Large Personnel Cuts Ahead Across The Federal Government

Trump budget expected to seek historic contraction of federal workforce, Washington Post
“Preliminary budget documents have also shown that Trump advisers have also looked at cutting the Environmental Protection Agency’s staff by about 20 percent and tightening the Commerce Department’s budget by about 18 percent, which would impact climate change research and weather satellite programs, among other things. Trump and his advisers have said that they believe the federal workforce is too big, and that the federal government spends – and wastes – too much money. They have said that Washington – the federal workers and contractors, among others – has benefited from government largesse while many other Americans have suffered. Federal spending, they have argued, crowds the private sector and piles regulations and bureaucracy onto companies. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, has said Trump will lead a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” On Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Obama loyalists had “burrowed into government.” Last month, Trump said the government would have to “do more with less.”
About 2.6 million work in the executive branch. Firing 10% of these within a year would effectively zero any job growth in the private sector. Worse, many of these people are in specialties unique to the federal government; there would be huge destruction in families across the country.
On the other hand, reducing the size of government is a key Republican notion going back many decades. No Republican President has been able to do it.
Will Trump be successful? No doubt he will take a ham-fisted and naive approach (“nobody knew health care would be so hard”). A consistent reduction through attrition might work, but would take far too long.
The larger economic repercussions, too, will be dismissed. We know that the huge unemployment will nose-dive the economy, but the Administration will simply say that they are unleashing the power of the Free Market.
Can I get an amen?
“Free Market” there really is no such thing, everything is owned and controlled. NASA will probably take a hit like in 1990s with downsizing to “increase efficiency and reduced costs” (read layoff people). It also leads to reduced infrastructure of various shops to do certain unique things. I’m referring to what Tom Matula (or one of you guys) said back in the days Soviets problem with their space program is they didn’t have “an Ace Hardware store on every corner.” Every unique tool or capability had to be developed in-house which takes time and cost.
No, because they are indeed unleashing it. Remember, free market economies are driven by the productivity of private business, not the regulation of bureaucrats. Rather than slow the economy this type of news is more likely to energize it.
Also your numbers are way off. 10% of 2.6 million is only 260,000. The American economy added 235,000 jobs in February alone. There will be jobs available for these bureaucrats if they are willing to be retrained for the New American economy. After all isn’t that the advice these bureaucrats give out when American workers lose their jobs to regulation and free trade?
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03…
US created 235,000 jobs in Feb, vs 190,000 expected
“Nonfarm payrolls increased by 235,000 in February and the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent in the first full month of President Donald Trump’s term, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.
Average hourly earnings increased by a healthy 2.8 percent on an annualized basis.”
The Trump employment boom has caused another record to fall…
“The total of employed Americans surged by 447,000 to 152.5 million, the highest ever.
Yes, every new job added is another record but of course you won’t see that news on your front page headlines, you have to dig for it.
“free market economies are driven by the productivity of private business, not the regulation of bureaucrats” – this is a false dichotomy. Investments are made in countries that are stable and secure; governments use regulation (among other tools) to establish and maintain that stability and security. That’s why SpaceX and Blue Origin, two growing new space businesses, set up shop in the U.S., rather than, say, Somalia (which has less regulation).
Stability is a necessary but not sufficient requirement. North Korea has had the same government for decades and is highly regulated but you don’t see any space startups there, or any real entrepreneurship.
Although not as extreme in regulation as North Korea you see a high level of stability in Europe, but the over regulation of their economies create less opportunities for entrepreneurs.
A little regulation is fine, but oppressive regulation stifles innovation. It is way past time to dial the level of regulation back in the United States, otherwise we will become like Europe with folks waiting for the government to solve economic, environmental and unemployment.
>Yes, every new job added is another record
You’ve heard of population growth? It makes this a pretty meaningless record. Just the other month, the Obama economy was a hellscape and now its turned around? That’s some work.
To give you a heads up, we had a very mild February which tremendously benefited construction activity. It will also through off seasonal corrections and this a good chance the Feb numbers will be revised.
Its the same measure the Obama Administration was using to claim Economic Recovery. Apples to Apples.
Now if you want to use the more accurate percentage of U.S. workers employed age 16 and over you will see that it decreased and was flat during the majority of the Obama Administration, only slightly recovering in the last two years. But it still ended lower than when President Obama came into office.
https://data.bls.gov/timese…
Population aged
Nope, not supported by data. Average age of the American workforce has increased less than 1 year during the Obama Administration.
https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_…
And population growth has made the current government employment numbers close to, if not in fact the lowest per capita since the early 1950s.
