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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.
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!
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
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
dead last in nearly every metric? Okay, I'll bite...please list all the metrics that you think count, and which ones the US is now in dead last in. I'll wait....
Are you retarded? There're 50+ all-electric car models available in the US market alone, today. Hyundai, Toyota, BMW, Chevrolet, Scion, Honda, Smart, KIA, Cadillac, Audi, Volvo, Mercedes Benz...
Go play with your clean coal. Soon enough it is all you'll be able to buy.
We need to stop giving corporations money for investing in future profitable endeavors.
When companies invest in solar or wind technology, maybe it will be profitable, or maybe not. But either way, much of the benefit goes to the public in the form of avoided externalities. Without public funding, companies will still research alternative energy, but will do much less than is optimal from the public's perspective.
Subsidies for alternative energy research make way more sense than subsidies for alternative energy production. We should do more of the former, and less of the latter.
That's working out real well for North Korea.
Trump started a war. That's the only reason he got re-elected. Americans love war. If Trump can start a popular war he's got a chance. But when the shitpile that is the "tax cut bill" comes home and rich Republicans realize that they can't deduct the property tax on their big mansions, I don't think they're going to go out in droves to vote for the carrot hued fat man. I don't think he'll get impeached. Only because Pence is probably worse. It doesn't matter. Just neuter the ahole for his last two years.
You do realize that a lot of basic research is done at these national labs, that often times, will not occur in private industry because the investment is too high and returns aren't quick enough. Businesses will seek profit for their shareholders, not what's good for humanity.
Businesses often depend on this basic research to be released to public to make products and services from but someone has to do the research. This cut also hits solar energy (which is currently only one of the few realistic long term energy sources we're aware of as a species), battery research (which is critical for many future developments--hell you can even pour your "clean" coal energy into batteries, they're agnostic...), and more.
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.
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.
> Why should Google be forced to host speech from Infowars in the form of advertisements, regardless of how anyone at Google personally feels about that site?
Then examples should be pretty easy to cite. Otherwise I call bullshit. Musk seems to be this community's anointed savior when it comes to future-tech. Now you're giving all the credit to the government.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Apparently, Trump thinks clean coal means washing the coal before burning it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
So expecting a trolling jackass to support their argument counts as "atrocious education" now? Expecting the person that makes a claim to support it is a very basic principle of rhetoric. Or were you ditching class that day?
It's interesting how much a mere 12 months makes. Who knew that the world could change so much so fast?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> 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.
MAGAers are such snowflakes...
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
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?
I'd like to think it's a Russian bot.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
And military strength flows from a strong economy, strong education, leading research, etc. Good luck having a strong military for long without the rest.
"What, like with a cloth or something?"
Since this a coal fueled rocket, shouldn't it be Werner von Black?
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...
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.
If you think Musk's engineers don't rely on publications performed under government funding (around the world) to advance, then you're crazy. Advances are certainly made by private industry, but a lot of pieces come from public funded research.
It's like saying Musk's Tesla group haven't benefited from any research and development into SLAM methodologies, which built off of much research in computer vision to help build their autopilot feature and self driving vehicles. Take away all public funded research in computer vision, for example, and lane assisted driving wouldn't be remotely near where it is today. It might eventually be developed as a competitive requirement as industry inched into this territory.
I'm no material scientist but I suspect much of the battery technology used can be traced back to leaps developed under or as a result of public funded research.
Research is costly and high risk of failure so businesses typically minimize research to the point of keeping a competitive advantage. Not only that, if you rely strictly on private industry to do all the research, you end up in situations like we have now in the US with the pharmaceutical industry (which is even higher risk of failure and overhead investment).
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.
Right, let's socialize the cost and privatize the profits. Oh, wait, isn't that what so many people complain about with government programs? Maybe the companies should invest in their own research if they are going to profit from it.
Public funding of research is a terrible idea. The decisions on who gets the money is decided by a bunch of lawyers in Congress based on how many votes it will buy them in their re-election campaign, not on it's ability to reduce pollution.
