News Brief by Kip Hansen — 11 February 2025 – 550 words
LOST: Maybe as many as 250 billion pennies. That’s a lot of pennies.
♫ Where have all the pennies gone? Long time passing? ♬ [apologies to Pete Seeger]
The most likely locations are: 1) Wishing wells all over the world. 2) Public fountains. 3) In the slots found on penny loafers and, coming in as most likely, 4) The coin jar on your bedroom dresser and millions of other similar coin jars and piggy banks.
I admit — mea culpa — I have a coin jar into which any coin smaller than quarter (25¢) ends up in the coin jar – including all those nearly worthless pennies.
“On Sunday night, Mr. Trump said he had ordered the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, to stop producing new pennies, a move that he said would help reduce unnecessary government spending.
“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” he said in a post on Truth Social, adding that pennies “literally cost us more than 2 cents.”
Actually, pennies currently are thought to cost 3.69 cents each, to be minted and distributed.
“Last year, the Mint issued over three billion pennies, according to its annual report, at a loss of about $85.3 million.” [ source ]
And it is about time:
“Countries around the world have eliminated their smallest-denomination coins in recent decades.
“In 2012, Canada stopped producing pennies, describing them as essentially a waste of time and space and arguing that the move would save millions of dollars a year. Since then, cash transactions have been rounded to the nearest nickel, after federal and provincial sales taxes are added.Australia withdrew its one- and two-cent coins from circulation in 1992, citing inflation and production costs. Even earlier, countries like Sweden and New Zealand stopped minting their one-cent coins.
In Australia, the elimination of those coins “hasn’t mattered at all,” said Andrew Stoeckel, an honorary professor at the Australian National University’s Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis.” [ source ]
People who code programs for modern cash registers and all the downstream (upstream?) accounting programs will be busy for a while as the penny falls out of use, as in other countries, and are simply rounded out of existence.
Rounded out of existence….what a way to go.
R.I.P. Penny, I for one won’t miss you.
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Author’s Comment:
I always kept myself supplied with pre-signed hall passes which allowed me to spend many an hour in my ghetto high school pitching pennies with the gang toughs instead of attending class. Alright, I admit, the hall passes were forged but no one would ever have challenged me about them. The only problem was that I was far too good at pitching pennies, so often had to quit before the guys got mad.
Maybe that’s all pennies will be good for in a few years time.
Let’s hear your stories about the penny.
Thanks for reading.
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Three days after he was confirmed as US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright was interviewed on CNBC Squawk Box by Brian Sullivan. The video clip above and one at the end provide his view of the way forward for US energy. For those who prefer to read, I provide a transcript in italics from the closed captions, lightly edited with my bolds and some added images. Brian refers to interviewer Brian Sullivan and Chris to Secretary Wright.
Brian: Let’s get to the topical issues, price of oil. The president says drill, baby, drill. You’re a guy that ran a fracking company. How do we balance out ringing down the price of gasoline, adding to US production, but yet not destroying the oil and gas investments as well? The CNBC audience talks about and looks at that every day.
Chris: Yeah, of course it’s a business and prices are dictated by supply and demand. But we’ve had four years of an administration that’s done everything it could to raise the cost to produce a barrel of oil. “We’re not sure if you can get a permit to drill here” or “It’s going to take 18 months. You’ve got uncertainty. You’ve got to build pipelines or gathering lines to move that product to market. “Well, we’re not sure if you can do that. You’ve got to do another study, or another this or that.” So when you add to costs of course you hurt the economics.
Now we’re going to have a more efficient operating environment. I think we’re going to see some efficiencies from scale, some efficiencies from certainty and from more credible Capital Markets. We’ve tried to starve the oil and gas industry globally, somehow thinking that’s going to help climate change. There’s been a lot of nonsense. And I think the agenda of this administration, this president, is to bring back common sense.
Brian: Can we have lower oil and gas prices and still have stocks that are not much lower than they are right now?
Chris: Oh, absolutely. Look, if you lower the cost of operations, there’s a lot of fat in the cost of operations. If you lower the cost of operations that’s going to flow through to lower prices but not necessarily lower profits.
Rough Seas for Captains of Industry
Brian: And that margin you think can remain steady and thus hold up because you were the CEO of a publicly traded company and on the board of another publicly traded company, which you have now left.
Chris: Absolutely. And look, it’s capitalism and business is driven by profit motives that have driven innovation, that have driven efficiency and driven improvements in our system. And that’s exactly what we want going forward in nuclear and natural gas and oil and geothermal, whatever it is.
