cryptogon.com news – analysis – conspiracies

January 22nd, 2007

I built a spreadsheet with functions that break down the cost of the war in Iraq into dollars per minute. According to the Pentagon, the war in Iraq is costing $8.4 billion per month.

Cost of the War in Iraq Per Minute

Cost per month: 8400000000

Cost per week: 2100000000

Cost per day: 300000000

Cost per hour: 12500000

Cost per minute: 208333.33

That war is costing $208,333 per minute!

On the last page of the this Oregon State University story about wave power is the following sentence:

“OSU’s College of Engineering is seeking $3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the national wave energy research center, where the engineers hope to test not only their own designs but those of other researchers and commercial developers.”

I tweaked my widget to allow me to enter an “opportunity cost” element to see how many minutes of war spending would need to pass before the cost of the other thing could be paid for:

OSU’s wave energy research center could be built with what is spent on the war in Iraq in about 14.4 minutes.

I was so shocked by this number that I started thinking bigger. For example, what is the total annual budget of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory?

The annual budget now stands at $210 million. In other words, the U.S. spends more on the war in Iraq in one day (about $300 million) than it does on the ANNUAL BUDGET for the primary government laboratory that is tasked with renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development.

What you have here is a proof, with mathematical certainty, that the U.S. government is engineering energy scarcity issues.

This isn’t even an interesting topic anymore, given these numbers.

The far more interesting question is:

Since they are obviously allowing these energy problems to escalate, what do they have in mind for all of us when the “crisis” finally hits?

Like I said in a recent comment:

“We have a problem with human nature. There is, however, no shortage of readily available energy… Water, top soil loss, copper and wheat issues are going to impact peoplesâ€™ reality before any of the energy scarcity issues do.”

Hmm. It’s interesting how the energy scarcity meme drowns out the sound of the wolves barking at the door.

Tell me the shit is hitting the fan because of top soil depletion, or fascists with nuclear weapons, etc. but don’t insult my intelligence by saying that there isn’t easily enough energy available from the oceans, the sun and the wind. And the cost? Do you want me to send you a copy of my handy Iraq War Opportunity Cost In Minutes Calculator?

I don’t like religion. It’s certainty and exclusion of simple, observable data—that don’t fit the dogma—are anathema to my nature. The energy scarcity argument, on its own, is like the American dream: you’d have to be asleep to believe it.

Again: We have a problem with human nature. There is, however, no shortage of readily available energy.

In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter. I’d just prefer to know the real score, rather than some nonsense that doesn’t even stand up to basic arithmetic.