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The Cool Science Stuff Thread

A new Smithsonian touring exhibit displays Apollo-era space suits, including X-rays to show the interior structures.

http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibits/suitedForSpace/

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Climate scientists must not advocate particular policies
by Tamsin Edwards, Ph.D.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2013/jul/31/climate-scientists-policies


As a climate scientist, I'm under pressure to be a political advocate. This comes mainly from environmentalists. Dan Cass, wind-farm director and solar advocate, preferred me not to waste my time debating "denialist morons" but to use political advocacy to "prevent climate catastrophe".

Jeremy Grantham, environmental philanthropist, urged climate scientists to sound a "more desperate note … Be arrested if necessary." A concerned member of the public judged my efforts at public engagement successful only if they showed "evidence of persuasion".

Others ask "what should we do?" At my Cheltenham Science Festival event Can we trust climate models? one of the audience asked what we thought of carbon taxes. I refused to answer, despite the chair's repeated requests and joke (patronisingly; his aim was to entertain) that I "shouldn't be embarrassed at my lack of knowledge".

Even some of my colleagues think I should be clearer about my political beliefs. In a Twitter debate last month Gavin Schmidt, climate scientist and blogger, argued we should state our preferences to avoid accusations of having a hidden agenda.

I believe advocacy by climate scientists has damaged trust in the science. We risk our credibility, our reputation for objectivity, if we are not absolutely neutral. At the very least, it leaves us open to criticism. I find much climate scepticism is driven by a belief that environmental activism has influenced how scientists gather and interpret evidence. So I've found my hardline approach successful in taking the politics and therefore – pun intended – the heat out of climate science discussions.

They call me an "honest broker", asking for "more Dr Edwards and fewer zealous advocates". Crucially, they say this even though my scientific views are absolutely mainstream.

But it's not just about improving trust. In this highly politicised arena, climate scientists have a moral obligation to strive for impartiality. We have a platform we must not abuse. For a start, we rarely have the necessary expertise. I absolutely disagree with Gavin that we likely know far more about the issues involved in making policy choices than [our] audience.

Even scientists who are experts – such as those studying the interactions between climate, economy and politics, with "integrated assessment models" – cannot speak for us because political decisions necessarily depend on values. There are many ways to try to minimise climate change (with mitigation or geoengineering) or its impacts (adaptation) and, given a pot of money, we must decide what we most want to protect. How do we weigh up economic growth against ecosystem change? Should we prioritise the lives and lifestyles of people today or in the future? Try to limit changes in temperature or rainfall? These questions cannot be answered with scientific evidence alone. To me, then, it is simple: scientists misuse their authority if they publicise their preferred policy options.

Some say it is safe to express our views with sufficient context: "this is just my personal opinion, but … " In my experience such caveats are ignored. Why else would we be asked "what should we do?" by the public or media, if not with an expectation of expertise, or the desire for data to replace a difficult decision? Rather than being incoherent – "I don't know much about policy, but I know what I like" – or dictatorial – "If I were to rule the world, I would do this" – we should have the courage and humility not to answer.

Others say it is simplistic and impossible to separate science from policy, or that all individuals are advocates. But there is a difference between giving an estimate of the consequences of a particular action and giving an opinion on how or whether to take that action; between risk assessment, estimating the probability of change and its effect on things we care about, and risk management, deciding how to reduce or live with that risk. A flood forecaster provides a map of the probability of flooding, but she does not decide what is an unacceptable level of risk, or how to spend the budget to reduce the risk (sea defences; regulation of building and insurance).

We must be vigilant against what Roger Pielke Jr in The Honest Broker calls "stealth issue advocacy": claiming we are talking about science when really we are advocating policy. This is clearly expressed by Robert T Lackey:

"Often I hear or read in scientific discourse words such as degradation, improvement, good, and poor. Such value-laden words should not be used to convey scientific information because they imply a preferred … state [or] class of policy options ... The appropriate science words are, for example, change, increase, or decrease." (Science, Scientists and Policy Advocacy)

I became a climate scientist because I've always cared about the environment, since a vivid school talk about the ozone layer (here, page 4) and the influence of my brother, who was green long before it was cool. But I care more about restoring trust in science than about calling people to action; more about improving public understanding of science so society can make better-informed decisions, than about making people's decisions for them. Science doesn't tell us the answer to our problems. Neither should scientists.

This post is part of a series on science and the green movement.




Tamsin Edwards is a climate scientist at the University of Bristol using computer models to study climate change and sea level. She blogs at All Models Are Wrong.
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I want this winner of the coolest toy ever...

Because seriously, how fucking cool is that? Cost a few grand though =\


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ITER is due to go live in 2019. If it works, and there's no reason why it shouldn't, it will be a game changer. They have an incredibly geeky website:
http://www.iter.org/
 
Sean said:
ITER is due to go live in 2019. If it works, and there's no reason why it shouldn't, it will be a game changer. They have an incredibly geeky website:
http://www.iter.org/
Click to expand...

A bit different than the ITER, Innovative Technology Evaluation Report, that the USDOE is responsible for.
 
hi-def-cme-sdo.jpg1370350857


The sun unleashed a powerful storm early Tuesday morning (Aug. 20), sending an enormous cloud of superheated particles rocketing toward Earth.

The solar eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), occurred at 4:24 a.m. EDT (0824 GMT) Tuesday and blasted billions of tons of solar particles toward Earth at a mind-boggling speed of 2 million mph (3.3 million km/h).

"Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 570 miles per second, which is a fairly typical speed for CMEs," NASA officials wrote in an update today. NASA's twin Stereo spacecraft and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, captured photos of the solar storm from space.

- read the full article Sun Fires Solar Storm Directly at Earth (from space.com)
 
PL75, I am loving the story-

" The supergiant’s disappearance implicated the star as the source of the supernova after all. Van Dyk and his colleagues
published their findings, which validated the conclusions of their competitors, in the August 1 issue of The Astrophysical
Journal Letters. “The other team was actually correct, and we were fully contrite in that way,” Van Dyk says.

But the saga of supernova 2011dh will not end there.
 
Well, this is a mix of medical and science, but an amputee catching a piece of fabric with his prosthetic limb.

R9LFz6i.gif
 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...on-researching-next-oil-frontiers-energy.html



Petrobras Outspends Exxon Researching Next Oil Frontiers
By Rodrigo Orihuela
August 23, 2013


On a seabed off Brazil, Petroleo Brasileiro SA is separating water from oil as it pumps the crude from beneath the Atlantic. No company had done that before.

The process, which takes the separation and reinjection mechanism off oil platforms, is the first of its kind in waters deeper than 1,000 feet and frees space so platforms can serve more wells. It was developed by state-run producer Petrobras and FMC Technologies Inc. at a research and development center that boasts 227 laboratories on an island off Rio de Janeiro.

Without developing technologies like this, Petrobras will struggle to haul in the world’s biggest discoveries this century, trapped beneath a sub-sea layer of salt off Brazil’s southeastern coast, including the giant Libra prospect up for auction in October. The state-run company invested $1.13 billion, or 0.8 percent of sales, in R&D last year, the highest rate of the world’s 17 most valuable oil producers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Exxon Mobil Corp. spent 0.3 percent.

“We are gaining confidence day by day, investing a lot, putting our best guys here,” Jose Roberto Fagundes, the center’s deputy head, said in an interview from the center. “Five years ago we had an idea, we knew there was something different but we didn’t know exactly how risky it would be.”

Growth Key
Petrobras engineers analyze work on a tailor-made screen in high definition at the center, which is down the road from R&D units run by at least six other oil-related companies. Fundao Island -- where Petrobras scientists work some 11 miles away from Copacabana beach and the average temperature is 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius) -- has become one of the world’s richest spots for advanced study into squeezing the last drop of oil from a well.

For Petrobras and partners such as Britain’s BG Group Plc and the Repsol Sinopec Brasil SA joint venture, research into Brazil’s so-called pre-salt fields may hold the key to future production. They’re trying to end the mystery around just how oil flows out of these off-shore carbonate reserves, which vary from field to field and are unlike any other that have been developed worldwide. Both BG and Repsol have said the Brazilian pre-salt is a key pillar of their future.

