John McCain's attempt to nail Senator Obama on the Adler Planetarium's Projector is a clear example of the fact that McCain has no idea on how education is an important integral aspect of growing a strong nation. He asserts that the projector's $3,000.000.00 dollars that was asked for in a bipartisan bill is "Pork Barrel Spending" when the bill was out front and in the open.
In comparing this learning tool for children and adults alike to the cost of the war in Iraq, I found that in the time it took me to research, compose & post this I had already surpassed the cost of $3,000,000.00.
The cost of the war in Iraq is at 10 billion a month (31 days.) That in comparison to the cost of the Planetariums complex projection system is $3 million dollars for 13.392 minutes.
Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals. After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,164859,00.html
visiting www.homedepot.com and clicking on the Olympic rings/ "It's time to turn clicks into gold" banner near the bottom of the page. For every click, Home Depot will donate $1 to Team USA on your behalf. The ticker shows that over $670,000 has been raised so far.
And now that HD has given Team USA a dollar for you, I challenge you to donate a matching dollar to the campaign!
Space policy made a pretty decent splash at Netroots Nation. We had an excellent panel on space policy, and an excellent platform meeting. For those of you who don't remember, we had Andrew Hoppin moderating, and Chris Bowers, Lori Garver, Patricia Grace Smith, and George Whitesides all speaking. You can about the panelists here.
Join me over the fold to read, and see it
Hey Everyone,
I figured now would be a good time to remind everyone (again) about some upcoming space events, that would be worth going to. We have a couple of major events this week, as well as future events upcoming. I promise reports to any and all I attend, and I suggest that you attend as well
This is being re-posted from my diaries over at dailykos
In many of my past diaries, I commented on Senator Obama, and his lack of a space policy, and the concern that he is anti human spaceflight. These diaries have ranged from long explanations, to something that was probably close to a rant.
Senator Obama, there should be no question as to wether the US should continue and bolster a vigorous manned space program without pause. This coupled with unmanned missions and the pursuit of fusion energy for space travel can be the winning combination that gets us where we want to be in space travel and value for what we hope to accomplish.
The Constellation mission will be a very important stepping stone to the giant leaps to come. We cannot afford to cut this funding and stall the program, only to pay more later to start back up and be way behind the potential. There is no good trade off of a vigorous manned space program for funding of education.
I say to you Senator Obama that we must do both, and they must be intertwined, and in the words of President Kennedy we must do it, not because it is easy but because it is hard, but we must do them together.
It is in the DNA of mankind to push the limits, it is what kills us and what keeps us alive!
To: Steve Robinson, space policy spokesperson for the Obama campaign.
Dear Steve,
Thank you for your long time support of Barack and your service in advising him on science policy. I am primarily interested in energy independence issues, but as a close follower of Space Policy (I admin the Space and Aeronautics Policy blog on democrats.org), I would like the opportunity to offer some observations about the recent debate you participated in at the International Space Development Conference.
Thanks for your time in considering these options for future confrontations with space spokespersons representing the Bush-McCain " Vision for Space Exploration" that will doom us to a 30 year delay in space exploration. An example of how I employ these themes and rhetoric may be found on the democrats.org space and aeronautics policy blog. Link to a recent post here. Although I am for reconsideration of Constellation/Ares in favor of heavier investment in climate change monitoring and remote exploration of space, contrary to the appearance given in this post, I am not an opponent of manned missions. In fact I fiercely believe this gets us a significantly more aggressive space policy using the same resources budgeted by the Republicans. I foresee manned bases on the moon and mars, but see the base construction and extraction of local resources largely conducted by vehicles operated remotely by humans on earth. I personally believe it is the fastest and smartest way to extend humanity's dominion to the inner and outer planets.
Warm regards,
John
The night felt like magic. YES WE ChAmpagNeEvery minute or two, another superdelegate endorsement was announced for Barack Obama. They kept coming faster and faster; it really did feel like an avalanche of superdelegates were announcing support for Obama. On the Obama website, supporters wrote messages about how happy they were, and how much joy they were feeling. Some said they had red, white, and blue balloons waiting to hang outside their doors the moment Obama won the nomination; some said they'd break out special bottles of (beer) (champagne) they saved for this night. On Democrats_Worldwide, the international discussion group for Democrats, the mood was euphoria as people toasted to Obama in messages from Cape Cod to Australia to Afghanistan to Paris.
Read more.
Carole
Current research indicates that the anticipated changes that might result from an increase in atmospheric CO2 are not so simple. Computer models are being used to project climate change, but because the actual mechanism of climate change is not well understood, doubts have been raised in the science community about their accuracy. Recent papers suggest that previous studies have significantly underestimated the phenomenon, and that the "fierce urgency of now" actually happenned 8 years ago.
