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US Funding Five Game-Changing Energy Projects
coondoggie writes "Taking aim at developing some progressive energy technologies the US Department of Energy said it will write a $130 million check to develop five areas, including plants engineered to replace oil, thermal power storage, rare earth alternatives and what it calls the energy equivalent of an Internet router."
Will Nikola Tesla please stand up? Oh wait, he's dead. Forget it.
Unlike Brazil, once prices went back down the US decided to drop all the programs from the 70s because. Hell, fuel was cheap! People have already forgotten 2008 and went out buying SUVs once again. Now they're complaining once again.
I love this R&D. We have a solid science base (in spite of the gutting of during the 80s and through the 00's). We have loads of inventions and developments. The problem is that we simply allow other nations esp China to simply take it. That has to stop. China has been subsidizing companies to go there, which is total bs. This R&D needs to require that any company picking it up remain in the USA with the tech. Simple as that. All of Asia does. All of EU does it. Only US and UK do not do this. We need to rebuild our own economy.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Oh boy, $130million to create new energy solutions. That about what the computer systems in an SR-71 Blackbird costs. Guess the DoD will have to go without until next year's budget. Seriously though this is pathetic. $130million isn't shit. It's a laughable sum for any kind of major research project, let alone what is arguably the most important human challenge being faced today. Even $130bn would be too little spent in my opinion.
All those previous game-changing energy projects have worked out so well over the years...
Do you think they would finance NASA if we could mine the top layers of the Moon for He3?
Way to waste our money Obamessiah
Isn't enough with cramming your electric car(government motors volt) down our throats
I'm glad to see gov't prioritizing this so highly.
Hi,
Imagine if we had an extra12 Trillion to spend on green energy. We could put $10,000 solar panels on 100M houses - almost every freaking house in the US. I am not saying it is a wise decision. Just saying that is the power of 1 Trillion dollars. That is also about HALF what we will pay in interest on our debt over the next six years.
Just a friendly reminder that the U.S. is getting itself closer and closer to insolvency. Between a grossly over-funding military, entitlements out the ass and a belief that the rich should get more and more tax cuts, we are getting closer to not being able to pay our bills.
Depending on how you look at the budget, we spend 780B to 900B on defense related funding (depends on whether veteran benefits are military or entitlement)
Social Security is 750B
Income Security is 570B
Medicare is 500B
Health is 400B
Interest is 250B
There is about 600B in miscellaneous other areas. And we will run up a tab of $1.6Trillion in the process. Grand total of around 16Trillion in debt.
I am all for funding science. This is an area that has an investment effect in the economy. The military has almost no payback relative to the investment. Other areas listed about don't either.
Yet with the exception of the military you won't see any of the above numbers drop (and military might not either). Interest paid out is expected to double by 2015. So where does science funding end up? It doesn't take a rocket scientist (I see what I did there) to figure it out. Other countries will be able to fund scientists and I surely expect the brain drain effect to take place. The US will lose (continue to lose?) its best and brightest to countries who value science.
If you are a Democrat, you are an idiot. Sorry. This is the truth. If you are a Republican (as I was once a Republican) you are even dumber. The Republicans brag about cutting 40B out of the budget when we are running $1,600B deficits. Democrats cry that we just need to raise income tax on the rich (or return to where they were a few years ago) and things will be hunky-dory. Republicans swear that if we increase taxes, the US will go to hell.
The reality is we need to cut back spending. If we increase taxes, it will cover about 1/3 of our deficit... but we need to return income taxes to pre-Bush levels. We need to seriously evaluate how much we want to spend on social programs and then we need to fund our future. And it should not be in the form of an IOU to China.
If you want to see science funded, we need to get serious about balancing our budget.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Since we have no shortage of energy but we have a desperate shortage of funds in the Treasury, these types of projects should not be funded. Let a less bankrupt country fund them.
These types of grants tend to be direct monetary payback for political support and campaign donations anyway.
We have already discovered this technology its called the bus bar (big copper / alloy strips we feed power through), tap off as many connections as you want. If you want a network switch then its a bit more complicated but basically a substation. Unless they want to share power all over the world in which case a world wide electricity gird is a lot more important.
Rocket Surgeon.
I thought "rare earth" metals were not so rare, but China is pretty much the only place mining them at scale. Instead of finding alternatives, why not just start mining? Wasn't there some in Canada, eh?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Really? As opposed to regressive new technologies?