Here we go again, Tom.
The function of the government is to maintain a socially acceptable level playing field. Make all the cars put in seat belts, require fire-resistant bedding, etc. etc. Stuff we all want and need.
These things make sense. Car companies whined like stuck pigs but have improved fuel economy dramatically. All to the public good.
The free market cares not a whit about public good. That’s why the government role is so important. To look out after the Big Picture. Imperfect? sure. There’s tension. But indispensable nonetheless.
You illustrate one of the problems with discussion these days, the inability to recognize gradations. As in sports, a limited set of regulations improve the efficiency of free markets. It’s not an on-off issue like binary code. But the problem is when regulations become both excessive and inhibit the advance of technology. I will give you an example – cabooses.
A major function of cabooses was to provide a place where brakemen were able to watch the freight cars of a train for wheel bearings overheating (hotboxes) by watching for smoke raising from of the wheels of the train. In the early 1960’s new electronic technology made it easy and more efficient to use heat sensors to identify overheating bearings before the even started to smoke. But it took another 30 years to get government regulators to recognize this was a safer and more efficient way to prevent the fire risks from overheating bearings. Thirty years before railroads could reduce costs by eliminating cabooses from trains and brakemen from train crews. This is only one example of excessive and unproductive government micromanagement of business.
President Obama added 97,000 pages of new regulations in 2016 alone. It broke earlier regulation records the Obama Administration set. Do you really think such massive micromanagement of free markets are needed? That it really benefits the economy?
https://www.forbes.com/site…
Obama’s Legacy: 2016 Ends With A Record-Shattering Regulatory Rulebook
“And the printed version of the Federal Register, the daily depository of all things regulatory, has topped off at 97,110 pages, by far an all time record.”
“We noted here last week that until Obama, ninety-thousand pages was unheard of. Up
until this year, the 80,000 page mark shocked, having been passed just three times (in 2010, 2011 and 2015, all by Obama). In fact of the 10 highest-ever counts, Obama holds seven.”
The 10% decline in federal employees you are crying about is simply reducing the number of federal employees to the level it was before President Obama took office. The real draining of the swamp has just begun.
I’m inclined to agree with you on the issue of micro-management, although I’m not entirely sure that citing the number of pages is a useful standard.
Surely both of us could cite apocryphal examples of over-reaction: 45’s relaxation of stream polluting regs in his first week stands out in my mind as obtuse, for instance.
On the one hand a periodic purging is probably not entirely a bad thing. And I don’t know what else would guide the hand of the “purger” than some sort of political touchstone, either, a touchstone that necessary obviates universal agreement, particularly when the parties are so commonly at war.
But there must be common ground, no? What happened to the Congress that enabled EPA, for instance?
(I don’t know the answer).
A good read on just why “Free Markets” dont and will not work with certain aspects of human existance; no matter what your political affilitations believe to be true: https://www.forbes.com/site…
^^^^ This….take the time to read this.
Interesting but irrelevant to Michael Spencer’s claim at the top of this thread that downsizing the government will crash the economy.
Spencer points out that it obviously does affect local economies: services/goods are not purchased. (Brevard, base closings, …) http://www.floridatoday.com…
Of course it relevant: USG pays health care and supports local markets. You offer no rationale on how the trickle down works to sustain the local economies nor global economy–the money disappears as it was borrowed. Cut one CEO’s pay from 20M to 500K however, that’s a 40K job with 10K health care that’s 400 folks buying goods and services from many sectors, which get taxed and ‘recycled’. The 19M minus loop hole zero taxes is sent to non-taxed banks overseas.
Single Payer cuts to the chase of consolidation thru ‘competition’ which means duplication: why spend 15% of 2T on ‘private bureaucracy’ – 300B! Open the books and provide ‘reasonable’ profit if fear of ‘monopolies’.
True, maybe Washington D.C. will be the new Detroit and Detroit will boom again.
A well functioning economy is a balance of government regulation and market forces. We’ve seen what happens with a healthy dose of regulation, as with no major financial crisis, zero, since the great depression, up till the movement away from regulating the financial sector begun under Reagan, furthered under Clinton and Bush. Then came the last three big financial crisis.
