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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!
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.
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.
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.
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
And military strength flows from a strong economy, strong education, leading research, etc. Good luck having a strong military for long without the rest.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Public research allows fundamental research (where motivations like profit are not viable). Private research fine-tunes fundamental research into a marketable, efficient, easily manufactured product. Both are necessary for healthy R&D.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
Sorry for your brain injury. I hope losing the ACA doesn't mean you can't still get treatment.
Maybe this is news to you, but a good 50% or more of education is controlled at the local level, through the local school board. That's made up of people voted in by the members in the community. Unless you're telling us that everyone in every state is voting in liberals for their local school board, your shrieking about the left is pretty stupid.
Another 25% or so of education is controlled by the state education agency, generally headed by a board and/or a state superintendent who's appointed by the governor of the state. Last I looked, all of the state governors weren't liberals, so it stands to reason that most of the state education agencies are not liberal.
Probably the last 25% is controlled by federal law, which, and this may surprise you, tends to be written by both republicans and democrats. The last major bill was ESSA, which was sponsored by Lamar Alexander and passed on a bipartisan vote.
Where do you get the idea that education is somehow owned by the left? Because the left is smart and the right is dumb?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
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.
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.
First, I used to be Libertarian, but am now GDI. IOW, I have less to do with dems than I do with GOP, which is very little.
Secondly, it is the GOP that continues to gut the fundings for education. For states that have given decent funding, like we used to do back in the 40-60s, they are tops in our nation. Who are the worst? Those with little funding.
BTW, my sons go to a charter school . Next year, they are switching to a stem charter school. Why? Because Koch bros funded a bunch of fucking GOPers who took over Douglas County school district in Colorado about 7 years ago, and drove what was considered a top 50 district in the nation, and top 5 in the state into mid-20 in the state and not even ranked in the nation. While my house's value HAS gown up in that time, it used to be at the top for growth. Now, we are middle of the road for value in a state that is booming.
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.
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.