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Category Archives: Politics

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Articles Archive Added

Mike Specian April 10, 2013 Leave a Comment 2089 Views

I recognize that my website is sorta oddball. “Serious” articles on topics like green development in Africa, sustainability and climate are interspersed with professional wrestling results, games and personal photography. This motley assortment of content precludes this site from being a pure issues blog. While I have considered going in that direction, I built mikespecian.com to be a reflection of me along multiple dimensions. So for now I intend to keep it as is.

With one exception. I have added a link entitled Articles to my main menu. This is will be the one-stop-shop for everything I have written and will continue to write on topics such as climate, energy, politics and science in general. Thank you all for reading!

EnergyPolitics

The Government’s Silence of Science

Mike Specian March 25, 2013 1 Comment 6906 Views

To understand the nature of the problem discussed in my last post, it is instructive to examine the story of coal ash in greater detail.  Scientists have known for many years that in sufficient doses, coal ash is toxic to human health.  The EPA first tried to regulate it in 1978, but a Congressional amendment two years later exempted it from oversight.1This condition would persist until December of 2014 when new rules would require coal ash impoundments to be lined and located away from sensitive areas.  Impoundment and landfuls prone to leaking would have to be phased out.  However, the EPA did not go so far as to classify coal ash as “hazardous waste”, a designation that would have required far stricter regulation.  In 2000 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed stricter federal standards to classify it as hazardous.  Their recommendations were met by fierce opposition from the coal industry, electric utilities and members of the Clinton administration.  The Edison Electric Institute, an association of electric companies, argued that a “hazardous” designation would force the industry to spend up to an additional $5 billion in cleanup costs.  The EPA was compelled to reverse course and issue a notice that coal ash need not be regulated.

In 2002, EPA scientists produced a study on coal ash dumps which revealed that they pose significant risks to human health and the environment.  Rather than publicize the results, agency officials decided to redact or simply not release significant portions of their data.

It wasn’t until May 2009 that the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and Earthjustice uncovered the EPA’s original findings.  They learned not only that those in proximity to coal ash ponds were at a highly elevated risk of developing cancer but also that the Bush administration had been aware of those risks and actively chose to withhold them from the public.

Six months prior to this disclosure, the Kingston spill brought the problem into the national spotlight.  109 environmental organizations quickly pressured EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to respond to the coal fly ash problem.  The EPA soon revealed that the United States contained about 300 dry landfills and wet ponds used to store coal ash.  Many were unlined, increasing the risk of seepage into groundwater, rivers and ponds.  The agency concluded that of the 300, 44 posed a clear and present danger to local communities in the form of severe property damage or loss of life.

But the EPA was stymied again.  They were prohibited from releasing the locations of the 44 sites by the Department of Homeland Security who cited unspecified national security concerns.  A letter sent from the Army Corps of Engineers to the EPA and FEMA also demanded secrecy.  Steven L. Stocken, Army Corps’ director of civil works wrote, “Uncontrolled or unrestricted release (of the information) may pose a security risk to projects or communities by increasing its attractiveness as a potential target.”

“The industry has told us for decades that coal ash is perfectly safe,” said Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project.  “Now we’re told that some of their ash dumps are so dangerous, the federal government is afraid to tell us where they are. We need to move beyond this ‘see no evil’ approach, and regulate these unsafe practices.”

It required the continued efforts of environmentalists and the power of the US Senate to finally compel the EPA to reveal the locations of the 44 sites.  Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,argued strongly for the disclosure “so that people have the information they need to quickly press for action to make these sites safer.”

Since the locations of the 44 hazardous sites have become public, the magnitude of the coal ash problem has become harder to ignore.  There have been cases ofradioactive leakage into an underground aquifer in Florida, drinking water contamination in Maryland and a massive 300+ million gallon coal-mining sludge spill in Martin County, KY.

Another EPA study in 2009 concluded that chromium in coal ash is “nearly 100 percent Cr(VI),” a well-established highly toxic carcinogen.  A report by Earthjustice and Appalachian Mountain Advocates in 2011 claimed that contrary to prior estimates, there are actually over 700 coal ash dams, many of which are unlined and unmonitored.  A November 2010 Duke University study found that river sediment downstream of the Kingston spill contained 2000 parts per billion of arsenic, 200 times the EPA threshold for safe drinking water.  The authors concluded that coal ash waste ought to be classified as a hazardous substance.

