Deep Sea, Deep Space Highlighted at White House Ceremony
The President and First Lady were among the guests gathered in the East Room of the White House last week for the latest Millennium Lecture, this one focusing on the exploration of deep space and the deep ocean. Appearing before them was Dr. Marcia McNutt, who will become president of the American Geophysical Union on July 1, and Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson, a member of the Council of the American Astronomical Union. The event provided an opportunity for the two scientists to offer their views on the oceans and space, and for President Clinton to discuss global warming and research funding.
McNutt stressed the importance of exploring the deep ocean, highlighting technologies that can overcome crushing pressures and opaque conditions. She discussed, at some length, global warming and its effects on fisheries and plant production. McNutt described how one degree of ocean warming corresponds with a 25% decline in the rate of new plant growth in Monterey Bay. “It’s scary,” she said, “when you recall that climate models currently are predicting that the globe will warm by several degrees over the next century in response to the build-up of greenhouse gases.”
In his presentation, Tyson described discoveries made possible through robotics and space-based observatories. “Robots are the most affordable way to explore the solar system in detail,” Tyson said, “But there are tradeoffs, of course. While nobody has ever mourned the loss of a robot, I don’t remember anyone ever giving a ticker-tape parade to one, either.” Tyson concluded by describing Mars and Venus as “endpoints of climactic evolution gone awry,” stating, “By combining cosmic discovery with the Earth sciences, our insights may offer us more than just fulfilment of our idle curiosities. Our insights may enable us to save ourselves, and to perhaps get to know our planet for the very first time.”
President Clinton responded by citing a global climate change report that had just been released that morning (see FYI #69), calling on Congress to stop blocking the administration’s efforts to combat greenhouse gas reductions. “This is about science, this is about evidence, this is about things that are bigger than all of us, and very much about our obligation to these children here to give them a future on this planet,” he said. Clinton then announced a new ocean research program.
A series of questions from adults and students in the audience and internet viewers followed. In answer to a question about manned exploration of Mars, Clinton responded that if NASA Administrator Dan Goldin recommended such a program, “then I would strongly support it, because I think the United States would make a terrible mistake to weaken either its space exploration or its undersea exploration. I think we should accelerate it; I think we should invest more money in it; I think we should keep pushing the frontiers of knowledge.”
Clinton added, “We just went through a very wrenching period where NASA had to basically do more with less, we were trying to get rid of this terrible deficit. Now we’ve got a surplus, we’re paying down our national debt, we’re investing in our future. And I think a big part of that investment ought to be the broadest possible commitment to science and technology, including vigorous, vigorous exploration of outer space and the depths of the ocean. That’s what I believe, and I hope that that will be a commitment the American people will extract from their candidates in this election season and in every one in the foreseeable future, because it’s very, very important.”
McNutt responded to a question about federal funding for research by saying that “with the present level of our budget, we have a hard time sustaining much in the way of either a robotic program or a manned program, much less trying to do both simultaneously.” She called for funding to be at least comparable to the space program within the decade. Clinton replied by describing his administration’s attempts to bring more balance to science funding, saying, “We have tried very hard to increase the entire budget for science and technology, and especially the research budgets. And basically, what happens is, we get in this debate with Congress; they are more than happy to invest more money in the National Institutes of Health, and that’s good.”
The president continued, “It’s a terrible mistake to think that the only kind of scientific research we need to be healthy on this planet is in biomedical research. It’s very important. But to have just that, and to neglect what we should be doing in space; what we should be doing in the oceans; what we should be doing with nanotechnology; what we should be doing with a whole range of other technology-related issues, all of which in the end have to be developed if we’re going to know as much as we can about how to live as long and well as we’d like to on this Earth. It’s a huge debate. So if any of you can make any contribution to righting that balance, I for one would be very grateful. It’s a major, major intellectual challenge that we face in the congressional debate. Again, I say this should not be a partisan issue. This is a question of what is the right way to do the most for our people in the new century.”