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
...nothing that really challenges our dependence on petroleum will happen. I really like to believe that we are forward thinking, and would through whatever resources were needed to make sure that our energy needs were met, but then I wake up and remember that the almighty $$$ controls everything that happens. If someone managed to genetically engineer a gasgrass, you can bet it will never show up until the last barrel of oil is pumped out of the ground. Even then, know that the oil companies will have a patent on it by the time you can buy it.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
We played that alternative renewable energy game 30 years ago. Quietly. Saved an extra +$100k to do better things than to heat or cool our house, like paying tuition, paying off our mortgage early and finding good naturist beaches.
Conservation and passive solar can replace more than 50% of the energy you--not ME--waste. Easy. High Energy Advanced Thermal Storage (HEATS) -- BTDT ca. 1980. We even have almost free air conditioning from long underground pipes.
Research? Make a list of what's already been done and change the building codes to require more insulation, air-to-air heat exchangers, solar hot water, PV panels, credits for being good [with energy]. This is OLD tech. We got our $3300 tax credit and turned it into a +3000% return. Pretty sweet!
Darn, was expecting Adiabatic CAES :/
The HEATS description is so vague
You can't fool us, you're not really a Republican, they're not that honest.
Seriously though this is pathetic. $130million isn't shit It's a laughable sum for any kind of major research project ...
But it's a tidy sum for a crony of the government administrator who decides who gets it.
And it's also a major boon to the crony who's actually trying to go to market - in competition with some non-crony who had to raise his capital himself. $130 million in free money is a big competitive advantage.
Let's bring out the Corps of Engineers' bulldozers and tilt the playing field - like about 45 degrees. ; THEN let the market decide. Yeah, right.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
All is well, as long as the result of the research belongs to public domain. It still may be patentable, but the patent should be compulsorily licensable royalty free to the public.
I once had a signature.
So the computers don't cost anything. Perhaps you are confusing present day with 20 years ago?
Planes get old, but uninformed Internet chatter is evergreen.
just end the oil subsidies and use that for these projects. It would actually be a significant amount instead of this pittance.
Holy cow, that's hilarious!Here let me try one.
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Swarovski Crystals -- sure they cost more, but by golly they're worth it!"
I believe the largest sources found of the rare Earth minerals we needed were discovered in..... Wait for it...... AFGHANISTAN!
A potentially truly game-changing technology is Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor). This was a technology developed during the Cold War that uses thorium to breed uranium for nuclear fission in order to generate electricity. It has most of the advantages and almost none of the disadvantages of traditional nuclear power generation. The technology has been tested and a reactor was build and run at Oakridge National Labs for a number of years. Unfortunately it wasn't developed initially due to the emphasis on building weapons - the thorium fuel cycle isn't ideal for nuclear weapons - and the technology faded into obscurity. Recently, however, a group of engineers, scientists, and concerned individuals has taken a serious interest in this technology and is advocating restarting research on LFTR with the goal of developing a commercially viable reactor. You can find more information at http://energyfromthorium.com/.
When fuel is cheap, and likely to stay that way, why invest a bunch of money developing more expensive energy sources that won't pay off for decades?
When existing fuels are about to get expensive it may make sense to develop these pricey alternatives - IF the fuels will STAY expensive once they're developed.
Of course no investor in his right mind will invest in the research if the government is going to hand out millions of bucks to their cronies so said cronies can take over the new market.
Such winner-picking handouts are what we've been seeing for a couple decades now in the renewable energy industries. This handout-to-cronies is just the latest example.
Want cheap energy alternatives to burning fossil fuels? Figure out how to make the government STOP handouts such as this, STOP putting regulatory barriers in the way of deployment, and make this hands-off behavior BELIEVABLE and DEPENDABLE for the decade or so it will take to devvelop, deploy, and profit from an oil replacement.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If you want to be taken seriously never use the word 'game changing;' in a article, even if you are talking about a video game.. Especially if you are taking about a video game
So we could open mines there that could produce enough money to rebuild the entire country, pay for the war, and provide millions of low skilled Afghanistan workers jobs. Well we definitely won't do that, it just makes far too much sense.
I thought "rare earth" metals were not so rare, but China is pretty much the only place mining them at scale. Instead of finding alternatives, why not just start mining?
China is the main source right now because they were selling it cheap. Now they're hanging on to it for their own industries and the price is rising. So it makes sense to reopen existing mines.
Wasn't there some in Canada, eh?
There's a bunch just West of Ely NV. And they're starting up a mining operation right now. Nice boost to the town's economy. (My wife and I noticed this when passing through there last fall.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yeah there you go, lets improve the quality of life in Afghanistan by putting them to work in the mines...
