To avoid having to apply for a state permit, Sandoval County and Rio West must prove that the deep aquifers they tap into won’t impact any of the potable aquifers closer to the surface.

Just in case, though, the county agreed with Rio West that after 20 years of pumping, Sandoval County would be responsible for finding a renewable water source for the Rio Puerco, Springfield said.

The agreement points to a long-term dilemma for anyone looking to deep aquifers as a new source of water: If the deep aquifer is disconnected from any renewable supply, eventually the water will run out. Then the water for developments like Rio West will have to come from somewhere else.

If drawing water from the deep aquifer does impact upper aquifers, developers of big projects like Rio West face the same prospect as other developers: Fighting farmers, environmentalists and other communities for the right to pump.

Further Reading: