Its not their general anti-science stupidity. This is far closer and dearer to their hearts...
This is about their patrons' bottom line. The Koch brothers and the oil industry are hearing footsteps...
"Electrofuels research shows promising results in producing fuel in massive scale and at a low cost..."
The quote above is from the website of this conference...
http://electrofuels.aiche.org/
...which is where all the people with really cool ARPA-E grants are coming to talk about them Nov. 6-9. This may be why all the Republican budget proposals call for slashing ARPA-E’s budget. Some of the “high risk/ high reward” lines of research they have funded seem to have hit paydirt.
The goals of this research threaten oil and coal interests, and the current results should terrify them. Multiple lines of investigation point to the possibility of running the economy, starting with the fleet, on carbon-neutral and otherwise very clean fuels at prices that match or better those of the extractive industries. The scientists speaking at this conference, if their work scales up well, have invented the technology which allows storage of renewables, in the form of liquid fuel. As the industrial feedstocks currently provided by petrochemicals can also be replaced, it will be possible to have a carbon-negative expanding world economy that uses liquid carbon fuels without pumping any petroleum. The Koch's would not be pleased.
This conference is worthy of attention even if the Republicans weren’t trying to kill the science of electrofuels. This stuff is beyond proof of principle, and if it does go big, video interviews from this conference will be priceless, like interviews with Gates and Jobs from the same event, before anybody knew who they were.
I'm attending the conference as a writer/activist, and have plans to interview some of the leaders in the field. I’d love to hear in the comments what questions people think I should pursue, especially from Kos community members with relevant technical backgrounds.