Comments on: AP Newsflash

By: JoAnne

JoAnne — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 21:15:02 +0000

PornDog: My comment that “democracy works” conveyed that a large number of people contacted their representatives Re science funding and had an impact on the acutal legislation. That is democracy in action. Sometimes it is easy to think that our voices don’t matter, but in fact, they do.

By: daniel

daniel — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 04:20:19 +0000

Hi Peter, if you dig around you can find numbers. It's hard to know which ones are definitive. For example, if you look at my original post, I link to some info I found useful. According to the side-by-side comparison, the House bill had $3B for NSF. If you look at the Excel spreadsheet linked off of the Nelson-Collins bill link in my previous comment, you find a proposed amount of $1.2 Billion. Hence the $1.8 B number for NSF.

By: Peter Woit

Peter Woit — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 04:05:02 +0000

Does anyone actually have real numbers about what is in the new Senate bill for the DOE office of science and the NSF? I don’t understand Daniel’s numbers for this, since according to

http://www.aip.org/fyi/2009/010.html

the House bill only had 430 million for DOE office of science and 1.4 billion for NSF, so the 1.67 billion and 1.8 billion numbers don’t add up.

By: daniel

daniel — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:26:05 +0000

Here are some numbers from the Nelson-Collins bill. The short version is that the NSF and DOE Office of Science contributions are gutted, compared to the House Bill.

Cuts in science relative to the previous Senate version are
o $100 million for research in NIST;
o $200 million for operations, research, and services in NOAA;
o $100 million for HPC in DOE Office of Science;
o $200 million for science in NASA; and
o $200 million for research and related activities in NSF.
The amounts for these agencies in the Nelson-Collins version of the Senate bill relative to those in House bill represent cuts of
o $25 million overall in NIST;
o -$22 million overall in NOAA (i.e., an increase of $22 million);
o $1,670 million overall in DOE Office of Science;
o -$200 million overall in NASA, setting aside the $500 million
for shuttle replacement (i.e., an increase of $200 million); and
o $1.8 billion overall in NSF.

By: daniel

daniel — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:11:23 +0000

This turn of events is precisely what I was worrying about earlier in the week. For a second there I thought the huge cuts were due to the NSF/porn nonsense. But I'm told that the NSF was dinged $3M for that indiscretion, not $1B+. There is no clear answer as to the best way to 'stimulate' an economy. The point is that these numbers are huge, and you would hope that whatever you invest in both creates jobs and stimulus short-term, but also leads to growth in the longterm. The link in my post above to the National Academies report makes a strong argument that investing in science makes sense. It may not be as effective a stimulus as food stamps in the short run, but it certainly will have a major effect in the long run. And the truth is that much of the stimulus is questionable on both counts. This ends up being about politics. @PornDog is correct, that we have the "political sophistication...of children". We need to be much more engaged, and advocate much more forcefully. Please call your senators! It's not too late; nothing is set in stone as of yet.

By: Skeptical

Skeptical — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 22:26:05 +0000

I don’t know, but those promoting “basic science” are leveraging heavily on the promise of solving the “energy crisis” and the “global warming crisis”. I hope scientists can actually deliver.

http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_progj/task,view/id,1114

By: PornDog

PornDog — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:07:50 +0000

Sometimes democracy works? So it works when you get the result you want, but it doesn’t when you don’t?

Reading the post and through the comments has shown me one important thing: regardless of the genius level IQs, regardless of the highly abstract and creative thinking required in the hard physical sciences, most of you have the political sophistication and maturity of children.

By: John

John — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:28:58 +0000

HOWEVER: the Senate did add in $330 million for “Lab construction” under DOE Office of Science. Sorry for the confusion. Still, going from 1.5 billion to 300 million is an 80% cut.

By: John

John — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:24:17 +0000

In the Senate version, now, DOE Office of Science gets ZERO, whereas in the House version it’s $1.5 billion.

NSF research got cut from $2.5 billion to $1.2 billion.

Call (don’t write) your senators now!

By: marc

marc — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 11:16:36 +0000

My bad–the DOE Office of Science cut of 100 million was NOT eliminated.