Well then let them not work in the mines, I saw it as something they would wanna do. We could always let Americans work in the mines, they are plenty willing, and they live in the USA. There would still be plenty of profits left over to help them out.
your recent posts getting modded down... one I see has a _hint_ of troll (but at the same time, not really), but this one? mods lose humor?
I think my high expectations must be getting the better of me again... because to me "game changing" would be orbital solar, non-deficit fusion, superconducting motors... or a Dyson Sphere.
So, they threw pocket change at 5 separate programs? While it's nice that they're at least putting some money in to it, it really isn't a whole lot. Especially when you consider it's 5 separate projects.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
If we wanna get off foreign oil dependence, then let us extract our own natural resources.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
It looks like the Mountain Pass mine in California - the largest, richest single-site deposit of rare earth minerals will be back online the end of this year. Problem is that there's considerable expertise needed to process the ores and, thanks to a combination of market forces and stupid shortsightedness, most of that expertise is in China. So it'll be a couple years before the mine is fully independent, once the ore-processing facility is completed and they get the hang of efficient extraction
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I'm sorry, but are we supposed to be impressed by the 130 million on ENERGY? This is almost 1/10th the cost of a stealth bomber.
Energy is one of our biggest problems in this country and is one of the scariest things we have to look forward to in the future. 130 million will not solve any problems or come up with any new solutions and will barely line the pockets of which ever friends of friends were given government contacts that will receive this money. We need to start coming up with massive amounts of money to not only put into R & D but as basically bribery to the current oil industries (cars/aircrafts) to really pull out heads our of our asses and move on from our current primitive situation.
If our country really wanted to try solving the worlds energy problem we would be spending 130 BILLION. That is a number that will solve problems.
TruePunk | Games
Why don't we just fund the development of the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor?
energyfromthorium.com
1. Article talks about Project X, the "game changing" new idea
2. Nothing is ever heard about it again
3. Random post to tech site 5 years later asks "whatever happened to Project X"
If you don't give them the jobs they go home with the tech. To an extent US universities are teaching useless MBAs in shouting to the locals and selling engineering and science degrees to people from overseas who would really like to stay but immigration rules mean they can't. They go home and take the technology with them - and if they are lucky they get a short term visa to come back, work on a bit of US technology and then get sent home with that when it's cheaper to hire someone more junior.
Then there's the situation where a very large portion of US technological development over the last half century was due to people coming from all over the world to where they could get the funding for their startup. Those days are gone due to immigration and financial reasons. Now instead of the best ideas available in the world you're stuck with whoever made it through a declining education system and didn't move off into real estate, law, finance and the many other more certain ways to make money in the USA other than technology.
We didn't allow China to take it. We threw it away and they picked it up.
Our solid science base is getting old so we need to take steps while it is still there. For one thing a big chunk of NASA is probably going to get laid off now the shuttles are gone and if there is nothing else the best will go to China to get a paycheck. It may well end up like a slower version of the science and technology exodus out of the USSR when it fell apart.
As the above commenters said: There are non-chinese deposits, but they don't have mines yet. The reason for this is just economics - China was always a far cheaper source, due to a combination of it's ready supply of expendable workers and very lax environmental laws. It's a very dirty process, extracting rare earth metals, and the more toxic byproducts you can dump in the nearest river the less you have to spend money to clean.
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$1.3 trillion for a personal vendetta in Iraq/Afghanistan
$1 trillion to fix the economy after it was wrecked for personal gain
$0.000125 trillion for something which could help fix the planet and ensure long-term financial stability by fixing the price of energy.
No sig today...
While mining might be a dangerous job, it is usually well paid and sure beats goat herding, doesn't it? The main thing would be to assure that the profits stay in the country, and that I seriously doubt...
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Yep. And the usual suspects whine about the 0.000125, while being perfectly fine with the rest. Tells you all you need to know about the state of society, doesn't it?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I lol'd.
...carbon capture that's supposed to allow us to continue burning fossil fuels.
Where'd you get the 1 trillion figure from?
Seems to be way more than that: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=trillion+federal+reserve
Might be another reason why prices are going up world wide (lots of stuff is bought and sold in USD).
I doubt there was actually that many US dollars in the world before they suddenly "loaned" those trillions from "thin air"/taxpayers/"future generations".
One project is breeding plants for biofuels. There are a few questions about that.
Why fuels? Why not things that run without fuel: horses, bicycles, sailboats, elephants, ... Or things that save vast amounts of fuel, like building good enough public transit that cars become less common?