Lacking a functioning regulatory body the private sector chooses dirty water, dirty air, and poor outcomes for most, with profits kept for the few. If there are exceptions anyone can give, real world historical exceptions, please inform the rest of us.
And BTW…we are glad to be having that “Trump employment boom” -which we used to call the “Obama employment boom” (right?), also adding about the same number of jobs at times last year, like in June 2016 with 297,000 jobs! Oh, maybe forget that one? And the other one’s?
Frankly, we have bigger problems than counting a couple hundred thou jobs on and off and all every month. This economy, as with most advanced economies nowadays, has to reinvent itself to rebuild it’s middle-class. Regulation in finance has to be strengthened to avoid another big financial mess. Each of the last financial crisis has been bigger than the one before. From Savings & Loan crisis to the real estate/financial bubble most recently. How big will the next one be if the last one was a Trillion dollar hit? Follow the trend line. Technology as well is making so many productive gains that plants that used to employ thousands produce just as much now, but with only hundreds. Steel and automotive as examples.
In the end, we’ll either move forward together with advanced, strong middle-class economies and strong democracy, or power will continue to concentrate in the few, with weak government part and parcel, but we can’t have both.
From thirty years in the medical field I agree. The major companies have enormous power and the customers (that’s us) are usually powerless. The problem with private medical insurance is that its goal is to transfer money to its stockholders and executives, not to actually provide health care to patients. UHC made $4 billion in profits alone last year, not counting its 30% overhead, vs no profit and under 3% overhead for traditional Medicare.
In commercial launch services the situation is different. The customers are as wealthy and powerful as the providers, and have time and freedom to choose the best deal.
I guess I’m a government bureaucrat, but oddly I have never written a regulation. However, I do have to deal with an extraordinary number of regulations, most of them due to meddling by congress trying to make political gain. Go figure. I say yes, let’s deregulate, but let’s deregulate government bureaucrats.
“meddling by congress” might also be called congress exercising its power in a rightful and appropriate way.
But I’d point out that the regulations many talk about aren’t formulated by congress at all. They are formulated by the various agencies who are charged with interpreting the will of congress and with establishing procedures to implement the will of congress.
Yes, congress does have that right… but I think you might agree that it is not unheard for congress folk to abuse it for their personal political gain.
In any case, my comment was rhetorical and partly tongue in cheek. I just get a little annoyed when folks constantly talk about regulation of business… I’d guess it pales in comparison to what government workers have to deal with.
Finding the right level of regulation necessary for a stable economy and a minimum of corruption is an ongoing task. Fundamentally though, what you need is folks who believe in the system, and believe that it is fair. No amount of regulation can fix that.
I’m not arguing whether the current administration’s policies could add jobs in the future, but don’t you think it’s somewhere past absurd to claim as its own the employment numbers for the first month of the administration? Neither the administration nor Congress took any concrete activity that would affect job markets in that time. At best, you could argue that businesses liked what they heard from the administration and implemented long-planned hiring decisions.
Yep. Thanks for the correction.
Every time a government Reduction in Force comes up, I am reminded of the DoD Zero Base Reviews and the BRAC process. Years back, the Base Realignment And Closure Commission was assembled to take a hard look at all military bases in the country. “Zero Base” meant, no one is sacred. Every command and organization had to justify their existence. The BRAC recommendations had to be 100 % accepted by DoD/Congress or fully rejected and back to square one. No adding or removing bases from the list. That was a blood bath. Yet, I believe most communities made out OK when the military closed down. I presume many did not. In the case of Trump’s administration, it will be very hard to lay off govt. people. We shall see how it goes.
“many of these people are in specialties unique to the federal government”
Not so many really. Management is management, they’ll just need classes on compliance with the private-sector end of government regs. For clerical, some re-education on how to use up-to-date computers and software, email, time-management and stuff and they’ll be good to go, and job training is part of the unemployment system. There might not be an awful lot of open private sector jobs in D.C. though, so they’ll have to sell their homes and move out here into the real world with the rest of us. I hope they don’t lose any equity, but if they do then that’s how real estate investing normally works for everyone in tough times.
For the Liberal elite there are probably lots of liberal think tank, lobbyist, news media writer and commentator positions opening up in Washington right now. That cycle ebbs and flows with changes of power.
Climate change scientists on the Federal payroll can start submitting funding proposals with everyone else.