Despite ample scientific evidence to the contrary, the coal industry continued to argue vociferously that coal ash was nothing to worry about.  The Nebraska Power Association wrote that federal “non-hazardous waste regulation” was sufficient and the alternative would limit its ability to usefully recycle coal ash.  The Competitive Enterprise Institute claimed that proposed regulations were just part of Obama’s “war on coal.”  The American Coal Council put out a factsheet that describes coal ash as “safe,” “valuable” and “not a hazardous waste,” though it should be noted most of the citations supporting the final claim are from the late 1990’s.

It was with these competing forces at play that the EPA proposed another set of coal fly ash regulations to the White House.  But the response of the Obama administration was the same as Bush’s.  Lobbyists met with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and neutered their proposal.  According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the resulting bills’ weakness were “unprecedented” in environmental law.

And so today, after the largest environmental disaster of its kind in American history and despite numerous reports detailing its potentially lethal impacts, coal fly ash remains unregulated in the United States.2While this was true at the original writing of this article, new regulations were enacted in December 2014.

Government deregulation and secrecy are not limited to the energy sector.  In October 2012 Nicholas Kristof, an Op-Ed columnist at the NY Times, brought the hazardous nature of formaldehyde to light.  Formaldehyde is a chemical found in everything from furniture to fabric softeners to nail polish and, according to scientists at the publicly funded National Institutes of Health (NIH),”formaldehyde is known to be a human carcinogen.”  Despite this critical warning, the American Chemistry Council, on the behalf of the chemical industry, is furiously lobbying Congress to suppress the full 500 page consensus Report on Carcinogens because it would cause “public confusion.”

Startling though it may be, the lack of government intervention is understandable.  Politicians have an incentive to kill regulations perceived as being against the business interests of their campaign contributors.  The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) says that the mining industry which includes Murray Energy, theNational Mining Association, Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources poured more than $2.8 million to federal candidates during the 2012 elections.  Rep. David McKinley (R-WV), who sponsored a bill that would have prevented the EPA as designating coal ash as “hazardous,” received $230,000 in mining industry contributions, more than any other federal candidate.

Even when regulations are in place, federal agencies cannot always be trusted to enforce them.  In the 1960’s the Atomic Energy Commission, which had been charged with both promoting and regulating the atomic energy industry, became riddled with internal conflicts of interest.  Business considerations came to trump regulatory requirements to such an extraordinary extent that Congress decided to abolish the agency.

More recently the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the agency responsible for monitoring and regulating offshore oil drilling, became so cozy with the industry it was supposed to regulate that it literally let the American Petroleum Institute write its own regulatory rules.  Instead of acting as a watchdog of the public interest, the MMS referred to members of the oil industry as their “clients” and “partners.”  Environmental reviews were often waived altogether.  In the end, the lack of adequate safety standards contributed to the explosion of Deepwater Horizon, a catastrophe that killed 11 workers and polluted the Gulf of Mexico for three months.

The United States has a supposed remedy to this problem – a piece of legislation that grants the public the right to access federal agency records.  In the next article, I will demonstrate how the promise of this right often goes unmet.

Notes   [ + ]

1. ↑ This condition would persist until December of 2014 when new rules would require coal ash impoundments to be lined and located away from sensitive areas.  Impoundment and landfuls prone to leaking would have to be phased out.  However, the EPA did not go so far as to classify coal ash as “hazardous waste”, a designation that would have required far stricter regulation.
2. ↑ While this was true at the original writing of this article, new regulations were enacted in December 2014.
EnergyPolitics

The Kingston Disaster

Mike Specian March 18, 2013 3 Comments 6684 Views

In the early morning hours of December 22, 2008, a dike separating 5.4 million cubic yards of coal combustion waste product from the outside world breached.  The toxic sludge flowed out like a river, moving its way through a local Tennessee community and into a nearby waterway.  The magnitude of the spill was unprecedented.  It could have filled a container with a base the size of a football field to a height of 370 stories, or an amount 101 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.  The slurry pushed with enough strength to sweep one resident’s home entirely off its foundation.

Yet in many ways the Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, was typical.  As with most coal burning plants, its combustion process releases a gas of fine particles known as fly ash.  In large enough quantities fly ash, which contains a blend of metals including arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and thallium among others, is toxic.  It can cause cancer, kidney problems, and nervous-system diseases among other ailments.

