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Lawrence Krauss: Congress Is Trying To Defund Scientists At Energy Department
Lasrick writes Physicist Lawrence Krauss blasts Congress for their passage of the 2015 Energy and Water Appropriations bill that cut funding for renewable energy, sustainable transportation, and energy efficiency, and even worse, had amendments that targeted scientists at the Department of Energy: He writes that this action from the US Congress is worse even than the Australian government's move to cancel their carbon tax, because the action of Congress is far more insidious: "Each (amendment) would, in its own way, specifically prohibit scientists at the Energy Department from doing precisely what Congress should mandate them to do—namely perform the best possible scientific research to illuminate, for policymakers, the likelihood and possible consequences of climate change." Although the bill isn't likely to become law, Krauss is fed up with Congress burying its head in the sand: The fact that those amendments "...could pass a house of Congress, should concern everyone interested in the appropriate support of scientific research as a basis for sound public policy."
But it's not in the sand.
You get involved in politics... you take sides... and there are consequences.
NPR for example is under similar threat of being defunded for the same reason. They took sides and when they stopped acting in the interests of all sides they became the enemy of sides they did not support... or the allies of sides they did support... and via the friend of my enemy is my enemy logic which is standard in politics... they became enemies.
Here someone is going to bitch at me like I had any part in any of these consequences.
Don't get mad at me. I didn't do anything one way or the other. All I'm doing is explaining what happened.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The DOE was established to decrease American reliance on foreign energy (oil, etc).They completely failed in their efforts towards taht and every other goal they established. They are only successful at milking the government gravy train of all they can get their hands on.
Even if the facts are true the bottom line is money trumps over common sense. They will be long buried before the shit hits the fan.
The summary makes it out that the decision to repeal Australia's carbon taxes was a bad one.
It was a horribly broken system that didn't work.
If you accept that, then this "He writes that this action from the US Congress is worse even than the Australian government's move to cancel their carbon tax" becomes the same as "He writes that this action from the US Congress is worse even than a spark of sanity from the Australian Government"
Funny, as it actually turned out, energy efficiency research for both electricity and transportation has worked very well, as have wind turbines and solar power. And quite a bit of that comes from DOE research.
Fusion reactor? Well, that's still 30 years away.
Of course the vast majority of DOE money is devoted to the nuclear weapons infrastructure and environmental cleanup from decades of nuclear weapon infrastructure.
For instance, take the FY 2012 budget of Los Alamos National lab.
http://www.lanl.gov/about/facts-figures/budget.php
What fraction would you say is on basic science? I expected 30%. More like 4%.
57% NNSA weapons
9% NNSA nonproliferation
7% NNSA 'safeguards and security'
7% work for national security (most likely intelligence agencies)
8% environmental cleanup
4% undefined 'work for others'
4% DOE Energy and Other Programs
4% DOE Office Of Science
The Republicans, who currently hold a majority in the US House, are the ones who voted to strip the science funding.
Saying "Congress" makes it sound bipartisan. It's only the Republicans.
Get back to actual science. I don't yet have a fusion reactor in my home. What the fuck am I paying you clowns for?
For not having to breathe sulfuric acid (acid rain)? Or not having your river catch a fire? Yeah, all those damn progressives ruin everything.
Nope, I'm not confusing them. DoE provided necessary data on sulfur emissions and monitored the power plants. EPA was the one enforcing regulations, based on DoE data.
I watched Krauss on Q&A and WOW, what a great scientist he is. I thought to myself, this is one of the reasons people look up to America, because they have all these great thinkers that we can learn from.
Unfortunately Australia sometimes takes the lead in being backwards thinking and it's no secret here that many of our accomplished leaders in creating solar energy are now in America. Now it seems American politician are looking to Australia for methods to embed the status quo. This looks a lot like the Australian government scrapping the independent Climate Commission (made up of scientists), but legislating to avoid, what happened here, a relaunched Commission funded by the public as citizens instead of as taxpayers,.
And like a dying animal the status quo tries to kill the future. This is not a generational issue because some of the older generation know what the issues are and trying to make things better to minimize the consequences and costs the younger generations that will experience. However, the people controlling energy and its future, now, will be dead by the time the effects are here, so for them why wouldn't they have all the benefits of cheap power when they will never experience the downside of it.
They struggle for 50's thinking to be relevant in the 21st century, but have compunction imposing it and since the science is so convincing the only thing left to do is muzzle the scientists. It's madness.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The thing about shit that works is that you don't really have to do any science or engineering to it. Because it already works.
Scientists and engineers focus on the shit that doesn't yet work for a reason.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
From the last time we had this discussion: http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg
The only people claiming the carbon tax wasn't working were Coalition politicians (and their apologists), and the companies who didn't want to have to cover the external costs of their businesses. Fact is, it was starting to work quite well, despite the damping effect of Abbott attacking it with all the FUD he could muster.
