National Parks and Funding

This will probably one of the few posts where I will discuss politics but I will try to remain as neutral as possible but we all have to acknowledge that most things we read do have some sort of bias especially when it comes to things like the federal budget so I apologize in advance. If you have been following this blog for any length of time you probably have a good idea of how I feel about the National Park System here in the United States. If you are new here or have just missed it lets just say I started a series discussing the National Parks I visit for a reason. This is why on Tuesday, March 29th, when I picked up the Texas Tech school paper, the Daily Toreador (DT), and saw an opinion piece advocating for no cuts to the National Park Service budget. The article is well written, for an opinion article in a college paper, and expresses a lot of my views on the subject.

People from around the world visit America’s national parks for a multitude of reasons. The parks offer unparalleled natural beauty, outstanding recreational activities, important historical preservation and education, and both mental and physical health improvement opportunities. Appropriating adequate funding to the national parks is essential to continue offering this to all Americans.

I was happy to see something like this in the school paper but I was soon to be disappointed. The following day, Wednesday March 30th, I picked up the school paper again and when I got to the opinion page saw this letter to the editor. I was seriously disappointed by what the author had to say because he seemed to be drastically misinformed. So I am going to try to destruct a lot of his argument, let me make sure to preface this by saying my economic background is lacking and there will be a lot of statements from personal experience that may not apply to everyone but I feel that these will work best for the arguments that he makes. So lets get started shall we.

While the author looks at the benefits of national parks, he fails to realize what the costs are. The budget for national parks is close to $3 billion. However, if you look at the budget for the department that oversees national parks (Department of Interior), its budget authority for 2011 is $18 billion.

$3 billion may sound like a lot of money but even when you compare it to the whole $18 billion for the Department of the Interior (DOI) that is really a small percentage. But let's expand this out, according to the New York Times, click the link for a really cool way to see where your money goes, the Federal Budget for 2010 was $3.60 trillion and President Obama's plan for 2011 is $3.69 trillion. So what does this mean? It means that if we cut all funding to the NPS you wouldn't see a change in either of those numbers. So how much percentage wise are we talking about, less than 1% of the federal budget for 2010 and in fact is less that 0.1% of the total budget. So we really won't save that much money if we cut the NPS out entirely.

Instead of spending money trying to conserve land and national resources, I would feel better auctioning off government-owned land, national parks and other resources. The federal government owns nearly 30 percent, or 650 million acres, of the United States.

Another solution proposed by Dr. Walter E. Williams of George Mason University is allowing people to exchange future Social Security benefits for government-owned land.

I included these two paragraphs together because lets face it they are arguing for the same thing. So his problem isn't with the NPS it is with the DOI, whose total operating budget is still less than 1% of the entire US Budget. These federal owned land which he feels should be sold include the National Parks but a far larger percentage of them belong to National Forests and National Grasslands, with some other land uses being by the BLM and Indian Reservations among others. National Forests and Grasslands are far from being just protected land they are land that the government allows for private use of. They do this by allowing logging and cattle grazing in these lands. Wait what? Yes that is right these lands can be used by private companies/individuals for logging and grazing but the government asks for a fee and that the land isn't overgrazed or clear cut. In order words they prevent private companies from destroying these resources for future use, so American will continue to have natural resources so we can continue to be a great country into the future, oh yeah and so we can continue to have clean drinking water.

The author also mentions how national parks can promote exercise and education. Nature is not the only place to get physical exercise. Doing an intense cardiovascular workout would burn more calories than hours at a national park.

Getting a 30 min "intense cardiovascular workout" may burn more calories in the short term, not that I am sure about this fact, but long hikes can build up endurance which means that you will have a better metabolism and be able to burn more calories sitting watching TV at the end of the day than if you just went to the gym. Also I feel the author has never hiked up a trail that included 2,000+ feet of elevation change over ~4 miles starting at ~1 mile above sea level, I loved the Guads, because trust me you are burning a ton of calories no matter who you are.

Now this next statement really got to me:

As for education, if people really wanted to get an understanding of history, they could spend an afternoon at the library or do online research.

