Just 10 Percent of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Cash 'Could Pay For Green Transition,' Report Says (theguardian.com) 312
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Switching just some of the huge subsidies supporting fossil fuels to renewables would unleash a runaway clean energy revolution, according to a new report, significantly cutting the carbon emissions that are driving the climate crisis. Coal, oil and gas get more than $370 billion a year in support, compared with $100 billion for renewables, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) report found. Just 10-30% of the fossil fuel subsidies would pay for a global transition to clean energy, the IISD said.
The new analysis shows how redirecting some of the fossil fuel subsidies could decisively tip the balance in favor of green energy, making it the cheapest electricity available and instigating a rapid global rollout. "Almost everywhere, renewables are so close to being competitive that [a 10-30% subsidy swap] tips the balance, and turns them from a technology that is slowly growing to one that is instantly the most viable and can replace really large amounts of generation," said Richard Bridle of the IISD. "It goes from being marginal to an absolute no-brainer." Reform of fossil fuel subsidies could have a significant impact on global heating. An earlier IISD study of 20 countries with large fossil fuel subsidies found that a 30% swap to renewables would lead to emissions reductions of between 11% and 18%. "Most experts define fossil fuel subsidies as financial or tax support for those buying fuel or the companies producing it," the report says. "The IMF also includes the cost of the damage fossil fuel burning causes to climate and health, leading to an estimate of $5.2 trillion of fossil fuel subsidies in 2017, or $10 million a minute. Ending the subsidies would cut global emissions by about a quarter, the IMF estimates, and halve the number of early deaths from fossil fuel air pollution."
The new analysis shows how redirecting some of the fossil fuel subsidies could decisively tip the balance in favor of green energy, making it the cheapest electricity available and instigating a rapid global rollout. "Almost everywhere, renewables are so close to being competitive that [a 10-30% subsidy swap] tips the balance, and turns them from a technology that is slowly growing to one that is instantly the most viable and can replace really large amounts of generation," said Richard Bridle of the IISD. "It goes from being marginal to an absolute no-brainer." Reform of fossil fuel subsidies could have a significant impact on global heating. An earlier IISD study of 20 countries with large fossil fuel subsidies found that a 30% swap to renewables would lead to emissions reductions of between 11% and 18%. "Most experts define fossil fuel subsidies as financial or tax support for those buying fuel or the companies producing it," the report says. "The IMF also includes the cost of the damage fossil fuel burning causes to climate and health, leading to an estimate of $5.2 trillion of fossil fuel subsidies in 2017, or $10 million a minute. Ending the subsidies would cut global emissions by about a quarter, the IMF estimates, and halve the number of early deaths from fossil fuel air pollution."
Who are these articles for? (Score:4, Insightful)
This one says ten percent of a made up number is enough to cover another made up number representing an expense.
So we should celebrate? We should pretend the numbers are real and get mad that mean people don't make the one number lower to pay for the other one?
How credulous and emotionally malleable are we supposed to be? Does anyone actually believe this stuff or are you all playing along?
Re:Who are these articles for? (Score:5, Informative)
I think that they're still being used as talking points by the "Green New Deal" fans and Bernie Sanders supporters. They should probably try harder to actually get their candidate elected before talking about jacking up gas prices to Joe Sixpack in Iowa, though.
I have to wonder how many supporters of the Green New Deal have actually read it, and also the comments by the authors that fill in some important details. One important detail that they seem to not want to discuss too much is how they define "zero carbon energy sources". To the Democrats this includes only wind and solar. They want to end all hydroelectric production, they want to decommission every nuclear power plant and not build another, they don't include bio-fuels like ethanol (which Joe Sixpack in Iowa might have mixed feelings over), nuclear fusion research, geothermal, or carbon capture.
I've been listening to talk radio for a long time and only recently am I hearing things like, "Why don't the Democrats like nuclear power?"
This will come up and the Democrats will have to answer questions like this, from Joe Sixpack and not their friends at CNN or Fox during televised debates. If they answer with the same happy mouth noises that Obama gave in his debates on the topic they will lose. Obama had a lot going for him and energy wasn't near the issue then as it is now. Obama mumbled a few things about maybe possibly someday he could get a panel together to investigate the potential of forming a committee to debate the funding of research on future nuclear power plants after the problems of nuclear waste disposal has been debated and funding investigated by a panel for the formation of a committee.
I don't think that will work any more. People want a simple answers on questions over nuclear power and if the Democrats cannot provide these answers then they will lose.
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Mod correction. The OP was modded -1, Troll. The correct mod for this is +1, Insightful.
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I see you have not learned your lesson. Very well.
