Planning for the Future

President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice President-Elect Joe Biden met with Al Gore in Chicago earlier today to talk about energy and climate change plans and policies. Pictures from the meeting can be found on the Obama/Biden website, and information on the political manuvering that is being speculated about is presented in this CNN article.

Obama’s website also has information about the President-Elect’s proposed agenda of topics to tackle upon entering the presidency. Among them, Technology, Education and Energy & Environment, all areas that concern the science community. The entire list of agenda topics can be found at the bottom of each page of the website.

Should We Worry?

While the president-elect is pulling together a list of candidates for cabinet members faster than most past presidents, so far only one position concerning science (and then only indirectly) has been decided on – the nomination of Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary.

Still, this is likely to change in the coming weeks, as more nominations may come out as the holidays approach. And as the U.N. Conference on Climate Change comes to a close at the end of this week, the roles of science advisors in the U.S. become even more important. With the expiration of the Kyoto Protocols, the U.S. government will want a strong infrastructure of scientific experience to rely on, one that will cooperate well with their international counterparts to improve upon and develop new climate and environmental protocols.

Physics Today’s Campaign Blog has more information on current developments with science and politics, and more information on Obama’s Cabinet nominations can be found on NPR’s website.

Opening Doors on Capitol Hill

For the last 20 years, the American Institute of Physics has co-sponsored several congressional science fellowships in Washington. This year, the AIP has added another position – a second opening for the AIP Congressional Fellowship. Each of the positions is co-sponsored by another group – the AVS: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces and Processing, and the Acoustical Society of America.

The Congressional Fellows spend a year working as scientific experts on Capitol Hill, and are given a unique chance to influence federal policy making. It is, however, only for scientists with a Ph.D. in a technical field (so no aspiring science writers, unfortunately), or with equivalent research experience.

The expansion of the Congressional Fellowship comes at a fascinating time. With the new president waiting to be sworn in next month, and the scientific community more involved and interested in the nation’s politics than they have been in years, the more awareness about scientific policy making that can be raised, the better.

For information on the AIP Congressional Fellowship, along with information about other science and politics Fellowships, please visit AIP’s Government Science FellowshipsWebpage. Links to other Fellowship sponsors can be found there as well.

Energy Infrastructure

The federal government is taking steps to allow easier transportation of fuels from domestic energy sources in the future. Several government agencies are working together to designate transport corridors for the creation of gas and oil pipelines. Recently, they released their final environmental impact report on the corridors they have selected.

The designated areas will not only be used to build pipelines for transportation, but will also become corridors to transmit electricity and create space for distribution facilities in the future. More information on the energy transportation corridors and on the impact report, please visit the Department of Energy website.

Subtle (Read “Sneaky”) Politics

As President Bush makes a few last minute changes in order to leave his mark on the country without having to worry about the popularity of his decisions, President-Elect Obama is filling in the final positions on his transition team and ironing out his list of priorities for 2009. And despite the fact that his presidency does not begin until he is sworn in this coming January, Obama is still making sure that his presence is felt in national and international politics.

In a message for the global warming summit in California, Obama killed two birds with one stone by addressing the members of the U.N. who will convene in Poznan, Poland for a meeting on climate change from December first through the twelfth.

More information can be found on Physics Today’s Campaign Blog.

Harnessing Star Power

As the holidays approach, media focus is shifting from politics to the hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping and Thanksgiving dinners. But the scientific community isn’t taking a break. As Barack Obama begins putting together transition staff and planning out his first moves for his coming presidency, advocates for strong science policies are already planning for the next congressional session.

Suggestions (subtle hints, really) are being sent to the President-Elect, advising him to think carefully – but quickly – about who he wants to retain as a science advisor. At the same time, the Department of Energy is trying to find ways to fund its nuclear fusion energy program, part of which is ITER, and international cooperative working to develop safe, efficient fusion reactors, using the same kind of energy process that powers our sun and other stars.

Visit their website for more information on ITER, and to keep up with any science policy news, check with Physics Today’s Politics and Policy blog and FYI, AIP’s Science Policy Bulletin.

Budget Cuts and Volcano Watching

With a new president-elect waiting to be sworn in this coming January, members of the science community are wondering whether funding for scientific research, laboratories and organizations is going to be high or low on the list of priorities. 

Many of our national laboratories have suffered during the past few years because of budget cuts. Some have even had to cancel less vital programs, like internships for undergraduate students. 

One of these federally funded organizations is the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO). In the audio recording below, I spoke with some of the staff from the observatory to find out just what it is that they do, and whether or not they have felt the affect of these federal budget cuts as well.

For more information, visit the Alaska Volcano Observatory website. To learn more about the Boeing 747 flight malfunction from December 1989, visit the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center’s Webpage for the Redoubt Aircraft Ash encounter, or visit AVO’s Redoubt Activity page for information on the 1989-90 eruptions.

 

Many thanks to Jessica Larsen, Rick Wessels and Tom Murray for their cooperation and assistance in the making of this podcast.

Songs in order of appearance:

A Witch and a Whip – Yuki Kajiura

The Dreamers – Yuki Kajiura

Vesuvius – Josh Woodward

Key Word: Energy

Energy was one of the hot topics during the election, and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is gearing up for the changes promised so often throughout the different campaigns.

Chairman Jeff Bingaman outlined the committee’s “to-do list” for the coming year in a speech before the elections began. He stressed the need for bipartisan cooperation, with focuses on dramatic changes in the transportation industry, the establishment of an energy infrastructure, and increased energy efficiency in industry and residential areas.

For excerpts of his speech, visit FYI: The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy. And for more information on Bingaman and his view on energy policies, visit his website’s Focus on Energy page to view some of his previous actions regarding energy policy in the U.S. and specifically in his home state of New Mexico.

Don’t Forget About…

As the hype surrounding the presidential election dies down, members of the scientific community are once again beginning their campaign to make sure that this administration pays more attention to science policy in the U.S.

In a recent letter to President-Elect Barack Obama, headed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Association of American Universities, numerous scientific groups stressed the need for the new administration to act quickly to appoint a science and technology advisor before Obama becomes president in January. The full text of the letter can be found here, along with the link to the list of groups and scientists that signed the letter.

 

Keep our soldiers in your thoughts, for these last few hours of Veteran’s Day.

And The Winner Is…

While Science Policy is the name of the game in this particular blog, tonight the only news is that Barack Obama is the new president elect. With a current count of 338 electoral votes (as of 9:24 p.m. Alaska Time), worries about elections decided in court rooms are things of the past.

While the big election is over with, many of the smaller state election votes are still being counted. For information on federal House and Senate elections, Yahoo!’s Political Dashboard is a valuable resource. And while local and state elections aren’t being followed from one central point, entering “(name of state) state elections” should bring you to local coverage of any election you wish to check on.

Happy Election Day! Kudos to everyone who came out to vote!