Brian: Just before this interview we were talking about tariffs and the impact. They were showing health and beauty stocks down 25%. We know there’s a pause on the potential Canada tariffs, there’s 4.4 million barrels a day we bring in from Canada on average. Much of that goes to where you’re from, the Rocky Mountains, the Denver area, the upper Midwest. What is your view on potential 10% tariffs? If it does happen, what is going to happen to US oil and gasoline prices?
Chris: Well, look. Obviously the Canadian energy system is built and integrated with the United States energy system. Those pipelines come to US refineries that are tuned to refine that heavier, more viscous crude that Canada produces. I don’t think we’re going to see that change. As the president has said, this is a drug war. This is about concerns and security at our border. This is to get everyone’s attention and focus on how can we reduce criminals and fentanyl and drugs that are a threat to American security coming in our borders. I think things are moving in a productive direction.
Brian: It doesn’t sound like you think the tariffs would ultimately occur.
Chris: I don’t know what the future will bring there, but I know we’ve got very productive dialogues right now.
Brian: I’m sure you have many friends in Canada, as do I. And you know, they’re angry about this. They said, “Well, you know what? If they want to tariff our oil, let’s just ship it to Vancouver and we’re going to sell it overseas. I would call that the nuclear option. Do you see anything like that occurring if the tariffs were to occur, Mr. Secretary?
Chris: It’s hard to build new pipeline capacity. Canada does have a West Coast pipeline, which is running today and exporting oil to Asia. But that’s 10% or less of Canadian oil production. But look, this president is aggressive. He doesn’t like the status quo. He wants to change things and improve things. We had a lot of noise and sound and fury last time he was president about tariffs and inflation. Inflation averaged less than 2% in the four years he was president.
His agenda is to lower prices and better American lives, and
I don’t see any reason to believe think that’s not going to happen.
Brian: You mentioned climate a couple of minutes ago. Coming into this Administration, one of the big question marks is: What will happen to the loans and the grants and the IRA Inflation Reduction Act monies that may be already committed to wind, to solar. This matters to CNBC’s audience. In the stock market, a lot of these companies have seen their share price decline by a lot. What is your view on the Inflation Reduction Act and wind and solar projects, and the monies that are required to produce them?
Chris: So look, I’m in this chair three days now. One of the things we are doing is looking at all the projects that are out there. Where are the commitments? Where are the uncommitted funds? What’s the best use to grow the supply of affordable, reliable, secure American energy? Tremendous opportunities there. So there’s upside here as well.
But one thing I will say, Brian, we will not follow the German model. And I think the last administration wanted to go down that road. Germany spent a half a trillion dollars, made their electricity 2 to 3 times more expensive, and they produce 20% less electricity today than they did 15 years ago. We’re not going to go down that road.
We want affordable, reliable, secure energy and
reindustrialization of America, not De-industrialization of America.
Brian: Well, that’s something I’ve obviously personally reported on many times for CNBC. Been over there, seen what’s happened. So just to be clear, because let’s be honest, a lot of Wall Street makes a lot of money investing in wind and solar and even nuclear. You were on the board of a nuclear company. So final question. Should we say that that it’s possible big wind and solar projects are still going to be okay, that they’re not going to be starved of Funds under this administration? What’s the what’s the money situation regarding some of these renewable wind and solar and nuclear type energy programs?
Chris: Look, I think you’re going to see continued development in the United States of all of these energy sources. But obviously, a flow of funds from this administration is all going to be about not what the energy technology is, but will it increase the supply of affordable, reliable, secure energy?
Will it better the lives of American consumers and
encourage businesses to build things in America?
Brian: Well, finally, on building things. The first new nuclear plant in the United States just opened up last year in Georgia, took about 20 plus years to build way over budget. You’re a nuclear guy. You were on the board of Anglo until you resigned that seat. What is the future of nuclear in the United States? Some say it’s the future. Others say way too doggone expensive up front, doesn’t pay off.
Chris: I think the future is very bright, very bright. It’s an energy dense technology that gives reliable energy at all times, with a small amount of land and a small amount of materials. Do we need innovation? Do we need some government out of the way to make it work economically? Absolutely. But that’s what America is about.
Brian: Exclusive interview with the new Secretary of Energy on Day three, Christopher Wright. Thank you very much for your time here.
I receive daily emails from the American Association of Science of America (News From Science), listing some of their latest headlines. I subject myself to this torture because it’s a great source of material for me to mock and ridicule in WUWT posts. This morning’s News From Science was a treasure trove of ridicule-worthy material.
