Science Debate Is Set; Now, Will Candidates Come?

Science, with it’s by-product, Technology, represent humanity’s extended senses to our expanding grasp of Universal Reality. Science and Technology promote an increasing capacity toward sustainable, thriving, and prosperous survival, through the extension of our senses: to see/hear/touch/move - further, closer, smaller, faster, heavier, etc.; to boundless creation of- new products, health advancement, and new realities previously unimaginable with just our physical bodies and senses alone.

Any obstruction to filtering Simple Understanding of the sciences to the masses, any obstruction to the sciences themselves, will result in a spectacular, heretofore unheard of, calamity to humanity, overshadowing all historical events, surpassing even the fables and legends.The pending lethal evidence stands clearly before all eyes, even those without scientific training:

* The coming nuclear resource wars – byproducts of the dumber than dumb scientific energy concepts promoting the beliefs in “there is not enough to go around” & “what little there is, it’s all mine” – the 2% corporate golden greedy guts who own 98% of the world)

* Global Warming/Pollution/Ecological Imbalance threat - caused by the successful Obstruction to Energy Evolution since the late 1940’s. Energy Evolution, the highest priority to humanity’s sustainable and prosperous evolution, has broken all records in stagnation; stifled to such an extent, that more and more highly respected scientists today exemplify “The Trouble With Physics” foundational problems with preposterous models and theories, including the outlandish belief in physical "time" travel.

In StarSteps, even a fourth grader could explain the vast differences in measurement of a flat plane and a curved ball; neglecting the curve disfigures reality with a flat earth belief when the curve on the ball's surface is not considered in measurement. The extended concept of E=MC2 throws the same curve ball measurement across the micro to macro realities, through the radius of curvature concept of all natural law – a recognition permitting simple 4th grade understanding of PhD level science to filter down to the people, carrying with it the capacity to overcome any known problem today with highly advanced energy systems and greatly expanded comprehension of energy space time relationships

February 11, 2008, 11:01 am
Science Debate Is Set; Now, Will Candidates Come?
By Andrew C. Revkin
Question for candidates: Should we keep sending people into space when a robotic rover can take pictures of the Victoria Crater on Mars? (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell)








http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/science-debate-is-set-now-will-candidates-come/index.html

The organizers of a proposed science and technology debate among the presidential candidates have set a date, April 18, and place, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. This would be four days before the Pennsylvania primary.
The group, ScienceDebate2008.com, has sent invitations to each of the remaining candidates.
Now the big question is whether their handlers will allow them to engage the thorniest scientific issues — like the dribble of money that the United States has invested in energy research through Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses; fetal rights and embryonic stem cell research; the need to add a cost to burning fossil fuels; reconciling science with belief in an all-powerful deity; the theory of evolution, which so many Americans (read voters) reject; etc.
[UPDATE: The organizers pointed out that the invitation specified that they are not “interested in state-level battles such as the evolution versus creationism/ID debate,” although they also said no subjects will be expressly excluded ahead of time.
In an e-mail and then a phone chat today, Shawn Otto, the CEO of Science Debate, Inc., which was set up to make the event happen, said the main goal was to get the candidates to explore how an invigorated science and technology enterprise could form the foundation for sustained, and sustainable, economic activity.
Here’s an excerpt from the email:
“This has never been about a science quiz. It has always been about the big policy issues facing the next president…. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett just signed on because this is an issue of American economic competitiveness. Science and technology have driven 50% of our growth in GDP over the last 50 years, and yet by 2010 90% of all scientists and engineers will live in Asia. That’s a huge fundamental change the next president is going to have to be dealing with, and yet nobody’s talking about it….”
“How are we going to compete? We’re seeing the candidates talk about short-term economic stimulus packages, but what about the fundamentals of our economic engine: our investment in research, and in science and math education? And that’s before we even talk about climate change or the environment, or health care…. This debate is about your pocketbook, it’s about your job, it’s about whether you can still afford health care, whether we’re going to do something about climate change or not, what kind of world your kids are going to be living in in ten or fifteen years, how are we going to respond to peak oil, where is the next transistor economy going to come from? Everybody knows these investments spin off economic engines – the transistor and Google are two examples….
This is the future of America, not some quirky science quiz. I’m not a scientist, I’m a writer and a concerned citizen. I care about the future for my son’s sake and for my own conscience, and I’m doing everything I can to elevate these issues in our national dialogue because they are that important…”]
Is there a big enough constituency passionate about science and related issues for campaign strategists to justify having candidates spend an hour or two on such prickly issues?
The latest polling from the Pew Research Center on public concern (the lack of it, actually) about climate change doesn’t suggest a groundswell. I’d like to think the candidates and their advisers will consent, but my guess is they’ll offer surrogates (although I’ll happily be proved wrong).
John Tierney, over at TierneyLab, asked readers back in December to suggest questions. I posted on the debate prospect when David Goldston, who spent 20 years in the science-policy tussle on Capitol Hill, said it could backfire.
The organizers of the debate have been accumulating thousands of endorsements — including those of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science — and hundreds of possible questions, as well, which can be explored on their Web site.
The site contains reams of useful background provided by the organizers, who include two screenwriters, one of whom is a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin (whose 199th birthday happens to be Tuesday), and the science blogger and author Chris Mooney.
If you were an adviser to one of the front-tier candidates, what would you suggest?