However, if they want a plant that produces an approximate replacement for gasoline, take a look at rubber trees. Decades back, I talked to an organic chemist who had worked on synthetic rubber, made from petroleum. He said all the science needed to go the other way and produce gas from latex was known; all the problems were engineering or economic.
"$1.3 trillion for a personal vendetta in Iraq/Afghanistan"
G I'm tired of you lefty/commie/pinko/fags whining about this.
Sure, we should have just sat back and done nothing about being attacked, having 2 buildings knocked down, and losing approx 3K citizens and others to a direct attack on our country. Can't think of a better way to encourage another one. Oh, BTW, "doing nothing" == "not kicking someone's ass." The bad guys _have_ to get their asses kicked or they will do it again, and again, and again...
My only hope is that all you whiners are at ground zero for the next attack that you are responsible for if we ever do simply discontinue defending ourselves...
Then there's the situation where a very large portion of US technological development over the last half century was due to people coming from all over the world to where they could get the funding for their startup. Those days are gone due to immigration and financial reasons
Yup, when I was growing up people were complaining about the brain drain - intelligent people were lured to America with the promise of huge amounts of funding for their research. Now? Getting a visa to work in a US university is relatively easy (but still not guaranteed), but getting one to work in a private US research institution is really hard. On the flip side, every few months I get emails from Chinese universities asking if I'd be interested in a job, with a guaranteed visa and funding to create a research group larger than the university department that awarded my PhD.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
a) What did all those lies about WMDs have to do with 'defence'? How many Taliban terrorist cells were based in Iraq?
b) How often has a war against an ideal ever resulted in victory? Martyrs usually make ideals stronger. Are there more or less Taliban now than in 2001?
Questions, questions...
Clue: We're not saying you should do nothing. We're saying you're doing it very wrong.
No sig today...
Radical? I'll tell ya radical. On roads and highways supported by federal funds, no cars under 40mpg with in 5yrs. No cars under 50mpg within 10yrs. No cars under 60mpg within 15yrs. Or better yet, an even more aggressive time table. No long haul trucks. Get back to rail. Sure it takes longer, but saves on fuel. Local delivery trucks have an aggressive mpg time table too since they need to be licensed.
Are there more or less Taliban now than in 2001?
Neither. There are FEWER Taliban now than there were 10 years ago though, and the ones that are around don't have the capability to hide terrorist masterminds, which is what our main beef with them was.
Clue: We're not saying you should do nothing. We're saying you're doing it very wrong.
What should we have done, then?
This is the EXACT kind of R&D that used to put America in the TOP SLOT. The reason is that it is taking on currently estalished companies that do not want to change. Routing power and storing energy will enable AE, but it will also make today's power companies VERY EFFICIENT. Right now, they have baseload and demand generators. The demand Generators are inefficient to run. With cheap storage, then we can pick up energy during the night and meet demand during the day. Heck, last year, we wasted something like 4-10 GW of power. WHy? Because we had to feather wind generators because other fossil fuel generators were on-line. If we have storage AND ROUTING, then we can separate energy production from delivering electricity, which would allow us to have SMALL monopolies. That means true free markets.
But you think that gov. has no place? Aviation? Trains? Roads? Water? Telecommunications? Rockets? POWER COMPANIES? All of these were developed by gov. directly and indirectly. The research on Aviation, rockets, and telco came dominatly from gov. grants.
This kind of R*D is good. It just needs to stay here, or at least in nations that have true free economic competition. Allowing another nation to manipulate their money and the situation while they are bound by treaty not to, is BS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"a) What did all those lies about WMDs have to do with 'defence'? How many Taliban terrorist cells were based in Iraq?"
There were no lies, and the defense started in 1991 when the tyrant in question began his quest to corner the middle east market in oil. Had we not acted, he would have invaded Saudi Arabia, etc. and after that, could have had us paying $7 a gallon. The 2003 action was just a continuation of the 1991 action. The fatal flaw was not in 2003, but in 1991 when we didn't finish the job.
BTW, $7 a gallon isn't just an incomvenience, it would wreck us. Just 'cuz the Euros can pay it, and drive around their geographically compact countries that are festooned with alternatives in public transporation doesn't mean we can do it in a country 3000 miles "wide" and about 2000 miles "high" that doesn't have much more than freight rail except for some extremely limited passenger rail that is totally inadequate to service the population in place of even air travel. When the city of Chicago was virtually shut down with snow last winter, I checked the AmTrak train schedules on Sunday and they were sold out thru Friday. We just don't have that sort of service, and won't, because it won't make a buck and would be far too expensive to lay new, non-freight rail to actually make fast trains work. And, people won't ride the slow trains except in dire situations.