What I just said sounds cold…and feels very cold to say it. It doesn’t reflect the compassion I honestly have for the unemployed, but I’ve been through the process numberless times myself as recessions come and go and I made it through alive. They’ll be fine eventually. It’s a risk that those of us in the private sector live with. The bad part is that they probably didn’t see it coming and aren’t prepared…but that’s not new either.
Well, sure, no job is certain, but this is (or would be assuming it happens) an “own goal”. It’s not driven by any compelling economic need… in fact I’d say quite the opposite. It’s purely ideology. And the thing with civil service jobs is that you do take a pay cut relative to private industry. The flip side is that supposedly it’s more stable. So if you get paid less and have no better stability than private industry, it’ll be even harder to attract the talented folks who would make the government more efficient…
You make that sound like a bad thing.
Heh, heh. So you want small wasteful government… interesting position. That’ll cure society’s ills eh? Novel theory, I’d have to give you that.
Amen brother Ben
I really don’t think it’s really going to hit NASA all that hard (if at all). NASA is one of the few (if not only) federal agency that both political parties like.
“Already, Democrats have vowed to fight Trump’s proposals, and some Republicans have also expressed unease at the size of the reductions”
It appears that the biggest budget impact will be with priority and funding shifts within the agency. Reductions to Earth Science, with a build up of Human Spaceflight priorities. Astrophysics should come out nearly unscathed.
Unscathed? Which means a shifting of jobs from some districts to another which affects local economies–is this not the hidden agenda? What supporting rationale is provided that makes the USG more efficient this way, a top and bottom levels assessment of current and future programs? It does make good for good sound bytes to ‘spin’ departments, however.
Why is HSF more important than Earth Science? Does HSF include SLS or the DOD fleet? Climate change will cost Trillions, yet per ‘C02 is not causing CC’ Pruit “there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact” but we need to continue the debate, review, analysis” by cutting ES? Weather prediction is the long term goal–significant effort required. IOW: way more depth of thought required.
There are always environmental disasters coming that are supposed to destroy the economy. Remember the shortage of fertilizer that was suppose to lead to economic collapse? The Club of Rome’s prediction’s of resources shortage in “Limits to Growth”? Where or where would we get all the copper needed for new phones lines and for hard wiring phones to the wall?
Remember Peak Oil?
Environmentalist scientists have cried gloom and doom for so long most Americans no longer even listen.
Free market economies innovate and adapt. The same will be true of climate change. When specific impacts become clear innovators and entrepreneurs will find solutions. If coastal cities flood new ones, better designed ones, will be built inland, creating new jobs and fortunes, while other entrepreneurs will make money with scuba tours of the ruins of the abandoned ones.
ROFL. The ‘carbon’ free market says not carbon tax as they don’t care about whether a city has to build a wall or relocate. A simple estimate would show its cheaper to regulate natural gas leakage to less than 3% at the cost of sensors and better sealing to the ‘free market’ gas industry than to the ‘free market’ solutions to walls/ relocation.
Peak Oil: 50 years of oil left says Oil Giant BP. Oops take Keystone Oil sands: 57 yrs at tremendous cost to the environment. Why?!
If you ask DOD, they would much rather spend $ on security, rather than allocate those $ to remedial ‘lifting or relocating’ ports or runways.
‘entrepreneurs’ do enjoy making a profit off of USG ‘problems’ as well. Why create one?
https://www.nytimes.com/201…
Oil has always been a few decades from running out, but always new sources are found. Or new technology developed to get at existing oil still in the ground. Current technology only recovers about 20-25%.
FYI
http://www.ogj.com/articles…
GLOBAL OIL RESERVES-1: Recovery factors leave vast target for EOR technologies “Resources and supplies are obviously finite, but to conclude that global oil resources are stretched or that the industry is or will be unable to replace production is a myth. Consider the fact that we have consumed less than 8% (1 trillion bbl) of the vast volumes of oil that have been discovered so far-a resource base of 9.6 trillion bbl of conventional and 3 trillion bbl of nonconventional crude oil.”
Yes, we have only consumed 8% of the oil in the last 150 years, we have 92% left to use.
Moving cities creates opportunity to rebuild them with modern technology. Most coastal cities in the U.S. are built around designs, traffic patterns and road systems a couple of centuries out of date. It is even worst in Europe. Climate change could be the ultimate opportunity for urban renewal.
That is one difference between entrepreneurs and government regulators. Entrepreneurs look for opportunities to create while government regulators seek to preserve the outdated.