And now we have economists scratching their heads as to why a conservative government would attack a market-based climate solution while favouring a big direct-action spending program instead:
Roger Jones, a Research Fellow at the Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies, called the repeal "the perfect storm of stupidity".
"It's hard to imagine a more effective combination of poor reasoning and bad policy making," he said.
"A complete disregard of the science of climate change and its impacts. Bad economics and mistrust of market forces."
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The 2010 fantasy novel Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory claims the second law of thermodynamics disproves the greenhouse effect. At first this seemed like a parody of creationists who claim the second law disproves evolution, but the Slayers seem very serious. They claim warm surfaces can't absorb back-radiation (*) from cold atmospheres because they mistakenly think heat can't be transferred from cold to warm objects at all. In fact, this is only true for net heat transfer. Cold objects can slow the rate at which warm objects lose heat without transferring more heat to warm objects than vice versa. That's how the greenhouse effect works.
(*) Also called downwelling longwave irradiance.
Again, Dr. Latour's Slayer fan fiction is fractally wrong:
Congress consists of the House of Representatives AND the Senate.
Most people (even the politicians) have a habit of calling the House of Representatives "the Congress", but it's not. It's only half of Congress.
Right now we have different parties controlling the two halves. I kinda like it when they don't get much done. It's better to have no laws passed than bad laws getting passed.
So, when the House passes something nowadays, you can bet that the Senate won't pass it, nor will the President sign it.
Nobody in America argues against physics or chemistry etc; there is no "war on science".
Have you met the people in America? Time and again I've met fine GED graduates who have told me that they know for a fact that basic cosmology is wrong and whatever they happen to believe is true, not to mention the whole collection of creationist idiots out here. It seems that more than half of everyone who isn't an authority is certain that their opinion is just as good anyways. People want what they want when they want it, and are anti anything that stands in their way. I like what you posted that wasn't in your last paragraph, but the claims you make at the end don't follow from those words. It's just rhetorical chicanery.
This is not about "Climate Change", it's about "Carbon Tax". Carbon Taxes have been used to stifle innovation and competition, and the players that should be paying the most have been immune to the tax. That's not an issue of a tax as much as issue of corruption. That said, while so many governments are grossly corrupt a "Tax" is not going to be the answer.
As long as people like you believe in a false paradigm blaming religion (or democrat vs. republican), no corrections will be made.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The people writing the checks need to better understand that these scientists are the main reason that the US economy does as well as it does. We have had and to date maintain a significant advantage over other nation states in terms of our technological innovation. However, it is undeniable that other countries are fast catching up. Our technological advantage is not a given thing, we have to properly fund R&D for it to be maintained. Technological prowess leads to economic health.
Climate change and energy policy must be linked for no matter how 'much' energy, if the climate is made incompatible with the civilization Americans wish to experience, the 'energy savings' will be entirely lost in ameliorating the damage done.
A cheap barrel of oil that uses up groundwater will cost infinitely more once there is no food on the table thanks to rising water costs, which can only be offset by using UP the cheap oil to move water from somewhere else.
What the F ck is the Energy Dept. doing building nukes for the war dept anyway?
The DoE was created to fund research into alternatives to foreign oil. What has happened to our reliance on foreign energy since the DoE has been created? I'll give you a hint, it hasn't gone down.
I've been reading articles and watching YouTube videos on alternative energy for years. I've seen a common complaint from people that want to do research in energy, the Department of Energy will not approve their research. These people are not asking for money, they have private investors. What they need is permission from the government to spend their own money. This is because the government has placed restrictions on certain materials and technologies. I'm not talking about restriction on researching the best means by which we can dissolve mountain sides in radioactive acids to find the best means to kill off endangered species and conjure their tortured souls to turn generators. I'm talking about being able to mine rare earth elements so they can be turned into alloys that can make windmills more efficient. These people want to be able to dig up dirt, take out the interesting stuff, then put the dirt back and plant trees on top.
The Department of Energy won't let these people turn worthless dirt into vast piles of energy because they might dig up some thorium. Thorium is mildly radioactive, kind of like how potassium is mildly radioactive. We don't ban potassium mining. We ban rare earth mining because someone decades ago theorized it may be possible to maybe, possibly, if you work real hard at it, use thorium to make a nuclear weapon. No one has actually made a thorium bomb but in theory they are possible. But since thorium exists everywhere that the materials we need to make better magnets we can't dig it up ourselves. So, we buy it from China. Now China is doing all the research on rare earth metals. They get to find the best ways to get this valuable material from the ground and turn it into better windmills, aircraft, ships, cars, light bulbs, and all kinds of interesting ways we can reduce our dependence on foreign energy.
The Department of Energy has become the problem. Any way we can reduce their funding sounds good to me. With less money perhaps they won't be getting in the way of people that are doing the real research.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.