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OPINION: Brand New Approach to Global Research & Policy Needed Now

Duane Nichols — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 14:33:37 +0000

Capturing bright ideas is a challenge!

A new model of American research is required today (opinion)

From an Article by Michael I. Kotlikoff, Emmanuel P. Giannelis and Glenn C. Altschuler, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, April 27, 2021

America’s dominance is currently at risk, and a new model is needed now more than ever.

More than a century after Thomas Newcomen, a miner, and John Calley, his plumber assistant, invented the first useful steam engine, the French scientist Sadi Carnot developed the theory of thermodynamics to explain it. And in 1903, the bicycle makers Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first powered flight, but the underlying mathematics of aerodynamic theory were explained by a university scientist — Ludwig Prandtl at Hannover University — almost two decades later.

These examples from The Code Breaker, by Walter Isaacson, convey an important lesson about the relationship between application and theory that is relevant for future technological innovation — and for research in universities in the United States.

Vannevar Bush, the director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development in the 1940s, articulated the inverse relationship between basic and applied research: universities play a critical role in developing the fundamental science that industry deploys to create products. Bush’s linear approach, which led to the establishment of the National Science Foundation, has powered innovation in the United States for decades. But America’s dominance of the innovation economy is currently at risk, and a new model is needed now more than ever.

Bipartisan concern about the erosion of America’s innovation dominance has led Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, and Senator Todd Young, a Republican from Indiana, to co-sponsor the Endless Frontier Act to invest $100 billion in research for emerging technologies. Echoing their apprehensions about “our national research and innovation enterprise,” Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, added his support for “the infrastructure that we need to support technology development.”

To more effectively harness the potential of research universities, whose basic research has enabled the development, among other products, of the iPhone, RNA vaccines and self-driving cars, we need a paradigm shift in higher education.

The new approach begins with an affirmation of the centrality of discovery, but it explicitly recognizes the role of the marketplace in driving innovation and the marked decrease in the timeline between concept and product. It supplements and complements basic research with investments and expertise in feasibility assessment, design and transitions to commercial markets. This model does not treat exploratory (basic) and translational (applied) research as silos but, as Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the National Science Foundation, has proposed, like double-stranded DNA, multidirectional and mutually reinforcing.

Dependent on a shift in culture, hiring and allocation of resources within the academy, as well as a new kind of partnership with government and industry, this model calls for unified discovery and commercialization engines, or “D&CEs.” D&C engines in the university are transdisciplinary teams integrating expertise in physical and biological sciences, social sciences, engineering, humanities, business, and entrepreneurship, and which work with government, corporate and venture capital partners to develop next-generation products. Such teams are essential if we are to address global crises, including climate, energy, food, water, health, inequality and poverty.

In practical terms, the shift should be accompanied by changes in pedagogy and curriculum that expose students to business strategies, intellectual property concepts, patent protocols, marketing and supply chains, and experiential learning in companies.

Catalyzing the development of diversified local economies consisting of start-ups, step-ups and established companies will also yield opportunities for students and drive economic development in university towns and beyond. To encourage companies to stay local, universities should work with government officials to identify tax and other incentives.

As universities encourage collaborations between private companies and innovative faculty members, they need to find new ways, where appropriate, to “share” faculty with companies. Such partnerships retain talented faculty in the academy while providing them with opportunities to fully develop and commercialize their ideas.

Universities must also develop investment funds through a combination of philanthropy and venture capital to support the development of new discoveries, provide incubation space for the early proof-of-concept and de-risking stages, and work to identify co-location space for established companies. Seed and gap funding are crucial for validating early-stage technologies, strengthening intellectual property and bringing technology to the inflection point for further development.

Finally, where appropriate, as it increasingly is in computing and information science and genetics, universities should adopt “translational” achievements as metrics for faculty tenure and promotion and include commercialization as part of Ph.D. theses. This new emphasis will not compromise indispensable institutional values, including independence of thought, dispassionate discovery and transparency. But adapting to the indivisible nature of discovery and application will be necessary to increase the volume and velocity of technology commercialization and start-up creation, nurture the next generation of innovators, catalyze economic development, and provide the wished-for returns on federally funded programs like the aptly named Endless Frontier.