Proven reserves now total ~1.5T (not 9T!). The world has already burned over 1T barrels. When a group finds 1B barrels of oil in Alaska, it represents 0.15% of the T. The energy to extract the ‘unproven’ is alarming, and the quantity is ‘unproven’. BP says 50 years left.
Worse, its not gushing out of the ground (no energy input) as it shifts from pumping to adding chemicals and energy (1 barrel of energy for 3 barrels of oil) from the oil sands. The ‘free market’ takes the oil gushers first
Since it takes ~100 years for the Earth to scrub the C02 from the atmosphere, the world needs ES to give as accurate estimate as possible how tall to build the (sea) walls. The time to act was decades ago.
http://www.opec.org/opec_we…
Yes, but when the A.E.C. did act in the 1960’s the environmentalists attacked their solution because of their irrational fear of nuclear power. Just go read the old magazines from the Audubon Society and Sierra Club, and the old Scientific Americans from that era.
Environmentalists don’t want A Solution to climate change, they want Their Solution of humanity abandoning modern society and living instead in harmony with nature as per the “Noble Savage” myth.
What was true in the 60’s isn’t true today. The cost of renewable energy has come down to the point that it’s starting to be deployed on very large scales. Nuclear will almost certainly continue to be necessary, but the “old way” of building very large nuclear plants is extremely costly. I’ve seen a lot of talk about small, factory built, nuclear reactors, but nothing tangible yet.
“The advocates at A.E.C. tried to move us to a nuclear-electric future in the 1960’s but environmental scientists objected to it.”
Far from it. We have 99 operating nuclear power plants in the US, and most have been upgraded and are producing far more power than when they were first brought on line. The US has four new plants under construction and five more proposed. Our biggest challange is the lack of a waste storage and reprocessing site. Yucca Mountain was not geologically suitable. Carlsbad NM is, but we need the funding and political focus and technical skill to move from WIPP to an operational capability. http://www.world-nuclear.or…
… And the person in charge of nuclear energy for America is the internationally known physicist Rick Perry.
Ask the folks in Fukushima if their fear of nuclear power is irrational.
Pity that plant was forced to stay in operation far longer than planned because of environmental protests. It was those same protesters that prevented a nuclear waste repository being built so spent fuel rods had to be stored on site.
Now you’re just being silly.
To return to 290 ppm takes a lot more time. The equilibration between the atmosphere, the biosphere and the upper ocean is about that level, but then you end up with 1/3 higher CO2 than you started with.
Oil reserves, like any resource, is a function of technology, and technology R&D is a function of free market economics. That is why Thomas Malthus predictions were “wrong”, because England had already unleashed the power of free markets without realizing it.
Unfortunately some of that new technology, namely fracking, comes with consequences that the petroleum industry won’t be paying for. They won’t even release the list of chemicals they’re pumping into the ground as part of the process.
There will be consequences to these more extreme measures being used to extract oil and gas from these increasingly challenging deposits.
I’ll give you a down-arrow for the implied stuff here. What was de facto agreed to by the scientists and nations of Earth at the Paris agreement in 2015, is that we cannot burn most of the fossil fuels that remain in Earth’s mantle without grossly violating the 2 degree limit (much less the under two degree goal); i.e, Paris was an agreement to keep most fossil fuels in the ground, because we can’t ‘afford’ to burn them. The existence of massive amounts of fossil fuels is not at issue; the burning of them most certainly is.
The advocates at A.E.C. tried to move us to a nuclear-electric future in the 1960’s but environmental scientists objected to it. That is still an option. But even if we continue to burn fossil fuels the world will adapt.
But remember that 2 degree limit only takes the Earth out of the temperature range it has been in since the Ice Ages have started. It’s not the point where the world melts down although it may be the point when a new Ice Age is triggered if some climate theories are accurate.
But even if we continue to burn fossil fuels the world will adapt.
And you base that on, what? Human-induced impact on Earth’s biosphere is currently causing growing numbers of extinctions. Forcing extinctions of other life on Earth out of laziness, greed, and immaturity, is not acceptable (and in the end, not good for us, either). People on Earth- usually very poor ones – are dying every year due to the growing effects of climate change; in addition to all the other more ‘direct’ pollution problems, habitat destruction etc. that continues. Staten Island wouldn’t have flooded- at all- but for the climate-induced increase in sea level since it was first settled; leading to some families having to leave, permanently; with they, along with an area of Louisiana being evacuated, becoming the US’s first climate refugees. And the world-wide refugee crisis is likely to see its worst ever periods to come as the century continues. This isn’t a joke.