Some coal ash is recycled for other uses.  The rest is mixed with a fluid transforming it into a metallic gray coal fly ash slurry.  With nowhere else to put it, the Kingston plant dug gigantic holes into the earth and deposited the sludge there.  The only thing separating the solid waste containment pond from the outside world was an earthen wall, that is, until the wall ruptured.

While the spill itself was devastating (and preventable), one resident, Deanna Copeland expressed an even greater worry.  “Our concern is, what happens if this liquid dries out?” Ms. Copeland said. “There are huge health concerns. It’s going to get in our house. We’re going to breathe it in. It would be like walking through a dust bowl, and we don’t know what’s in the dust.”

While residents and many emergency officials were ignorant of the dust’s effects, government scientists were not.  They had previously conducted research on coal fly ash and were well aware of its effects on human health.  And yet on this December day, just hours before Christmas, the victims of this tragedy were kept completely in the dark, denied access to the government studies that could have potentially saved their lives.

The Kingston calamity raises two important questions.  First, given a long history of leaks at the plant, why weren’t sufficient regulations in place to prevent the accident?  Second, under what possible justification were victims denied basic information about their exposure risk?

The answers to those questions expose a disconnect between government scientists and a public that requires access to their conclusions.  The culture of deregulation and secrecy is not unique to the Kingston plant, or even to the energy industry in general.  Instead, we find in America an epidemic of ignorance and denial that spans across sectors, affecting each and every one of us.

In the forthcoming series of articles, I expose the circumstances that led to the Kingston calamity and provide numerous examples of how similar practices in other industries continue to endanger human health.  Despite the Freedom of Information Act, which grants Americans access to government memos and reports, I will show how scientists are still routinely silenced and their studies are often redacted.  Numerous examples of industry being favored over public safety will be provided.  Finally, I will present evidence that suggests this problem has only worsened during the Obama administration before offering potential solutions.

PoliticsTravel

The Health Care Rally – A Rudimentary Documentary

Mike Specian August 22, 2012 Leave a Comment 5033 Views

On August 15, 2009 we took a detour into Grand Junction, CO to drop a friend off at the airport.  Minutes after depositing her at the terminal, she called to inform us that her departure had been delayed because Air Force 1 was landing within the hour.  After a bit of research, we discovered that President Obama was holding a health insurance reform town hall at Grand Junction’s Central High School later that day.  If the President was going to be there, why shouldn’t we?

Tickets to the town hall were distributed via lottery prior to the event.  There was zero chance we were getting in.  This condition was shared by a couple hundred activists and protesters who had gathered on a street outside the school to vocalize their opinions on what would eventually become the Affordable Care Act.  In this video, I play (really) amateur documentarian by capturing the sights, sounds and spirit of the afternoon.  Signposts are provided below the video if you’d like to skip ahead.

0:50 – A walk along the ranks of the opposition
3:27 – A visit with the supporters of Obamacare
7:10 – Both sides claim “freedom” as their value premise

This video is part of a larger American Southwest gallery.  Click the link to see more great videos, photographs and interactive panoramas.

ClimateEnergyPolitics

My Silver Bullet for Solving the Energy Crisis

Mike Specian May 21, 2012 Leave a Comment 8763 Views

In the course of traveling through life, I occasionally intersect with others as passionate as I am about our world’s climate and energy crisis.  I love to pick people’s brains and most of the time I can’t stop myself from asking them, “If you had one silver bullet policy in your pocket that you could implement today, what would it be?”

I have received responses ranging from “sign the Kyoto Protocol” (which I perceive as small beer) to “remove corporate money from politics” (which, while probably the correct answer, is wholly unrealistic).

Through these discussions, I believe I have settled (at least for today) on an answer of my own: “promote international development through green growth.”  At a time when economic concerns drown out calls for foreign aid, I’m reminded of the saying, “The cleanest power plant is the one you never have to build.”  And nowhere is the need for new power as acute as in the developing world.

For some, a Third World green intervention seems like a misallocation of limited resources.  Why not just let them build a bunch of coal plants?  For others (me included), this need provides real opportunity.  In locations where firewood is the the primary sustainable resource, intelligent green investment can be sustainable in its own way – through profitability.