I can see some public funded research as valuable. We've come a long way in prosthetic limbs because the government was looking for ways to treat wounded soldiers. That makes sense from the government's standpoint, since the government "broke" these warriors then they should do what they can to "fix" them. Since it's government funded this research goes out to help people injured in accidents, with birth defects, and so on. There is no doubt some lawyers still buying votes with this but there is at least some check on this with a goal to protecting the nation. It's going to get difficult to recruit people to defend the nation if you have a bunch of veterans complaining on how the government did not take care of them.
Where's the check on government waste for energy research? How do we know that we're actually getting anything of value from the money spent? Given past experience with the results of money spent on energy research I can't expect much if this continues. We haven't seen much success in the past, and a lot of failures.
If we are going to see government funded energy research then at least put the military in charge of it. I saw some awesome research on nuclear reactors, synthesized fuels, flexible solar panels, and more come from DOD projects. The problem comes when the Department of Energy takes over these projects. After that happens the goal becomes "foggy". In the DOD the goal is to make it fit in this, weigh less than that, and provide X amount of power. The DOE can't do such things because they have no end goal in mind. In fact the DOE has no reason to exist if they actually solve energy problems. So long as energy is considered scarce and expensive they can claim a need for funding, so they have a disincentive to solve anything.
The one well defined goal that they do have concerns the government nuclear weapons program. That should be a DOD program anyway. The Department of Energy needs to go away.
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.
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.
Actually, economics, esp. manufacturing, is what enables a strong military.
WHen you do NOT have that, then any strong military is simply a drain on society. And right now, our mlitary is draining our GDP because of the idiots in CONgress.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"can't deduct the property tax on their big mansions" Sure they can! All they need to do is transfer the house into a pass-though trust, re-structure their actual income to go through several similar trusts, funnel income through various tax-avoidance systems in various islands, and a long list of other types of systems. "Normal people" don't have the wealth required to make use of this, but the 1% does. Raising taxes on them just makes them funnel even more money out of the "normal system".
The 99% and the 1% exist in two completely different economies, two completely different monetary systems. These wealth protection schemes cross several oceans, different countries, and are not designed for us peasantry.
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'd like to see some examples of successful publicly funded research projects.
The irony of someone typing that on a computer, communicating over the world wide web on the internet is obviously completely lost.
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'd like to see some examples of successful publicly funded research projects.
The irony of someone typing that on a computer, communicating over the world wide web on the internet is obviously completely lost.
Not to mention the fact that some of those internet hops may very well occur via satellites.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Aren't you happy?
*exact words
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'd like to see some examples of successful publicly funded research projects.
The irony of someone typing that on a computer, communicating over the world wide web on the internet is obviously completely lost.
Not to mention the fact that some of those internet hops may very well occur via satellites.
He probably is pissed of that we have Government weather satellites, when the government should just get their weather form the Weather channel like the rest of us do.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Really? You saying all this time Obama was researching a lithium battery?
https://energy.gov/eere/vehicl... (Until some Trump lackey gets appointed to pull all the useful content off their website.)
Someone had to do it.
No black, Werner von White with GOP. Coal is "white" when it's clean coal. See fixed that for you!
It's not *your* money, any more than the road you use is your road. It's our money. Your ability to earn money is inexorably linked to us pooling some percentage of it together for the common good, of which scientific progress is a part.
"Old man yells at systemd"
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
[($)]
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
It was DOD funding that brought us the internet protocol. This is a cut for the DOE. The argument was made to put the money that would be spent on the DOE into the DOD instead. Early computer research was also funded under the DOD. Interstate highways? A DOD project.
Seems to be a lot of people on Slashdot that think we need to cut military spending and put that into energy research instead. Where would that energy research be today without computers, the Internet, interstate highways?
Ironic indeed.
Right, let's socialize the cost and privatize the profits.
That is not inherently bad. We subsidize the research, the company makes profits, and the public benefits from less CO2 emissions and a stronger dollar from fewer fossil fuel imports (or more FF exports). Win-win.
