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White House Seeks 72 Percent Cut To Clean Energy Research (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The Trump administration has made it very clear that it is pro fossil fuels and has little interest in pushing programs the promote renewable energy. Now, the Washington Post reports that the president's proposed 2019 budget slashes funds for Energy Department programs focused on energy efficiency. While the proposal is just a jumping off point, the fact that it seeks to cut such funding by 72 percent underscores where the administration's interests lie and in which direction its policies will continue to go. The draft budget documents viewed by Washington Post staff showed that the president is looking to cut the Energy Department's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) budget to $575.5 million, down from the current $2.04 billion level. Included in the budget cuts are funds for programs researching fuel efficient vehicles, bioenergy technologies, solar energy technology and electric car technologies. Additionally, the draft budget proposal seeks to cut jobs, dropping staff levels from 680 down to 450. One EERE employee told the Washington Post, "It shows that we've made no inroads in terms of convincing the administration of our value, and if anything, our value based on these numbers has dropped." The report notes that the Energy Department had requested less extreme spending cuts, but the Office of Management and Budget pushed for the more substantial ones found in the draft proposal. It's also worth noting that the proposal could still be changed before being released in February.
I'm glad I invested in oil stocks last year. Good move!
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
This administration is determined to make the USA more like a third world country.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
We need to stop giving corporations money for investing in future profitable endeavors.
Been so much fun watching the wealthiest country in the history of humanity plummet to dead last in nearly every metric that counts. USA! USA! USA!
... but then I'm not American.
I saw something earlier today about a "GOP train wreck". Is this connected to that story, or does it just refer to the Republicans more generally?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The Democrats might be bought and paid for, but at least their sponsors are leaders for the 21st century instead of the 19th.
This is probably not a big deal, IMHO. Sure, some groups will be stymied by the lost of tax breaks and grants. But let's face it; solar and wind are going to become cheaper than fossil fuels in the long term anyway (hell, it's a dead heat right this minute) and we won't need government funding for renewables to propagate. In fact, I would rather the feds just get out of the way.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
Hopefully they'll get a VW exec to gas him with diesel fumes also. Disgustingly stupid traitor.
Come on.. This is a leaked document which is admitted to be a draft, subject to wholesale changes, of a budget request from the DOE, which will be edited at the Whitehouse before the president presents it to Congress with a bunch of other similar documents. Congress will ignore the president's input and draft their own budget in the house, argue for months over in committee, sent to the floor of the house, finally arrive at something that won't be recognizable as the original draft that the house passes as a "budget" which will be taken up by the Senate who will likely add their own amendments in committee and from the floor which if it actually passes, will head back to the reconciliation committee to be possibly edited again before both chambers vote to pass it or not.
How's this even news fit to print by a respected news paper much less "News for nerds" on Slash Dot? There is a nearly zero chance these numbers will survive all the coming edits driven by the endless debate in congress.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Have we figured out everything we need to know about clean coal?
This is because they spent 8 years sucking one dick, and now don't like the taste of another. Guys, guys, play to the crowd! You have a Republican president...write your proposals accordingly! This "I'm going to stick to the political language which was so in vogue of the previous administration until hell or high-water" is why you are getting trounced.
And for those of you hoping that this one will get impeached, or not re-elected in four years...remember, they tried that with W. They tried to get an impeachment going...they tried to prevent his re-election. Incumbents tend to re-elect lately...
Is this a parody of senile elderly right wingers, or do you really think random all caps words, incomplete sentences, and ridiculous bragging are a good form of argumentation?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Plus, why should we be forced at gunpoint to pay for research for corporations? This funding is morally wrong in the first place even if the end is good. The end does not justify the means.
People who believe in this kind of stuff can invest in these types of industries and choose companies they believe will succeed.
Trump does everything he can to make America as uncompetitive as possible. Then again has he ever had anything manufactured in the US?
... and coal is going to get us there! You're going to see, it will be beautiful! The war on coal powered rockets is over! Werner Von Brown knew coal was the future but Obama didn't! Coal is gonna be Yuge, fantastic, giggity!
Did you see my election victory?
He sure is genius making the democrats look retarded.
Trump: "Lowest African-American unemployed ever!"
Black Caucus and Democrats: "I am not going to applaud that. Why would I applaud African-Americans doing well!"
What Trump and the GOP are calling "Make America Great Again" is just a re-branding of "Bring Back the Good-Old Days". They want to turn back the calendar to some decade before the 1960's, in every way that matters, and this is just a small part of that agenda. Take a look at how America was, socio-politically, in the 1950's and before, and you'll get an idea of the hell-hole they want to drag us back to.. but I diverge. This is one of the most retarded things Trump has done. Of course it probably won't have any effect on industry, since the energy industry as a whole has some actually intelligent people working for it who see that fossil fuels' days are numbered and that other sources are going to be necessary if we want to continue having a civilization; the only real effect this will have is to further prove that Trump and his cronies aren't living in the Real World and are not fit to lead. We won't be 'making America great again' by being left behind by the rest of the industrialized world; we sure as fuck won't be impressing anyone when the likes of China passes us up because our so-called 'leadership' has it's collective head up it's collective ass like this.
Yea let's instead prop up a dying industry thats also trying to take the planet down with it.
Kill yourself.
At this rate, America will never again be great.
That's true. The government's role should be to make the market work efficiently, which means eliminating market failures such as monopolies and negative externalities.
But the federal government doesn't seem to be eager to internalize negative externalities by charging polluters the cost of air pollution, about $1,000 per person annually. Instead, the current administration has been doing the opposite by dismantling protections!
While it lasted, the government's investments in clean energy research were a good way to repay its negligence in making sure the market cleaned up after itself. Ending the research will only accelerate the environmental debt that our children and grandchildren will inherit from us.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The public benefits from government funded R&D. That makes it worth doing. Your arbitrary "defense and metrology" cutoff is silly.
> Yea let's instead prop up a dying industry thats also trying to take the planet down with it.
I remember when this kind of "pie in the sky" stuff also included useful non-polluting things to do with COAL. So I am kind of baffled at all of the blind hatred for coal around here. This group should be better informed than that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
We clearly seem to do something like that (Make America Great) because there is a certain contingent that can do nothing but denigrate the US. So clearly there is a problem. If Trump wants to be the man to address it than that's better than the total helpless despair that the other side wants to peddle.
Even liberals get tired of liberal nonsense.
BTW, we outsourced our "leadership" to China a long time ago. That chicken is going to come home to root sooner or later. It's inevitable (same goes for India).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
bobbied argued:,/p>
This is a leaked document which is admitted to be a draft, subject to wholesale changes, of a budget request from the DOE, which will be edited at the Whitehouse before the president presents it to Congress with a bunch of other similar documents. Congress will ignore the president's input and draft their own budget in the house, argue for months over in committee, sent to the floor of the house, finally arrive at something that won't be recognizable as the original draft that the house passes as a "budget" which will be taken up by the Senate who will likely add their own amendments in committee and from the floor which if it actually passes, will head back to the reconciliation committee to be possibly edited again before both chambers vote to pass it or not.