But with hundreds of international initiatives underway to support green growth, it’s easy to suffer from paralysis of too many options.  What are the key strategies?  Who’s doing what well?  Where is there room for improvement?

In the United States, we look to Silicon Valley as the model of an innovation ecosystem.  It is there that raw talent, research capability, and venture capital’s business-building power converge to create the planet’s premier environment for the generation of new products and wealth.  While Silicon Valley itself has shown little interest in the developing world, their model remains a gold standard and its strategies are easily transferable.

Nurturing talent must start with education.  The status quo of having one professor teaching standard courses to 1000 students will not get the job done.  Training students in the basics is key, but education needs to become less abstract and more vocational.  Let brewing beer be a study in chemistry.  Let cows be a study in biology.  If HP cannot offer copying equipment to parts of Africa due to a lack of qualified technicians, as was recently the case, teach technology to match the need.

Then, for research to be effective the world must work together.  China and the United States are behemoths, and science agencies like the US’s National Science Foundation offer much in the way of support.  Africa, however, is challenged by having 45 separate, smaller science foundations.  Regional agencies must be formed to bring these groups together.  If Rwanda relies solely upon its own scientists, it’s going to miss 99% of knowledge generated elsewhere.

Consider General Electric’s ecoimagination, an enterprise they describe on their website as “GE’s commitment to imagine and build innovative solutions to today’s environmental challenges while driving economic growth.”  Thus far, their research has proven capable of meeting global needs like lowering carbon emissions, increasing energy efficiency, developing/deploying wind and solar, and maximizing water conservation.  GE possesses massive resources, benefits from economies of scale and has a global presence.  There’s still plenty of room for improvement, from geothermal investments in Indonesia to new public transport systems in Central America and Asia.

But while technology is the glue between green and growth, solving the R&D problem alone doesn’t mean you have a competitive product.  It certainly doesn’t guarantee a valid business model, nor is it necessarily scalable.  For instance, a company the size of GE is not optimized to sell solar panels to villages one at a time.

So while nations like Burundi will seldom outperform the science team of a company like GE, that shouldn’t be their role.  Developing nations are much better positioned to understand their own needs, constraints and goals.  Perhaps they can host franchises that spin-off First World tech to deploy on village-sized scales.  Then, the smaller region’s needs can spur local innovations of First World “big box” technologies.

For example, to process coffee, beans must be washed, hulled, polished, sorted, etc.  A developing nation relying on its own technology will be priced out of the market by big box technology that scales.  But since the final coffee product depends keenly on the details of the processing method, innovations of big tech at local sites can provide an end product neither the First nor Third Worlds could have achieved entirely on their own.

However, research and business can only do so much.  If conditions on the ground are not fertile for green growth, roots won’t take hold.  Electricity cannot be transported if the government fails to maintain electrical wires.  If the state heavily subsidizes coal or oil, green technologies competitive in a free market won’t survive in a rigged one.  Without patent protection and sharing of intellectual property, tech transfer will not occur.  Agencies like the World Bank can be coaxed into giving their assistance, but they rarely lead.  The bed must first be set by gathering global support for investment, e.g. by connecting principle investigators in neighboring countries or by getting the World Bank to fund distributed solar (perhaps by crowdsourcing) in developing markets.

Many of these issues will be discussed in June at the Rio+20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  If representatives can figure out how to link regional science foundations, introduce researchers to businesses (venture capital-style) and direct First World technology to Third World innovations, this might be the silver bullet most worth firing.

AstrophysicsPolitics

Congress Says Yes to James Webb Space Telescope, WFIRST – Details of the NASA Appropriations Bills

Mike Specian May 12, 2012 Leave a Comment 2785 Views

It’s time for more federal appropriations fun!  Earlier this week the House and Senate released their versions of the 2013 NSF appropriations bills.  Now they have done the same for NASA.

The House has recommended that NASA be funded $17.6 billion (a decrease of 1.3% from 2012), while the Senate has recommended $19.4 billion.  According to a statement from the Senate Appropriations Committee, “The large increase results from a reorganization of operational weather satellite procurement from NOAA into NASA. Without the funds for weather satellite procurement, this level represents a $41.5 million cut from the fiscal year 2012 enacted level.”