Male chimps ask for sex in different ‘dialects’
Earth’s inner core might harbor volcanoes and landslides
Spacecraft probing cosmic evolution spies an ‘Einstein ring’
Alzheimer’s scientist resigns after university finds ‘data integrity concerns’ in papers
How a cancer researcher lost a gender-related grant to Trump’s executive orders
‘My boss was crying.’ NSF confronts potentially massive layoffs and budget cuts
NIH slashes overhead payments for research, sparking outrage and lawsuit
Congress could soon erase Biden rules on archaeology, climate, and the environment
‘Madness’: Trump freeze on global HIV prevention efforts sparks disbelief, anger
New journal co-founded by NIH nominee raises eyebrows, misinformation fears
Since I am too cheap to actually subscribe, I can only get access to a few articles per month. So I zeroed in on headlines 5 and 6, because 5 seemed to really justify 6.
Science Insider: Science and Policy
‘My boss was crying.’ NSF confronts potentially massive layoffs and budget cuts
Trump could propose slashing agency’s budget by two-thirds 7 Feb 2025
Two major political bombshells hit the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) this week. The first was an official communication from the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM): Prepare for the possible layoff of half of your 1600-member staff as soon as this spring. The second, still a rumor, is equally shocking: President Donald Trump may ask Congress to cut your $9 billion budget by two-thirds.
The potential double whammy came as NSF has suspended business as usual to find out whether any research it is already funding clashes with a series of executive orders issued by Trump, including one to stop efforts to increase workforce diversity. And it has sparked anxious discussion of what such massive cuts would mean for the second-leading government funder of U.S. academic research behind the National Institutes of Health.
[…]
“My boss was crying when she told us,” says one NSF employee who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. “This is not something NSF wants to be doing,” the employee says. “But they weren’t given a choice.”
[…]
The White House is floating a $3 billion number for NSF, sources tell Science. By comparison, the agency’s current budget is $9.1 billion, and former President Joe Biden’s 2025 request, submitted in March 2024, was for $10.2 billion.
[…]
Such cuts would likely force NSF to eliminate large portions of its broad portfolio, which ranges from operating one-of-a-kind telescopes at the South Pole to supporting elementary school science and math education. And it would almost certainly reduce a researcher’s chance of winning an NSF grant—currently one in four—to the point that researchers might look elsewhere for support.
“I mean, if the success rate drops to 10%, why bother even applying?” says one higher education lobbyist. “Researchers may decide to leave the United States if they can’t get funding here.”
Having worked in the private sector since 1981 and having paid a buttload of income tax over the past 44 years, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for these people because…
That said, this quote probably irked me the most:
“I mean, if the success rate drops to 10%, why bother even applying?” says one higher education lobbyist.
WTF is a “higher education lobbyist?” And who pays his or her salary? Taxpayers? If it’s already so easy to win a National Science Foundation grant, that 25% of applicants win awards, it’s way too easy for these people to win a taxpayer-funded lottery. Dropping the success rate to 10% seems like a good start. It would force more competition for funding. It might actually lead to research projects that deliver tangible results, like we have to deliver in the private sector. And, hopefully, it would weed out useless crap like this:
Science Insider: Science and Policy
How a cancer researcher lost a gender-related grant to Trump’s executive orders
“Unethical, unlawful, inhumane”: NIH-backed scientist decries termination of study collecting data on sexual orientation and gender identity of cancer patients 7 Feb 2025
Late last week, George Washington University (GWU) cancer researcher Mandi Pratt-Chapman received a shocking phone call. Because of an executive order by President Donald Trump that has widely disrupted research related to gender or diversity being done by federal workers or U.S.-funded scientists, she and her colleagues had been ordered to immediately stop work on a large-scale cancer study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). The project, which explores the best ways to collect information on sexual orientation and gender identity of cancer patients, was already one-third of the way through data collection.
Yes, I know that the NIH is not the NSF. However, they are both funded by taxpayers and they both spend our money on frivolous projects.
I have lost family members to cancer. My wife survived a brain tumor 20 years ago and is currently battling lymphoma. I am a huge supporter of cancer research… Provided the research is targeted at treating, if not curing cancer. According to her LinkedIn profile Mandi Pratt-Chapman has a BA, MA and PhD in English and a PhD in… wait for it… “Translational Health Sciences”… WTF?
Every dollar spent on crap like this, is a dollar not spent on trying to cure or even treat cancer…
More than ever before, today’s health care leaders are faced with complex challenges to translating evidence to practice that require navigating geographical, organizational, economic, cultural, and professional barriers. These challenges are formidable and multifaceted, so the solutions must be robust, comprehensive, and draw on cross-disciplinary knowledge representative of multiple and novel perspectives. Effective leaders who can close the gap between evidence generation and implementation are needed in every aspect of the healthcare arena, including research laboratories, clinics, community settings, classrooms, boardrooms, and both government and non-government organizations.