We can also take it further, and set up a patent-pool for all companies that accept research subsidies. This keeps the IP out of the hands of NPEs (who will just sit on them), while simultaneously encouraging companies to participate in creating shared IP. So we are encouraging both the creation and the sharing of innovation. Again: win-win.
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.
It depends on what point on the curve you are at in terms of what the best investment is. Without the subsidies, the market would not have accelerated as quickly and profoundly as it did. Just 10 years ago, it was a really big deal to have a building with a 50kW PV array; the subsidies likely cut the time to get where we are now in half.
Personally, I think that has meaningful strategic value.
Would those high schools be the same ones that the federal government is funding? Maybe the government should not be spending money on schools if they can't produce people capable of serving in the military.
I seem to recall some high schools ending their JROTC programs because parents protested the "militarism", "indoctrination", or some shit. Well, if the parents want the government to pay for educating their children then maybe the government should get something in return, like some "militarism", "indoctrination", or some shit. I can't imagine JROTC graduates ending up fat, drunk, and stupid.
Go ahead, blame that on the GOP. I'm sure it's their fault for kicking out the JROTC.
Oh, and just because students join JROTC does not mean they have to join the military. It does mean that they have to know how to read and write, and do a few push-ups. If the students do choose to join the military then they get rewarded with a higher pay grade upon enlistment. If they don't join the military then they still benefit, such as being able to read and write, and do a few push-ups.
Remember when we used to be a first world country in the US, and poured resources into science and engineering and education so that we wouldn't fall behind the Commies? Today it seems like our competition is Syria, and as long as we're doing better than Syria that we don't need to work harder to be better.
This is like Biff from Back To The Future is president, and he gives noogies to any nerdy scientist he runs across.
But the DOE secretary has a built in bias against the DOE!
So....how many billions did Big Oil promise the Trump Administration?
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.
Congratulations on your investment, Ivan! How are the capital gains tax is there in Russia?
"let's socialize the cost and privatize the profits"
Exactly! How else are we going to build a techno-dystopia?
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.
Once China finishes building their perimeter airbases on the various disputed islands, they will have air superiority over the big coastal cities. With their industrial and population centers defended the Chinese *will* be the strongest military power in the world.
In any protracted conflict, China's awesome industrial superiority will carry the day. We don't stand a chance against them in a long war. No one does.
THAT is the legacy of the Reagan / Clinton policy of deindustrialization. A few capitalists lined their pockets, and America was reduced to a second-rate power.
Vote Demonrat OR Repuglican for more of the same!
Public funding of research is a terrible idea. The decisions on who gets the money is decided by a bunch of lawyers in Congress based on how many votes it will buy them in their re-election campaign, not on it's ability to reduce pollution.
Whilst the size of the pot may be decided by Congress, a lot of the research goes on in universities, and allocation is via competitive tender, judged by a panel of senior academic peers.
I'm saying that $2B a year into American research doesn't seem to have made a meaningful impact, as I can't differentiate the American EVs from the European, Japanese or Korean ones ...
That might be because Europe, Japan and South Korea have made public investments into EE research too, and thus the US's own investments (until now) have enabled them to keep up.
EE research
*RE (renewable energy)
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.
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.
Actually, there are a lot of universities in the USA doing research on solar panels, and then publishing the research (sharing it with industry). Private companies do research too, but it doesn't make sense to ignore the university research which is quite extensive.
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.
I don't know if those specific figures are accurate, but often those who are serious about things like solar have taken other measures to improve their home, including additional insulation, and often things like wood burners (although I am not personally convinced they are a solution to the energy problem worldwide as it would require a large amount of net primary production to support), and solar thermal for hot water. If you look at standards such as PassivHaus, then even in winter there can often be little requirement for heating for a house that is reasonably occupied (e.g. a family of four).