Here’s the funding breakdown (approximately) for the various NASA directorates:

Science: $5.0 billion
Space Operations: $4.0 billion
Exploration: $3.8 billion
Cross-Agency Support: $2.9 billion
Space Technology: $0.6 billion
Aeronautics: $0.6 billion
Education: $0.1 billion

There are a number of recommendations in the report, but I will focus primarily on the two projects most relevant to astrophysicists – the Wide Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope (WFIRST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

WFIRST is a proposed wide-field space-based observatory capable of mapping the distribution of 2 billion galaxies.  It will be able to detect thousands of supernovae which can be used to measure the expansion rate of the universe and study dark energy.  WFIRST will study the formation and growth of black holes as well as how galaxies evolve over cosmic time.  More locally, WFIRST will observe star clusters and exoplanets within our own Milky Way.

The WFIRST mission was identified as the astronomy community’s #1 space-based priority for the next 10 years in the National Academy of Sciences’ Astro2010 decadal survey.  Yet over a year ago, astronomers feared that in a challenging budget environment there was some risk that WFIRST would be ignored.  If this happened, the only way for American scientists to get in on the game would be to piggyback off of a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite, Euclid.  There was some question of how the astronomy community should proceed.  Should they hedge their bets and throw their support behind Euclid?  If they did, would this disincentivize funding for the American-led WFIRST?  On this issue, the House Appropriations Committee report said the following:

“The Committee believes that NASA’s proposal to spend up to $9,000,000 in fiscal year 2013 on a hardware contribution to the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission is in conflict with the NRC’s recommendation to make such an investment only in the context of a strong commitment to NASA’s Wide Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope, for which no funding is requested.”

In the end, the Senate Appropriations Committee invoked both the NAS recommendation and the awarding of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics to JHU’s Adam Riess (for his discovery of dark energy) to justify their support of WFIRST.  In what will amount to the first direct appropriation for the astronomy’s community’s #1 space-based priority for the next 10 years, the Committee has granted $10 million to begin planning and development.

Despite high-profile threats to defund it last summer, the Senate also “strongly supports completion of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)“.  Members of Congress were concerned that with scheduling delays and cost overruns, the price tag of JWST was approaching $9 dollars, far more than was originally envisioned.  The Committee asked for an independent assessment, the Casani Report, of the telescope which found that “NASA had never requested adequate resources to fund its development.”  Quoting directly from the Senate Committee report:

“As with many other projects, budget optimism led to massive ongoing cost overruns because the project did not have adequate reserves or contingency to address the kinds of technical problems that are expected to arise in a complex, cutting edge project. Without funds, the only other way to deal with problems is to allow the schedule to slip. That slip, in turn, makes the project cost even more, when accounting for the technical costs as well as the cost of maintaining a pool of highly skilled technical labor through the completion of the project. 

“In response to the Casani report, NASA has submitted a new baseline for JWST with an overall life-cycle cost of $8,700,000,000.  NASA has assured the Committee that this new baseline includes adequate reserves to achieve a 2018 launch without further cost overruns. The Committee intends to hold NASA and its contractors to that commitment, and the bill caps the overall development cost for JWST at $8,000,000,000. The Committee expects to be kept fully informed on issues relating to program and risk management, achievement of cost and schedule goals, and program technical status.

In addition to WFIRST and JWST, the committee also provided the full requirement of $98 million for continued operation of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).  Discoveries can occur quickly in astrophysics, and it was important to the community that funds be left available through the Explorer Program for stand-alone missions of opportunity.  These missions are generally mid-sized and deployable on shorter timescales, like the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

Other science priorities laid out in the appropriations reports are:

  • the Earth Science Decadal Survey Missions (e.g. satellite observatories for soil, moisture, ice)
  • IceBridge (to continue making high-resolution measurements of polar sea ice and glaciers during the gap between IceSat-1 and IceSat-2)
  • carbon monitoring
  • cooperation between NASA and NOAA
  • SERVIR (a program that links satellites, sensors and models to forecast and improve responses to natural disasters)
  • producing fuel for future space missions
  • robotic exploration of Mars
  • competitive planetary programs (e.g. flexible, fast money for research grants)
  • earth science and heliophysics (including the NASHeliophysics Decadal Report’s top recommendation, the Solar Probe Plus mission)
  • planetary science (which the Committee was concerned was endangered by cuts) and
  • production of Plutonium-238 (an essential source of power for deep space missions)
AstrophysicsPolitics

US Congress Decides Astronomy Deserves 244 Million Dollars from National Science Foundation

Mike Specian May 11, 2012 1 Comment 3007 Views

The United States House and Senate have just released their versions of the FY 2013 appropriations bills for the National Science Foundation, one of America’s most prominent scientific funding bodies.  Both chambers of Congress are more or less in agreement that the NSF should be funded about $7.3 billion, which is an increase of approximately 4% over FY 2012 levels.  According to the Senate Appropriations Committee report, “The Committee’s fiscal year 2013 recommendation renews its support for Federal long-term basic research that has the potential to be transformative to our economy and our way of life in the context of a Federal budget that is shrinking.”