I can read about Gettysburg all I want, I can hear that the Confederates had to cross a mile of open field, uphill, till the cows come home, but until you are standing at the Confederate position in Gettysburg and you see how impossible it really was. You can "learn" history from books but you don't really know history till you can experience it yourself, see it for yourself. This also neglects the fact that many of these historical locations saw the deaths of thousands of American soldiers many of them were never identified and were buried in mass graves which are often lost to history. The only thing we know about these graves is that they were on the battlefields, these battlefields serve as reminders as well as graveyards. The Civil War battlefields of the east especially those around Washington D.C. have already been built up around and we have lost portions of history forever and we need it to stop.

I am not going to address his last two paragraphs as they are purely political and I don't want to get into these statements here. Some other arguments have thankfully been put forth in a letter to the editor of the DT today, Friday April 1st, so go read those as well. Also I want to admit that there are reasons that you could justify cutting some money from the NPS and DOI but none of the above are them. Let me end with words that should probably be familiar to all, well at least those from the U.S., explain the need to protect a lot of these lands from President Abraham Lincoln.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Buffalo Commons

This was something I was not aware of till recently due to a discussion and a project I have to do for a class this semester. The reason I probably hadn't heard of it is because I grew up on the east coast so I didn't experience these problems.

When people think of the Great Plains of the United States they probably think of miles and miles of flat terrain covered in corn and other similar crops. While this is true of much of the eastern portion, Iowa good parts of Oklahoma and Texas etc, the western portion, from Montana and North Dakota south, is typically not as lucky. The western portion sits in the leeward side of the Rocky Mountains and this produces a rain shadow effect. North American settlers have tried to conquer this area for close to 200 years with agriculture, this is one of the leading causes of dust bowl. Much of the agriculture in this area is reliant on an aquifer, the Ogallala Aquifer, for their water. This has resulted in a severe depletion of the aquifer since it has been strongly pumped starting in the 1950s. All of these problems have led to this area drastically losing population over the last few decades.

In 1987 Deborah and Frank Popper wrote an article, the full article can be read, in Planning Magazine arguing for the creation of what has been called a Buffalo Commons. This area would be a massive area of land that would be returned to the native grassland conditions. In these areas cattle and other domesticated animals would be removed and instead be replaced by native animals such as bison, pronghorn, and deer (The first two have been greatly reduced in number and range since settlement began as can be read in their respective articles); on a side note I would hope they would also allow replacement of predators such as wolves as well. This land would be treated as a National Park, since it would be bought up by the federal government. This would hopefully increase tourism to this area and may slow or stop the depopulation of the great plains, or at least give those who stay another industry to earn money from.

When the idea was originally proposed there was a huge backlash against the idea. This would make sense many of the farmers and ranchers in this area are hard working, they have to be, and they don't want outsiders telling them what to do. This land still produces a large amount of cattle and the land is still worth a lot of money. Over time, however, there has been a slow growing acceptance for this idea including an article written about a year ago, November 2009, advocating for the creation of the Buffalo Commons (I would link to this but the link is no longer active).

Now I am not trying to advocate, one way or another, about this idea I am just trying to draw attention to this and maybe start a discussion. As I said I wouldn't have known about it had it not been for a project I have to work on in one of my classes this semester and but I feel it is an idea that should be talked about. I can see benefits; no more withdraw on the aquifers, increase in native grasses to help prevent erosion, and tourism being brought to the area; but I can also see negatives; this land will not be available for use later, what do the owners of the land do when their land is bought from them, and the cost of tearing down all that has been built in the area will cost just as much as buying up the land. I only want to bring this idea to a larger population.

Read more on the Buffalo Commons:
Great Plains Restoration Council article on the Buffalo Commons
Wikipedia article

NASA and the future of Science

So I should have blogged about this about a week and a half ago when President Obama first unveiled his budget. Anything dealing with the President and the budget will be perceived as political so I am going to have to flirt a fine line here I know.

So when the President unveiled his budget for this upcoming year one of the major programs taking a hit was NASA's attempt to return to the moon and then their eventual plan to go to Mars. Now while I understand that this is a trying economic time, I am a grad student after all, these programs risk doing damage to the number of young kids who we are drawing to science.

Let me explain my reasoning. In the 1960s the US had one enemy who was in one place, the USSR for those of you who don't know/remember/really should go take another history class. Well in the early '60s President Kennedy challenged the American people to get safely to the moon and return to the Earth. This challenge was not taken lightly by the American people and the scientists of the US and in 1969 we DID land on the moon, no matter what some people might have you believe. This inspired many of the people growing up at that time, my parent's generation, to have an interest in science and while not always a complete understanding they were at least interested and respected it.