>>> Biographical Sketch — Michael I. Kotlikoff is professor of molecular physiology and provost of Cornell University. Emmanuel P. Giannelis is Walter R. Read Professor of Engineering and vice president for research and innovation at the university, and Glenn C. Altschuler is Litwin Professor of American Studies there and the co-author, with Isaac Kramnick, of Cornell: A History, 1940-2015 (Cornell University Press).

WVU Studies Impacts of Climate Change on Appalachian Forests

Duane Nichols — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 11:04:07 +0000

WVU Students: Justin Mathias & Nanette Raczka

WVU Biology Students Investigate the Impact of Climate Change on Appalachian Forests

From an Article of WVU Newswire, September 20, 2017

MORGANTOWN, W. Va.—Biology students at West Virginia University are studying the impact of climate change on the forests of the Appalachian Mountains.

Justin Mathias and Nanette Raczka, Ph.D. students in the Department of Biology, have received Smithsonian Center for Tropical Forest Science-ForestGEO grants to support their research.

“These grants are prestigious and very competitive to get,” said Richard Thomas, chair of the Department of Biology. “It is very unusual that one university gets more than one in a year.”

Mathias is using his $13,000 grant to investigate changes in tree growth in the Appalachian Mountains over time and identify the drivers of those physiological changes. He will use a site in Front Royal, Virginia, that is part of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s ForestGEO network.

“Trees can’t get up and move if they become stressed by their environment. They just deal with it in some way,” Mathias said. “They are telling us a story; we just have to figure out what that story is.”

By studying stable isotopes and tree rings, Mathias will identify the elements that comprise the trees, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen or sulfur, to better understand their physiology.

“Each of those different elements tell you something different about how the tree is functioning. When a tree adds on wood, the carbon that it gets to form biomass comes from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Given that, at least in the forests around the Appalachian Mountains, you have a growth ring every single year added on,” Mathias said. “It’s a really neat way to retrospectively examine both the physiology and the environment the tree is in, in a given time period.”

Through her $7,000 grant, Raczka will incubate soil from the same ForestGEO network plot to study the complexities of leaf litter. Using a technique called Quantitative Stable Isotope Probing, she will examine how soil microbes process carbon from leaf litter.

“This is a new technique, but it’s really useful because we can measure the amount of leaf litter that’s incorporated into the microbial biomass. We can see what microbes, whether they are fungi or bacteria in the soil, incorporate what type of leaf litter,” Rackza said. “This is really cool because it’s a critical step in understanding how carbon is stored in the soil and how it’s utilized from the inputs of the tree and the leaf litter to what stays in the soil or what is respired.”

Raczka learned qSIP from her research experience in Ember Morrissey’s lab, an assistant professor of environmental microbiology in WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design. She is applying the technique to her research with Assistant Professor of Forest Ecology and Ecosystems Modeling Eddie Brzostek, which focuses on below-ground interactions and potential responses to global change.

“It’s a great partnership with her because I can learn this molecular technique that’s new to us to incorporate something that we do in our lab,” Raczka said. “The interaction with the graduate students and the professors here has been the best part of my WVU experience so far. To be able to learn new techniques in different labs is a really great opportunity, and I love the cross-disciplinary collaboration.”

-WVU-

Corporate Challenges to University Research: Transparency vs. Harassment

Duane Nichols — Sat, 02 May 2015 07:19:39 +0000

Corporate Challenges to University Research: Transparency vs. Harassment

Guest Editorial by Michael Halpern and Michael Mann, Science Journal, Volume 348, no. 6234, p. 479, May 1, 2015

Open records laws worldwide are critical to holding public institutions, including universities, accountable. Such laws protect against inappropriate influence on the scientific enterprise and promote public trust in the integrity of science and scientists. But the growing use of electronic communications by researchers makes these laws vulnerable to misuse. Conversations that used to occur in person and by other less-recordable means are now electronically written. Increasingly, activists across the political spectrum in several countries are requesting not only records of discussions about the strengths and weaknesses of work, but also preliminary paper drafts and private constructive criticisms from colleagues.