There is a nearly zero chance these numbers will survive all the coming edits driven by the endless debate in congress.
All of what you say is quite true - and yet TFA has actual value, in that it reveals the deeply-atavistic mindset of the bugeteers in the Orange Oaf's administration.
Note, for instance, that TFS points out DoE - which currently is headed by noted Texas dimwit Rick Perry (of "I forget" fame) - requested fairly Draconian cuts, but the OMB insisted on going beyond cutting to the bone all the way to chopping off whole limbs. This is an otherworldly level of stupid and spiteful, done together, with arrogance.
What this report does is to provide incentive for private citizens and public ones alike to work even harder to influence their Congresscritters to push back against the ever-greater excesses of an administration with no actual vision of its own - only a blind determination to undo every singe policy and legislative achievement of its predecessor, for no better reason than to wave the toddler-in-chief's tiny, flaccid dick around.
In other words: its value lies in motivating sane people who live in the real world to stay angry at the narcississtic know-nothing who occupies what has become the Offal Office ...
Check out my novel.
Come on.. This is a leaked document which is admitted to be a draft, subject to wholesale changes, of a budget request from the DOE, which will be edited at the Whitehouse before the president presents it to Congress with a bunch of other similar documents. Congress will ignore the president's input and draft their own budget in the house, argue for months over in committee, sent to the floor of the house, finally arrive at something that won't be recognizable as the original draft that the house passes as a "budget" which will be taken up by the Senate who will likely add their own amendments in committee and from the floor which if it actually passes, will head back to the reconciliation committee to be possibly edited again before both chambers vote to pass it or not.
How's this even news fit to print by a respected news paper much less "News for nerds" on Slash Dot? There is a nearly zero chance these numbers will survive all the coming edits driven by the endless debate in congress.
How do you think it gets changed?
It's public outrage that causes items like this to get scrapped. Extreme cuts like this are designed to change the Overton window so they can "compromise" on slightly less extreme cuts later on. The earlier the uproar the less chance they have to shift the debate.
I stole this Sig
You do know that African American unemployment fell by 10% during Obama's tenure? That it continued to fall another 1% in the first year of Trump while he publically called for African American football players to be sacked for daring to make a statement about police brutality which disproportionately affects their community, is just not something to applaud him for.
Pieces of clean coal make fine Christmas stocking stuffers for naughty children. Let's put the "C" back into "Christmas"!
Texas had to pay people for consuming their electricity, they generated so much wind power. Likewise off Europe. Trump, et al, required a 30% duty on Chinese solar panels because the USA companies "could not compete". Maybe the companies should revisit how they do business? What if We The People (of the world) ignore Trump and his budgets. What happens if we pay, directly, to fund the solar, wind, wave and tidal energy development, perhaps swamping the fossil fuel industries? What about us using those power generation means to power our houses, families, households, and devices? If we (members of rich or medium nations, obviously excepting OPEC, coal company locations, etc.): If we each provided USD$5 or something equivalent, would it move that research forward? Would we and our children reap the rewards of that small investment? I don't know about you folks, but my wallet is out, ready to donate. Maybe I should set up an organization to fund the research? Might need some help here, but no-one, absolutely no-one, would be paid as much as a CxO. More along the lines of "just another employee". Most especially me. Isn't that subversive?
The private sector and capitalism will find solutions. We don't need another worthless government bureaucracy sucking up valuable resources.
I love it when Hegelians start blowing gaskets and melting down. 'WE'RE DOOOOOOOMED!'
Watching you guys foaming and blathering stupidity is better than watching a chic-fight.
Captcha: economy
I'd like to think it's a Russian bot.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
That's not the point and is irrelevant. The point is the democrats and black caucus didn't applaud an objectively good thing on multiple occasions and their response from Kennedy amounted to: "non-citizen good. citizen bad".
And now let's have a word from Actual Reality:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/01/30/fact-checking-the-2018-state-of-the-union-address
I see nothing in the list of programs requested to be cut that aren't the proper domain of private industry, that's how they make their money 'research & innovation'. Besides while the amount of money suggested to be cut for this research seems large, it is a mere 'pittance' in the total government budget. Push comes to shove you have to start somewhere...NASA next (even though I love the 'idea' of NASA, private industry has the tools to drive this as well).
The DOE performed basic research in the 1970s that led directly to our leadership in today's fracking technology. Basic research funded by the government can be critical to a nation's technology and economic strength. As the articles note, it's not about choosing technologies, but helping them along. This is an important distinction, but it's clear that industry does not always fund basic research very well, esp. that with a long time to pay off. http://www.aei.org/publication... https://www.forbes.com/sites/l...
That is something we should not applaud?
Seriously, we need to add a lot more geothermal and SMR nukes (not the gen 3/3+ crap from toshiba, etc) that are affordable, clean energy, and will provide base-load power, as opposed to wind/solar. Do not get me wrong. Both of these are needed and will continue. States are backing solar, and wind is ready to drop all subsidies on anyways.
As to dropping EV subsidies, Tesla has always begged for it since all of their competitors have NEVER used it correctly. And they are correct. Those subsidies SHOULD have been used on 150 MPC EVs and not on 75 MPC/hybrids which then charge in the daytime increasing demand and then pushing coal plants.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Having this helps make a thriving technology centric country. If you want to become less and less important and self sufficient in this world, stick with your opinion, otherwise fucking learn about all the net positive with real trickle down effects.
Sigh. Another GOP who has never served in the military.
Look, the military is about PROTECTION of America, and improving our defense. The highway system was built up to serve the military in times of war, while also helping our nation in a civilian fashion.
Energy is a SERIOUS issue for the military and our nation. As such, this R&D and even the subsidies to get this stuff going, IS about defense.
And as has been pointed out by the DOD, climate change, if it goes too far, will lead to massive numbers of wars and refugee issues.
Sadly, ppl like you are NOT listening to them because you AND YOUR FAMILY NEVER FUCKING SERVED.
You have NO idea of what it means to put it on the line. Nor do you have any idea of what it means to AVOID a war.
Far too many of you on the right, are like trump, cowards.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
“African American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded, and Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history.” During the State of the Union. IOW, the state of the Union is that "African American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded". Is that claim wrong ? How did he take credit for it?
The article references a flip flop and Trump is using it to his advantage and tying it to various accomplishments the GOP have done, namely the tax cut. Sure, make the point that it was trending before but that didn't happen .
Here's the thing. Democrats didn't applaud the success of African-Americans in the US because Trump. They are disingenuous and look like no matter what Trump offers they will refuse because #resist #thisisnotnormal.
