Global Climate Change Science News

[pErvinalia]

A lot of this subsidy stuff is over-inclusive. They include stuff like "refunds of overpaid taxes" or "the elimination of taxes" as "subsidies." In other words, they include things that aren't subsidies and call them subsidies.

Because... you say so?

[Seth]

Subsidies for renewables have always been a wise use of taxpayers money.
Firstly, they kick-started an industry that wouldn't have existed otherwise.

Egg-zactly. "wouldn't have existed otherwise." And therein lies the entire point. Neither solar nor wind power are viable alternatives, much less replacements for nuclear, coal and gas fired power plants and therefore neither industry should have been subsidized in the first place. Solar panels were perking along quite nicely on their own because they ARE useful for limited tasks that require small levels of power that can be effectively supplied by batteries that can be recharged by the sun, like remote communication sites and even individual homes where the homes are designed (and paid for) by owners who wish to be non-grid dependent.

Wind power, on the other hand, is one of the most egregious examples of politically-created, environmentally-harmful complete wastes of taxpayer money that has ever been thought up.

If you don't want to be left behind, you have to grow your own industry, or risk having to buy everything from abroad, if the industry takes off.

If "your industry" can't "take off" without being funded by the taxpayers to begin with then it's not a viable business model and shouldn't be funded AT ALL.

Also, for the UK, and probably other countries, it's very wise to have a mix of energy supply technologies. So that you're not over-reliant on imports, that could be cut off overnight if the politics went wrong. Here in the UK, we've had experience of the country being held to ransom over electricity generation. That was by the miners unions, but it could be by the Saudis or Norwegians etc etc. just as easily today. If you have a mix of nuclear, wind, solar etc etc as well as imports, then you've always got some generating capacity to fall back on.

I really want to see the UK get by on its solar and wind plants if all its conventional power plants were shut down tomorrow. You do realize that none of the "green" alternatives work when their sources aren't available, like at night or when the wind doesn't blow, and all the "green" capacity in the UK wouldn't power London for 20 minutes, much less the rest of the country. Nukes are your only viable backup plan for fossil fuel cutoffs. When was the last nuke in the UK commissioned and how many are under construction right now. I don't know, but I'd guess about 1960 and zero.

If I was in power, I'd be making an offer to the Germans for their nuclear power stations.
Rip em up and ship em over here, if they don't want them.

Yup. Of course then you are dependent on uranium-rich nations for fuel, so....

[Hermit]

A lot of this subsidy stuff is over-inclusive. They include stuff like "refunds of overpaid taxes" or "the elimination of taxes" as "subsidies." In other words, they include things that aren't subsidies and call them subsidies.

Over-inclusive? I'd say there is a lot of under-inclusiveness instead.

At least in Australia, but I suspect in other countries as well, governments chip in for the cost of the road and rail infrastructure required by the mines in a major way, and sometimes even pick up the entire tab. Rail operating costs of the private sector is particularly heavily subsidised. Although millions of tons of coal are railed to power plants every year, the subsidies are classified as transport rather than power generation subsidies. Similarly, direct as well as indirect health costs are likewise taken care of by the tax payers via the NHS or equivalent, and they don't show up as power generation subsidies either. They are classified as subsidised health instead.

Furthermore, I have not seen stuff like "refunds of overpaid taxes" in any list of subsidies, and how is "the elimination of taxes" not a subsidy when it is exceptionally granted to the mining industry and fossil fuel based electricity generation plants?

[Forty Two]

A lot of this subsidy stuff is over-inclusive. They include stuff like "refunds of overpaid taxes" or "the elimination of taxes" as "subsidies." In other words, they include things that aren't subsidies and call them subsidies.

Because... you say so?

No, because I've actually read the material that you cite, and see that what they include among subsidies are things like refunds in overpaid taxes and the repeal of taxes, among other things that are "not subsidies." You cite the materially without actually understanding what they are basing it on.

