[Retric]

New emergencies generally offer more low hanging fruit.

I am doubtful that ~50M split into 260 grants would have any measurable impact on climate change. Just as this didn’t have any large wins. Arguably rather than research leveraging that into solar panels or other infrastructure would be a better use of funds.

In the end it’s a real gamble. One or more of those 4,000 applications was likely a great use of funds, but finding and funding it is hard especially if you’re trying to keep overhead low. Up the amount to say 1B/year and the tradeoffs become even harder between research and action.

[boxed]

Your argument is short time and defeatist. Good science can totally chance the game. You're talking about playing the existing game.

[Retric]

We don’t need new science at this point. 0 CO2 from cars + 0 CO2 from electricity + 0 CO2 from heating is a monumental improvement and we don’t need to tech to get there just building infrastructure is enough. Few people will want an ICE when 80+% of gas stations close down, that’s a huge tipping point.

Any discovery that take 20 years to go from a lab to production isn’t fast enough to make real change. Avoiding CO2 pollution today on the other hand gives us time to find better solutions.