First, you need to check the impact of hurricanes on New York in the 18th and 19th Century. It might surprise you the areas that were flooded. BTW do you know how Wall Street got its name?
What you are describing is the state of affairs that have existed throughout human history. Are you aware of the number of ancient cities underwater? Google “Pavlopetri”. Or the history of Venice?
The impacts of climate change you are panicking over are nothing new, they have been the trend throughout human history. You just need to extend your time horizon. i.e. study some history.
I’ve heard these points made by denialists (not calling any names, here, please, just pointing it out): namely that there have been ups and downs. All true but beside the point, which is; why make it worse?
Isn’t a shift to renewables a win-win for everyone except Exxon?
I’m not ‘panicking’- yet. I gave a couple of specific examples, which you didn’t refute. And it is not factual to say that what we’re seeing now is a repeat of ‘human history’; if you consider modern humans stem from approximately 100,000 years ago or so, that’s simply not true.
We’re no longer waiting for the effects of climate change to become noticeable. And one group that knows this, and has to deal those effects (particularly rising sea levels) on a daily basis, is the military:
https://tinyurl.com/jppz85j
Plus, they are also preparing for the instability and global conflicts that they know climage change will produce.
So, if you don’t believe the scientists, then believe the generals, admirals, etc, who have no dog in this fight other than to report (and deal with) the situation as they find it. And if you don’t believe them, well, I have some prime real estate on the coast of Florida you might be interested in purchasing…..
I have accepted Climate Change since the 1970’s when I read Willy Ley’s excellent essay on it in “Days of Creation” (1940). Issac Asimov also wrote a good essay on it and one of the justifications the A.E.C. used in the 1960’s for nuclear power plants was global warming.
Also the polar explorer Bernt Balchen spoke about how Arctic sea ice was thinning in the 1970’s from global warming so its effects were visible decades ago. (Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1972).
So its not that I don’t accept climate change.
The difference is I don’t see it as doom and gloom like the environmental movement is painting it. I don’t see America needing to give up flying, driving, air conditioning and going back to a 3rd world lifestyle of bikes, walking and trolley cars because of it. Instead, like all change, its an opportunity to move to the next level of technology and next level of human progress.
Let’s let coastal cities like New York that were designed before the automobile and built with 19th Century be sunk under the Atlantic and build new cities to replace them based on the technology we use now.
The problem is that the climate change scientists are not just providing data on it, they are also trying to sell the public a gloom and doom future. That is why they have lose support for their ideas.
Sadly, there don’t seem to be any solid predictions that can be made from these models. For one thing, there are too many variables. For another, there are way too much variability and re-adjustments built into the system and they say that this is supposedly uncharted territory for mapping out regional cause and effect.
Lastly, it really is a system of ups and downs trending upward. What can anyone do with that?
“OK, everybody. Even though the mean temperature is rising because of anthropogenic climate change, we can’t accurately predict the consequences. So let’s just shrug our shoulders and say, oh well.”
Uh, I don’t think so.
No, let’s just deal with the effects as they emerge instead of wasting resources on effects that may never appear.
I didn’t realize how many fatalists there are out there.
How is it wasting resources figuring out how we’re changing the climate so that, first, we stop the bleeding, and second, we can be better prepared to deal with the effects?
That’s not what I said, Colin.
I said that the models cannot and will not predict the detailed, regional impact of climate change in such a large, variable-rich environment across such a huge span of time. It’s like articles predicting “The Home of the Future” in Scientific American.
I did not say do nothing. We should all live prudently and responsibly, which means not living at the ragged edge of our income, so that we retain a certain amount of resilience to adjust to whatever change that occurs…economically, culturally, or environmentally…that happen’s to impact us. No environmental impact that leaves mammals alive on the planet will wipe out all humans, but human cultures, governments and economic systems could change (probably for the worse) and we need to ask ourselves if we and are families would still be ok if we had to yank up roots and become refugees.
No one knows what will happen next year. On the one hand, the caldera under Naples could blow with a type 8 eruption that wipes out most of Europe and causes a 10 year ice-age…destroying most carbon emission sources and absorbers in the process and resetting the whole system. On the other hand, some biologic or geologic trigger could go off instead and cause a Triassic-style, Hydrogen-Sulfide-gas-rising-out-of-the-ocean driven extinction event that drives everyone to the mountains. You don’t know, and neither does anyone else.