These requests can attack and intimidate academics, threatening their reputations, chilling their speech, disrupting their research, discouraging them from tackling contentious topics, and ultimately confusing the public.* So what level of disclosure is appropriate? How can public accountability be balanced with the privacy essential for scientific inquiry?

As AAAS President Rush Holt noted, “…excessively intrusive demands for personal or irrelevant information that go beyond appropriate levels of oversight” can negatively affect scientific discovery.† As recent examples, four U.S. universities received open records requests for years of correspondence between biologists and several private companies from activists who oppose genetically modified organisms.

In 2012, a mining company asked West Virginia University for draft documents and peer-review comments about occupational health research. The burden from these requests can be considerable even if documents are ultimately kept confidential. In 2009, British tobacco marketing researchers reported stress and weeks of lost time after a tobacco manufacturer requested not only correspondence but also primary data, questionnaires, and record descriptions. In 2015, University of Arizona climate researchers reported spending weeks culling through e-mails in response to a request for their correspondence documents.

Court battles are even more time- and resource-intensive. One of us (M.M.) was subjected to a request for all records created as a University of Virginia professor. The request followed congressional inquests, none of which unearthed any impropriety, but manufactured doubt in public understanding of climate change science.‡

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that excessive disclosure could put the university at a “competitive disadvantage,” and cause “harm to university-wide research efforts, damage to faculty recruitment and retention, undermining of faculty expectations of privacy and confidentiality, and impairment of free thought and expression.”§

Elsewhere, academics have not been as fortunate. The patchwork of state and national open records laws means that disclosure varies among universities, putting researchers at more-transparent institutions at a disadvantage and giving private university scientists (who are generally exempt from open records laws, even if they receive public funding) an edge over those at public institutions.

Universities should articulate how to respond to requests in accordance with the law and ensure that faculty know their rights and responsibilities. They should better understand requesters’ motivations—not to determine the appropriate response, but to help employees understand how access to correspondence could be misused. Legislatures should ensure that laws protect faculty correspondence when disclosure would compromise the conduct of science.

The scientific community should develop common disclosure standards for all researchers and creative mechanisms for enforcement. Implementation could become a requirement for university accreditation. The standards could also be adopted by government grant-making bodies, increasing the likelihood that state laws will be modernized, or by legislatures and executive agencies for academics who choose to provide testimony.

Ultimately, more uniform disclosure standards will create more public trust in science.

>> Michael Halpern is the manager of strategy and innovation at the Center for Science and Demoracy, Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, MA. Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology (with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute) at the Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA. <<

Comments on Recent Methane Leakage Study

S. Tom Bond — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 19:55:10 +0000

Prof. Anthony Ingraffea on Methane Leakage

Information on Large Shale Gas Leakages Coming Forward

Submitted by Heather Cantino, Athens County (OH) Fracking Action Network, March 2, 2014

Here is an important critique of the methane leakage research recently published in Science (February 14, 2014) and its reliance on the 100-year time frame for analysis of fracking’s and methane’s impacts on climate change (posted at www.acfan.org):

Cornell professor Anthony Ingraffea, responds to questions on new study published in the journal, Science, that reveals much larger methane emissions from oil and gas extraction than previously acknowledged:

Asked how this study can be reconciled with Dr. Ingraffea’s research on methane emissions from U.S. gas extraction and distribution, Dr. Ingraffea responded: “Its findings are largely consistent with what was published by Howarth et al. in 2011: oil/gas industry and the EPA have been underestimating national -scale methane emissions, by a large margin.”