Anyway, every major intelligence agency on the planet thought that this kook had WMD, and that he would be at least capable and desrious of having it used in the USA, and would do so if he found the right terrorists delivery methods. Taking him out was unavoidable if we didn't want to live day-to-day under a threat of attack that could kill 100's of thousands, not simply 3K people and a couple buildings.
"b) How often has a war against an ideal ever resulted in victory? Martyrs usually make ideals stronger. Are there more or less Taliban now than in 2001?"
We don't have to be victorious, we just have to remove their capability to attack us.
"Clue: We're not saying you should do nothing. We're saying you're doing it very wrong."
Yes, you are, you are sayng we have to do it without kicking their asses. We absolutely, positively have to kick their asses, or they will simply do it again, and again, over and over until we physically stop them.
I'm sure you want something you consider innocuous, like the Iraqi economic sanctions that killed 100,000 Iraqi children per year it was in effect from basic things like not being able to buy chlorine on the open market, and therefore rendering the Iraqis unable to purify their water so their kids got sick and died, but of course your sort would have kittens if a cluster bomb killed 3 kids while knocking down a couple dozen terrorists. I know where your coming from, and it is not enlightmenment, it is all emotion and gut reaction, and it is wrong.
the ones that are around don't have the capability to hide terrorist masterminds...
Really? I wasn't aware that we had found Osama Bin Laden recently.
Bush totally mis-characterized Al-Qaeda and the Taliban supporters. Instead of looking at 9/11 as an attack and having the military handle the response, it should have been characterized as a crime and the FBI should have taken the lead. If the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden, then the FBI asks the military nicely to get this guy for them and we invade Afghanistan. FBI agents would have traveled with the military to handle prisoners and ensure that we brought those murderous bastards to justice in American Courts.
Instead, we glamorize and elevate what those murderous thugs did and grant them a status as prisoners of war that they were never really entitled to. They were criminals, plain and simple, that murdered thousands of innocent lives. They should be treated as such and no more. We invented a war, when we should have been pursuing criminal cases instead.
As for Iraq, well, that was personal for the Bushes, but invading a country to get your father's portrait off the floor of a hotel is not a good reason for millions to die.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
The US government is funding it? I'd give their chances of success to be close to 0. Private enterprise is just as interested in cheap energy as the government is. The difference is that the private sector functions on its own dime.
What you describe are multiple issues wrapped up in one. For starters, the science/engineering students vs. nation is because we make available the same grants to foreign students as to American. China comes along and simply adds to the top of that, so that Chinese students here make double what an American does. Total BS. That needs to stop.
However, once we educate these ppl, and they have learned our culture, we should offer up green cards. Many times we do not.
Now, as to China taking our tech, yes, that is what is happening. Regularly, we have tech in the university that goes to a company which China then approaches and offers up all sorts of deals. Total subsidization. That is how they obtained the LED work. The same is true of solar and wind. When we cracked down on direct investment, China simply did an end-run by buying investment companies.
As to the shuttle, well, we both know that it was dead. However, much of the real tech resides not in the 3000 that will be laid off buy ppl in L-Mart, Boeing, and PWR. In addition, we have the ability to say no to tech. transfer. Hopefully, we will run away from SLS and will instead put forward a COTS-SHLV, in which we get two SHLV of 130-150 tonnes for a fraction of the price that SLS will cost to build and operate.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sure, we should have just sat back and done nothing about being attacked, having 2 buildings knocked down, and losing approx 3K citizens and others to a direct attack on our country. Can't think of a better way to encourage another one.
It worked for Gandhi...
Not trying to be a prick, but the FBI is for domestic crimes and domestic enforcement. The CIA is for external crimes (threats); among other things. Contrary to movie crap, it would be the CIA, not the FBI, which is exactly why the CIA has always handled such issues.
I think that's a major part of the problem. The students and guest workers are set up to make a contribution to the country and they want to stay but are instead thrown away. Meanwhile the aging science and technology workforce is not replaced in time to pass on what they know. Without a healthy manufacturing sector there is little to feed back to engineers involved in design so most of those jobs will go to where there is a healthy manufacturing sector. With a diminishing supply of jobs you get few apart from the overseas students that want to study in the fields of science and technology, and even they will go elsewhere as education continues to decline. It's a bit of a deep hole to slide into and it's going to take a lot to stop the slide and try to get out of it.
"It worked for Gandhi..."
Ghandhi was willing to risk and lose everything including his life for his cause. We are not willing to risk and lose our country just to avoid kicking their asses, which also works.