I live in the UK, and I have gas for heating and hot water, but my monthly electricity bill is not normally that much more than $50 (electrical cost is a little higher here) for a family of two, although my wife's been using the electric heater the past month to top up with, so it is likely to be higher this month, probably doubled. We have a washing machine, dryer, electric oven, microwave, etc., but a modestly sized LED TV and LED lights apart from a couple of rarely used areas like the shed, and halogens in the bathroom as dimmable LEDs don't seem to be compatible with the current dimming controller.
You might argue that China's ascent into a global industrial powerhouse had little to do with the US and more to do with China. Basically, once they stopped doing stupid shit like killing all people with eyeglasses, the sheer size of their population meant that eventually they would eclipse pretty much everyone else. What could Reagan or Clinton have done to prevent any of this? Bomb them back to the stone age while they still could? Force-inseminate American women so they would have ten children each?
You're thinking of Cambodia with the killing of eyeglass wearers, not China.
Reagan did his damnedest to destroy organized labor. And thereby eliminate the voice of working people in public policy discussions. Clinton oversaw economic policies under which large parts of our manufacturing infrastructure were literally packed into boxes and shipped to China.
Plastic drinking straws are a meanace. What do you suggest we do about them? If we leave it up to individuals then the planet just fills up with shit.
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.
Been seeing a lot of headlines like these lately which essentially consist of "Trump Administration attempting to keep campaign promise he made to the people who elected him, journalists shocked they would dare to do that!"
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
That is socialism. Socialism is bad, mmkay?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but Clinton's policy and accord with china is not really what did that.
It was in 2005 that W passed the infamous tax law that says that those companies did not have to pay taxes until the money was repatriated. At that point, it was better for companies to keep it offshore and wait for idiots that would give major tax breaks on this rather than roll that back.
And to be fair, both O and Trump are disaster WRT China. O allowed China to constantly dump and did nothing about it. Trump's taxes are a joke. His effective rate for offshore repatriating is around 14%, while he is charging 21% for on-shore. At worst, those numbers should have been reversed, and the smart one would have been doing zero corporate taxes for America-made/serviced/sold, while the offshored businesses where charged 25%.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
Have you noticed how your mom, sister, aunt, girlfriend, wife, daughter, and female friends haven't died from cervical cancer? You can thank public science (and NIH/NCI) for that.
Have you noticed how you haven't died from lung cancer yet? You can thank public science for that.
Have you noticed that things around you are made from plastic? Have you noticed that 'medicine' now involves surgeries and anti-bacterial treatments rather than voodoo and shrunk heads? Have you noticed how we can build rockets that take us into space, predict likelihood of certain diseases by reading an individual beings genome, troll unfortunates on the internet, scan individuals for relatedness, fly with the birds? Yes, publicly funded research has led to a vast improvement for our civilization.
I get the feeling your argument is more on the emotional axis than the logical one.
Not surprising when Trump is trying to emulate Iran
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
damn.. not Iran, Islam. Islam destroyed they science advances of the middle east when they were well ahead of the west.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Putting money into a field or technology to entice companies to adopt it and bring down the price isn't corporate welfare. Corporate welfare would be ignoring the state of the world and letting corporations continue to shit on the common man.
Well, considering that a lot of Trump voters rationalized their choice with "oh, he wouldn't do what he claims that he is going to do" there are probably a lot of people that ar surprised that Trump turns out to be that racist con-artist of a sexual assaulter he never even tried to hide.
Those aren't scientists, however convenient for your argument that might have been.
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
Underrated reply if I ever saw one
America was first in everything back then because we worked to improve the nation. Ever since Reagan the policy has been burn the future for today's gains. It's unsustainable, just ask Sun.
Examples of government funded research that made it to private sector:
Cell phones
Radio
Internet
Electron Guns (tube TV's)
LCD displays
Lithium batteries
Just from NASA alone:
Barcodes
Cordless power tools
MRI Machines
Microchips & Integrated Circuits
Quartz clocks
Smoke Detectors
Teflon
Velcro
Infrared thermometers
Ventricular Assist devices (Devices that make heart transplants possible)
Artificial limbs
LEDs
Scratch resistant glass
Aircraft anti icing systems (IE what makes planes able to fly in winter and as high as they do)
Radial tires with a life over 2000 miles
Chemical leak detection systems
Fire breaks & Fire resistant building materials
pressurized Fire extinguishers
Memory foam
Cordless vacuums
Freeze dried foods
Digital cameras
I'm tired of typing, and I'm not even 3% through the list.
