Integrated Organic Waste to Energy Biofuels Systems are vastly superior as energy production, organic waste disposal and fertilizer and irrigation water production systems and could produce trillions of dollars of clean energy from existing organic wastes without competition with food sources or generating pollution. Such systems have worked well in Germany and elsewhere for 60 years.

Why is it that we in American do not have such systems when some of the best research in the technologies that make them more efficient has been done in the USA by private companies and universities?

Why is it that there is public information available on this and yet government officials and so called environmental experts completely ignore such approaches?

Schmak and Hertzen corporation of Germany have been building them for decades while the ORB IOWEBS system was invented right here in the US and has been offered to governments at all levels as well as the military, AT COST.

So why do we not have them?

The more than 250,000 professional scientists and health care personnel who staff our nation’s superbly equipped research laboratories at more than 500 U.S. universities, colleges, and medical schools have a vested interest in helping STEM teachers raise student interest and achievement in STEM disciplines. They are more than willing to host teachers in their laboratories. I propose a federally supported investment in STEM teacher professional development programs at these institutions modeled on highly successful programs already in place at Columbia, Rockefeller, and Stanford Universities (see Science 326:440-442, 2009). These programs provide paid fellowships that enable science teachers to engage hands-on in the practice of their discipline for eight weeks over two consecutive summers under mentorship of university faculty and staff. Teachers literally practice what they teach. Students of teachers who have completed these programs pass state standardized science tests at a significantly higher rate than students of non-participating teachers.

It is undeniable that the US economy is transitioning away from traditional manufacturing jobs into highly-skilled, highly-educated STEM knowledge based jobs. However, graduate (PhD students), postdoctoral fellows, and research associates - the work horses of this 21st century scientific revolution; often have high student debt, sub-poverty wages when their actual working hours are accounted for, and little or no access to health insurance and retirement investments. These talented individuals often work all hours with dangerous chemicals and equipment yet are uncompensated. Given the low value places on our most creative and innovated minds when they are between 22 and 42, STEM fields are loosing their appeal. When a factory line worker at Ford, for example, is guaranteed a stable hourly wage, health insurance, retirement investment options, and union protection why would one become a scientist? What public policies and protections are you considering to properly value scientific researchers efforts and help them develop a stable financial future?

Geohazards have a high public profile and can be costly. One political party thought volcano reseach was just political pork but shortly after that Anchorage airspace was threatened by ash falls and European airspace was shutdown because of the volcano in Iceland.

We had the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and Japan but our warning system is still inadequate (can we use cable news channels to get the warnings out?). We're overdue for The Big One in San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest. Rogue waves are hazardous to shipping. Coastal erosion and hurricanes wipe out communities that shouldn't have been built there in the first place causing an enormous cost to the economy and society. The threat of meteors and asteroids impacting Earth are real but hard to calculate. Tornados are getting more dangerous because of suburban sprawl and lack of shelters. Sealevel rising will have a tremendous cost. Floods, landslides, blizzards, ice, and forest fires disrupt everything.