In the '70s NASA's budget was cut we had accomplished our mission why do we need to keep funding this mission. This continued until the 1986 Challenger disaster in which more money was briefly increased in order to increase the safety of the shuttle missions. Finally through the '90s and 2000s anytime that it seemed that some budget needed to be cut it came from NASA and in many ways this is one of the causes of the Columbia disaster in 2003, wow has it really been 7 years.

I mention this because the current leads in science were brought up during the prime of NASA's space exploration. This most likely led to them going into and being interested in science. While many of these scientists are still young enough to do research there has been a fall off in the number of students being interested in science and this will be visible in the number of researches in mine and future generations.

So why did I mention the new NASA budget cuts? Simple these return trips to the moon and eventually to Mars would draw people into science that may not have been interested in science the same way the original trips to the moon brought people into science in the '60s.

Do I understand why the President did what he did? Yes, we need to keep ourselves safe etc. Do I have actual solutions? Make space feel more open to private companies. Privatization will make the technology cheaper to get into space which then NASA and universities etc can use to get themselves into space to open it up to scientific exploration. Cutting the funding to these programs however is not the way to do that and will probably set NASA back more than the year that the actual budget will financially effect. As with the space shuttle disasters cutting money now will cost us more money later! I welcome every one's comments tell me how wrong I am or how right I am or whatever you have to say.

Textbooks and politics

I am a Yankee through and through it makes it a little weird at times living in West Texas, to be honest I feel really out of place a lot of times. But if many of those living here in Texas had it their way they would control everything. The main people doing this are very much the religious right. What may come as a supprise to many is how much control Texas has over the textbooks that students around the country use. This is because when their standards are written the state itself chooses the books. Texas is the 2nd most populated state in U.S. and with all of the schools using the same books this is a huge number of books. This means that many publishers write their books to the Texas state standards and don't rewrite them for another state or school district. With this background information I figured I would pass along this article I came upon a couple of days ago showing the history of the far right's take over of textbook standards here in Texas that have been causing a stir amongst educators from over the entire U.S. This is an interesting read and shows why so many of those in higher education here in Texas are so vocal about going against what the board says. Things like this in particular:

There has already been plenty of screaming and wall pounding in the battles over standards for other subjects. In late 2007, the English language arts writing teams, made up mostly of teachers and curriculum planners, turned in the drafts they had been laboring over for more than two years. The ultraconservatives argued that they were too light on basics like grammar and too heavy on reading comprehension and critical thinking. “This critical-thinking stuff is gobbledygook,” grumbled David Bradley, an insurance salesman with no college degree, who often acts as the faction’s enforcer. At the bloc’s urging, the board threw out the teams’ work and hired an outside consultant to craft new standards from scratch, but the faction still wasn’t satisfied; when the new drafts came in, one adherent dismissed them as “unreadable” and “mangled.” In the end, they took matters into their own hands. The night before the final vote in May 2008, two members of the bloc, Gail Lowe and Barbara Cargill, met secretly and cobbled together yet another version. The documents were then slipped under their allies’ hotel-room doors, and the bloc forced through a vote the following morning before the other board members even had a chance to read them. Bradley argued that the whole ordeal was necessary because the writing teams had clung to their own ideas rather than deferring to the board. “I don’t think this will happen again, because they got spanked,” he added.

It is things like this along with the state standards for science and the potential ones for history that only show the US as being right in all of their decisions and founded as a christian country. Both of these are wrong ideas. The U.S. has made mistakes in foreign policy along with domestic policy. Showing these wrongs and teaching why they are wrong is what makes us a better country and better people in general. And there have been enough people that have pointed out why we are not a Christian country that I don't feel I even need to address the idea of seperation of church and state.

Anyway I def suggest that you check out the article it is important that we all know what we are up against both here in Texas and throughout the rest of the country.

Why argue against people who believe the earth is 6000 years old?

So people might be wondering why do I care about informing people what the science actually says. Well today I was clicking through xkcd and came across this:



Yeah the fact that anyone can become a member of our representative democracy and/or they vote is pretty much the main reason.

But it's cold...