Taken as part of the social contract that is the United States citizenship under the United States Constitution as specified in Article 1 Section 8.
If you don't agree with the social contract that comes with being a citizen of this nation, you are free to move to a nation that has no social contract or taxes that come with it. I hear Somalia is nice this time of year, and it fits your demand nicely.
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>
sic transit gloria
Translation: Gloria threw up on the subway again.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
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
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
No it's ours. Taken by mandate. Who would volunteer to pay it? Usually spent unwisely. Rarely for the common good. Usually to pander to some cause or make someone (or some group) feel good about themselves. What innovation comes from it we end up paying for again if we want to use it.
No, it's the Federal Reserve's. It says so right on the note. You and I are just borrowing it.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Yup. Those coal mining jobs he was elected to bring back will be coming back any day now. Any day now.
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
My parents live a bit further south than you, Ohio, but their solar install paid its self off in 7 years if memory serves. Having a house that is hemorrhaging energy into the outdoors is definitely where the problem is at for most people. Drafts used to be essential when the primary in home heating was fireplaces, but we're a long ways from that time and people really should invest the minimal effort in sealing up their homes.
To be honest the hissy fits the military has over physical fitness are mostly about looking pretty in uniforms. There are of course jobs in the military which are demanding enough to require a good or high level of physical fitness. Most jobs though don't require much if any fitness at all. The argument for everyone being a fitness model is that any troop could end up in a combat situation. Which is kind of true but largely because the branches don't recruit enough people to actually be combat troops and instead fill deployment slots with people from only vaguely related careers. For instance I knew a computer programmer who was deployed into a combat zone as a radio operator, because he was a "communications" troop. That was incredibly stupid because it put everyone he was supposed to support by running communications into added danger. His previous four years of experience never involved anything so much as requiring him to touch a radio, let alone coordinate fire support while trying to not get killed in a firefight. They should be recruiting more people for actual combat roles. And those troops should then be practicing and drilling enough that extra PT time should be unnecessary.
Give the DOE 10% of the DOD budget and they could probably come up with "some awesome research" as well.
You also talk about "check(s) on government waste for energy research" but what about checks on waste in military spending?
This is true. You were simply born into a system where such contracts and obligations form the very structure of society and government.
So what are you going to do about it?
How do you propose we fund roads, education, parks, etc.? Ok, great, work towards setting up those systems.
This is directly analogous to the environmentalists who spend all day criticizing fossil fuels instead of focusing their attention on developing viable alternatives. The best way to beat a system is to make it obsolete.
Biff was actually based off of Donald Trump so it's not far off. Perhaps someone will spot a copy of Grays Sports Almanac in Donald Trump's pocket and there will be weird sightings of a Delorean hovering over the White House.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
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
The White House was at least rumored to have SAMS at one time. Would a heat-seeker lock on a Delorean with a Mr. Fusion mounted on it?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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.
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.
Congratulations on your investment, Ivan! How are the capital gains tax is there in Russia?
He doesn't need to be Russian, and accusing every person who says something dickish as being a Russian troll kindof.. cheapens the Russian troll problem like the boy who cried wolf. US history is full of people who got ahead by investing in markets they thought would turn a profit, even if the market was morally questionable.
Yup. Those coal mining jobs he was elected to bring back will be coming back any day now. Any day now.
Many of them have come back, but not so that we can burn the coal ourselves. That's what Trump's line of the US being an energy exporter came from. This horrible gunk that we're selling to developing countries instead.
You don't need to sign that contract to be bound to it. You are bound as a Citizen of the United States at birth. You CAN opt out of it, but that means declining citizenship. You want to be a citizen of the United States? It comes with rights but it also comes with responsibilities.