[Forty Two]

A lot of this subsidy stuff is over-inclusive. They include stuff like "refunds of overpaid taxes" or "the elimination of taxes" as "subsidies." In other words, they include things that aren't subsidies and call them subsidies.

Over-inclusive? I'd say there is a lot of under-inclusiveness instead.

At least in Australia,

http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/2421 ... bsidy-myth

"A critical examination reveals that so-called fossil fuel subsidies are usually refunds for excess taxes paid or legitimate deductions for business inputs that are not restricted to mining companies." https://ipa.org.au/publications/2422/au ... a-myth-ipa

[/quote]

Furthermore, I have not seen stuff like "refunds of overpaid taxes" in any list of subsidies, and how is "the elimination of taxes" not a subsidy when it is exceptionally granted to the mining industry and fossil fuel based electricity generation plants?[/quote]

There are no special tax exceptions to the mining and fossil fuel industries in Australia. See above.

[Forty Two]

Wind power is often viewed as super "clean" energy, with no cost. However, if used in any degree that would assist in global power needs, taking that much power out of the air would definitely have an impact on surface temperatures and climate. There have been articles on it in Scientific American and other sources. If environmental costs are to be considered subsidies to power sources, then wind and solar each have such unrecouped costs. Solar, for example, requires a manufacturing, maintenance and waste disposal of old power panels and such -- these are not recouped. So, if you want to compare apples to apples, these kind of things must be compared, and wind and solar get direct payments from governments at a many times over per kilowat rate than that for fossil fuels. That's just a reality.

I'd love to have nothing but perfectly clean energy sources. However, a viable one has not yet appeared. The best one existing now is nuclear.

[Hermit]

There are no special tax exceptions to the mining and fossil fuel industries in Australia.

And how does that mean (a) that the mining industry is not subsidised, and (b) that it does not get the lion's share of those subsidies? The short of is that (a) it is and (b) it does. For example, the mining industry gets a 40% discount on the fuel excise. That is a subsidy. Other industries get the same subsidy, but unlike in the mining industry, fuel consumption is an almost negligible factor for, say, wind farms. Of the 5.5 billion dollars paid back by the government to 687,755 companies by way of the fuel tax rebate in 2012 2.3 billion went to 7547 companies in the mining industry.

[Hermit]

Wind power is often viewed as super "clean" energy, with no cost. However, if used in any degree that would assist in global power needs, taking that much power out of the air would definitely have an impact on surface temperatures and climate.

Be nice to see some actual figures on that.

Have a look at just how small the proportion of the total area needed for wind farms is to hypothetically cover all the electricity needs on earth, and keep in mind that wind farms only actually "consume" a tiny fraction of the wind passing through those farms.



I never took you to be so fucking stupid as to echo Joe Barton's argument.

I am going to read a paragraph which is if true very ironic, and this is from Dr. Apt's paper and I quote: "Wind energy is a finite resource. At large scale, slowing down the wind by using its energy to turn turbines has environmental consequences. A group of researchers at Princeton University," which is in New Jersey, parenthetically "found that wind farms may change the mixing of air near the surface, drying the soil near the site. At planetary scales, David Keith, who was then at Carnegie Mellon, and coworkers found that if wind supplied 10 percent of expected global electricity demand in 2100, which is a number of years off, the resulting change in the earth's atmospheric energy might cause some regions of the world to experience temperature change of approximately 1 degree Centigrade," which I think is about 1-1/2 degrees or 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now, wind is God's way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it is hotter to areas where it is cooler. That is what wind is. Wouldn't it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I am not saying that is going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale — I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something. You can't transfer that heat and the heat goes up. It is just something to think about.

[Jason]

I'd be far more worried about the technology being used right now all around the world to induce rainfall over certain areas. Surely that will change the world climate far more than the equivalent of some forests absorbing the wind.

[Seth]

There are no special tax exceptions to the mining and fossil fuel industries in Australia.