Even with extensive measures of CO2 emissions, scientists agree that the processes that govern the carbon cycle are not very well understood. This fact is siezed on by extremists who would deny climate change due to human activity exists.
There are two responses to this. The first is political. Many of those swayed by such rhetoric are actually reflexively responding to the notion that this is some sort of hippie environmentalist fad hoax. This can be disarmed by reloading the problem as an energy independence issue and that we must get off oil because it sends money to the terrorists. This appeals to their sense of patriotism, mom, and apple pie. I don't think this is a dishonest tack to take. The point is accurate, and while the consequences of global warming are far more crushing than those of dependence on foreign supplies of energy, energy independence is a vital national security issue, and rallies us to the defence of our nation even if global warming were a fantasy.
The second response is that it is just as true that we could be underestimating the threat as overestimating it. When threat assessment is weak due to poor understanding of fundamentals, both consequences are equally dangerous A juried paper published two weeks ago in Geophysical Research Letters shows that if stabilization targets are to be reached, CO2 emissions must go to zero. Simple reduction to 20% of 1990 levels (Barack's plan for the US), even if achieved on a global scale would be insufficient. Further, the study shows that the climate changes are likely to be virtually permanent. [WaPost article] [Research paper]
If true, that's bad for the "wait and see" approach. Maybe these early reports are alarmist, but maybe they are like Billy Mitchell's demonstration in 1925 that the age of battleships was over. "Wait and see" was costly but not crippling at Pearl Harbor, because we had time and resources to bounce back and build carriers. But if this latest study is correct, "Wait and see" won't work. Farmlands lost due to warming won't return to production for centuries. Extreme storm conditions that emerge will become the norm for the forseeable future.
Bush's war on science has not missed opportunities to reduce knowledge of climate change. Built at a cost of 100 million dollars, since 2001, the Deep Space Climate Observatory has been sitting in a closet. That's 7 years of information not collected on climate change. The reason? Republicans politicized the project- referring to it as "GoreSat", and although the NAS reported that the science it would return was "vital", the Bush White House had NASA quietly kill the project.(NYTimes opinion: Scorched Earth)
It's nuts. Whether you are someone that thinks climate change is a hoax, or someone who thinks the threat has been seriously underestimated, given the stakes, it is important to know for sure one way or the other.
What we are stuck with are ground based observations, but measurements of atmospheric CO2 vary drastically from year to year, and the datasets are sparse. Without a better understanding of these variations, scientists will have difficulty predicting how the atmosphere will respond in the future. Although NASA has defunded study of climate in order to pay for Bush's idiotically expensive scheme for Mars exploration, JPL's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) will be launched next year and will provide scientists with some of the information that they will need to better understand the carbon cycle. It was scheduled for launch in 2007, but the Bush administration's cuts forced this out to the current December 2008 launch date.
It's pretty cool, because it's spectrometer produces a 3 dimensional model of CO2, and it leads in a formation of US and French climate satellites known as the "A-train", so that data samples can be correlated. The OCO data will revolutionize our understanding of the carbon cycle, obtaining data on CO2 sources and sinks using reflected sunlight to measure carbon dioxide concentrations down to a 1% accuracy – around four parts per million molecules of air. The entire earth will be coverred every 16 days for a period of 2 years. Each column sample of CO2 will be less than 3 cubic KM, and a remote sensing algorithm will produce CO2 concentrations at various altitudes. That's a hefty dataset. (source)
It is crucial this data be acquired as soon as possible. The increases in CO2 were 1.1 percent in the 1990s. Since 2000, the increases have been 3 percent. In 2004, the increase was 5.41%. (source)
Could be a fluctuation, or things may get real nasty real fast. -Especially if the CO2 sinks are getting saturated. (study) Given the rate of Coal plant construction in China, my guess is that ahead of us is a challenge much greater than Iraq, the economy, or health care.
Meanwhile, the media is talking about red phones, plagiarism, vp offers, and monsters. Yep, it's silly season.
Dear Senator Obama,
It is clear, through your statements, that you have questions about what role human spaceflight can and does play on our society. You have said that you want to have a full evaluation, and have a clear understanding about how and where we can have the most impact in our spending on space.
Part of the problem is how we've interacted with space, and how we view it. For a long time, space has been viewed as being beyond the reach of the average person, and that it can only provide us more scientific knowledge.
However, there is growing evidence that this is about to change, and that properly harnessed, space can have an incredibly positive effect on society - it can help with our economy, and it can help provide us with clean, cheap energy.
It is for this reason I have written these essays - so you can understand how human spaceflight can have a beneficial impact on society, why the time is now that it can have such a beneficial impact, and how best to capitalize on this.
In this second essay, I talk about the economy, and suborbital space businesses.