Both sides has rhetoric of "working together" yet one side refused to even applaud objectively good things. How can you deal with a group like that?
We're talking about electric power generation here. Electrons are electrons. If coal is cheaper to produce than solar and my electric costs reflect that. By god almighty burn that damn coal.
The federal government has no business doing commercial product R&D that's actually being done in the private sector. Federal scientific organizations exist only to fulfil the mission of the federal government. In this case, it's science for defense and science for metrology standards. What kind of car private citizens drive and what kind of power plant generates the electricity when you flip on the lightswitch is not something the federal government needs to be very deep into.
Well first off, this is YOUR opinion on the role of government. There's no political consensus as to the federal government's role when it comes to R&D, except perhaps a general consensus that the government should not exist to specifically profit off its citizenry (even if this is far from the reality). In fact, I would argue that energy policy is something the government SHOULD be deeply invested in. Because when climate change is partially responsible for escalating regional violence and the creation of terrorist states like ISIS, when oil shortages force us to get involved in places like Iraq, when coal-fired plants release greenhouse gases and carcinogens into our air and water and earth...you're goddamn certain I want the government to be in the business of research and development of alternative sources of energy, along with strategies to incent these industries to grow rapidly.
The government has been a source of innovation for hundreds of years. Land-grant universities, for example, have been a powerhouse of innovation. The internet was the result of a DARPA project. Argue away that the federal government shouldn't be manufacturing things for profit, but IMHO it's stupidity to argue that government has no business in research and development.
So all of America's adventures in the middle east was to prevent refugees and not make them....Yea good job....*rolls eyes*
There is ONE, literally one, large power plant in the US that uses carbon sequestration technology (clean coal). other than that, clean coal is just a presidential punchline. Clean coal is a joke of epic proportions.
If you want TRULY clean coal, then you have to clean it from the moment it's pulled from the ground to its end cycle as energy. Guess what? You'll never get there. Mountaintop mining alone is incredibly destructive to the environment, and as for its industrial use, it's expensive as hell to put most of the byproducts like coal ash and CO2 back in the ground environmentally. Coal is the buggy whip of the 21st century. It's going to die, it's only a matter of time. Clinging to the promises of clean coal is like claiming nuclear fusion works right. Neither are commercially viable, and certainly not when there are no regulations in place to enforce it.
The federal government has no business doing commercial product R&D that's actually being done in the private sector.
Do me a favor and get your ass off the ARPAnet.
I'll look forward to your opinion on your token ring appletalk bullshit.
Applaud for lower unemployment is good. Applaud because Trump think he did it? No, that is disingenuous and you know it. The facts don't lie.
“African American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded, and Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history.” During the State of the Union. IOW, the state of the Union is that "African American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded". Is that claim wrong ? How did he take credit for it?
The article references a flip flop and Trump is using it to his advantage and tying it to various accomplishments the GOP have done, namely the tax cut. Sure, make the point that it was trending before but that didn't happen .
Here's the thing. Democrats didn't applaud the success of African-Americans in the US because Trump. They are disingenuous and look like no matter what Trump offers they will refuse because #resist #thisisnotnormal.
Both sides has rhetoric of "working together" yet one side refused to even applaud objectively good things. How can you deal with a group like that?
Simple. Why don't you ask Republicans and Conservatives that under President Obama? In fact ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/when-did-mcconnell-say-he-wanted-to-make-obama-a-one-term-president/2012/09/24/79fd5cd8-0696-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html?utm_term=.ee8a81cff2a0
And before you say or anyone else says it ... this is REAL NEWS and this s reality. Don't paint Republicans like "the good guys" because they have their fair share of nonsense.
Military spending is twice what it should be as a percentage of GDP - look at 1940 just before the war. Then shit got real and we spent 40% of GDP for WW2. Imagine what would happen if the US spent $7.89 trillion on war. That'd be a freakin' space opera.
A true "Bring Back the Good-Old Days" policy would cut DoD spending to $291.35B instead of increasing it to $639.1B - a $347B difference or 53% of the deficit. $650B in cost cutting or revenue increases needs to happen to stop the debt from growing. If each tax bracket was increased by 5%, the gap would be closed and the budget would be balanced. To actually pay the debt off, you'd need to raise 6.1 times current annual revenue in excess of spending. It can be done, but needs to be done as a 50 year plan to not wreck the economy. Politicians are incapable of long-term planning.
It's not really clear what Trump is "addressing", though.
He's effectively ceded all American claims in the Pacific to China, and only the senate is keeping him from doing the same for Russia in eastern Europe. In the Middle East, he's done everything in his power to strengthen Iran. He's even turned "support for Israel", which for 70 years has been a bipartisan agreement through all US governments, into a partisan issue - something that the Israelis will rue bitterly before we're all much older.
In a way, it's been educational for the rest of the world: it's like getting a preview of what the post-American world will look like. But how, exactly, it's supposed to translate into "making America great" is something that eludes me.
I'm not on the ARPAnet. I'm on the Internet. Using a computer built by a private company with a CPU developed by a private company running an OS developed by private entities containing IP developed overwhelmingly by private actors communicating with you over network connections built, maintained, and paid for by private citizens and businesses.
Saying ARPA therefore all government spending is good is like saying Sikorsky therefore all non-helicopter transportation is bad.
Got a chip on your shoulder? Well, that's OK.
We're not the Soviet Union here. Everything isn't automatically military just because the military may benefit from it.
I will ignore the trolling/bait about 'sending us back to the 1950s'...let's just take a look at 2 of your sentences & juxtapose them...
!) one of the most retarded things Trump has done
2) Of course it probably won't have any effect on industry
How is it you don't see the point of 1 IS because of 2?...there is no benefit to the industry or society of the Federal government investing in this research that private industry can do themselves. It is an entirely unnecessary federal government expenditure and the people employed can go in to private industry to get a job.
As for China passing the US (or any other western country) in certain industries, perhaps you should take some time to review the significant differences in 'government regulation & support of an industry' in China vs the US...the former would make a 'liberal' apoplectic (e.g. insufficient environment regulation, insufficient or nonexistent workers 'rights' legislation)...the latter (direct investment & ownership) would likely be a 'liberals' wet dream.
A dying industry is one that cannot get private funding on merits and so must run to the government for its continued existence. Sort of like buggy whip makers running to the government to keep the automobile off the market.
Solar power, a technology so great that we have to get the government to pay you to buy it.
Look guy, I work in government R&D. We do things inefficiently. Not because we don't know what we're doing, not because we're out to suckle at the taxpayer's teat, but because the federal government is a large organization with multiple competing constituencies and institutional priorities. Some things we need to do in-house because they're of strategic value to not outsource. Other things...are best left to private organizations to do in the way that best fits their corporate cultures.
