Energy, Earth science, and the role of lobbying

Money talks for energy research

Science magazine’s Eli Kintisch discusses the impact of the $777 million that the Department of Energy has put toward creating 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers. The centers will support 1100 scientists working in interdisciplinary groups that will research such energy issues as making lighting more efficient, and using photosynthesis to create new fuels derived from solar energy.

The increased public visibility and the money are making it “an easier and easier sell” to attract new researchers to the program, said Energy Secretary Steven Chu to Kintisch. Chu has been pleading to colleagues for many years “not to just write a paper and say this finding applies to energy” but to be willing to tackle a real-world problem.

NASA’s Earth science program

For the first time in decades, NASA’s Earth science program will receive more money than the planetary program, says New Scientist’s Rachel Courtland in an analysis of the proposed NASA budget.

The extra funding will allow the Soil Moisture Active and Passive mission, which measures soil moisture levels globally, and the ICESat-II , which will track changes in ice cover at the poles, to launch a year earlier.

Industry increases lobbying effort to weaken cap-and-trade bill

According to Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian, the oil, gas, and coal industry has increased its lobbying budget by 50% in the first three months of the year in order to kill the carbon cap-and-trade emissions scheme. Cap and trade form a key component of the Obama administration’s attempts to limit climate change .

More budget news

AIP’s Richard Jones reports on the press briefing given by science adviser John Holdren . “We have done better that almost any other constituency,” said Holdren. “We have a president who gets it,” and who is “walking the walk,” despite the US being in a “very bad spell economically . . . [in an] “era of stringency,” he added.

Paul Guinnessy