Re:Who are these articles for? (Score:5, Informative)
Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/07/10/feature/how-saikat-chakrabarti-became-aocs-chief-of-change/?utm_term=.606f1eafa961
Re:Who are these articles for? (Score:5, Informative)
He's not the first either..."one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy"
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War... First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
Christiana Figueres, leader of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”
Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
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Hydro has an effect on the environment. Might as well keep the current ones going but building more doesn't seem viable. Nuclear produces a fair bit of CO2. Mining for fuel, transport, storage, reprocessing, and more mining to build long term storage.
Don't mistake not wanting to fund things directly as meaning that they are not going to be privately developed though. It's just that if the government is going to invest a lot of money in infrastructure, it should ideally be a fairly safe bet that is proven an
Re:Who are these articles for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear produces a fair bit of CO2.
Then so does wind and solar.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
If wind and solar can be called "zero carbon" then so can nuclear.
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Where did you find the definition of "zero carbon energy sources" and where do they say "They want to end all hydroelectric production, they want to decommission every nuclear power plant and not build another, they don't include bio-fuels like ethanol"?
It is not from the Green New Deal which can be found at: https://ocasio-cortez.house.go... [house.gov]
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The land/water protection clause and prevention of eminent domain abuse is pretty ominous.
With water rights even pumped hydro projects are going to get stuck in courts if government isn't willing to muscle through. Pre-emptively talking about eminent domain "abuse" shows a lack of commitment to the currently only viable way of months level storage for renewable energy.
You mean this?
"(L) ensuring that public lands, waters, and oceans are protected and that eminent domain is not abused;"
"(M) obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples and their traditional territories, honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous peoples;"
In a 14 page document that outlines massive infrastructure investments, a clause about e
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No, I simply think they don't really have the balls to do renewable megaprojects. They'll simply fuck around in the margins and then shy back when it's time to fill a couple of deserts with solar panels and mountain ranges with pumped hydro.
Just search the text: https://ocasio-cortez.house.go... [house.gov]
Renewables are mentioned only under one of the propositions:
(C) meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources, including
(i) by dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable power sources; and
(ii) by deploying new capacity;
The OP wondered how many of it's supporters had actually read the proposals, I don't have an answer to that, but I'll go out on a limb and just say that non of
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I have to wonder how many supporters of the Green New Deal have actually read it,
Why bother? It's intended to spur discussion, not to actually do anything. It's literally just a series of talking points. That's why it was a non-binding resolution. It has been successful in promoting discussion around climate change, so it has accomplished its most important goal.
One important detail that they seem to not want to discuss too much is how they define "zero carbon energy sources". To the Democrats this includes only wind and solar. They want to end all hydroelectric production, they want to decommission every nuclear power plant and not build another, they don't include bio-fuels like ethanol (which Joe Sixpack in Iowa might have mixed feelings over), nuclear fusion research, geothermal, or carbon capture.
Carbon capture is not an energy generation technology, so it's unclear why you've included it in this list. Ethanol fuel is an ecological atrocity. You know well how I feel about nuclear. Hydroelectric energy production has sign
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While fish ladders work perfectly well, some huge dams have fish elevators :)
No joke!
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Could you articulate that a little better? We should believe obviously made up numbers because... [Greenland something something]?
Why not stop making up nonsense numbers? Isn't this stuff supposed to be serious?
Not exactly "subsidies" (Score:3, Interesting)
In most of the countries they're talking about, the "subsidy" is calculated by taking the amount the government-owned oil companies charge their own citizens and comparing it to international oil prices. So places like Venezuela (before their economy crashed) were selling gasoline to the people at ridiculously low prices to help keep them content and prevent revolution. That didn't work, of course.
Other places, like the Middle East oil producers and the US, have low prices because they don't have to ship it anywhere, and are below the cost the OECD thinks should be charged...
In a lot of other places, the OECD takes the view that, if a country isn't charging enough tax when compared to everyone else, that counts as a subsidy - even though it's not really any such thing.
This is a lot like the US "fossil fuel subsidies," where they count things like oil sales to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at market prices as "subsidies," and also include plain old tax deductions in the same category.
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/thread
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/d... [forbes.com]
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The GP points out specifically how the article misconstrues the word "subsidy", and you double down on the lies? I bet you're one of those Antifa guys that think you're protecting free speech by assaulting people for talking.
Probably the usual meaningless 'subsidies' measure (Score:4, Interesting)
Take it with a pinch of salt.
They take tax breaks and investment incentives that all business use. Then claim they are 'fossil fuel subsidies'. No shit they receive large subsidies, they are large businesses.