Fracking and nuclear energy and aviation and all of that stuff were pie in the sky decades ago and it was appropriate for federal institutions to dabble in them on the off chance that they'd yield strategic or military benefits down the line. But the moment something takes off commercially, it's time for the federal juggernaut to back off and let it grow on its own.
Why do these articles never include the source document? I'm curious to see what else is in the draft, and what aspects are cut versus not. This is a pet peeve of mine, only behind articles about rankings that don't just have a table with the rankings in them.
Think you need the Coward tag more than I do.
Aren't you happy?
*exact words
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You're the one arguing all such spending is bad.
All it takes is one example to refute it. We don't need to chase your strawman over all spending entirely being good.
Sorry, but your argumentation is terrible. Have you ever sat back and just thought about not being stupid?
Can't applaud universal good thing because Trump.
slashes funds for Energy Department programs focused on energy efficiency
This part doesn't make sense in any political universe, no matter how left or right wing, pro- or anti-fossil fuel. It's just bad business, like some international imperialistic political movement of the past. Has there been a bill to end entropy as well?
I try to hypothesize about how this has come to pass, and the only thing I can think of is that Trump is an alien.... trying to terraform earth to his liking. What the hell else is there... insanity maybe.... nah
[($)]
You're right. Burning coal in the furnace is much cleaner than burning solar panels, and cheaper!
After hearing last night's pep rally, I hope, for the love of all that is good in the world, you people vote for a congress to block this guy. He is truly scary. Especially eerie was the chanting. Very Nazi like. We can't have our congressmen doing shit like that.
Everybody, reread "Lord of the Flies". That is our future if we continue this path. Before our eyes we are watching people turn into vicious animals.
It's nothing about good guys or whatever partisan bullshit you think it is.
The fact of the matter is that democrats refused to applaud a good thing because Trump. How can you work with someone that irrational?
Trump likes coal, man this is minor. I agree with the spending money on research but probably we spend way too much, so all good. Now lets get 20 new Nuke power plants happening and get some really good new Nuke tech. Dependable power is helpful when it is night and the wind is flat (oh a few batteries can help unless there is no wind a few days.)
This is about WHO get it to make those tech cheaper : " Included in the budget cuts are funds for programs researching fuel efficient vehicles, bioenergy technologies, solar energy technology and electric car technologies" if you cut research that means you leave the lead to future technology to others. If it was cut on promoting solar or whatever I would agree with you, but this seem to be cut on research. As for "i would rather than the fed get away" be wary of what you are asking for : some fundamental research is done solely on the fed level, because it does not pan out any immediate useful tech or patent for the private sector, yet down the line they may be indirectly getting the fruit of it. Cut that research, then you stall.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
> The federal government has no business doing commercial product R&D that's actually being done in the private sector.
This is so wrong it's hard to know where to start. Let's just confine ourselves to renewable energy. It's fair to say that renewable is a growth market worldwide. If your country doesn't do fundamental research on renewables, how do you expect to capture this market? Well, it wont by slapping a 30% tariff on importing PV panels because the world's largest *market* for PV will retaliate in kind and you'll sell precisely 0.
Bottom line, if you're not in this race, you lose market share, and that means losing exports, jobs, tax revenue and all that jazz.
The second aspect of your rant is the whole small-government idea. Well, most of world considers that one of the things a government ought to do is ensure there is a healthy safe environment for their citizens. Any move to renewables is basically a strategy for avoiding chuffing out fine particles from chimney stacks and tail pipes. I mean, you wouldn't want to have everyone spewing out catalytic-free diesel clouds from their cars would you? Eventually, everyone is going to be driving (or being driven by) electric vehicles. That's just the way it's going to be. Most nations realise the value of investing in research so they can reap economic benefits from participating in the emergent industry.
Or you can basically kill all your environment protections, kill your research funding and initiate a trade war with everyone else by slapping on tariffs. It's a policy so perfectly honed to be almost completely the wrong-thing-to-do that it's breathtaking. Still, I'm sure your ideologues will convince you that it's good some how, the market will sort it all out right? Good luck with that.
"we've made no inroads in terms of convincing the administration of our value" is exactly the reason for being cut. Burning money for 4 decades without progress means something is wrong, we still don't have "clean energy" and most "clean(er) energy" innovation hasn't happened in the US.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I was never really a "Trump supporter" (voted for Gary Johnson in the election, in fact) -- but I'm fine with these fiscally conservative changes.
Every time I turn around, someone is shoving "environmentally clean/sound/Green" this, that or the other thing my direction -- and usually without much logic to their position. As long as it makes them feel good that they're "saving our planet", to hell with common sense and logic, right?
I mean, look.... It's gotten so ridiculous, we have the state of California trying to fine restaurant workers $2,000 if they hand out a plastic drinking straw without a customer asking for one first!
When it comes to tax dollars spent on "renewable energy research", I seriously doubt there's much of any real benefit that can be shown for the money they've poured into it recently? Almost all of the incremental improvements I've seen with solar panel technology have come from private industry doing their own in-house R&D so their specific brand of panel can outperform the competition in some way. It wasn't a matter of the U.S. government doing all that R&D and then sharing it with industries so we could have better panels for all. A whole lot of the solar industry is just a big sham anyway, IMO. Basically, you've got all these installers out there hawking panels to people under low/no money down "power purchase agreements" and solar leases, when the math doesn't even add up that the panels these people bought are generating enough electricity to cover the discounted kilowatt hour rates the customers receive in the agreements.
I just saw this illustrated last month, with the super cold weather we had out here in Maryland. People pretty commonly received electric bills of as much as $750 for the month, because we're all using electric heat pumps or baseboard heating. A few people with Vivint and other solar PPA arrangements bragged that their bill was only about $50 or $60. But fact check! With the amount of energy it takes to heat a home with all electric heat plus all the other power used (electric stoves, water heaters, clothes washers/dryers, etc.), there's no WAY those panels generated anywhere NEAR what it would take to offset the bill down to $50.
So how can this be a workable business model for Vivint and others? Clearly they're banking on all sorts of clean energy subsidies they're collecting for increasing the solar footprint, regardless of any real economic sense it's making.
I happen to have SunPower solar panels myself (a 7.64Kw system) that I purchased straight out. And I can assure you that the month of December is one of the lowest power generating months of the year. My panels don't put more than maybe a 25% dent in my electric bill in winter months. They probably account for a maximum of maybe 65% of my usage in the peak months where they get the most sunshine. Granted, our house is 2,200 sq. feet and over 100 years old, drafty, and we have a family of 6 living here and using a lot of electricity. But I can more clearly see exactly what the solar panels contribute than the people on these lease arrangements that obfuscate the facts. And as much as these cost to install? They won't even break even on that until they're over 2/3rds. of the way through their usable life.