It’ll probably be something in between and, regionally, something between a new rain forest, or a new desert, or a new shoreline, sometime between now and a few hundred years from now…maybe. Prepare by doing whatever you can to be ready for anything anytime and you’re good to go.
Wow! That’s a very sanguine (and radical) viewpoint. Not sure how to respond to someone who says we should rebuild the coastal cities and relocate the tens of millions of people that live in those cities. A question, how do you do that for less money than it would take to wean the country off fossil fuels? Seems like a much more reasonable (a much less costly) goal to do the latter.
You must be thinking of cities being relocated whole by some massive centrally planned government program. That is not how its going to happen. It will happen as it always has in the past, with individuals and businesses just deciding to leave when the effects of climate change become a problem.
New Orleans is a good example. After Hurricane Katrina many folks just didn’t return, finding life and economic opportunities elsewhere. The trend in coastal cities will be encouraged by market forces (insurance rates) and local governments (banning building in hazardous areas).
The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s is another example based on agricultural patterns changing. Cotton and the Boll Weevil had a similar impact on the South triggering the great migration to northern cities. Maybe if climate scientists studied some economic history they wouldn’t be so gloomy to be around.
Most scientists I know who work in earth science aren’t gloomy. Indeed, they are rather upbeat and hopeful. Here’s a good example from one of the best (who is, unfortunately, no longer with us):
https://tinyurl.com/zdqlaym
And many of the best of them work for NASA. It would be a damn shame if that changes.
Keep drinking the kool aid…
The military was IMHO ordered by the Obama administration to make preparations now regarding climate change. Most of the effects I’m aware of would be gradual and not requiring immediate action but rather long term planning. In 50 years, at the current rate of increase, the sea level would rise only 2 to 3 inches. Areas susceptible to that increase would already be having problems related to storms, high winds and high tides. I doubt that would affect any land purchases in Florida for a long time.
You are supposing that climate responses to anthropogenic forcings are linear. That’s not necessarily the case (many would say that they aren’t).
As for purchasing land in Florida:
https://tinyurl.com/z8opewe
https://tinyurl.com/gl9h56t
Research of past climates shows it isn’t. The end of the last glacial age appears to have been very abrupt.
The climate tends to flip from one state to another.
There is a theory that a ice free Arctic Ocean is the trigger to an ice age.
Norfolk is immediately threatened by sea level rise. Norfolk is also the largest set of bases for the Navy. As a result considerable expense for retrofitting. Today. Even yesterday
You obviously believe you can “buy” your way out of the permanent destruction of life and ecosystems on this planet? Do you even understand how natural cycles work? Lets see your credentials and your research. And if you think humans are smart enough to control their own behavior, especially regarding greed and avarice, then you are just another part of the problem: http://science.sciencemag.o…
Thanks for illustrating why most folks tune the current generation of climate scientists out when they were willing to listen to earlier ones. And if you understood economics you would know it works best when greed, i.e. self-interest, is greatest.
Humanity will survive this climate change event as it survived past doomsday predictions, by moving to a higher level of technology that better isolates it from the variability of the natural environment. Surviving climate change is what humans have been doing for 70,000 years, and each major event has been marked will humans advancing to a higher level. This climate change event will be no different. Already the seeds of the leap are there with firms like Telsa, SpaceX, Blue Origins and the major advances in biotech.
One of my favorite columnists – John Gruber (daringfireball.net) likes to collect predictions of this sort. He calls them, when looking back from a few years hence, “claim chowder”.
A little like the chairman of RIM saying, on the subject of phones, that “PC guys aren’t just gonna walk in here” and steal the phone business.
No it won’t impact it because NASA is seen as one of the few civilian agencies that enhance the economy and do great things that make Americans proud.
Pluto is a classic example, not only was it a planet America discovered, but we also mapped it. Indeed America is the only nation that has sent spacecraft to every planet in the Solar System. No one else has even dared to try such a feat…
No, NASA won’t be cut, it will be unleashed to do even greater things.
OMB controls and dictates the civil service headcount at NASA. Civil service headcount was decreasing under previous administration. That will likely accelerate in concert with the overall agenda. Emotional feel about NASA likely won’t change that edict.