So I have blogged about greenman3610 before (see here, and here) and I know I seem to really push every video he does, it couldn't be because he addresses concerns that anger me in a very eloquent way could it. In his latest video he addresses the common misconception that just because it is really cold outside right now that must mean that global climate change is wrong:



So while we are on the subject PZ Myers blogged about this a couple of days ago (and of course I can't seem to find his post exactly to link here) and I thought it was very interesting. PZ pointed out that the person writing this article is in fact a restaurant critic, so enjoy this article as well.

EDIT: So this is why I couldn't find the article on PZ's blog I actually found it on Rationalwiki's what's going on in the blogosphere section, by bad!

The difference between going to Grad school and going to work right out of school

So this may seem really random but where I am currently in both life and in location I really got to thinking about this today. At 23 years old I am in a unique position in life most of my really good friends from both high school and college have a job now but there is a good number, myself included, who decided to continue going to school and are now in grad school. I also am not quite in the position where I know a lot of people who are working and in grad school at the same time so I won't really be discussing that here. But tonight I was hanging out with a bunch of friends from high school we are all really close and it was good to finally see them all again. As I was leaving my one friend's house (yes he owns a house) he jokingly said to me something along the lines of it must me nice to have 3 weeks off but I guess you do kind of work for it. He has next week off and I told him well I can only imagine what it is like in your position.

So what is the point? Well once you get through your undergrad education your life very quickly evolves out of the large amounts of fun it was as an undergrad. I'm not saying life isn't fun but no matter what path you take you will be in working to be where you are. So for example there is no question my friends who have jobs work harder than me when you average it out. They will work 48-50 (5 day) weeks a year I however will get a month off from winter break and 3 months off for the summer. But what do you get for that? One of my friends is working but owns a house and has a kid, my fiance and I couldn't afford to do that if we pooled all of what we make a year, we would still make less than all of my friends except the ones who are teachers (which says something about our society). They tend to get up and are at work by 7-9 in the morning where as I tend not to get up that early but I will be up working on homework or something till 2.

So what should you do? Sometimes you don't have a choice. There are certain fields, and all of academia is included in that, in which you need at least some post-graduate education so you are stuck. But is it worth going to grad school right away or to enter the work force. That I cannot answer for you, and to be honest it took me time to answer it for myself. And that is just it if you can make enough to afford to own a house and have a kid at 23 then I say go for it but if you don't want to leave school right away and are willing to work hard in the academic world go for that too. In the end it comes down to the individual and nothing else!

Climate Change - "Those" e-mails and science censorship

Potholer54 continues refuting those people who cling to the recent e-mail hacking incident as evidence against global warming in his newest video and since I posted his last video (here) and greenman3610's last video (here) and after my post yesterday/earlier today (here) I figured I should pass it along as well:

Why we must tread carefully with climate refrom

So I just finished up my work for the semester and made it home yesterday so I might have some free time over the next few weeks to put some posts together, assuming I can come up with some topics.

This week wrapped up the Copenhagen climate conference in which only very little was accomplished. But I don't really want to discuss what happened there to be honest you will never get most of the developing countries to support something like that until you make it cheaper than just dumping the trash in the ocean, so to speak, and for this reason I think the US needs to take the lead in this attempt to clean up our actions. We have done this before when polluting of water was a major problem and now most countries realize it is wrong it just isn't something they can easily change. We need to set the example!

But, you might be saying that is not what you have as your title to this post. You would be correct and that is because of the economic problems we will face with a sudden drastic change in the way we produce power/drive/etc. The US transport and power industry is currently based on oil/gas and coal if we all of a sudden said no you can't use those any more because it is destroying the world well we will destroy our economy in the process it is currently too expensive to buy the alternative energy sources. I often think that many scientist forget about this cost and that is really too bad but I think most humans tend not to care as much about those who aren't us, so I don't think it is just a scientist thing but I know we do it and think that it should be easy to change things.

So what do I suggest we do, since it is one thing to say something is wrong but we should always be able to provide solutions to the problems we point out? Well we should start by funding alternative energy solutions. The current government subsidies go almost exclusively to oil/gas and coal. Why not scale back a little on that funding, thereby increasing cost and making it less desirable to the average person, and send that change towards alternative options. The strides that have been made in solar and tidal etc have been slowed by lack of money but yet they have occurred.