China is also the main source cause they don't give a damn about contaminating the environment. The US mines shut down because environmental measures raised the cost and it was cheaper to buy from others. US on land oil drilling and shale processing has never taken off for the same reason. The costs are greater than buying foreign sources. But never fear when the US finally gets fed up with financing China and the wonderful folks we buy oil from we still have a ready supply of fossil fuels until we figure out how to move off them for good. And it finally looks like the government and private sector is workin towards alternate energy sources. It won't happen fast but it is happening. It takes a long time for awareness and reality to take hold in a population as diverse as the US but it finally is.
Oh I forgot about our neighbors to the North. We do buy a lot of oil from them good folks but if you take a good look at their operations you have to wonder how the oil sands projects even got off the ground giving the toll on the environment and water use it takes for extraction.
The crime was committed on US soil, therefore it is a domestic crime and thus the FBI's jurisdiction. If often happens now that criminals that flee the US are hunted down and brought back by the FBI, usually with help from local law enforcement and wheels that are greased by the CIA. That is why there are FBI field offices in foreign countries.
Remember to that the CIA is not a law enforcement agency - it is an intelligence agency. It's job in 9/11 was to prevent the attack from happening. Once the crime was done on US Soil, the FBI takes the lead, apprehends the criminals and brings them back for trial. Not saying the CIA wouldn't have had a hand in tracking down those the FBI was interested in, but the ultimate responsibility for catching and bringing those guys to trial should have rested with the FBI, not the Defense Department.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Oh right, because burning down the rainforests to plant sugar (which you burn to harvest.. at least that's the time-honored-low-tech way of doing it) is SOOOOO much better?
every major intelligence agency on the planet thought that this kook had WMD,
Nope. That's been thoroughly debunked. The CIA told GW Bush that there were no WMDs in Iraq. The Bush administration then created a false report to take to the UK to convince Tony Blair that there were. The speech given by Colin Powell to the UN shortly afterwards was also a pack of lies.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/07/turningtruthintolies
Why did Bush invade Iraq? I think he told the truth to Jacques Chirac when he went to France to sell his war agenda:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush
We absolutely, positively have to kick their asses, or they will simply do it again, and again, over and over until we physically stop them.
Huh? You're not fighting anything physical so how can you 'kick its ass', exactly?
Terrorist attacks are carried out by nutcases. No amount of murder in Iraq/Afghanistan will ever rid the world of nutcases (in fact it makes them more likely).
The war in Afghanistan might refocus the nutcases' attentions onto the soldiers there instead of going to the USA to wreck stuff, sure, but that just means you have to keep their attention indefinitely, i.e. the 'war' has to last forever. Are you up for that? Are you even enlisted in the Army?
No sig today...
your sort would have kittens if a cluster bomb killed 3 kids while knocking down a couple dozen terrorists.
So far the ratio is the on wrong side of 3 terrorists per dozen civilians...just saying.
No sig today...
b) How often has a war against an ideal ever resulted in victory? Martyrs usually make ideals stronger. Are there more or less Taliban now than in 2001?
ww2, global war against general European fascism, German Nazism and Japanese Imperialism. Seems like it was pretty successful.
Cold War, global war against communism, brought down the Soviets after a while, though the jury is still out on the cost of this one.
I'm constantly reminded of the opening to the "The Road Warrior" where the narrator proclaims that 'While the gas ran out, our leaders talked and talked 'til the machines ground to a halt. Civilization crumbled.'
I seen a zillion scams posted on slashdot, where some company claims to have invented some new scheme to magically get energy out of thin air.
Bloombox for example, has a fuel cell that they can "print" and they are talking a $3000 box that will run your house, just feed it natural gas, and it will efficiently create electricity. We're not going to see this in our lifetimes.
EEstor keeps talking about an Ultracapacitor. While not being able to create energy, if it was to work, we'd have super efficient electric cars that can charge up in 5 minutes and run for 300 miles. We're not going to see this in our lifetimes.
Heck, I'd settle for the 30% more efficient, super-cheap solar cells we were promised in 5 years, 5-years AGO. Well, where are they? Can I cover my roof in 'em for less than $25,000? Apparently not. We're not going to see this in our lifetimes.
The point is: The oil is running out, and our leaders talk and talk, and worse, corporations that spring up to supposedly solve the energy crisis are just scams, there don't seem to be any REAL solutions. They are just taking money from suckers.