Regarding the study’s conclusion that major methane leaks do not eclipse supposed benefits of switching from coal to natural gas for generating electricity, Dr. Ingraffea explained: “I disagree. Once again, there is a stubborn use of the 100-year impact of methane on global warming, a factor about 30 times that of CO2. All the current consensus climate science, summarized in IPCC AR 5, says that we only have about 20-30 years before we reach the warning zone of temperature rise that could lead to climate tipping points. And we can’t wait 20-30 years to START decreasing CO2eq emissions from fossil fuels. Over a 20-year period, the consensus impact factor for methane is about 80, and some peer-reviewed estimates say it could be over 100. There is NO scientific justification for the use of a 100-year period: that is a policy decision, perhaps based on faulty scientific understanding of the climate change situation in which we find ourselves, perhaps based on political wishful thinking. When one looks at the coal-methane tradeoff for electricity generation, the break-even leak rate over a 20-year period is less than 3%. And only about 1/3 of our methane usage is for electricity generation. Again, there is a stubborn refusal to admit that doing something non-fossil-foolish about the other two-thirds is even more important. This paper should have emphasized that the continued heating of our homes and businesses and our hot water with electricity generated from combusting methane cannot be scientifically justified from a climate change perspective.”

Asked how the study contributes to an understanding of methane leakage and what can be done about it, Dr. Ingraffea stated: “It once again indicates that industry and the EPA have been underestimating, when we all should have been out there measuring, BEFORE setting energy policy. However, I disagree with the assertion that a significant dent can be made in methane emissions quickly and cheaply by an industry that refuses to accept that their estimates have been wrong. Ratepayers will have to pay to fix leaking infrastructure, IF the industry is forced to make the fixes, and, given the brief 20-year period we have left to DECREASE CO2eq emissions, such fixes will not be in time. They just make the ‘bridge’ too long in time.”

See our post on the Athens County Fracking Action Network.

Also, see Professor Ingraffea’s presentation at University of Chicago, 1-23-14 here and more on his leaky well research from November 2013.

See also: www.acfan.org and www.ecowatch.com

Common Sense Commentary: The Fracking Industry Isn’t Honest About Government Support

Duane Nichols — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 11:20:08 +0000

: The Mom & Pop Farm

The Fracking Industry Isn’t Honest About Government Support

By Jim Hightower, as published in the on-line blog “other words” of the Institute for Policy Studies

As they drill for quick corporate profits deep inside our Earth, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and other titans of the natural gas hydraulic fracturing industry are harming people’s health, the environment, and local economies across the country. They’re also fracking something essential to a properly functioning democratic society: the truth.

They’re hailing themselves both as exemplars of free-market success and as the “virtuous ones” in our society — the producers and makers, as contrasted to the mass of Americans that the far-right corporatists are now openly calling “moochers” and “takers.”

Fracking companies and political front groups are selling the public a self-serving narrative. They claim the current natural gas boom is a victory over those wimpy and undeserving producers of wind and solar power who are dependent on government subsidies to get up and running.

The shale gas boom, wrote the oil-and-gas-funded American Enterprise Institute this year, has occurred “away from the greedy grasp of Washington.” AEI’s laissez-faire fabulists snidely added that “surely Washington would have done something to slow it down, tax it more, or stop it altogether” had the bureaucrats realized that the private enterprise was making such progress. Indeed, crowed an industry PR group, “The free market has worked its magic.”

Sheesh — their bull goes deeper than their fracking gas wells. For three decades, the federal government has pumped more than $100 million into research for the frackers, finding ways to make the technique work. And, since 1980, the big bad government they now badmouth has paid frackers more than $10 billion in a subsidy written specifically for them. These oil giants are liars, fracking away at their own integrity.

>>> Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow. He has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top. He is a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, spreading the message of progressive populism all across the American grassroots. <<<

Fracking Centers at Universities Cause More Problems Than They Solve

Duane Nichols — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 09:36:39 +0000

: Penn State University

Let’s look at the “centers on fracking” at SUNY-Buffalo, the University of Texas, Penn State University, Ohio State University, and West Virginia University. While the specific mission for each is somewhat unique, they are intended to (1) bring in money from outside the schools, (2) provide a clearinghouse for accurate information, and (3) bring praise on their schools. Doing university research on the full drilling & fracking process is not really practical but some limited aspects could be studied. The implication in each case is that fracking is good, so let’s spread the good word; that maybe it could be done better, so will someone tell us how. We can get money for this!