Why keep paying government to advocate this stuff?
The federal government has every business doing commercial product R&D that won't pay off in the short term, but that may very well reap huge benefits in the long term. When the average tenure of an S&P 500 CEO is only 10 years (https://www.creditdonkey.com/ceo-statistics.html), they have no interest in investing in technologies that may only pay off in 20, 30 or 50 years.
Unfortunately, that's exactly the kind of investment humanity needs right now....long term, speculative innovation.
Or we could just stick our head in the sands, say that black is white, coal is clean, news is fake and we've always been at war with eastasia. Maybe that will work out for us.
It is amazing how the far right really does not understand how important all of those items are. Even now, the military is pointing out how worthless our high school grads are. They are in HORRIBLE shape, and many of them can not pass boot camp or even pass high school.
Oddly, the GOP screams about having a strong defense, while gutting EVERYTHING needed to make it so.
The GOP is SOOOO fucking over America.
The left controls education in this country; the results of that system serve the goals of Democrats. Sure, you can point to some school in the rural south that is trying to teach young earth creationism, but the vast majority of schools are run by graduates of left-wing education schools (inside left-wing colleges) that are more interested in teach neo-marxist doctrine than the three 'R's', history, and physical education.
Further, they get their guidance from the United States Department of Education, whose employees gave $74,000 to Clinton last election.... and $220 to Trump.
SHRIEK and USE alternating CAPITALIZED letters all you care to, but the left owns education in this country.... so they own the results. It'll take another two generations to undo the damage your fellow ideologues did to American education.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I am a scientist, I've worked in government, academia, and industry. I've been around long enough and paid enough attention that I've seen Nate Lewis give his presentation that led to both "An Inconvenient Truth" and the "clean coal" movement.
Until very recently, science funding under Republican presidents has gone up (slightly) more than under Democratic presidents. Yes, we're a bunch of secular humanist pains in the ass for Republicans, but it's understood that if we want a good economy and a strong military, we need to have the best research. If they're cutting us this drastically in an market where they're also starting a trade war, it means they no longer see a connection between economic growth and scientific research. (Or, ok, they could just be flailing around wildly... but presumably John Kelly or someone at the White House has put some thought into this.)
The terrifying thing is not that they see science this way, it's that they're right.
$1 of (inflation adjusted) research today does not have the economic or social impact of $1 of research 20 years ago. This is reflected in "research efficiency" which is a term generally only used in long term commercial research, but also in a few government agencies. Perhaps it's a cycle and where the USA and Japan used to dominate, now it's the Nordic countries. This is something I've seen discussed in a few scientific journals and among some very data driven stock pickers. There's a lot of hand wringing in some commercial science circles (i.e. big pharma) about why this is.
You can search online for "new company creation rate USA" and read the articles in the last year and the last decade worrying about the declining rate of entrepreneurship in the country. If you limit things simply to science based businesses (i.e. not social media, apps, or marketing tools), things are even worse.
Total scientific output (papers) has grown tremendously. Why economic impact hasn't is a hard question. Is science harder now? Are our funding structures wrong? Have we in science lost our cultural desire for or respect for commercial success? Do we not track useful metrics? (In a particularly silly real world example, the publisher Elsevier launched a program to track the economic impact of research by recording journal publications and citations.)
It might be worth noting that the commercial successes in the USA in renewable energy received government assistance through rebates, tax policy, and large loans; not research grants or IP positioning.
What Trump and the GOP are calling "Make America Great Again" is just a re-branding of "Bring Back the Good-Old Days".
Indeed.
Let's go back to the pre-70s, before the Rust Belt. Let us duplicate that inefficient car industry throughout America and make sure the whole country rots.
Insisting, rightly, that avoiding war is much more important while also insisting that people who avoid war by choosing to not enlist and go half way around the world to kill brown-skinned civilians are the cowards.
Hell of a slant.
So....how many billions did Big Oil promise the Trump Administration?
How is it you don't see the point of 1 IS because of 2?
Someone needs a clue-by-4 to notice states passing EPA / FCC laws.
Someone is a paid shill for radioactive coal and wants money wasted (re-)building castles in the sand. Who cares about the tide, the GOPernment will waste more pork barrels next year.
yeh when I heard this in the SU speak I was like, "err wtf, did he just miss pronounce something"...
My opinion aligns with the intent of the Constitution. The federal government is explicitly empowered to do only the things which it is charged to do by the Constitution. This is stated explicitly in the original Constitution and the 10th Amendment, implicitly in much of the Bill of Rights and other Amendments, and explicitly affirmed by centuries of nonbinding convention and binding legal rulings.
You are quite free to have an alternate opinion about the role of government, and you are quite welcome to advocate for amendments to the Constitution to enable that alternative vision, but you ought not fool yourself (and you ought not attempt to fool me) into thinking that your opinion is legal to implement.
No, I'm arguing that federal government doing commercial R&D is bad. I am not arguing all federal scientific work is bad. That would be hypocritical of me since that's what I do for a living.
Power systems and civilian vehicle technology is commercial R&D, though. Whoever wants to make a buck off of selling me a car can pay to have that research done. I don't want my tax dollars wasted on giving away corporate freebies that private business is capable of paying for out of its own pocket.
Life isn't binary just about all the time. Arguing like it is makes you look like a fool.
To the extent that corporate governance is broken (in your estimate, at least), the only role for federal government is identifying and remediating laws and regulations that incentivize that sort of short-term thinking. Tax cuts for R&D work can be a carrot. Fiduciary responsibility to shareholders on a per-quarter schedule can be a stick. Neither are carved in stone and can be adjusted to incentivize good behavior and avoid incentivizing bad behavior.
So you don't want to hear about it when US leadership makes a mistake? Would rather deny the problem exists than deal with it? Fine, put your head back in the sand again, and let the big boys face up to the job.
It wasn't a hell hole back then. And the people were a lot better. And those people are the ones that made the social changes happen. It's been downhill the last 20 years. Your comment that "Of course it probably won't have any effect on industry...." is a great reason for a government with $20T in debt shouldn't be spending money there.
You seem to suggest, no one would've researched those technologies, if the government hadn't done it. Are you ready to support this suggestion with citations and other evidence?
Don't even try. Your own link states:
Sure, if the government has already done something and published the results, it would be stupid not to use them. But to imply, as you do, that the government's contribution was somehow unique and irreplaceable is to misrepresent the facts.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"according to draft budget documents obtained by The Washington Post."
Yet these alleged leaked documents were not released to the public. I guess The Compost thinks us commoners just can't handle real source material.
OR.... this is just their latest fabrication.
Look guy, I work in government R&D. We do things inefficiently.
So you admit you're part of the problem by your own definition. You got fat off the tax-payer's dime, but now that you've got your retirement funds all squared away, now it's a problem, is that how that works?