Which means our post-apocalyptic film-making friends in Australia were right on the money. So start building your "last of the V-8's" with two 50-gal drums in the back while you roam the wastes in search of guzzeline.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Just to put that in perspective $130 Billion is still only 1/4th what we spent to bail out the banks 2 years ago. It's only 1/5th what we spent in Iraq ALONE.
And frankly, if that money had not been spent on a useless war, and not spent on bailing out corrupt banks who's CEOs gave themselves big fat paychecks for bankrupting the country, we'd HAVE that money to spend on energy.
Just imagine what kind of development towards new energy sources we'd have by spending almost TWO TRILLION DOLLARS.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
$130 million dollars for 8 projects - this is truly a drop in the bucket (if it is even that much). Consider the fact that the government essentially insures nuclear plants against disasters Price Andersen act. With a disaster (3 in the past 30 years) bound to happen again in this country, and given a possible cost of a nuclear disaster in the trillion dollar range if it occurs close to a major city, $130 million dollars is peanuts. Consider the direct tax subsidies for oil exploration and extraction - in the billions of dollars per year (oil subsidies). The sad fact is that the only reason that this kind of funding is news is that our energy policy is so incredibly beholden to entrenched interests that it is a miracle that there is any funding for alternative energy sources.
Normally, the FBI is only sent when they require an investigation. Example, US embassy blown up. In this case, there wasn't so much a need for investigation as there was intelligence gathering. Again, not really a job for the FBI. Furthermore, there is a long documented history of the CIA performing enforcement actions - legal,means of local forces, US military, or otherwise.
the ones that are around don't have the capability to hide terrorist masterminds...
Really? I wasn't aware that we had found Osama Bin Laden recently.
OK, but the Taliban isn't hiding him in Afghanistan. He apparently fled to Pakistan, which we aren't sending troops into for other, political, reasons.
If the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden, then the FBI asks the military nicely to get this guy for them and we invade Afghanistan. FBI agents would have traveled with the military to handle prisoners and ensure that we brought those murderous bastards to justice in American Courts.
For the record, we tried this. We offered them the opportunity to hand him over. The FBI doesn't get to "ask nicely for invasions." The President, as Commander in Chief, asks Congress nicely for an Authorization for Use of Force. (That happened.)
The terrorists declared war on us as early as 1998. They put out a literal declaration of war. They see it as a war, and have attacked military targets. Yeah, they're not following the Geneva Conventions, while we mostly are. There's rules in the Geneva Conventions that cover what you're supposed to do with "Unlawful Enemy Combatants." (I bet you thought Bush made that term up.) We've mostly been more generous by holding people in POW conditions where we should be holding them as UECs, and we can argue about whether that will help. But we're being attacked by people who think they're at war with us. The way to deal with that is the military.
And that rock you are holding is doing a great job of keeping tigers away.
Seriously, the people who committed the 9/11 attacks are dead; they blew themselves to shit along with 3000+ innocent people. You can't "kick their asses"; their asses are scattered all over Manhattan, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
You can't maintain the pretence that getting rid of Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11 - it's simply laughable. And the so-called war-on-terror in Afghanistan has only served to piss off the majority of the Afghan public, and given the Taliban more fodder for their propaganda machine.
I'll tell you what's kept the US safe from terrorist attacks like 9/11 for the last 9.5 years: An attack like that could never work again. Before 9/11 if someone tried to hijack your plane, you co-operated - The hijackers would generally want to negotiate and in the vast majority of cases everyone went home in one piece. 9/11 changed the rules. If someone tries to hijack a plane now, the passengers are going to "kick their ass" - there's nothing to lose.
Finally, you claim the US is "not willing to risk and lose [the] country just to avoid kicking their asses". If you look at the number of bad laws that have been passed as a result (e.g. the PATRIOT act), you'd see that you've already lost the country. I thought the US was supposed to be the "land of the free and the home of the brave". By implementing such draconian legislation, you've become a land of fear and oppression. The rest of the western world thinks you already let the terrorists win./p
Companies use to have R&D that could be used as a competitive edge against competitors. There are still some but most are gone. It seems to me that when the government interfered with this it lowered the competitiveness and greatly reduced the amount of R&D. I say let the companies that will use these technologies fund the R&D. As more people buy from companies that did the research it will fund itself if its worth it. Why should public money be squandered on dead end technology. If its not dead end it would make it in the capitalist system.
I could not agree more. That is a SERIOUS issue and we have stepped deep into it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Imagine if we had an extra12 Trillion to spend on green energy. We could put $10,000 solar panels on 100M houses - almost every freaking house in the US. I am not saying it is a wise decision. Just saying that is the power of 1 Trillion dollars. That is also about HALF what we will pay in interest on our debt over the next six years.
The US has had a $600-700 billion TRADE deficit for the last number of years. That is markedly worse problem than a simple budget deficit that can be fixed by increasing taxes and cutting spending.
And it should not be in the form of an IOU to China.
That is a false statement. The IOU to China is via the trade deficit, not the fiscal deficit. Fiscal deficit is not IOU to China - it is China wanting to buy the long term IOUs (read: BONDS) from the US with their short term IOUs (read: CASH).
Trade deficit with US is giving IOUs to China in exchange for goods. Fiscal deficit is more or less irrelevant in comparison. After all, you can't buy US Treasuries with the Chinese yuan!
Now, China has had huge amount of US cash from huge trade surplus. But China's trade surplus are wilting away. China has recently even posted a net trade deficit! So where is China spending all the IOUs it is receiving. Think Saudi Arabia. Think Iran. Think OIL, copper, uranium, RESOURCES. China needs all these resources in order to continue to function as an economy. So what is the result? - USD and more USD from China is driving oil prices higher thanks to peak oil.
Anyway, all of this is about to end (within a few decades, for certain) as energy supplies dwindle. Hell, China has 3rd largest coal reserves on the planet and they will effectively mine out all that coal within 3 decades. Never mind oil which is already at its peak. And switching from oil to gas will cost huge amounts of money, destroy large section of land and groundwater and result in no-energy scenario 10 years down the road anyway.
So, US has a much larger problem. Trade deficit problem which mostly goes to 2 places - OIL and China. And in comparison to OIL, China is a small fry.
No I think what he is saying is that it is better to wait, and see what we can do about a problem that is 300 years down the road OVER TIME, as to not disrupt our current way of life to any large extent. There is a HUGE difference in your sensational claim of "well fuck the future right" and what I read into his statements of "Technology and knowlegde will increase over time, and a better solution may be viable with better long term planning, rather than rash changes now"
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
There are people who share Tesla's dream of extracting energy from the aether. They don't grok physics like Tesla did, and there is active resistance from the devotees of materialist-based science, which is why progress has been so slow. The Pure Energy Systems wiki is the best place to go if you want to get a better idea of what innovations dreamers are thinking up. I saw my acquaintance's truck on the front page one day... :)
Here's an article that's on the PESwiki front page right now, about Tesla Coils unleashing the aether.
What's most interesting to me is how many people, who've been trained in the Heaviside/JP Morgan version of electromagnetism and science grounded in materialist philosophy, are allergic to the idea that thermodynamics is just a special case & that the universe also has organizing principles. Science was switched to assume that "matter is all there is" sometime in the early 19th century by 2 or 3 guys in their 20's (I'm sorta trying to figure out who these three men were, but I don't really care that much - maybe I'll write the speaker).
Hence the search for a "smallest" particle / building block of matter. The alternate view is that matter's fundamental nature is not something "hard", but simply interacting force fields. Conventional Science already knows that atoms and protons and neutrons are mostly "empty space", and E=mC^2, so the leap is very, very small at this point.
I don't grok aether physics but know at least two people who do, and two more who would be up for sainthood if they'd lived 600 years ago in Europe (after they'd been burned at the stake, of course).
All the evils of the switch to a materialist-based philosophy of science have been unleashed in the world today. The only thing left in Pandora's box is "hope". The heirs to JP Morgan won't allow the DOE to invest in fundamentally "game changing technology" that would make the hydrocarbon-based energy economy completely obsolete, but there is still hope that the forces of Tesla's vision of energy will be unleashed. As soon as I figure this all out I'm going to revise my domain, . :)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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From what I understand, rare earth metals aren't rare at all. Mining is concentrated in China, because they undercut other producers to the point that they went out of business. If prices are going up 300-700%, per TFA, it's likely due to China using their monopoly to manipulate prices. Other producers may be hesitant to restart production for fear that China will undercut them again, but a quick look at teh Google indicates some are re-opening. Before the Chinese monopoly, California had one of the largest rare earth mines in the world. Wouldn't it make more sense to provide them some sort of price protection than to invest in alternatives? Or do both?
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This is a ridiculous pittance. The Omaba Regime and team aren't serious. $130 million is chump change, we need more like $130 BILLION to provide an alternate to Middle East Oil and to begin to drive toward true energy independence. Don't let these idiots fool you. They love keeping us dependent so their cronies can reap huge profits. Otherwise we would be drilling like mad!
Skip Stein Free Agent Management Systems Consulting, Inc. http://www.msc-inc.net www.linkedin.com/in/skipstein