But the government shouldn't be the only one we as consumer's should demand cleaner resources etc. Vote with your wallet, drive less and walk more, turn off lights when you leave a room, (in honor of the massive snow storm on the east coast) shovel your own snow you don't need a snow blower, all of those things that we have been preached at to do we should. Yes it won't always be easy but it can be done but I do realize that you can never please everyone:

Smacking the Hack Attack

Write a paper of watch youtube videos and post a quick blog article? We will go with the second one.

Ok so yesterday I posted the video posted by potholer54 so today I was glad to see that greenman3610 decided to comment on the hacked e-mails as well. So I will let him take it from here:



So at least these two should help clear things up.

Those hacked e-mails

Ok still busy working on the end of the semester hopefully after the next two weeks I might be able to blog a little bit more.

Anyway I am sure you have all heard about those hacked e-mails from the climate change experts. Well the right here in the US has been holding up a couple as proof that it is just a conspiracy. So Potholer54 did some research and shows that well maybe they don't say what we have all been told they say.



Interesting eh?

Obama shouldn’t be silencing opposition

I want to start by apologizing for not posting recently studying and writing has been getting in the way of that, I should be studying now but I don't want to so I'm not.

This post won't be about science like normal and while I said don't want to talk about politics in here well sometime you can't escape it. I came across this story while reading the paper this morning. Now maybe I am a masochist but whatever it I always read the opinion portion of the paper and that is when I came across this. So I read the headline and decided to go ahead and read it.

The article started to annoy me right from the start:

Among the many volatile threads common in the current administration, there is one that is especially troubling. That is the repetition of the attacks our president and his media representatives have repeatedly made against any voice that dares counter his own.

We saw this when they set up a White House Web site for citizens to report any suspicious or contrary information about health insurance during the summer. We saw it when they unleashed havoc on Fox News for daring to criticize President Barack Obama. And we saw it when the administration decided to let loose another attack. This time it battled Edmunds.com over its criticism of the cash for clunkers program.

Ok the White House did not set up a way to report people who were lying, and there were plenty of lies, during the summer they just wanted to know about misconceptions about the health debate so they could correct them in speeches etc. Next how did they unleash "havoc on Fox News"? All they did was refuse to be interviewed by Fox News I would too if they were calling me these type of things:



But you know what I'll give you a chance lets see how you summarize the Obama vs Edmunds argument:

To sum up the squabble quickly, Edmunds claims the administration failed to deliver the facts about each “clunker,” costing taxpayers $24,000, and although it boosted third-quarter sales, the fourth quarter, which is traditionally the worst season for car dealerships, will report abysmal numbers at best.

This administration reports, in contrast, the excitement of an inventive vehicle program drew in purchases that previously would not have happened. What they fail to say is this is highly unlikely for those who did not qualify, which is a greater percentage than one would initially think and during the CFC program, prices on vehicles actually rose.

Really that is it they disagree on what is going to happen in the future? And how is this silencing the opposition? Last time I checked we were allowed to say what we want and we were allowed to disagree in none of the things that you quoted did the Obama administration stop anyone from saying anything. You can speak your mind and guess what he is a citizen of the U.S. so he can...speak his mind too heaven forbid it disagrees with what you think.

I will let you read the rest of the article if you want but he pretty much goes on to say that Obama is wrong and that he doesn't let us use free speech but there is one last thing I want to discuss from the article:

The First Amendment states American citizens have liberty in the areas of the free exercise of religion, of speech, of the press, of assembly and to redress grievances before government. This is a statement that ought to take primacy in the lives of our leaders.

Guess what Obama is an American citizen and has the right to say what he thinks as well but even more so find me one instance where Obama has stopped any of these. Where the Tea party protesters allowed to protest? Yup. Are people still allowed to practice whatever religion they want? Sure. Do people call Obama a Nazi/Hitler? Yup. Has it ever been stopped? Nope. So you and he disagree on political issues, what did I expect living in West Texas, but that doesn't mean that you are being oppressed in what you can do/say.

Alumna sues college

So I know everything has been very Virginia Tech centered recently so here is something different!

Wow is this really what we have come to?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/03/new.york.jobless.graduate/index.html

1) A 2.7 is not stellar
2) People with experience are having trouble finding jobs what makes you think you are so special
3) There are jobs out there you might just have to leave the city you are in
4) They might not help out the 4.0s more it is just easier for them to find a job

I hope to be able to keep up with this story and will let you know how it ends. Also the next 2 weeks I will be running around the Eastern and Central US like a chicken with its head cut off so don't expect too many posts.