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Research and development is heavily funded by federal government. If the government no longer sees green energy as a priority, then a lot of federal funding will reduced. I highly doubt it most of the universities or companies who do research and development for green energy are self funded. I assure you the vast majority of these companies and universities are federal funded. If global warming is not seen as important, then federal funding for green energy will be reduce. Are these green energy companies profitable and self sustaining without government subsidies? There are some forms of green energy that makes sense to develop. For example, there is an Iowa plant that makes ethanol from corn stover. Another is maybe Nuclear Fusion, which would allow us to completely replace all forms of power plants with the output of a current nuclear power plants, but without the drawbacks of nuclear power plants.
There are many problem with green energy. Take for example, solar cells require platinum for the conversion of the light to electricity, if I remember right, for the most efficient solar cells. The bandwidth that solar cells absorb light is very small, most light is not converted into energy. In short, solar cells are inefficient at converting solar light into electricity. One of my professors was working on finding cheaper and comparable efficient catalyst for the process of converting light into electricity.
My husband's a scientist, and he'd agree with you on all these points. The green energy field is not quite ready to overtake fossil fuel energy yet. But nuclear fusion and corn fuel both sound promising. I'll ask him about it when he wakes up tomorrow, ha.
In the meantime, I'd rather we just focus on things we can all agree is bad and can have some control over- clean air and water. The things that prevent pollution also tend to help minimize contributing to manmade client change.
Aside from Tesla and SpaceX, plenty of other companies are urging Trump to be a part of the deal along with the rest of the world.
Maybe Elon Musk could run in 2020?
EM apparently has no strong moral commitment to a cleaner environment if he quits having a voice at Trump's table.
If EM were committed, he would remain and contribute ideas and suggestions in what the liberals call the darkest hour.
Instead EM cuts and runs in the darkest hour. Some environmental hero he is.
The countries in the paris accord can still do what they promised to do, The US can continue to research cleaner energy, so nothing changes.
China is claimed to be such an economic juggernaught, so the paris accord countries should still be right on track with China's help. Libs claim trump screwed up and let china lead, so now is China's chance to be a world leader and save the earth from sure destruction.
Then negotiate for a better one. Pulling out of a deal that is for the better of humankind is just short-sighted. We have to all do our part, can't just say, 'not my problem, am going to continue polluting the earth for profit, screw everyone else....'
China is the #1 polluter in the world and is going to exceed their obligations to the agreement but also profiting from it in the meantime through investment in renewable energy. They will literally leave us in the dust....
Doesn't reflect well on us when we're the 2nd biggest polluters in the world and one that has the wealth to actually do something about it, but refuse to...
Just because we pulled out of a bad deal doesn't mean the U.S. will stop looking for and inventing better, cleaner ways to make power and have clean water.
Statements to the contrary are complete hyperbole and crap to push a political agenda.
China has done NOTHING to clean up their act so far and there's nothing saying they have to. Gotta love the fact that they had to suspend all operations during the Olympics just to get air clean enough to partially see not to mention breath.
$20 million in economic development subsidies from the libby-libs in Texas is enough to get your blood pressure up? SpaceX is saving us billions as compared to using the old cabal. If you guys really thought market processes were efficient (and if you followed space news), you'd cheer on as SpaceX proves how efficient development can be done.
Hmm. No it isn't.
And NASA, the only space agency to travel to the moon, and send probes out of the solar system, isn't the "old cabal". Its one of the more idiotic things that I think I've heard here.
Obama gutted NASA so that he could give money to Musk. Result - We have to fly our astronauts on Putin's spaceships because Space X hasn't been able to figure out what was already developed in the 1960s. It's like everything that Obama touched. It went to ****. And Musk is laughing all the way to the bank.
My husband's a scientist, and he'd agree with you on all these points. The green energy field is not quite ready to overtake fossil fuel energy yet. But nuclear fusion and corn fuel both sound promising. I'll ask him about it when he wakes up tomorrow, ha.
In the meantime, I'd rather we just focus on things we can all agree is bad and can have some control over- clean air and water. The things that prevent pollution also tend to help minimize contributing to manmade client change.
Then we need to start demanding LNG cars and trucks. We've got a glut of LNG, the tech is already there and ready to go!
And NASA, the only space agency to travel to the moon, and send probes out of the solar system, isn't the "old cabal". Its one of the more idiotic things that I think I've heard here.
I thought you followed space - you don't, and that's fine. Ignorance isn't anything to be ashamed about.
I am of course not referring to NASA. NASA is doing a good job, yet could do much better with the money assigned, were it not for the corporate cronies in Congress forcing NASA to spend its budget in the least efficient manner possible. Congress uses NASA as a funnel to direct moeny into the coffers of Boeing, Rocketdyne, Thiokol etc. etc. - an that's the old cabal.
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Obama gutted NASA so that he could give money to Musk.
Ehm - that's not what happened in reality. The Obama administration stopped Constellation, a program that might have been able to fly something in 2015 if it suddenly started meeting deadlines, something it had completely failed to do. What Constellation did do - very well - was move money from taxpayers, through NASA, and into the coffers of those companies who'd come to rely on the Shuttle as their meal ticket. Companies who were big enough to buy the right senators.
The Obama administration came up with the COTS program: Fixed price for specific delivery. What an idea, hey? The old aerospace companies hate that, they're used to cost-plus contracts - but SpaceX stepped up, and they're now launching Falcon 9s like clockwork, coming up with cost reduction solutions like re-using the first stage, that sort of thing. (The old guys just threw away the first stage. The taxpayers will just buy a new one and we make money on that, right?) This is market mechanisms at work. American ingenuity at its finest. Anyone who actually likes the idea free enterprise should applaud it.
NASA is resupplying the ISS at a fraction of the cost, and that's a good thing.
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Result - We have to fly our astronauts on Putin's spaceships because Space X hasn't been able to figure out what was already developed in the 1960s.
The gap in manned capacity is due to GWB cancelling the Shuttle program - overdue, even so, because the Shuttle was a pretty bad spacecraft. Even at the time, it was perfectly well known that nothing would have been flight-ready after the last Shuttle mission.
SpaceX's development process has been fast and efficient. Particularly compared to Constellation. The Dragon capsule flies to the ISS as clockwork.
But hey, we're getting the old ways back! The Ares-V rocket that was cancelled under much gnashing of teeth is getting a rebirth as the Space Launch System (SLS), and may fly in 2019, perhaps manned in 2021. And you can rest assured that it's done the old-school way you seem to prefer, with contracts placed in just the right Congressional districts. Oh, and expensive as all out. Looking at one cool billion per launch. But it's just taxpayer money, right?
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It's like everything that Obama touched. It went to ****. And Musk is laughing all the way to the bank.
And that's the article of faith you have to cling to, isn't it? It happened during the Obama administration, hence it's bad, and facts be damned.
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Elon Musk threatens to quit serving as Trump's advisor if he withdraws from the Paris deal