State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo faculty are seeking more information on industry ties to an institute created to study fracking for natural gas. A group of 83 professors and staff have requested documents on the founding and funding of the school’s Shale Resources and Society Institute, according to an August 23 “open letter” to the university administration.

The institute released a report in May that didn’t acknowledge “long-term” ties by its authors to the gas industry while it seeks more than $1 million in corporate funding.

“A number of questions have been raised about whether the institute was really intended to provide independent academic inquiry,” according to the faculty members’ letter. “Only complete transparency can dispel the shadow now cast over UB.”

In April, the newly formed Shale Resources and Society Institute issued a report that found drillers in Pennsylvania had reduced by half the rate of blowouts, spills and water contamination since 2008. Potential environmental problems could be “entirely avoided or mitigated” under New York’s proposed rules, according to the shale institute’s report. The Public Accountability Initiative, a Buffalo nonprofit that focuses on corruption in business and government, said the report contained errors and didn’t acknowledge “extensive ties” by its authors to the gas industry.

Last month, the University of Texas at Austin announced it would convene a panel of independent experts to review its February study on gas fracking after reports that the professor who led the study is on the board of a gas drilling company.

Charles Groat, associate director of the university’s Energy Institute and former Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, proposed the study, selected the researchers, edited its summary and presented it to the American Association for the Advancement of Science on February 16th.

Groat also sits on the board of Plains Exploration & Production Co., a relationship he didn’t disclose in the report or to his boss. Company filings show that in 2011 he received more than $400,000 in compensation from the Houston-based company, which has fracking operations in Texas.

The university announced August 14 that Norman Augustine, former chief executive officer of defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., will lead the review panel. Augustine is also a former board member at the oil and gas producer ConocoPhillips.

Kevin Connor, president of the Public Accountability Initiative, said Augustine’s ties to the oil industry raise questions about the panel’s independence. Augustine over almost 20 years received “millions of dollars” in stock and compensation from ConocoPhillips, according to Connor. “It is extremely troubling that the university chose an energy industry insider to chair the panel.”

Pennsylvania State University now requires faculty research to be submitted to university officials before it is published, according to Michael Arthur, co-director of the school’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research (MCOR). A 2009 report on the economic impact of gas drilling in Pennsylvania’s portion of the Marcellus shale was released without disclosing industry funding.

The MCOR is Penn State’s education and research initiative on shale gas recovery and use. MCOR is internally funded by the College of Agricultural Sciences, the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment and Penn State Outreach, according to their web-site. Obviously, this doesn’t reveal the root source of the funding.

Jeff Daniels is Co-director for The Ohio State University Subsurface Energy Resource Center (SERC). SERC was opened in September 2011, to cover all aspects of the industry – geologic, economic, public health, environmental, outreach and education in communities impacted, policy making. But, as a “resource center”, the intention apparently is to provide accurate information to the public, with some 70 affiliated faculty participants. Professor Daniels is a geophysicist doing research on carbon dioxide sequestration.

On February 24^th, a member of the West Virginia University Board of Governors expressed concerns about a plan for a Marcellus shale center at WVU. Charles Vest said that he wanted assurances that conflicts of interest would be avoided in such a center, as proposed by the WV Legislature in Senate Bill 522. Vest was formerly president of M.I.T. and now President of the National Academy of Engineering in Washington, DC.

The Senate Bill 522 would create the WVU Shale Research, Education, Policy and Economic Development Center. It had already cleared the House and Senate education committees and was headed to the finance committees. WVU President James Clements agreed, saying that while he’s proud of the work scientists do and eager to see research grow, firewalls must be created and conflicts avoided.

On July 25^th, the Morgantown Dominion Post reported that the WV Legislature held discussions on the proposed shale center bill. Sen. Ronald Miller, D-Greenbrier: “Are we going to focus on fixing every center in West Virginia or just this one?” Bill Hutchens, WVU’s general counsel said a dream project for the research center was put on hold by the recent dive in natural gas prices — but he’s working to get it going again. WVU wants to work with an operator to drill a horizontal well on WVU land. It would be a working well, generating money for the operator. But it would also be a research well, with every bit of data from the first turn of dirt through drilling and production and on being shared to advance knowledge in the field.

