After John McCain’s planetarium gaffe you might have hoped that politicians would learn the following lesson: trying to score cheap points off your rivals by criticising science projects is not a good idea if you don’t understand the science.
You might have hoped, but here comes Bobby Jindal.
The Louisiana governor was giving the Republican party response to President Barack Obama’s latest speech when he criticised the stimulus package designed to get America’s economy going again. One of his gripes was that it includes “$140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.” Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.”
Would Bobby have criticised volcano monitoring if he was governor of Hawaii? Of course not.
Predictably, some scientists and bloggers are not happy about this. A few point out that the stimulus package actually earmarks $140 million for a number of things at the US Geological Survey including facility refurbishment, equipment upgrades and volcano monitoring.
“It’s very hard to read that statement and honestly conclude that the law is spending $140 million on volcano monitoring,” Dunford writes on the Questionable Authority blog. “They do mention volcano monitoring, but it’s clearly not the only thing that’s being funded.”
On the Green Gabro blog, Maria Brumm adds:
Ignoring for the sake of argument the value of the basic science that always results from the data collected during routine monitoring – ignoring the general function of increased spending as an economic stimulus to the nation’s earth scientists, instrument manufacturers, etc., – even ignoring all that, volcano monitoring is still a very sensible investment in national security. A $1.5 million investment in monitoring at Pinatubo (near a U.S. air force base) earned a greater than 300-fold return when the volcano erupted explosively in 1991: hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property (mostly airplanes) was saved, as were thousands of lives. That 30,000% figure comes before you attempt to put a value on human life.
The FiveThirtyEight blog also brings up the Pinatubo incident.
If all this talk has got you itching to read more about why volanco monitoring is cool, here is just the thing: