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."

Comments

Rare earth alternatives.

[drfreak]

Will Nikola Tesla please stand up? Oh wait, he's dead. Forget it.

Re:Rare earth alternatives.

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the day the Rare Earth scored Top-40 hits with "Get Ready" and "I just want to celebrate", but if you were looking for alternatives, the Temptations (who also did "Get Ready", as well as "Ball of Confusion") would be one.

Until costs go down...

[0100010001010011]

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.

Re:Until costs go down...

[sqrt(2)]

Which is why public policy should be directed to intercede. The public is short-sighted, like the markets that supply their fuel and "choose" which technologies to pursue. We can see the storm coming on the horizon, but when you've got so many people looking straight up, seeing the sun and proclaiming there's no danger it's hard to react to a future that many experts know is coming.

We can either make tough choices now that will lead to a somewhat painful but tolerable transition period, or wait and do the same things in haste and agony. The people saying we should do nothing are doing so mostly out of an ideological mistrust of government doing anything, but they are going to be very regretful when they realize the markets failed to see and prepare for a future that experts and government DID predict, and could have prevented or at least vastly reduced the severity of.

We are in for a bleak future, because a small section of society has a vested interest in doing nothing and they have fully convinced roughly half of us that doing anything about it is an affront to their liberty. They'll pay in the end, we all will.

Re:Until costs go down...

[bunratty]

So Obama's to blame for $4/gallon gas? Was Bush to blame the last time we had $4/gallon gas? BTW, no one is asking anyone to suffer. We can switch to alternative energy sources without anyone suffering at all. Using corn for fuel doesn't use energy wisely; it takes nearly as much energy or even more energy to make ethanol from corn as you get from the ethanol. Using corn for energy is a waste of energy.

Re:Until costs go down...

[sqrt(2)]

History will show who was right. I'm prepared to be judged for, in my zeal, doing too much. Are you prepared to be judged for doing too little?

Re:Until costs go down...

[Gerzel]

Yes there is a good reason why gas can't be cheap.

It is a limited finite resource and there is a large and growing demand for it on the planet.

It is something that will increase in cost and has greater value for chemical manufacturing. Why are we squandering such a resource on fuel? Why are we burning it and wasting it? Why do so many people think it is such a good idea to go through our own reserve supplies first and then depend on the rest of the world for our supply?

Drill here, drill now is just a good recipe to destroy American sovereignty.

Re:Until costs go down...

[Pseudonym Authority]

You obviously do not understand the merits of wait then act.

If a train is coming at you, you do not wait until he hits you to get out of the way.

it'll probably turn out ok

Oh, you are one of those types immune to reason, who would just stand there on the tracks and expect the free market to save you.

Re:Until costs go down...

[RobbieThe1st]

As far as incandescent lightbulbs go, it's a bad thing in some places and fine in others.
In the middle of California, sure... Not only are you wasting a lot of energy, but that energy then has to be moved to the outside, wasting even /more/ energy.
In the middle of Alaska, or even the northern states, however -- places that need heating and not cooling, incandescent lights are fine. The wasted energy is used to heat the building.
In addition, you have several problems with CFLs:
1. Made in China. We aren't -- and /won't/ -- be producing any of our lights now, relying on someone else to do it for us. What happens if we stop being able to import new ones? Say the dollar goes down to the point at whch they can't be afforded?
Oh, and they're cheaply made and full of mercury too..

2. Climate-sensitive: CFLs hate high humidity, and extremely high and low temperatures. Which means they aren't good for outside lights if the temperature drops below freezing, or in ovens, refrigeraters etc. Same with bathrooms, honestly.

3. Slow start. Sure, for a living room light, it's fine. For a closet, however, not so much.

4. Low power factor. I haven't seen one CFL over 0.4 PF. Not a big deal for one or two, but it could easily distort the wave form when you have several millions lights going, which could cause other problems. Unless it gets filtered by the pole transformer, of course.

That all being said, I've been using flourescent lights for years, and were a relatively early adopter of CFLs. I just don't think they're appropriate everywhere, nor do I think the mandate was a good idea. Incentives might be a better idea.

Re:Until costs go down...

[khallow]

History will show who was right. I'm prepared to be judged for, in my zeal, doing too much. Are you prepared to be judged for doing too little?

I would rather do the right thing now than concern myself with judgment. Hence, my choices. I know already that no one has more than a greatly imperfect knowledge of the future and no understand at all of the possible choices we collectively could make. So imposing restrictions that not only depend on a relatively solid knowledge of the future, but also constrain our collective lives, seems remarkably foolish to me. Clothing that choice in the conceit of elite knowledge is just folly.

I don't know whether you will ever regret the choices you make imposing your myopic morality on the rest of the world, but I do know that I would regret allowing your choices to go through uncontested. And that's good enough for me.

Re:Until costs go down...

[Mindcontrolled]

Ah.. here we go. Show your colors. It doesn't concern me, only the next generation, so fuck them for my personal gain. Thanks for showing off what passes as "ethics" in you circles, if you ever even heard of the concept.

Re:Until costs go down...

[HungryHobo]

The hole might have always been there, but we didn't see it until we looked.... and now it just happens to be shrinking now that CFC's aren't being used as much.
Pure coincidence of course.

A prediction was made based on the hypothesis that CFC's were causing the hole and based on that changes were made(CFC's banned and used far less) and the hole shrank fitting with the hypothesis.

Like any test of a hypothesis it's not perfect but it's orders of magnitude better than your denial Just-Because.

Re:Until costs go down...

[HungryHobo]

For example, imagine that you choice what to eat based on the last news story that you read on which foods were healthy and which weren't. You'd always be shuffling your diet around as the next new thing was heralded or scorned by someone in the newspaper or on TV. I imagine that would be costly and expose you to a variety of risks and harms that a normal person, who did nothing about their diet, wouldn't even see.

you've got the wrong comparison.
Yes it would be insane to listen to every "nutritionist" and hack who think fish oil will make you smart or that bread will give you cancer.

on the other hand if you based your diet on the current best practice as advised by the majority of dieticians(that's the real experts with the real qualifications who don't change their minds every 20 minutes but can sometimes be wrong like any scientists or professionals) then you'd likely have an exceptionally good diet and be more healthy than average.

there are good reasons to wait.

until... what? most of the actual experts are fairly confident that they have the right model now and that it would be best to act now.

but what evidence are you waiting for?
What event exactly are you waiting for?
The opinions of the experts obviously aren't good enough for you so what is?

Re:Until costs go down...

[BobGregg]

>> The Obama administration, for example, both has engineered a ban of incandescent lightbulbs
>> and a ludicrous increase in the required gas mileage for auto manufacturers via CAFE.

Sigh... The Obama administration had nothing to do with the ban.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Independence_and_Security_Act_of_2007

Signed into law by George Bush. If yer gonna tell lies about Obama, at least do 5 seconds of research.

Re:Until costs go down...

[Nimey]

Because in aggregate people are selfish. They'd rather have their gas-guzzling toy than worry about everyone's air quality and the remaining supply of fossil fuels because THEY WANT IT, and anyone gainsaying them is obviously a socialist commie out to take their liberties away.

Rupert Fucking Murdoch, man.

Re:Until costs go down...

[Attila Dimedici]

on the other hand if you based your diet on the current best practice as advised by the majority of dieticians...

If you had done that in the 1970s, you would have had a low fat, low protein, high carbohydrate diet. This has been proven since then to be an unhealthy diet. I remember when dieticians insisted that coffee was bad for you. They ran study after study attempting to quantify the ways in which coffee was bad for you. They finally had to admit that coffee was actually good for you. The same thing went on with eggs. They had all these studies showing how eggs were bad for you, until someone did a long term study of people who ate a reasonable number of eggs vs. people who ate no eggs and discovered that the people who ate the reasonable number of eggs (averaging around two per day) were on average healthier than those who did not eat eggs.

Re:Until costs go down...

[jo_ham]

You can do an experiment that demonstrates how CFCs and HCFCs catalytically destroy ozone, and build computer models of the way the atmosphere works to show why we ended up with a specific "hole" over the pole rather than simply a weakened ozone layer all over.

There's really no doubt in this. Your bold assertion that

There's little evidence that human CFCs had any effect on the Antarctica hole, for example. The hole might have always been there, but we didn't see it until we looked.

is just laughable. So, first you say there's little evidence we had anything to do with it (without actually looking at any of the vast, vast amounts of data and tested hypotheses and models, and the resulting changes to the ozone layer in the years since), then say "it might" in the next sentence and expect your first one to be taken seriously!

Yes, we "might" not have had anything to do with it - that's why we *went and tested it out* to find the cause.

Re:Until costs go down...

[khallow]

You can do an experiment that demonstrates how CFCs and HCFCs catalytically destroy ozone, and build computer models of the way the atmosphere works to show why we ended up with a specific "hole" over the pole rather than simply a weakened ozone layer all over.

And we can build models that fit our preconceptions as long as there isn't much data to conflict with them. Answer this simple question: how many centuries of data do we have on the interaction of CFCs with the ozone layer? If the models are right, then you're right. If the models are wrong, then you're wrong. In the absence of sufficient evidence, you simply don't know which is which.

Re:Until costs go down...

[Shotgun]

Damn, I'm glad you interventionist were there to save us from the copper shortages in the 50's. They were going to bring modern civilization to a screeching halt. But ya'll jumped right in there and saved us all with your government programs. What would we have done without you?

Good, but there is always an issue

[WindBourne]

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.

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I particularly like the look of Green Electricity Network Integration (GENI) project; using the stuff we've learned about networking applied to the problem of power switching and monitoring. Electricity, once generated, is pretty much a "use it or lose it" proposition, so coming up with new ways to route the electric grid (particularly with peaky generation like wind) is a really great idea. Although, "up to" $30M to this project doesn't seem like a lot.

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[ArcherB]

LOL what goes around comes around. Americans didn't get where they are without totally disrespecting intellectual property from europe during the industrial revolution. why should the chinese?

Which we then used to build tanks, airplanes, submarines and battleships to defeat the Nazis.

Alright! We'll call it a draw.

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[arkenian]

This is just total BS. The vast majority of advances in engineering and science in the history of mankind have been funded by the government or the church at one level or another. Why? Because R&D is high risk, and willingness to invest in things that high-risk is rare in the private market. VCs very rarely invest in real research, but instead typically invest in the phase where you take a concept with proven theory to a real product. Most research money produces nothing immediately useful. I freely confess this. But the only way to progress is to be willing to try a hundred ideas, understanding that 50 of them will produce nothing at all. Another 40 will probably basically just produce some interesting information. 9 of them will give you an interesting concept you might develop when conditions change, or that is useful for an exceedingly limited purpose, and 1 of them will produce a product that will actually go to the general market.... But guess what? Its totally worth it. And, in the end, not very expensive.

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[FishTankX]

I suppose that the construction of the interstate should have also been dropped in favor of individual private corporate entities constructing it and charging tolls to make their money back?

Ditto for the railroads, (why should the government have given bonds to the railroad companies when they should've been able to do it themselves)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad

Ditto for rural electrification. The companies should do what's profitable for them, not rely on the government to prop them up! Rural electrification was merely propping up the electric companies too, right? Probably the same for rural telephone access.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_electrification#United_States)

The point i'm trying to make, is that ALL of these projects, at their outsets, was "centralized planning or rent-seeking under a government unlawfully propping up its supporters with taxpayer money". "free-market competition under the same legal regime of equality under the law, absent political bribery and ransom" would have eschewed putting together a committee to study rural electrification, resulting in a massive delay in getting power to the boonies, which would've delayed dairy refrigeration, irrigation, etc. The government had to step in and offer loans (which probably cost taxpayers money) in order to spur development.

Sometimes government funding is necessary to carry out projects which corporations won't take up because they are short sighted or oblivious to anything but profits. We all used public infrastructure that are the result of centralized planning, or supported with tax payers money. Why do you have the right to say that we should draw a line at energy research? I suppose you say we should ax Nasa too, because it's rent seeking under a government?

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[plague911]

There is no message worth speaking of or responding to. These "people" have no information and are simply doing as their preacher tells them to. Arguing/ speaking with them is a joke.

The motivation of these techologies is not a profit motive thus there is little incentive for mega corporate entities to suck them dry. If any thing it is to counteract the effects of externalities previously unaccounted for. A large part of this will result in lower corporate profits and better living conditions for the average person.

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[jovetoo]

Routing power is a bit more complex than routing a packet.

For one, a packet is a discrete amount of information, while power is a complex analog phenomenon. You can put a packet on a link and hope it gets there, you can't just put a kilowatt on a power line...

A more conceptual difference is how demand is distributed. A network client talks to a few distributed servers on the Internet. A power client just demands power and does not care where it comes from or if the server cannot deliver it. When a server gets overloaded, the clients just have to wait. If a power plant gets overloaded and the power cannot be gotten elsewhere, the service of the whole network goes down (voltage drops) unless some of the load is cut. If a certain network link is overloaded, packets get dropped. If a power line is overloaded, (hopefully) circuit breakers pop and ALL power transfer is interrupted.

Some practical problems you will run into with power switching:

• power conversion - the power grid is not uniform. There are several types of high-voltage lines and power needs to be converted to route power between them. Those conversions introduce losses and have capacity limits.
• transport losses - each length of power cable introduces loss.
• power plant characteristics - each power source has its own characteristics. For example, the output of a nuclear power plant is more or less constant and cannot adjusted to changing demand.
• changing demand - power demand changes drastically over the course of a day, both in level and geographically. During office hours, power is needed in office buildings, during the evening in households, ...
• load characteristics - inductive load vs capacitive load. In ideal situations, you would combine them to get a resistive load as much as possible as this leads to optimum power efficiency.
• politics - which, I have read on the Internet, is one of the major sources of blackouts in the US.

As an aside to the last point, I wonder why blackouts happen so regularly in the US while the are exceedingly rare in Europe. I am in Belgium and I get a "blackout" once every decade or something. I do sometimes experience glitches where you see the lights dim and computers with lousy power supplies reboot... once every few years or so. It suggests to me, whatever the problem is, it isn't technical...

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[The End Of Days]

At what point does the bankrupt government stop spending money? Every dollar has defenders, so there's no way to get rid of any of it. Clearly the answer is to continue until it all falls over. Obviously anyone who points this out is a moron teabagger who sleeps with Dick Cheney 6 inches deep in his ass. And really, what's 130 million between friends? A few billion for this, a few billion for that... it's nothing. Somewhere along the way, the rich people will pay for it. Yeah, that's it.

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[khallow]

Its neither. Its some dude sitting in his underwear thinking "I have a 1/2 chance of dying and a 1/100 chance of saving the world. I like siting in this chair i'm not going to work for the good of the nation" Its the cowardly corporate way out. and its the way republicans want the nation to act as a whole.

There's a word for this: bullshit. Stupid accusations of cowardice (I also see no sign that you have a clue what "good of the nation" means) and a pathetic bash of Republicans too (golly, a whole party of people who disagree with you!). Further, I find it remarkable that you think bravery or cowardice has any meaning in government funded research. It's sure money. Most of the business world would love to have that luxury.

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[arkenian]

In other words, Other Peoples' Money is free money.

This is just insulting. When I said 'cheap' I meant it. In general R&D is just expensive enough on the scale of the individual to make self-funded research very difficult, but cheap enough by the standards of business or governments. The vast majoirty of government-funded research projects are under 1 million, and most are SIGNIFICANTLY under. That is, by the way, significantly less than businesses usually invest when they get to the point of investing, a VC investment is usually 10-85 million. As to it "just being easy" no, its because really that's all there is. I'll also note that R&D isn't easy for business people either, to make first-stage (i.e. 'high risk') R&D a good investment, while any individual project is cheap, you have to invest in LOTS of them. I've worked the VC side, and I've done government research, and I've helped administer government research. Just to be clear, by the way, the people administering government research, with the exception of the dollars they're forced to waste by earmarks, probably care more about getting good value for your tax money than the average VC does. And work at least as hard for it, in my opinion, at least in DoD, can't speak for other government organizations.

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[SuricouRaven]

Better: "I have $100,000 to spend. If I put it into research, there is a 99% chance I'll lose the lot, and a 1% chance I'll make millions off it. If I invest it in conventional bonds and such, I'll end up with maybe $200,000. Much as I like millions, I just can't risk spending on something so unlikely to pay off."

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[rmstar]

In other words, Other Peoples' Money is free money.

I know you will get a tantrum over this, but hey. You are part of a society, and to some extent, your belongings belong also to society. It is not "other peoples money". It is our money going into research.

Not that you have to worry. As soon as it is understood well enough to be profitable, it will be privatized, and someone with good connections will make a formidable amount of money on the back of the effort we, as a society, invested in risky research.

Re:Good, but there is always an issue

[locallyunscene]

Why is it going to fall over this way? Because the party that's supposed to be for fiscal responsibility, including the Republican co-opted Tea-Party, in this country nickels and dimes small fry programs while actually adding to the deficit. They cut funding to the IRS which makes a return on that investment by finding tax cheats. They cut funding for early start and school lunch programs which make for more successful and productive citizens later in life. They then turn around with that "saved" money and continue to fund more money than any "socialist pork" program on defense contractors and wars to maintain the American Empire. And for good measure give it back in tax cuts to pay homage to trickle down economics which has never worked to solidify their power base.

$130mil? Wowzers~

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:$130mil? Wowzers~

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Yep. About as much as it costs to run a Nimitz class aircraft carrier for half a year. A truly outstanding commitment to energy research.

I am dissapoint.

Re:$130mil? Wowzers~

[ArcherB]

Well, we could change $130 million to $130 Billion if we could work out some sort of compromise. For example, we could drill ANWR, which is federal land (meaning federal oil), and mandate that the feds set aside $10 for each barrel of oil sold for investment into "green energy".

Oh, wait. We can't do that. A Caribou may have to have sex five miles from where he had it last year. Nevermind.

Re:$130mil? Wowzers~

[pixelpusher220]

The reason ANWR is useless is because there isn't much there. Estimated recoverable oil is only about 1 year's worth at today's usage levels. Say we split that over 20 years for production. That's 5%. Lowers gas prices a whopping $0.40 for twenty years and then is gone, and we have a BP oil spill in the arctic where we can't even go to clean it up half the year.

It's not worth it.

Re:$130mil? Wowzers~

[pixelpusher220]

Your an idiot. Your household budget doesn't work like the governments and shouldn't. We don't have money to spend on stupid things, but we can print our own money and people are still lining up to lend us money.

If we keep playing political games with the deficit and the debt limit though, they won't keep lending us money because they'll see we're completely taken over by a crazy party (GOP).

If you could spend $100,000,000 and get back $160,000,000, would you spend it? or would claim we are broke and not spend the money to make that $160 million?

Food stamps, unemployment insurance and infrastructure spending all return more money into the economy than they cost. Tax cuts do not.

So we can invest in our economy and country and grow our way out of this, or we can cut to the bone and just keep sinking lower and lower. We have some things to reform, but our budget was close to being balanced a decade ago. The only thing that changed was massive debts run up by the GOP.

Re:$130mil? Wowzers~

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we could change $130 million to $130 Billion if we could work out some sort of compromise. For example, we could drill ANWR, which is federal land (meaning federal oil), and mandate that the feds set aside $10 for each barrel of oil sold for investment into "green energy".

Oh, wait. We can't do that. A Caribou may have to have sex five miles from where he had it last year. Nevermind.

ANWAR solves nothing it's strictly about oil company profits. I believe Obama pointed out that we could provide as much oil as is in ANWAR by keeping our tires inflated properly. The Republicans made fun of him but neglected to point out that he was right. We can relive more pressure faster and cheaper through conservation and that is a fact than opening up all public lands to drilling. Set car average MPG at 50 and minimum at 30 which is doable and you'll save as much as 10 ANWARs and it can happen in a fraction of the time. The problem is conserving doesn't line corporate pockets and that's why it's not an option.

Re:$130mil? Wowzers~

[ratnerstar]

I'm not sure I understand you. Are you advocating a targeted $10 per barrel tax only on oil drilled from ANWR? That seems silly, plus you must be aware that taxes on oil production are a political non-starter. It would be easier to get environmentalists to agree to drilling than to get the GOP to agree to taxes. And I don't even want to think about the economic distortions that would accompany taxing one area of production but not others...

On the other hand, it kinda sounds like you're calling for the Federal government to get into the oil drilling & selling business.

Re:$130mil? Wowzers~

[pixelpusher220]

We need oil now and for many decades to come. Producing it here can only benefit us.

Spoken like the true addict that we are :) Actually it can harm us. If we use it now while oil is cheap we won't have it available when peak oil hits and it gets really expensive. 'Conserving' your resources is better than just using them up as fast as possible.

Now the other argument to be made is that if we don't start drilling right here right now, it won't be online when peak oil hits. A fair argument, except for the fact that the 'drill here drill now' people also claim peak oil is either a myth or hundreds of years away...thus invalidating their argument for doing it right now.

Better to do what this article is about and start spending that money on alternative sources so that they are ready to pick up the slack when peak oil hits.

Re:$130mil? Wowzers~

[ArcherB]

I'm not sure I understand you. Are you advocating a targeted $10 per barrel tax only on oil drilled from ANWR? That seems silly, plus you must be aware that taxes on oil production are a political non-starter. It would be easier to get environmentalists to agree to drilling than to get the GOP to agree to taxes. And I don't even want to think about the economic distortions that would accompany taxing one area of production but not others...

On the other hand, it kinda sounds like you're calling for the Federal government to get into the oil drilling & selling business.

It is estimated that it will cost between $30 and $50 a barrel to extract oil from ANWR. Oil is currently trading at over $100/barrel. The owner of the mineral rights owns the oil. That owner is the US Government. That means that it will be the US Gov't selling the oil at roughly $70/bl profit. Take $10 from every barrel sold and invest that into "green energy". Take a portion out of environmental maintenance, another portion out as an environmental disaster insurance, and the rest goes into the US Gov't general fund.

No additional taxes required.

It'll work THIS TIME

[Anonymous Coward]

All those previous game-changing energy projects have worked out so well over the years...

1.6 Trillion Dollar Deficit

[MyLongNickName]

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.

Re:1.6 Trillion Dollar Deficit

[pixelpusher220]

If you are a Democrat, you are an idiot....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.

You do realize the Dem's have agreed to reforms of Social Security and Medicare right? They aren't saying taxing the rich will fix everything just that it's crazy to give them tax cuts when cutting other major pieces of the budget.

If you think providing a social safety net is 'stupid', well I don't have a lot of sympathy for you. Your parents use it or will use it, just the same as Medicare. These are *necessary* programs for the health of our society. Imagine how bad the economy would be if everybody was saving to buy private insurance when they are 65+. It's ridiculously expensive to buy insurance when you're healthy, let alone when you're elderly. How about retirement? Again lots more money out of the economy as people have to save for their entire retirement.

Next, what do you do with people who lost their savings in the recession? They don't have any money to pay for health insurance or retire. If you say 'tough', well I have no sympathy for you.

Being in favor, and paying for, social programs is not stupid. It's the fabric that keeps this the best country in the world.

Re:1.6 Trillion Dollar Deficit

[pixelpusher220]

And if you break you leg the first day on the construction job? You haven't had time to 'provide' for yourself yet. What do you do?

Re:1.6 Trillion Dollar Deficit

[Mindcontrolled]

That's what I love about you guys. You are giving me a good laugh every time. Don't even think about whether something makes sense, no, Sir, that would be unamerican. The only thing that matters is whether it is "in the constitution". Fapping off to your version of the holy scripture.

Progressive new technologies?

[poity]

Really? As opposed to regressive new technologies?

Game changers: BTDT

[RavenManiac]

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!

Re:Game changers: BTDT

[russotto]

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.

$100,000 over 30 years is $277/month. You saved $277/month? What were you heating and cooling, a mansion?

Re:Bankrupt government funds boondoggles

[Kohath]

The Treasury is empty and we're $14 Trillion in the hole. If we weren't so recklessly willing to pay for anything, we'd only be $12 or $11 Trillion in the hole.

But it's not chump change for the cronies.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.

Re:But it's not chump change for the cronies.

[Black Parrot]

Seriously though this is pathetic. $130million isn't shit It's a laughable sum for any kind of major research project ...

Especially when you consider how much we "invest" in welfare for the oil giants.

It's called "market forces", dude.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.

Re:It's called "market forces", dude.

[sqrt(2)]

You're starting from the assumption that energy production and distribution should be, or must be, the domain of private enterprise alone. This isn't the only way things can work. It's simply too dangerous (look at Japan), dirty (look at the Gulf of Mexico), and important to put in the hands of a capitalist framework that is willing to cut corners to make more profit. I'd rather have the entire sector in control of an entity run by experts with the full resources of the nation at their disposal and no board of directors or shareholders to answer to but only the people, and the nation that they too are part of and wish to see prosper. There is no such thing as a patriotic corporation, nor a corporation interested in protecting the environment or public safety. To the extent that they do is only because they are compelled to by The State or public outrage--and the later only after some terrible calamity has stricken our geography or population.

Re:It's called "market forces", dude.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Let's start investing now, so the price of alternative energy comes down and we can switch to them before energy prices skyrocket.

My point is that, as long as the government does the investing - in the form of picking their cronies as the winners, we WON'T get private investment. Meanwhile government cronies on the dole put on a big show of doing the development but always manage to avoid bringing anything to market - unless it's to kill some competition for a while. Government programs like this just about ALWAYS fail.

WITHOUT the government winner-picking we'd likely ALREADY HAVE affordable alternatives. Investors are very good at figuring out where the money will be coming from in a few years and positioning themselves to sell whatever will get them some.

But they're ALSO good at figuring out that the government will steal some particular cash cow once it's giving milk. So when that's a big risk they don't breed it in the first place.

Re:It's called "market forces", dude.

[hedwards]

It's called the paradox of efficiency, and that's why the government is supposed to step in and make sure that gains in efficiency aren't reflected in the price. If there weren't externalities involved and running out was the only issue, I'd say don't bother, but as it is, there are other compelling reasons for us not to use gas, other than supply problems

Re:It's called "market forces", dude.

[mbkennel]

"My point is that, as long as the government does the investing - in the form of picking their cronies as the winners, we WON'T get private investment."

Because, uh...um...they'll get cooties?

"Meanwhile government cronies on the dole put on a big show of doing the development but always manage to avoid bringing anything to market - unless it's to kill some competition for a while"

Gee. If these supposed government-funded morons don't ever bring anything to market---then how do they kill competition? And if they actually bring something to market, then .... isn't that at least OK?

If these supposed uber-brilliant capitalists know all the government-funded stuff is bunk---why does it matter? How does it possibly get in the way of the super profitable solution? Why are they so (supposedly) afraid of this miniscule government R&D?

And why shouldn't this super brilliant capitalist milk the government and *then* bring this magic technology to market and make a few billion?

Back in the real world of R&D, there is about 20-25 years of very hard work between the discovery of the basic phenomenon or engineering principle and commercial application. Capitalist investors are quite effective at funding the last two years of this. They go almost nothing beyond this.

Re:It's called "market forces", dude.

[pablo_max]

Yes, I am sure big business will solve the problem for us.
BTW, how are you enjoying that Internet, jackass? You know who paid for it? You think it was big business. It is amazing how many F-Tards out there think that corporate America will solve every problem, even though it was corporate America who has gotten the entire world into a shit storm.

Re:It's called "market forces", dude.

[mbkennel]

I hear there's a new drilling technology that can bust through the craziest rocks like phasers: the drills are tipped with pieces of Objectivist cranium

Re:It's called "market forces", dude.

[LunaticTippy]

There are a few major reasons the highway system is deteriorating:
The federal highway tax hasn't been raised in nearly 20 years and is a fixed amount per gallon. Gasoline has tripled in price but the tax is the same.
Raw materials such as concrete, steel, asphalt, fuel, and labor have increased several hundred percent.
There is a lack of accountability from contractors. Partly corruption, partly incompetence, partly bureaucratic inertia, it results in shoddy overbudget work in too many cases.

These are tough problems to solve. Localities are oddly protective of their dysfunctional transportation infrastructure industry, opposition to tax increase, even to keep pace with the cost of materials, is fierce, and much of the interstate system is reaching the end of its design life at the same time.

I don't see any easy answers. Perhaps high profile disasters will spur investment, but the sad truth is we all pay every day for the poor state of our roads in increased maintenance cost, accidents, impaired fuel economy, higher cost to transport goods, etc.

Re:how about the US spending real money instead

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Ex-Shell CEO Says Big Oil Can Live Without Subsidies

Although it doesn't matter, because Republicans in the House voted UNANIMOUSLY to keep sending TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars in subsidies to Big Oil. And yet somehow this thread has attracted all kinds of bitching about $130 million. Talk about hypocrisy!

Re:Sam I am.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.)

Re:Sam I am.

[The End Of Days]

Yeah there you go, lets improve the quality of life in Afghanistan by putting them to work in the mines...

Game changing? SRSLY?

[macraig]

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.

Re:public domain research

[hedwards]

I'm back in school and it's really discouraging how much research is only available by paying fees to gain access. It might be worthwhile if you're working, but it gets really hard to write research papers when most of the sources want $30 for a copy of a paper which may or may not be of any value to me.

Granted it's their right to do it, but it stifles innovation and artificially limits the amount of access that people have to the information needed to innovate. Granted when it's private research, they have a right to do it, but if it's being funded by tax payer dollars it should be mandatory that it be available for free under the normal rules of citation and use.

Re:Sam I am.

[haruchai]

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

Only 130 million?

[blanks]

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.

Re:Only 130 million?

[Nimey]

Because killing brown people and enriching the military-industrial complex is more important. Because it would threaten our existing energy industry.

Because Republicans just don't give a shit.

If you don't give them the jobs they go home with

[dbIII]

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.

Re:Sam I am.

[Joce640k]

$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.

Re:Sam I am.

[Mindcontrolled]

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...

Re:If you don't give them the jobs they go home wi

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Sam I am.

[VVrath]

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

The DOE cannot investigate Tesla's vision

[nido]

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, . :)