There is research that is good for everyone in general and nobody in particular, and that needs to be funded by the government. This includes basic research, which, after a lot of things happen, make it possible for you to be a neo-Luddite.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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.
Technically, the US is first in prison population, both in raw numbers and relative to population (last I looked, anyway), so the US is first in some things.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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
Your contractor could do the exact same thing without a business. He takes in $120K/year, has $20K/year in expenses, and he and his wife get $100K income. (The combined income is what's important for tax purposes, not which spouse gets what.) In a regular 1040 filing, it would come out pretty much the same.
There are advantages to forming a small corporation for contracting, though. If you have a corporation and someone sues you, you can let the corp go bankrupt instead of you.
"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's working out real well for North Korea.
It has. No one has dared to invade or bomb them yet.
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.
Your birth certificate is your contract.
==================
Hippie Logger Jock
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Clinton; W; Obama; Trump; Tom Tancredo of Colorado; Ted nugent (and is a pedophile).
The list goes on and on.
At this point, I would like to see America require all 18 y.o to do boot camp, if not a year worth of service. At least that way, politicians would have their kid's lives on the line and would think twice before doing things like Iraq or Libya.
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
Umm.... I'm essentially in Western MD myself (Frederick County).
It's great that wherever you're at, nobody is getting high electric bills like that. But are you also in one of those areas where people commonly heat with propane or oil burning furnaces? The area I'm in is full of 100+ year old two story homes that have been retrofitted to only using electric heat pumps for heating and cooling.
Sure, most of these homes could use better insulation. But I've been there and done that with a previous split-level I owned, and even after spraying the recommended amount of insulation into the whole attic and so forth, never found it put that much of a dent in my utility bills. (What I mean is, it might have knocked $20-40 off of a bill in the winter or middle of the summer -- but wasn't a solution to a big, $700 type electric bill, for sure.)
I already swapped out every light in this place with efficient LED lighting, too. So it's not like I've done nothing to curb power usage.
As for the rest of what I said? No, I'll never be convinced that it's generally a wise policy to take large amounts of money from wage earners and hand it over to government, so a relative few "elites" in power get to decide how they can best spend it. What I do know is that private business is always strongly motivated to keep innovating, whenever they've got a product people are buying. And people only buy products they actually like and find useful. I'd love to see a lot of these government subsidies to "big oil" going away, too ... I'm not singling out solar or "clean energy" here. I just universally believe we're going to be better off letting people keep more of what they work to earn. They'll turn around and vote with their wallets for the best options. It's an imperfect world and this method won't ALWAYS produce the optimal solution. But so what? Neither does asking imperfect and biased politicians and government committees to spend your money for you.
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.
Do you think Pence is less impeachable?
Certainly. He's also possibly MORE of an asshole than Trump, but we haven't seen him get his hands dirty with impeachable offenses.
Plastic drinking straws are a meanace. What do you suggest we do about them? If we leave it up to individuals then the planet just fills up with shit.
I would use paper straws if they still made them, they were better anyway than these flimsy plastic ones.
They still make them, but they're kindof pricey, and only good for 10-15 minutes before they're too waterlogged to work anymore.
Best way to enjoy a good Pina Colada though.
Sadly, there are a lot of knuckleheads who actively deny the social contract. It's destroying the US, too - we're not taking care of people whose jobs have been outsourced. We've passively acquiesced to letting corporate entities to ship jobs elsewhere and perform labor arbitrage, resulting in privatized profit and socialized costs....the increased profits are taken by corporate entities, and the costs are borne by US citizens paying taxes to help our fellow citizens.
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
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
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're a small small man. The joke is you'd never survive in a society without taxation.
"Old man yells at systemd"
And Who would volunteer to pay it?
Democracy is literally the proof that at large, society organizes to pay taxes rather than living in a might-is-right society where your ability to keep your house relies on you not only having a large enough family/cadre/group of friends (who by the way, would ask that you pool your wealth) to make sure that house remains yours.
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
No, your wrong.
Remind me to go and tell the people I've met doing such research that apparently they are mistaken and they aren't actually doing it.