Petrobras shares handed investors a 22 percent loss in U.S. dollar terms in the past year, the worst performance in the BI Global Integrated Oils Competitive Peers Index after Moscow-based TNK-BP Holding’s 37 percent drop. Exxon, which gained 3 percent in the same span, invested $1.04 billion in R&D last year, spokesman Patrick McGinn said by e-mail today.

Carioca Challenge
The Carioca prospect, one of the pre-salt’s five biggest discoveries, offers an example of the challenges, Fagundes said. The companies have until Dec. 31 to declare it commercial.

Carioca’s high paraffin levels make it hard to pump crude to the surface, as temperature changes can make it solidify. The companies are looking at the most efficient way to keep the oil flowing, Fagundes said. Carioca wells produce as much as 28,000 barrels a day, according to a statement from BG.

Research at the Cenpes technology center has also helped companies deal with the uncharted geological and operating conditions to drill horizontal wells through a layer of salt as thick as 2,000 meters under the Atlantic seabed, at both the Lula and Iara fields.

“Petrobras is the world leader in deep and ultra-deep water production,” Michel Curletto, a consultant at the IFB technological research institute in Rio, said by e-mail. The company wants “to develop technologies that allow it to surpass the barriers of new production frontiers,” he said.

Dinosaur Statues
In the R&D center’s main building, where white-coated staff study crude viscosity and geological permeability, is a courtyard with a collection of small statues of dinosaurs. The statues stand around a pool in the middle of which is a globe representing the world before the continents split.

Knowledge that Africa and South America were once a single body of land is what led producers to hunt for pre-salt oil off the coast of Angola, where discoveries have been made and 20 exploratory wells are scheduled to be drilled next year. In Brazil, Petrobras produces about 310,000 barrels of oil per day in the pre-salt and plans to reach 2 billion by 2020. It’s already the biggest producer in waters deeper than 1,000 feet.

In an auditorium at Cenpes, Petrobras has set up a film screen with five times more resolution than any sold by television makers LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. that shows computer generated replicas of oil platforms and their sub-sea production systems. The images are generated with software developed by Petrobras and a Rio de Janeiro university.

The images shown on the screen, combined with a 3-D simulator set up in an adjacent room, allows engineers, scientists and other researchers to analyze the production systems without interfering with operations.

Not Alone
Petrobras is not alone in its technological drive in Brazil. By law, producers that have concessions in the country’s top oil fields, such as the pre-salt ones, must invest 1 percent of revenue in technology for fields under a regime known as special participation. Other areas have lower thresholds.

Companies including FMC, Schlumberger Ltd, Halliburton Co., and Baker Hughes Inc., all of which are Petrobras suppliers, have set up regional R&D centers in the same island and BG is building its global technology headquarters there. After working with Petrobras on the sub-sea injection system, Houston-based FMC developed a similar project with Royal Dutch Shell Plc. in the Gulf of Mexico.

While the FMC-Petrobras collaboration is not for pre-salt, the bulk of the research in Brazil is focused on the pre-salt.

“Because of the size of the pre-salt, we were able to convince them to open their R&D centers here,” Petrobras’s Fagundes said. “We develop the hardware for our technology with our suppliers. We share our needs.”

‘Very Remote’
The Brazilian producer’s R&D has led to the filing of 175 patents in the three years through Dec. 31, 2012, the company’s press office said by e-mail. The patents range from sub-sea pumping systems to a process to produce hydrogen from ethanol.

The novelty of the pre-salt and the physical distances involved in extracting the underlying oil are the main challenges faced by Petrobras, according to Ruaraidh Montgomery, a senior analyst at oil and gas researcher Wood Mackenzie.

“When they moved into deep waters, they were really a pioneering company,” Montgomery said in a phone interview from Houston. “Now we have the pre-salt, a very remote location.”



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...on-researching-next-oil-frontiers-energy.html
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