[A dream project indeed. Maybe a Marcellus well could be put on the University farm, within elbow reach for the health professionals of the WVU Medical Center and the Monongahela General Hospital. I understand that some of the drilling/fracking companies will replace the roads after they are torn up. DGN]

Research Initiatives on Unconventional Natural Gas from Shale

Duane Nichols — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:51:53 +0000

: Upshur County Drill Site

Federal Cooperation Among DOE, EPA, and Interior

Recently, three federal agencies announced a formal partnership to coordinate and align all research associated with development of our nation’s abundant unconventional natural gas and oil resources. The partnership exemplifies the cross-government coordination required under President Obama’s Executive Order released earlier, which created a new Inter- agency Working Group to Support Safe and Responsible Development of Unconventional Domestic Natural Gas Resources.

This new partnership will help co- ordinate current and future research and scientific studies undertaken by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of the Interior – better positioning the Obama administration to ensure that continued expansion of natural gas and oil production happens safely and responsibly as part of an all-of-the-above approach to American energy in which science plays a guiding and critical role.

For more information about the partnership and to view the Memorandum of Agreement outlining this coordination, visit the following Internet web-site here.

Proposed Shale Development Research Center at WVU

Legislators working on a bill to approve WVU’s Shale Research Center wrestled Tuesday morning with a question posed by Sen. Ronald Miller, D-Greenbrier: “Are we going to focus on fixing every center in West Virginia or just this one?”

Bill Hutchens, WVU’s general counsel and vice president for corporate and legal affairs, and Bruce Walker, HEPC general counsel, explained the issues to a joint Finance subcommittee Tuesday? Hutchens said a dream project for the research center was put on hold by the recent dive in natural gas prices — but he’s working to get it going again.

WVU wants to work with an operator to drill a horizontal well on WVU land. It would be a working well, generating money for the operator. But it would also be a research well, with every bit of data from the first turn of dirt through drilling and production and on being shared to advance knowledge in the field.

When gas prices fell, operators cut back their drilling plans. “Now I’m looking for money to fund the work, from industry and others,” Hutchens said, as reported in the Morgantown Dominion Post newspaper.

WVU Dean Says We Need Study of Public Health Impacts of Fracking

Dee Fulton — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 04:00:42 +0000

Dr. Alan Ducatman

The Intelligencer/Wheeling News Register: Dr. Alan Ducatman believes that there is a need for research focusing on identifying public health threats related to hydraulic fracking. Ducatman, Chair of the WVU School of Community Medicine and interim Dean of the planned WVU School of Public Health, spoke at the program “Marcellus Shale Drilling: A Health Perspective” on Tuesday. The program was hosted by the Ohio County Medical Society, OVMC and the Wheeling Area Chamber of Commerce. Other speakers included Dr. William Mercer, Wheeling-Ohio County health officer; Lou Vargo, Wheeling-Ohio County Emergency Management Agency director; and lawyers Christopher Riley and Denise Pentino from the Dinsmore and Shohl firm. The event was moderated by Robin Capehart, West Liberty University president.

“The industry should get out in front of these issues,” Ducatman said, referring to initiating health studies. He stated that water and air should be tested before, during, and after fracking.

West Virginia finds itself at or near the bottom of most lists which rank the health of the citizenry of the states by factors such as rate of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and drug abuse. Thus it is exciting that plans for a WVU School of Public Health were announced in January 2011. Perhaps a portion of drilling fees could be set aside to fund the costs of exploring the public health impacts of fracking and thereby also supporting educational jobs in the new School of Public Health. Who will fund the needed studies?

It would be wise to get ahead of the issues. It is only in the last few years that the ugly facts about the toll of coal on the state and the health of its citizens have emerged through studies. A May 2011 WVU study documented more health problems in residents near Mountaintop removal sites. In February 2011, I reviewed studies that documented how coal industry costs were shifted to the public in this blog post. Let’s not make the same mistakes with this extractive industry and allow the industry to “externalize” its costs onto the public.