US companies are driven to ever increase quarterly profits. With research, they will strongly tend to do things that promise a quick profit. But, with basic research not chasing a quick buck, maybe publicly funded, the research can look at promising technologies that may be better in the long run. They can look at long shots, which may prove to not be viable. But knowing what is not viable helps guide future research. Or, it may be viable in the future. Improvements in battery tech had made wind and solar much more viable than they were even a few years ago.
In last year's WH budget proposal the orange turd proposed to yank TDIU (unemployability, not unemployment benefits) from social security aged vets, many of which had not been capable of or allowed to work in many decades so had no SS benefits to speak of. This cruel proposal would have financially devastated almost 250,000 vets who have no earning capacity because of their service to this nation.
How it got killed was a concerted effort of organized vet groups and individuals embarrassing their congress-critter to make sure it didn't get out of committee.
It also showed the lie that the orange turd cares about anything or anyone. The proposal was made so they could funnel the money from poor vets to the private sectors. Not surprisingly, not a single Trumpanzee cared that their god-emperor was destroying vets. Sadly, I am at a VA hospital regularly and my fellow vets who are Trumpanzees didn't even believe he tried it despite being able to go to the WH website and read it. Stupidity know no bounds and I have always been ashamed that the military has such low standards in recruitment. Sure it made it easier for the few of us with functioning brains to succeed in the military but made day to day life much harder than it needed to be. Dealing with these morons is exhausting.
Anyway, it is critical that this type of bullshit gets out as early as possible so it can be stopped before the US is a literal third-world country.
numbnuts
Going back to nineteenth century technology while the rest of the world is moving forward, what could possibly go wrong? Bunch of frickin' energy hipsters.
You seem to suggest, no one would've researched those technologies, if the government hadn't done it.
That no one would have done the research eventually is probably unlikely, although hard to determine, but it is seems likely that such research would have been delayed, and less readily available to all companies in the field, so is likely to have reduced adoption. It's very hard to determine by how long a period without an alternative earth to test this on in detail, which does make fundamental research funding decisions difficult, but government has an opportunity to act like a VC firm, such that whilst not all investments necessarily pay off, it is highly likely that there is net benefit.
As essentially all of the money cut was going to bloated government bureaucracy to service the lobbyists from the likes of Solyndra and other failed Obama-era scams set up loot the treasury and not actually make real progress. Those with actual IP will do well. The only reason for the other to exist is to go bankrupt and sell off their assets at a discount to the non-losers.
Look guy, I work in government R&D. We do things inefficiently.
I work in private R&D. You have no idea the extent of inefficiency we are capable off, or the amount of politics involved in commercial products.
People who thinks that the private sector does things more efficiently than the government have no idea of what they are talking about.
The inefficiency associated with government doesn't come from the way it is funded but from the size of the organization.
Once a company is large enough to do the things the government is capable off the inefficiency and politics have taken over.
On top of that you have the blatant corruption.
In the government it is fought, in the private sector it is considered good business practice.
Even better is when you put a private company in charge of developing something with government funding.
Then it is not just the regular inefficiency and politics. Then you add a nice chunk of "milk the government" on top of it.
You start to do things inefficiently because it generates more profit.
not with a big bang, but by lots of little/big cuts.
That is socialism. Socialism is bad, mmkay?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
it's science for defense and science for metrology standards.
The gov can and should do lots of things. For example, much of our vaccines and anti-biotics came from fed R*D, not from private businesses. The reason is that antibiotics solve issues and makes far far less money than drugs that simply gloss over recurring issues.
Our highway system was developed for the military, and that dictated our cars, in part.
DOT then does regulations because it is cheaper to have well made SAFE cars than to simply allow private businesses to decide. The pinto is a GREAT example of what happens when private businesses decide safety issues.
And no, we are not USSR. I know. I helped develop defense and weapons against them. BUT, just because we are not communist, does not mean that limited regulations are not needed.
BTW, that AC was not me.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It will be reduced further than 72%. I'd expect around 100%, leaving 0% funding for renewable energy research.
So, in your own words, not spending 1.5 billion in tax payer money won't have "any effect", doesn't that imply that the spending was itself wasteful? If private interests will pick up the slack, shouldn't we be saving that money to spend somewhere else where it is more needed? Maybe that money could be spent improving infrastructure? Or other research? Or just plain not spending as much so our government doesn't have to borrow as much money every year. It doesn't sound so "retarded" to me in that light (and there's a bit of irony in an angry liberal using a derogatory word to describe mentally handicapped).
I agree with you about Trump's likely motivation here, but that doesn't mean that the outcome is actually bad. Don't go on angry rants about things that aren't really that bad -- it makes it much harder to take rants about actual bad things seriously.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
I live in Europe and I sure don't want to live in the US.
Ditto for a Canadian here. We have ring-side seats to the spectacle though.
You really believe that shit, broham? We don't have two parties in America. We have one party, the Financialist Party, with two faces.
Yes, voting for the Democrats is exactly the same as voting for the GOP.
The Ds and Hillary would have also cancelled net neutrality. Would have also pushed for tax cuts to the (multi-)millionaires. Would have gutted environmental protection and clean energy programs. /s
I'm sure there are also sorts of "bad" things, or even just things you would have disagreed with, that the Ds would have done. But don't be a retard and think the Rs and Ds are even remotely equivalent.
I know it's easy to be disappointed and be cynical about the political system, however you should at least attempt to be rational about the differences between the parties.
Hidden in the WaPo article is an (alleged source) punchline,
One source familiar with the negotiating process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe what the person had learned, said that the budget request had been lowered after negotiations with the Office of Management and Budget, and may have been lowered further because of a desire to channel more funding toward nuclear energy, a favored subject for Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
It's funny that so many of the folks who see Russian Bots everywhere and also happen to promote utility wind and solar, FAIL to spot the 'natural gas bots' in their midst. If there is a future for modern civilization at the present level of convenience -- which is code for "nobody has to die" -- it is through clean, safe nuclear energy with a ~300 year low volume waste profile . See that link for more rant.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
If they'll use the money to fund 'battery research', we it should be OK. Windfarms and photovoltaics are unreliable anyway (because weather), so we need to research better batteries (particularly lithium-air batteries).
Something tells me that they'll use that money to fund oil / coal exploration, though.
Those times weren't even the "good old days", at least not for most people. Female, non-white, gay, transgender, disabled... Basically anything other than healthy straight white male sucked to be back then.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
When he removed solar from the WH roof. This time the rest of the world leaves us behind that far.
affordable
Tell us your plan to make these new plants affordable. As in more affordable than renewables+storage.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So you admit that this leak is a blatant attempt at PR for this program?
You do understand the meaning of demagoguing right? This is a bad practice used by partisans to get their way by appealing to the emotion and foregoing logic and dispassionate thought.
