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What's Getting Cut From Science Part of the Federal Budget
Kristina at Science News writes "As part of the announcement of its proposed fiscal year 2010 budget, the Obama administration released a summary (called 'Terminations, Reductions, and Savings: Budget of the US Government, Fiscal Year 2010') that includes which science-related programs are getting cut. Two big programs are the nuclear waste storage project at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and a second prototype airborne laser missile-defense weapon." Update: 05/07 23:03 GMT by T : On the other hand, reader Dusty writes, "The NASA budget for 2010 has been announced, up
5% on 2009. Human space flight plans to be reviewed."
Every gun, bomber, particle weapon made, means less money for those who need to go to college to make better, smarter bombs.
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It's not $17 billion in cuts, it's $17 billion in proposed cuts, 99% of which won't happen. For comparison, last year George W Bush proposed 434 billion in cuts, none of which happened.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It doesn't much matter anyhow. Nuclear waste becomes no more toxic than a great many other industrial process after being stored for only 5 years or so. Leave it at the reactor site for 5 years, then move it (which is the actual plan in many places).
We're only storing old fuel because it's valuable, not because it's unusually dangerous. WHy should we care about "safe for 10000 years" storage? It's complete and utter nonsense.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The first ABL laser prototype worked out prety well, actually. The whole point was to bypass countermeasures by hitting the missile while it was still boosting, which is an unmistakable signature. It's somewhat questionable as an overall strategic defense, since you'd need the have a plane in the air somewhat close to the launch site, but for theater defense it would work great.
We don't seem to need to defend against the Russians right now, but a crazy dictator who managed to cobble together 1 working nuke warhead and 1 working long-range missile? That sounds like a likely scenario, and the sot of thing where said mad dictator would give us plaenty of warning time to get our defenses airborn near his country.
Missile defenses don't have to be viable vs a Russian saturation attack with modern countermeasures to be useful this century. Providing solid protection against a low-tech threat with just a few misiles is entirely worthwhile (especially if you live in the major US city closest to N Korea!).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The whole point of green is creating an Age of Less.
NO, the whole point of green is creating the Age of Sustainability, and anyone who wants less isn't green.
It's true that neo-puritans have glommed on to the environmental movement since the early '70's to the extent that they have dominated it until recently, but there are some actual green voices out there, clamouring to be heard amidst the neo-puritan lies.
The thing that should be stunningly obvious to everyone is: sacrifice is unsustainable. It requires more self-discipline than any large group of humans has ever managed, and in the absence of self-discipline it requires unsustainable (to say nothing of unethical) enforcement measures.
The neo-puritans are in particular trouble right now because green tech has reached industrial viability--wind farms, solar farms, biodiesel, etc. are all becoming viable industries, and in opposing them neo-puritans necessarily reveal that they don't love the environment, they hate industry. While genuine greens are out there making the world a better place, and making money on the way.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.