Lawrence Krauss: Congress Is Trying To Defund Scientists At Energy Department 342
Lasrick writes Physicist Lawrence Krauss blasts Congress for their passage of the 2015 Energy and Water Appropriations bill that cut funding for renewable energy, sustainable transportation, and energy efficiency, and even worse, had amendments that targeted scientists at the Department of Energy: He writes that this action from the US Congress is worse even than the Australian government's move to cancel their carbon tax, because the action of Congress is far more insidious: "Each (amendment) would, in its own way, specifically prohibit scientists at the Energy Department from doing precisely what Congress should mandate them to do—namely perform the best possible scientific research to illuminate, for policymakers, the likelihood and possible consequences of climate change." Although the bill isn't likely to become law, Krauss is fed up with Congress burying its head in the sand: The fact that those amendments "...could pass a house of Congress, should concern everyone interested in the appropriate support of scientific research as a basis for sound public policy."
Someone has an agenda to push (Score:3, Interesting)
The summary makes it out that the decision to repeal Australia's carbon taxes was a bad one.
It was a horribly broken system that didn't work.
If you accept that, then this "He writes that this action from the US Congress is worse even than the Australian government's move to cancel their carbon tax" becomes the same as "He writes that this action from the US Congress is worse even than a spark of sanity from the Australian Government"
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, as it actually turned out, energy efficiency research for both electricity and transportation has worked very well, as have wind turbines and solar power. And quite a bit of that comes from DOE research.
Fusion reactor? Well, that's still 30 years away.
Of course the vast majority of DOE money is devoted to the nuclear weapons infrastructure and environmental cleanup from decades of nuclear weapon infrastructure.
For instance, take the FY 2012 budget of Los Alamos National lab.
http://www.lanl.gov/about/facts-figures/budget.php
What fraction would you say is on basic science? I expected 30%. More like 4%.
57% NNSA weapons
9% NNSA nonproliferation
7% NNSA 'safeguards and security'
7% work for national security (most likely intelligence agencies)
8% environmental cleanup
4% undefined 'work for others'
4% DOE Energy and Other Programs
4% DOE Office Of Science
Re:Price of using scientists as political pawns (Score:5, Interesting)
How, specifically? Fundamentally, is the DOE doing bad research? Are the results wrong? Or is good research simply being used to support political ends that you disagree with?
If I ask an expert if X is true and then use his answer to support my position, does that make him a "puppet" that my enemies should attack?
Re:Let's get one thing straight: (Score:0, Interesting)
Democrats voted for it too and Republicans voted against it.
https://www.govtrack.us/congre... [govtrack.us]
It was bipartisan and it was "congress"
Facts, y'know...
Re:Price of using scientists as political pawns (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree, we shouldn't be subsidizing the green industries, instead we should just regulate the shit out of the extraction industries which manage to externalize so much of their costs.
How much should the coal industry pay for the ~1M deaths/year?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Price of using scientists as political pawns (Score:4, Interesting)
"The US coal industry is on the brink of collapse.
I wish! Sadly, they aren't.
"f where you're going to get energy from now that you've shut down the nuclear power plants"
Who wants to shut down Nuclear plants? Not me. I want to see thorium plants and generate electriscity form burning our current high yield 'waste'.
Anyway, we would get all are energy needs from a 100 mile to a side solar furnace plant.
Every bit.
We could start that right now. Doesn't even need to be all at once, we could roll out out a 20 year plan.
Sylindra went under what the Chinese flooded the market with solar panels sold under their cost.
You are so stupid that your whole premise seem to be based that we just shut one thing off and then start the next. I understand it can be hard for simpletons like you to do more then one thing at a time, but for actually thinking adults, it's not really that hard.
Citation please (Score:4, Interesting)
The only people claiming the carbon tax wasn't working were Coalition politicians (and their apologists), and the companies who didn't want to have to cover the external costs of their businesses. Fact is, it was starting to work quite well [smh.com.au], despite the damping effect of Abbott attacking it with all the FUD he could muster.
And now we have economists scratching their heads [yahoo.com] as to why a conservative government would attack a market-based climate solution while favouring a big direct-action spending program instead:
Roger Jones, a Research Fellow at the Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies, called the repeal "the perfect storm of stupidity".
"It's hard to imagine a more effective combination of poor reasoning and bad policy making," he said.
"A complete disregard of the science of climate change and its impacts. Bad economics and mistrust of market forces."