Of that $7.3 billion, about $5.9 billion is dedicated for research and related activities while the remainder goes to major research equipment, facilities construction and education.  Of the $7.3 billion, about 3.4% of that is directed to astronomy research.  The following justification and explanation for the astronomy appropriations comes directly from the Committee report:

“Astronomy. — The Committee recommends the full budget request of $244,550,000 for astronomical sciences in fiscal year 2013, of which $161,890,000 shall be used for infrastructure.  The Committee welcomes the line item identification of pre-construction funds for future major MREFC [Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction] projects, including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, the astrophysics decadal survey’s top ranked ground-based priority in the coming decade. This joint NSF-Department of Energy project will provide unprecedented views of the changing sky and will drive key advances in cyber-infrastructure and large-volume data management. The Committee provides funding at the request level in order to make progress towards a potential new start in a subsequent year, subject to the project meeting the necessary conditions for such action.

“The Committee notes that the Foundation has proposed a wide ranging review of the portfolio for investments in astronomy including optical astronomy facilities, radio astronomy facilities, and individual investigator grants. Although the overall budget request level for fiscal year 2013 proposed an increase for NSF of 4.8 percent over fiscal year 2012, astronomy infrastructure was proposed to be held constant in the fiscal year 2013 request. The Committee intends to review any proposed restructuring of the portfolio for astronomy to ensure balance among the competing programs, and that core infrastructure capabilities needed to preserve U.S. leadership and broad access for the community are preserved.

“Radio Astronomy. — United States-based astronomy facilities continue to make groundbreaking discoveries and conduct world-class scientific research. NSF should consider allocating adequate funding within the amounts provided to sustain operations at domestic radio astronomy facilities while transitioning to full operation of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array.

While 3.4% of the overall science budget may seem small, the National Science Foundation provides support for all frields of fundamental science and engineering, except for medical sciences (these are primarily handled by the National Institutes of Health).  Also, this allocation typically does not fund space-based science missions, which fall under NASA’s purview.

Politics

What ShamWow Can Teach Democrats about Winning Elections

Mike Specian April 23, 2012 Leave a Comment 5110 Views

The shellacking delivered upon American Democrats during the 2010 midterm elections did not need to happen. And if Democratic strategists had applied a psychological principle utilized every day by millions of people all over the world, it may not have.

Conservatives’ resounding electoral victory in 2010 was fueled by anger over what would eventually become the Obama administration’s signature legislative achievement, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.” For liberals, the act marked a necessary improvement upon a broken health care system. For conservatives, it was the signal of a massive government takeover.

What the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats failed to fully appreciate was that passing the bill was only half the goal. The other half was managing public opinion so that the momentum of this massive reform would carry over into the midterm elections. A Democratic victory there would help facilitate passage of the party’s other priorities for at least two more years.

To be fair, Democrats attempted to lure voters to their side through a series of town hall meetings, but these were destined to fail. They focused too heavily on what people think, the set of rational justifications for reform like, for example, that patients would no longer be denied coverage for preexisting conditions, or that children would be able to stay on their parents’ health plans until they reach 26.

Few people are wonkish on policy and most develop their opinions based on gut instincts and basic premises. Rare is the blue collar worker who can discuss the merits of a cap and trade system versus a carbon tax, for example.

Instead, Democrats should have focused on how people think. They needed to understand how two identical proposals can be viewed into two totally different lights depending upon the path taken to get there.

Their fundamental flaw was the choice of starting point. As any haggler or negotiation expert will advise, start high and let the other side come to you. But President Obama, the eternal mediator, believed in letting Congressional Democrats set the stage. They began with a collection of “reasonable” proposals that conceded so much to conservatives right off the bat, that many liberals considered the bill’s starting point to be right of center.