I don't know about you, but I make better choices when I'm not angry or upset, but calm and rational with a clear mind.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Who needs research when we already have "beautiful clean coal".
Is there really any mystery or surprise about this?
Well said.
You forgot the step to bury it in soft peat for three months before recycling it as firelighters.
At least individual US states are ignoring what Trump is wanting to do and are going ahead with green energy despite his obsession with coal. The move by individuals and US states to green energy sources massively lowering demand for the energy generated by coal powered stations will be what ultimately brings the death of coal and there is nothing Trump can do about that. The only downside is how many tax payers dollars he spends trying to prop up a twitching corpse of an industry.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Personally, I do not believe it is a bad idea to drop all this government money for renewables.
Obama gave Solyndra, a maker of solar panels about $80 billion. Then they went bankrupt shortly after. I always wonder who got that money. What would have happened if they had not been given the handout?
My reasoning is not pro or anti clean-energy. The government is simply very inefficient in deciding who should be getting that kind of money. Political money tends to go to political friends. And speaking of presidents, I don't care which president you choose. Bush did a lousy job with all the money he gave to Pharmacies. People and companies who do the real work should be deciding where to spend the money. They know where the best benefits can be made for customers at the best cost and profit. It's called the free market.
This move completely follows the recommendation of coal magnate and Head of "Murray Energy", Robert E. Murray. His action plan was given to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
Murray Energy's plan is to:
* Overturn the clean power plan
* Withdraw and suspend the "endangerment finding" of green house gases
* Eliminate production tax credit for solar/wind
* Withdraw from the "illegal" Paris accord
* Eliminate "mine safety" regulations
* Kill the EPA
* Eliminate environmental safety regulations
* Replace non-conforming panel members on Federal Energy Commission
Read the memo yourselves: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
A picture was taken of Robert E. Murray, the coal Barron hugging the Energy Secretary... The photographer was fired.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...
If you don't think this not a cut and clear case of the oligarchy changing Government policy against the health and well being of Americans, you're in sand.
VOTE THESE PEOPLE OUT!
I posted this a couple of days ago and was flagged as "off topic", but if people looked, its exactly on topic..
geo-thermal can already be cheaper than BOTH wind/solar with/without storage. That is a fact.
Why they are not being drilled is because it is hit/miss. IOW, we have lots of experience at finding oil/gas, so nearly all wells come up profitable. BUT, finding heat down below is a whole other issue.
NASA is pushing for us to put in geo-thermal with injection all around yellowstone to keep it from blowing again. This should be pushed by the gov and like wind/solar, given some subsidies help to get it going. At the same time, I would push for tax breaks for any oil well that is converted into geo-themal HVAC, if it has certain conditions (i.e. enough heat).
As to SMRs, I would pick the top 5 companies and give them 1B each to get their systems R&D, and tested/vetted. Then I would offer up guaranteed funding for 50 of these to be built, with limits of 20, 15, 10, and then 5. IOW, the faster you get your SMR out, the more reactors with guaranteed funding can be built. I might even say that each of these companies would get 1/2 of the funding paid for the first 3-5 reactors.
Then I would also try to get a STANDARD for controls and back-end. IOW, allow a company like Babock/wilkins to build out a site that would allow for say 5-10 reactors of which say 3-5 might be of 1 type and another 3-5 of another. This would allow for reactors that process thorium, or better yet, waste, to be added later on.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/energy-subsidies.aspx
We were spending about 2 billion a year before we went broke from the housing crash and the Obama administration figured that we should increase spending to over 9 billion, because we all know that when you're broke the best thing to do is spend more money, right?
We're currently spending about 5 billion a year, so to cut that back to pre-abusive spending levels, that would be a decrease of about... You guessed it. Right about 72%.
This whole thing is lemming fodder. "Oh my god, Trump is going to... reduce spending to sane levels" just doesn't fit the hate-trump narrative now, does it?
If SMR was as cheap as $1bn in R&D then investors would be all over it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It is just funny seeing you snowflakes loose your minds about an article that wrong about how the US government works. :D :D :D
Thanks for the entertainment.
Big Giant Orange Head didn't serve because of some alleged foot problem. He is curiously uninterested in talking about the matter. I intend to correct that today.
Ever notice that BGOH's feet don't seem to be a problem? Does he limp? Does he need braces like Roosevelt did? Does he simply need to rest periodically? Does he take meds, go in for surgery, anything at all?
Oh wait, you see his feet used to be a problem but they were fixed and stopped being a problem. That must be it. Kind of like the temporary insanity dodge used by certain crooks looking for a get out of jail free pass.
BGOH came from money and privilege. I'll bet the foot thing was made up, or at the very least exploited to the max. You see, wealthy people don't need to serve, that's for the common folk. Poor people need to put their life on the line and money does not.
Big Giant Orange Head dodged the draft. And in a final insult, he attacks veterans and their families when he has no right to say a word. This man has no shame and does not deserve to be President. He isn't a quality person and he fails the integrity test.
nuscale is almost there and 1B would put them over the top quickly.
For others, if they had a 1B grant from the feds, they could get other investors VERY QUICKLY.
IOW, just as W/Os investment into Solar and Wind created a number of companies here (to which China targeted and destroyed a number of them or simply offered much bigger incentives to move to China), created a number of companies here.
By getting 5 nuke SMRs going, it will encourage other SMRs to build here.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Because it will melt all of the triggered, lefty snowflakes.
Oh, and liberals, that landslide you keep predicting for the mid-terms, yeah, that ain't gonna happen. If you'd poke your heads out of your MSM echo chambers for a moment, you'd realize that the country loves Trump and the Republicans, but is getting sick and tired of your constant whinging.
I can't wait to see the looks on your faces when the Rs grow their lead in Congress this fall and The Donald fills the judiciary with right-wing judges over the next 7 years.
#MAGA
Clean energy is not a good deal. Destroying the world is, at least in the short term. Although the climate is already rapidly changing.
But if it's that simple then why are people not investing?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You are speculating and aren't particularly convincing. Would the electricity reach Americans any faster, had the work of Tesla and Edison been done by a government agency instead? Would we have had airtravel any sooner, if Wright brothers worked for the Feds? Hitler's government created "People's Vagon" in the 30ies — decades after Ford's private enterprise created an affordable car for the masses. (Cue in the "Why can't we be more like Europe?!" lament.)
Bzzz! Stop right there. The government can not be a "VC firm", because none of the government officials are putting their own money on the line. This allows them to spend the monies confiscated from you and me at gun point on pies-in-sky and without any responsibility. The best we can hope for, is that they aren't outright corrupt — investing taxpayers' monies in exchange for kickbacks. But even if they are sincere and honest, they can simply make stupid decisions — with our money.