Conducting research in our challenging health care environment requires a basis in translational research, a cross cutting approach that connects basic biomedical discovery to global population health impact.
The PhD in Translational Health Sciences program draws on Implementation Science, which investigates the processes and strategies influencing the distribution of evidence-based health care from the clinical research stage into effective treatment options.
Are you a mentor seeking to educate the next generation of health care professionals? Are you a change agent seeking to make meaningful contributions to widespread implementation of evidence-based care for complex health issues?
Mrs. Middleton gets irate every time a medical form asks about her “sexual orientation” and she goes postal when they ask about her gender, particularly if there are more than two choices. The fact that the money I earned and the government confiscated is being spent on a project “which explores the best ways to collect information on sexual orientation and gender identity of cancer patients” makes me want to go dump a cargo of tea into the harbor!
It is high time to DOGE the NSF!
27% Of National Science Foundation Grants Went To DEI Projects, Study Finds
‘Congress must end the politicization of NSF funding and restore integrity to scientific research,’ Sen. Ted Cruz says
The National Science Foundation spent more than $2 billion funding “science” projects that were often more about activism and critical race theory than science, the Senate Commerce Committee found.
The committee found that one in 10 grants awarded between January 2021 and April 2024 had to do with oppression, social or environmental justice, gender, or race. The figure was dramatically higher in grants issued more recently, as what counted as “science” transformed dramatically under the Biden administration.
“While only 0.29% of all grants with start-dates in 2021 centered on DEI initiatives, by 2024, more than a quarter (27%) of new grants pushed far-left perspectives,” the Commerce Committee said in a report released Monday.
[…]
Cruz said that wasn’t the only way DEI activism masquerading as research was harming real scientists, saying it also reduced the public’s confidence in the field as a whole.
[…]
Some papers from left-wing academics have said that the scientific method, the written word, and hard work are all racist, making it all the more surprising that mainstream scientists have failed to condemn it.
[…]
In 2022, NSF gave a $4.4 million grant to Columbia University to “decolonize geoscience.” Another million dollars went to a project that says that physics is racist.
Implementation grant: implementing novel solutions for promoting cultural change in geoscience research and education (inspire) -implementing novel solutions for promoting cultural change in geoscience research & education (inspire) program delivers a multi-faceted solution for transforming culture, shifting power, and authentically engaging underserved communities within the transdisciplinary earth and environmental sciences. Inspire will mentor, train, and develop early-career researchers and professionals historicallyunderrepresented in the geosciences. By strengthening relationships between research institutions and minority serving institutions (msis), inspire will decolonize geoscience, prioritize engagement of communities through co-design of research programs, and promote the equitable sharing of geoscientific knowledge broadly across our nation. Inspire will foster a just, equitable , and inclusive geoscience research community that reflects the diversity of the nation and is rooted in multi-directional listening and knowledge transfer. Inspire will focus on two cohort populations of future geoscience leaders at the transition points where they are often lost: 1) prior to graduate school; and, 2) prior to tenure. Bridge scholars (post-baccalaureates) will be supported and trained through a climate-focused bridge-to-phd program that will include enrolling in graduate-level classes, participating in research, and launching an evidence-based self-affirmation component, the armor project. Visiting fellows (early career faculty/researchers at msis) will gain skills and experience for developing community-focused geoscience research through their home institutions with collaborative support from – and partnerships with – columbia university scientists. Reciprocal visits from columbia hosts/mentors to the visiting fellow home institutions will be an integral part of their collaboration and will strengthen institutional partnerships. Participants from both cohorts will engage with communities in new york city to gain experience with community-focused co-design of geoscience research. The columbia geoscience community, including its alumni, will participate in coordinated action of mentoring and support, and will offer networking opportunities to members of both cohorts. A council of cultural advisors of scientists and scholars from msis and bipoc leaders in stem will provide guidance and feedback on program directions through communications and biannual meetings. Together with their mentors, host and collaborators, inspire?s 14 visiting fellows and 16 bridge scholars will become agents of change who will propagate aspects of this novel research and education ecosystem into multiple institutions. Inspire will deliver novel solutions for systemic change and cultural transformation long overdue in the geosciences. It will support and sustain diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (deia)-centered programs, and will create resources and opportunities for new programs to flourish. The envisioned cultural transformation will increase the creativity, equity, relevance, and impact of geoscience. This award reflects nsf’s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation’s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
I now need a shot of vodka and a BC Powder. While, there’s room to debate how much taxpayer money should be spent on complying with meaningful regulations, protecting the environment and tangibly useful scientific research, we shouldn’t be spending a penny on DEI and other social engineering efforts!
“For far too long, the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday. “This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”