The key the Democrats needed to understand was that the purpose of a “high starting point” was not to compel conservative legislators towards the center – that was never going to happen within a party for which compromise is anathema. Following Obama’s election, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proclaimed that making Obama a one-term President was his “single most important political goal along with every active Republican in the country.” It should have been clear to Democrats that earning any concessions from the other side of the aisle would be extremely difficult.

Rather, their purpose should have been to use negotiation tactics to persuade the public at large. By launching with a strongly leftist health care proposal, then migrating towards the center, centrists and conservatives would have had no choice but to view each new version of the bill relative to older, more liberal versions.

And as psychological research reveals, people are more sensitive to relative position than to absolute position. For instance, someone who enters a 55 degree room from a winter blizzard is going to perceive the temperature to be more favorable than someone who’s been sitting there for an hour.

While it is not always consciously acknowledged, this principle is employed by commercial outfits all the time. Skilled real estate agents admit to showing undesirable properties first, like those in dangerous neighborhoods or near busy highways, not because they expect them to be purchased, but because it will make the better houses they intend to show later look plum by comparison. Run the experiment in reverse by showing mansions first, and the plum house will seem insufficient in contrast.

Step into any Best Buy and you will doubtless be confronted by walls of HDTVs. The majority cost several hundred dollars, some will top $1000 and a select few “elite” units retail for over $7000. Without the elite sets, the $1000 items are the most expensive of the lot, and consumers rarely purchase the most expensive item available. Offer a couple HDTVs that are 7 times the price, and all of a sudden a $1000 unit looks like a huge value by comparison. The presence of the extreme option enhances the perceived value of the mid-range option.

The same premise that works in business manifests itself in personal relationships. Schadenfreude and the idea of “keeping up with the Joneses” both capture the idea that human happiness is a function of our position relative to others. Several years ago when I asked one of my more ambitious friends from MIT about his career plans after graduation he commented, “Well, I’m either going to get a job at Goldman Sachs, or I’ll become a bum.” While this statement seems objectively ridiculous, it’s far less so when you realize that he, like most of us, tends to measure our worth relative to those immediately around us.

For Democrats, their great missed opportunity in the health care debate was their failure to offer their own “elite” version of health care – the type of over-the-top plan where the government pays for any health care you want, offers it instantly, forever and throws a popsicle in to boot.

This broad relinquishment of power to the government would have admittedly been too much for many conservatives to stomach, but the point would never have been for them to swallow. The proposal would have been a straw man created for political opposition like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party to lash into and eviscerate.

But as in business, moving towards a more reasonable position adds value en route. Infomercials advertise the ShamWow not for $60, not even for $40 – but for only $19.99! And if you buy right now, you’ll get a second set and

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the ShamWow mop absolutely free! These types of sales pitches are ubiquitous because they are effective. The base price is kept artificially high so that the discounted price they intended to sell at the entire time seems like a tremendous value in comparison.

Gradually, the Democrats could have reined in their plan, approaching the house they intended to sell the entire time. Each center-converging policy iteration would have added value in the eyes of the swayable center and saddled the conservative media with the burden of railing against a plan that conceded to many of their objections. Should the criticisms persist long enough, the unwavering opposition runs the risk of being perceived as increasingly petulant and unreasonable.

However, this value added approach is no panacea. Hardcore conservatives and Republican lawmakers dead set against health care reform would have voted against it regardless of how the final proposal was reached. But since relative reform adds value, a Democratic proposal reached via concessions would have had greater worth in the eyes of the public than the same version which was just dropped on the country. Ultimately, a series of value added liberal policies could have shifted the political center leftward and better facilitated a sustainable majority.

They say you never realize what you had until it’s gone. If the Democrats are smart, they will take their 2010 electoral walloping as a lesson in messaging and missed opportunity. If they do, the Democrats of the future just may be smart, competent and persuasive – if only by comparison.

ClimatePolitics

Why It Is So Difficult to Convince People That You Are Right

Mike Specian February 29, 2012 Leave a Comment 3974 Views

One of the biggest reasons it is difficult to convince someone of your argument is that, far too often, facts and rationality are irrelevant.

