The Western World keeps cutting its science research budget due to the economic crisis. As China rises-funneling hundreds money into science-our obtuse politicians don’t realize that, without pure research, they may be sentencing us to irrelevance and oblivion.

The latest example of this shortsighted stupidity is the eu Union demanding that CERN cut its budget by $135 million over five years. $135 million during five years is nothing. To present you a sense of scale, the ecu Union will spend $10.6 billion just on bureaucracy in one year.

As as a result this negligible budget cut-that can probably be saved just by reducing on, say, public service advertising campaigns-CERN will stop operating all of its particle accelerators, including the Large Hadron Collider .

Venus saved Earth

The worst part is that the majority people don’t care. Why accelerate invisible particles and cause them to collide, when problems inside the tangible world are breaking out each day? Why pay people to resolve 2,000-year-old math problems in case you have to square the budget? And why study the atmosphere of Venus when our Earth environment is dying?

There is an easy answer.

Take Venus as an instance. Studying Venus falls under planetary research, something that seems totally useless to the vast majority of humans. Who cares in regards to the atmosphere of Venus? I know I don’t give a damn if there’s chloride or Venusian farts up there. Thankfully, someone cared years ago and that pure and seemingly useless science saved all humans and our home planet from destruction, like Carl Sagan reminded us in Pale Blue Dot:

Who discovered that CFCs [Chlorofluorocarbons] posed a threat to the ozone layer? Was it the principal manufacturer, the DuPont Corporation, exercising corporate responsibility? Was it the Environmental Protection Agency protecting us? Was it the dept of Defense defending us? No, it was two Ivory-tower, white-coated university scientists working on something else-Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina of the University of California, Irvine. Not even an Ivy League university. Nobody instructed them to seem for dangers to our environment. They were pursuing fundamental research. They were scientists following their own interests. Their names ought to be known to every schoolchild.

In their original calculations, Rowland and Molina used rate constants of chemical reactions involving chlorine and other halogens that have been measured partially with NASA support. Why NASA? Because Venus has chlorine and fluorine molecules in its atmosphere, and planetary aeronomers had wanted to realize what’s happening there.

The study of Venus’ atmosphere gave us the data that unlocked the deadly processes of CFCs

Identifying the hazards posed by CFCs-inert components that destroy the ozone layer that protects every living being on the planet-is simply among the many examples described by Sagan. That discovery pushed governments everywhere to prevent CFC production instantaneously.

OK, so you’re sold: planetary research could prove useful. But what purpose does pure math research serve? Or particle acceleration?

Math is everywhere

Our computers, cellphones, and video games run due to millennia of pure mathematical research that, on the skin, had no practical implications. Yet, they’re the backbone of our industrial society. Esoteric fields like chaos theory research have direct effects on weather prediction. Everyone understands how a tornado can kill them. Nobody understand the maths that can predict the danger of a tornado happening given a fixed of circumstances.

Particle acceleration experiments, that are going to be canned at CERN, try and understand the internal world that exists inside all matter. Like astronomy, this field of analysis chases the questions that have puzzled humans since we started to grasp the arena around us. But beyond that incredible quest, this research will open the door to new energy developments that might eventually give us almost-free, limitless sources of energy.

And yet, European politicians are going to put off an insignificant $135 millions over five years faraway from these scientists… after having already spent $10 billion building the massive Hadron Collider. It is not sensible. These shortsighted, self-serving, power-hungry, poll-driven, lying money hogs can’t remember that this research-and the research process itself-may have consequences in an effort to change humanity forever. But other than cutting most of the $50 billion they’ll spend on bureaucracy over a higher five years, they cut the science. Because, let’s face it, those scientists are just crazy people in white coats.

How can a $135 million budget cut save the economy?

Also in Pale Blue Dot, Sagan makes another interesting and obvious observation:

There are now other matters-clear, crying national needs-that can not be addressed without major expenditures; mutually, the discretionary federal budget has become painfully constrained. Disposal of chemical and radioactive poisons, energy efficiency, alternatives to fossil fuels, declining rates of technological innovation, the collapsing urban infrastructure, the AIDS epidemic, a witches’ brew of cancers, homelessness, malnutrition, infant mortality, education, jobs, health care-there is a painfully long list. Ignoring them will endanger the well-being of the nation. the same dilemma faces the complete spacefaring nations

Nearly each one of these matters could cost hundreds of billions of greenbacks or more to handle. Fixing infrastructure will cost several trillion dollars. Alternatives to the fossil-fuel economy clearly represent a multitrillion-dollar investment worldwide, if we will do it.

The 2011 Federal Budget: Notice the proportions in spending. Click here for full version .

How can a $135 million cut help to unravel the problems that we’ve got now? Is it really that important? Is cutting the cash that goes into NASA going to unravel the education problems of the usa? What concerning the unemployment rate?

The effect of any cost cutting measures within the already weak budget for non-commercial science research is irrelevant. And yet, it’s always the very first thing that the govt, Congress, the Senate, the eu Parliament, and the parliaments of every Western democracy cut first. No forward thinking whatsoever. Just poll-driven measures. Like we say in Spain: ” Bread for today, hunger for tomorrow.”

I’m not advocating unlimited money for science-although just imagine what is likely to be done if we allocated a little bit more money for pure research. But when NASA’s 2011 budget is barely 1.8% of the complete Defense budget, when anything else of the sciences get even lower than that, you know our priorities are truly fucked up.

The fact is that pure research moves the arena forward, and its implications are always far reaching, even while they won’t seem obvious first and foremost sight. While practical research-a new mobile chip, a new car engine, a new display technology- gives direct benefits today, that’s pure research that makes the practical side possible. Practical research is something better done by private companies, but pure science, the sort of science for you to put humans on Mars, discover a way for practical fusion energy, or eradicate cancer, needs of the support of each person.

We need those crazy people inside the white coats, and not supporting them may save some pennies today, but will ruin us all tomorrow. [ The Washington Post ]

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This post is tagged: cfcs chlorofluorocarbons, environmental protection agency, million over five years, principal manufacturer, public service advertising, university scientists