And how does that mean (a) that the mining industry is not subsidised, and (b) that it does not get the lion's share of those subsidies? The short of is that (a) it is and (b) it does. For example, the mining industry gets a 40% discount on the fuel excise. That is a subsidy. Other industries get the same subsidy, but unlike in the mining industry, fuel consumption is an almost negligible factor for, say, wind farms. Of the 5.5 billion dollars paid back by the government to 687,755 companies by way of the fuel tax rebate in 2012 2.3 billion went to 7547 companies in the mining industry.

Again, so what? The issue is not whether or not a particular segment of the power production industry gets subsidies, it's whether or not the subsidies are being distributed in ways which maximize the amount of energy available to consumers at the lowest possible price.

Government's role in the energy industry is to ensure that there is adequate full-time, secure and cheap power available to the society it manages, not to fund bullshit "green" initiatives that spend enormous sums of money on "solutions" that aren't solutions at all, but rather are just political sops to the enviro-fascists.

Wind and solar will never, ever, ever provide more than a fraction of the power modern societies need and the cost-to-benefit ratio is dismal at best. Subsidizing the coal industry however, which produces the bulk of electricity today, makes perfect sense because it stabilizes and supports the vital public utility of power generation. All the money spent on "renewables" would be far better spent building nuke plants, which DO have the potential to replace coal plants, but which will then be deserving of subsidies for mining the uranium needed to operate them.

Solar and wind plants are nothing more than a huge waste of money that enriches those who build such facilities (and those who work for them) and impoverishes the taxpayers for no good reason.

If you're going to spend taxpayer money on electricity subsidies, and I stress the "if" part, then spend it where the people get the best bang for their buck, which ain't renewables. Period.

[Seth]

Wind power is often viewed as super "clean" energy, with no cost. However, if used in any degree that would assist in global power needs, taking that much power out of the air would definitely have an impact on surface temperatures and climate.

Be nice to see some actual figures on that.

Have a look at just how small the proportion of the total area needed for wind farms is to hypothetically cover all the electricity needs on earth, and keep in mind that wind farms only actually "consume" a tiny fraction of the wind passing through those farms.

What a load of crap. Do you have any idea of the actual size of the area being proposed and how many windmills it would take to accomplish this goal? It's beyond ridiculous to even contemplate such a stupid idea. It would take hundreds of millions of windmills to achieve this "plan" and the maintenance alone would beggar the world's economy, not to mention the fact that if you put them in the antarctic ocean they would be quickly destroyed by the weather, not to mention how the FUCK do you plan to get the power from these vast seas of floating windmills to where it's needed? Clearly whomever made up this horseshit knows nothing about power generation and transmission. It's hard enough on land, much less in the middle of the ocean.

Unbelievable. Do you actually believe this bullshit eco-fascist propaganda?

[Hermit]

That's a nice pair of rants, Seth. Have a good snooze. You'll feel better when you wake up.

[Tero]

Whom: object form of who

"Clearly whoever made up this horseshit knows nothing about power generation and transmission. It's hard enough on land, much less in the middle of the ocean."

It was necessary to rap whomever on the hand for writing the crap sentence.

[mistermack]

Wind power is often viewed as super "clean" energy, with no cost. However, if used in any degree that would assist in global power needs, taking that much power out of the air would definitely have an impact on surface temperatures and climate.

That's entirely wrong.
The energy that a windmill takes out of the air is mostly returned to the air directly as heat, via cooling of the equipment. What's left, the electrical energy, travels via cables and substations, all losing some heat as transmission losses, again back to the air.
Then, when the electricity is used by the consumer, the rest of the energy is returned to the atmosphere as waste heat.
The amount of energy that a wind generator removes permanently from the atmosphere is absolutely nil.

You could argue that, as a substitute for fossil fuel, it prevents additional energy being ADDED to the atmosphere by man. But the current thinking is that this is a good thing.

[Tero]

One for Seth
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/06/02/a ... g-greener/