A real venture-capitalist backing something like the infamous Solyndra would lose his shirt and not invest again. Has anyone been fired from the DoE for actually investing in Solyndra?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Anything built new (solar, hydro, wind, etc) is not a replacement it is an add-on. Then the new apparatuses fail and need more building. Build the equipment to build the equipment first. Don't use oil to build (solar, hydro, wind, etc) either now or later. As a separate project it could be smart. Using oil to build it is not a net benefit. Using oil to sustain it is not a net benefit. Of course people drive their cars to work and use gas. Of course everything else takes oil/gas.
You can do it if you begin with an entirely independent system but you can't scale it quickly unless you use --> OIL.
Eg. only use alt energy factories to build alt energy factories etc. But? Lazy people won't. They will cut corners. Then you have a loss. This is why electric cars are a gimmick. Neat they are electric wow but the oil it takes to make them just depletes world reserves faster.
Think, dickheads goddam.
And kick out the Jews again. They are all up in USA business and they are not American-loyal. Fuck Israel.
Samson Option and stories about Noah and the 2 goats rolling with 2 aardvarks and 2 birds of every type etc are stupid. Get them out of the news, money, hollywood, tv, etc too. All out. They are a deceptive culture and a false religion. "but we are chosen by God" so says the Jews themselves. STFU. GTFO.
No kidding. You know what the difference is though? Business can fail. Government can't. All the BS you see in working on government contract doesn't go away if you do the same work "in house." The decision to pursue a line of work is where the mistake happens, not so much the execution of it. But government research doesn't fail. If funding priorities change, everyone and their mother start bellyaching to their congressman about the Evil Republicans Defunding Science (TM) or Evil Democrats Wasting Money (TM). Creative destruction doesn't occur in government labs. It does in the private sector. Not black-and-white, but pretty clear contrast in the aggregate.
Our government does and should do lots of things. But I draw the line in a different place than you do. I don't think commercial product development is what government labs are for.
It's a matter of presenting possible contingencies to people while they can still maybe do something about it. Letting people know what their elected representatives are up to is vital to democracy.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you think Obama wasn't trying to make America as great as possible, you missed something. We're not peddling helpless despair, we're looking into places to improve. It's you idiots that keep insisting that everything is fine with you (as long as you're healthy, white, heterosexual, not suspected of a major crime), so you view things like racial discrimination with tacit approval.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That depended on a lot of things like your skin color (although you could be accused of "passing" if you looked a little nonwhite), or your sexual preferences, or how much you liked rigid gender roles.
Better in what way? They sure weren't better to people who didn't resemble them.
It's hard to make social changes happen when you're on the bottom.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sure it can be. It can also be a lot more expensive. Depends on where you are. Iceland is a great place for geothermal, Minnesota a lot less so.
There's no way we can bleed off enough energy to make a difference, and if we had the ability to do that we'd have to be real careful not to make things unstable and start an eruption.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
why did few invest into wind/solar prior to W/O hug subsidies for these?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
LOL In a partisan world, One man's information is another's propaganda...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
On your Yellowstone comments, I will trust NASA and the geologists and engineers that they brought in more so than others. Also, before NASA did this a separate study by mit on Geothermal confirm all of that and more.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I don't self-identify as a 'liberal' because I don't embrace all of their core values -- I just registered as Democrat out of self-defense and a desire to try to bring back some socio-political BALANCE to this country, instead of the socio-political indicator needle slamming back and forth from extreme to extreme like it has been. I'll call Trump a 'retard' all I want, because he thinks he's a genius, when in fact all he is, is a loud-mouthed bully with narcissistic tendencies.
This isn't so much about the money, it's about the intent and the message that sends; Trump and his cronies are saying "fuck renewable energy, we want coal and oil, and we don't care what anyone thinks about that!". Couple that with the very clear message of "we don't believe in 'climate change', we don't want it discussed or researched, and we don't care what anyone thinks about it", and you see an ass-backwards trend. Fossil fuels will run out sooner or later, stet? We must move on to another energy source sooner or later, stet? It only makes sense to encourage (either with money or with intent) the change-over sooner rather than later, when it'll be an emergency, stet? Trump & company are being stupid about this -- and so many other things.
Risk and low ROI. But nuclear has massive subsidies already, far more than wind and solar. It just doesn't seem to add up.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So you admit that this leak is a blatant attempt at PR for this program?
It is not an uncommon tactic, inside and outside the government, to 'leak' a proposal to gauge how the public will react to it. It gives you cover later on if the reaction was bad to say that it was just a theoretical draft that wouldn't have seen the light of day because it was a bad idea.
First off, nuclear does not have massive subsidies, except when u try to add the indemnity clause for accidents. Secondly, there is very little risk with an SMR. The reason is the reactors are prebuilt and checked at a factory. With old approach, it takes years to build reactors on site, test them, etc, which allows for the far left to raise costs with legal challenges, etc. With SMR, after approval, the reactor is installed in 6 months and running within another 3-6 months. And as to ROI, the ability to replace all shutdown and current nuclear reactors, along with coal and Nat gas, makes these very likely to be decent.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In the UK nuclear power is guaranteed approximately double the going rate for wind power. There were also many other huge incentives because no-one wants to build it any more. In the end they had to guarantee insane prices (£96/MWh) just to get a French/Chinese partnership to build it for us.
Also, there were no legal challenges in that case. The new plant was built next to the existing one, on land already owned and permission already obtained.
Again, if SMR really was so great and so cheap, why isn't it attracting huge investment? Even with only the standard level of free insurance subsidy investors should be all over it. Why didn't they cut the £37bn cost of the new reactor in the UK down to a small fraction using SMR? It doesn't make any sense.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That is easy to say, but resources are not unlimited, so debate needs to be made where these resources will be spent.
Of course, it surprises no one that if you want to cut something that is some group's pet issue, they'll go on about how it is the end of the world and the fall of the country.
Have you served? If you did you'd be aware that the military personnel are overwhelmingly GOP members.
Any pointers on NASA and geologists thinking they can drain significant heat from Yellowstone? I don't see that as possible with anything resembling current technology.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You seem to be missing the point.. You said that government funding didn't help. I suggested that this was too simplistic a response and that often government funding was useful, but the detailed effects hard to determine, but that it may often help, which is often the case in more fundamental, less market-oriented R&D. In the examples you gave, youve neglected government funded research predating Edison and Tesla, the government funding given to aircraft design immediately after the Wrights, whose version of the aeroplane was not the form that emerged ten years later, and the development of mass production, which involved many government contracts, although the Fordian version is based on meat packing factories.
The government can not be a "VC firm", because none of the government officials are putting their own money on the line.
That's often true of VC firms too, though.
This allows them to spend the monies confiscated from you and me at gun point
That's not a view of taxation I subscribe to. I see it more as a social contract. If the contract is violated then, like a shareholder, I can vote to get rid of the board, although I might not be successful.