I participated for many years as a parliamentary debater in the American Parliamentary Debate Association. We won rounds based on our ability to establish multiple, strong arguments in favor of our case, then eliminating, one-by-one, the arguments of our opposition. It was a tit-for-tat battle. If my opponent failed to account for one of my arguments, I could triumphantly claim that he “dropped’ my point and win it by forfeit.

This is NOT how the real world works.

In 2010 I attended a climate change education workshop in Washington DC run by the National Academy of Sciences. The question was how climate change skepticism was so widespread despite the fact that 97-98% of actively publishing climate scientists agree with the conclusion that climate change is happening and that humans are primarily responsible. The parliamentary debater in me firmly believed that if only people were more educated to the facts, they would surely change their opinions.

And yet psychological research, including that from Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project, does not support this conclusion. In one study, cognitive scientists found that many of those most alarmed about climate change don’t even understand the science. A recent poll from Brookings has shown that while 78% of Democrats acknowledge global warming is happening, Republicans are split down the middle. Both examples illustrate a disconnect between facts and what people believe.

This occurs because humans develop, as a natural defense mechanism, a model for the world in which they live. Adherence to the model gives an individual his identity. That identity is often woven into his relationships with larger communities, like family, friends, church, or political party. To turn his back on a foundational tenant means to ostracize himself from a group, and admit to a personal fault.

The most effective way, therefore, to convince someone of your argument is to first understand their cultural commitments. People (political conservatives especially) tend to prefer the established order. Failure to understand their bedrock principles can lead to arguments that rub against the grain, creating backlash and ironically, an entrenchment of previously held beliefs. A compelling debater understands cultural commitments and plays to them.

Every approach will be different. If you want to convince a fisherman of climate change, take him to his favorite river and highlight the changes he’s already observed, like a shortening of the winter season. For the very religious, work through a church authority. For politicians, find a way that allows them to accept an argument that coexists with their principles, e.g. using a carbon price to address greenhouse gas emissions rather than a complicated collection of regulations, requirements and government agencies.

Instead of directly introducing the argument you want your listener to believe, take a three-step approach. First, ask him to name a quality about himself that he considers a strength. While this may seem silly, this helps him assume a position of strength. This mindset increases the likelihood that he will accept new ideas.

Second, instead of directly stating your point, begin by introducing uncontroversial facts. Try to avoid bringing incorrect conclusions, as doing so can reinforce them. If you must, though, be sure to first issue a big disclaimer. For example, you might say to a global warming skeptic, “You will often hear people report incorrectly, and I stress ‘incorrectly’, that global temperatures are decreasing. The way scientists know for sure is by taking temperature measurements all over the globe over a period of many years.”

Third, instead of explicitly saying the argument you want to convince him of, show him data that allows him to draw his own conclusion. You might say, “Here’s a plot of the average planetary temperature as measured by 5 different groups over the last 100 years. You can probably see why so many scientists have concluded what they have.”

Approaching the argument from this direction permits the listener to make up his own mind. He needn’t concede that he was wrong and you were right. Instead, given the freedom to make up his own mind, he takes control of the information as his own. Research has shown this three-step approach to be quite effective.

There are other tips one should follow:

  • Make arguments personally meaningful and attempt to trigger empathy.
  • People often use poor word choice. Use clever alliteration to aid retention of information, and then repeat, repeat, repeat.
  • Tell good stories if you can.
  • Never overwhelm with facts. Use three facts at most. Going overboard has been shown to be counterproductive.
  • Never dispel an incorrect argument without replacing it with a correct one.
AstrophysicsPolitics

Federal Obligations for Research by Detailed Science & Engineering Field

Mike Specian February 8, 2012 Leave a Comment 2913 Views

Several weeks ago the National Science Board released a highly informative study, Science and Engineering Indicators 2012, which provides “a broad base of quantitative information on the U.S. and International science and engineering enterprise.”  Most exciting to wonks, however, is the appendix – it’s loaded with statistics!

There are any number of stories these statistics tell, but I wanted to highlight federal funding levels for the physical sciences (see 4-35) since the late 1980’s.  The reported levels compare federal obligations for physics, astronomy, geological sciences, oceanography, and engineering (metallurgy and materials).  Using the information provided, I created the following reference chart to illustrate how much financial support Washington has been providing for our nation’s scientists over time (click for higher resolution).

US government Obligations for Science Research by field (1989-2009)

Of particular note is how hard astronomy was hit between 2004 and 2008.

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