President Trump understands draining the swamp is not enough, you need to pull the “deep state” out by it roots or the swamp will just refill again in a future administration. I see these reductions until Congress starts shutting unneeded government agencies like Commerce, Education, Energy. The few beneficial functions will be transferred to other departments or allowed to stand alone. The rest will be abandoned.
That’s all dogma talking, Tom. And I’ve never heard any serious informed person say they believe that DT ‘understands’ anything about government. (e.g., his statement last week, about health care for our 320 million people: “Nobody knew it would be this complicated!” (!!))
Than you are listening to the wrong “informed” person. But then that is why the Democrats and media were so shocked he won.
LOL. Trump won because of all of the hate for Hillary Clinton. Just how many Bangazi investigations were there? Russian hacking and leaks didn’t help her much either. Vladimir Putin absolutely despises her.
I know a lot of Republicans who are still shaking their head at what Trump is doing, but they still say “anything is better than what Hillary would have been”. The hate runs very deep for Hillary.
Yes, the Democrats managed to pick the one candidate Donald Trump could beat. And now they are doubling down on their error with their “resistance” movement.
The person who feared Hillary most was Vladimir Putin. Trump, in contrast, admires Putin for his strong and direct leadership, and does not see anything devious in him. This is a guy (Putin, not Trump) whose political opponents regularly turn up dead from polonium overdoses.
That’s a non-value added response. His knowledge is clearly zero on any aspect of government- except for when he lobbied Congress for more tax breaks for real estate moguls and plowed them with money to get them. In terms of good and necessary government, and good policy on any subject? If I was a christian, I’d simply call him the anti-christ. But, I’m not, so…..
The expert fallacy. General Eisenhower lacked government experience, so did Teddy Roosevelt. Abraham Lincoln, etc. And President Obama didn’t exactly have a wealth of experience not even finishing out his first term as Senator.
The figures you mention weren’t government figures but they were/are involved and informed citizens. People who read widely, who have lived lives involved or knowledgable about government. People who, at the least, realized they would be responsible upon being elected to the Presidency to populate the West Wing.
45 doesn’t meet these qualifications. He lives in a very small bubble, one that would let him say without a trace of irony that “nobody knew how hard health care is”. Everyone knows, of course.
There’s a hard core cadre loose in the land convinced that if only certain simple principle were applied that by golly the whole swamp would be drained.
It’s trickle down writ large.
Obama reduced the EPA staffing level about 15% from 2011 to 2015 with about half of that reduction in 2012.
Again, why are further reductions necessary? Cutting red tape on oil and gas at the expense of climate for short term gains? “As the new CEO of the company, i cut the workforce just because the previous CEO did”. What’s your solution to cutting SLS from the budget with more private jobs?
“The bill excludes a White House proposal to spend $66 million on new or expanded EPA regulatory programs”
““These provisions will help prevent excessive bureaucratic red tape that unnecessarily burdens American businesses and industries and slows economic growth.”
“The legislation delivers big blows to critical public protections and the resources we need to make investments in infrastructure”
http://www.govexec.com/mana…
https://qz.com/175157/barac…
Sounds like they’re taking a hatchet to the budgets of most Federal agencies. This is how you cause stress in a workforce. Even for the personnel that are not fired, they know they’re not valued, which negatively impacts their productivity.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
This was the 2016 President’s budget. 17,518 https://uploads.disquscdn.c… , notionally showing going down to 17,200 or so in 2020 which was an OMB trend before the new administration.
18,159 was the number in 2008. 20,900 in 1996.
If you take 10 percent off of 17,518 you would have 15,767
Normal attrition is 2.5 to 3%. although that may be increasing of late.
“impacts their productivity”.
That’s a good one.
They should start with deleting any position vacant for >/=6 months in all government organizations.
That would be a start, especially as one of the first thing President Trump did was declare a hiring freeze.
https://www.washingtonpost….
Trump freezes hiring of many federal workers
After eliminating the positions that have sat vacant for at least 6 months, start taking a really hard look at every “deputy” position.
This just might be an opportunity to close or significantly draw down a NASA center. Redundancy in function would be key.
Which of the 10 NASA centers would likely see the ax if that was to happen? Something tells me JSC and MSFC would be shielded by their congresspersons, leaving the research centers to be the most likely targets to be drawn down.
MFSC – they agreed to it once before (93), but could not afford to move/cancel the existing contracts. A major draw down and transferring traditional responsibilities is more likely. Both could happen. HSV has grown well beyond MSFC in terms of Gov contract jobs.