Green companies can get the identical subsidies and tax breaks, but the numbers are smaller because the companies are smaller. Nothing to see here.
This is completely separate from not counting all the negative externalises of the fossil fuel industry. But it's disingenuous to frame them in the same way.
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"But it's disingenuous to frame them in the same way." No it isn't, try charging the oil companies because your city is getting flooded, see Miami for details.
If true, great: do it! But also do this: (Score:3)
Re:If true, great: do it! But also do this: (Score:4, Interesting)
Shift some of that money to R&D into better, intrinsicly safer fission power plants, and while you're at it, shift some of it into accelerating fusion R&D.
By R&D do you mean that for once we see some full scale and operational prototypes? We can keep funding the computer simulations and laboratory scale models but that's not getting us any where. These simulations and models need real world data to work from and that cannot come from anything other than a full scale prototype.
I remember this same debate come up with nuclear weapons testing not terribly long ago. There were people protesting the resumption of tests, asking why they didn't just do computer simulations instead. The answer was simple, the simulations are only as good as the data, and they cannot get data from anything other than a real world test.
The US federal government has been putting a lot of money into fusion research, maybe not enough but they have given money. I don't recall anyone demanding an explanation for the funding of prototypes on this. Or funding for prototypes of windmills or solar PV cells. We can research all we like but development means we actually...
BUILD THINGS!
We can't build anything close to the perfect nuclear fission power plant until we build at least 20 imperfect ones. We built a lot of very nice nuclear power plants 40 and 50 years ago so anything we build today should be at least as good.
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By R&D do you mean that for once we see some full scale and operational prototypes?
Probably not, no. We did try that in the past, it didn't work very well. Lots of expensive accidents and ideas that turned out to be dead ends. Much better to do computer simulations before throwing billions of dollars at something that history suggests has a very high probability of becoming a white elephant.
We built a lot of very nice nuclear power plants 40 and 50
Not really. The ones with very conservative designs were okay-ish, assuming they were run properly, but at that time there were a lot of experimental plants, new ideas that didn't pan out and some that
Re:If true, great: do it! But also do this: (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear has had decades of subsidised research. 70+ years of it.
It's always "if we just had a bit more" but all these experimental wonder reactors always turn out to have major, expensive flaws. At this point it's just throwing good money after bad.
Re:If true, great: do it! But also do this: (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear has had decades of subsidised research. 70+ years of it.
It's always "if we just had a bit more" but all these experimental wonder reactors always turn out to have major, expensive flaws. At this point it's just throwing good money after bad.
Bullshit. Nuclear hasn't had 70+ years of subsidized research because there was a 40+ year span of time where no new nuclear power plant was built. That's like saying we did 70+ years of research in astronomy by looking at the same photographs for 40 years instead of building new telescopes and taking new photos.
Do we do automotive research by looking at the 1972 Ford Pinto over and over again? No, we build new car models every year. It's not research if we don't...
BUILD THINGS!
Here's an idea. Let's not allow wind and solar to build anything new for 40 years and see how that turns out for everybody. They can do all the "research" they want so long as they build nothing new.
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40+ year span of time where no new nuclear power plant was built
In the US perhaps, but even that seems doubtful. What years are you talking about?
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In the US perhaps, but even that seems doubtful. What years are you talking about?
1977 to 2016, my mistake on that being 40+ years as it was really only 39 years. Please forgive my "hyperbole".
https://www.treehugger.com/cor... [treehugger.com]
The last two power plants to be built in the US were the Watts Bar plant, which began construction in 1973, was completed in 1990, and didn't begin commercial operation until 1996, and the River Bend plant, which was built in 1977 and went online in 1986.
https://www.timesfreepress.com... [timesfreepress.com]
The Tennessee Valley Authority is refueling America's newest nuclear reactor after its first production cycle of nearly 17 months of power generation.
This is hardly a "new" reactor. The second unit completed was a near identical copy of the first unit that had ground breaking in 1973. This "new" reactor is the best technology the 1960s had to offer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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So US only, because only the US can develop nuclear power?
Also, looking at Wikipedia's list of nuclear power plants in the US, it appears that many were built in the period 1977-2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Do we need large scale production installations (Score:2)
As far as I know we're still building small test reactors for new tech. Maybe not as much as folks want, but science has been massively underfunded for decades after the push for tax cuts started in the 80s. We used to have a kind of "use it or lose it" tax system where profits after 20 million or so not re-invested went to the government who then invested
Fossils and renewables get the same subsidies (Score:2)
I looked up 2016 total government subsidies of all kinds https://www.eia.gov/analysis/r [eia.gov]... and for the 2018 US energy production mix https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl [eia.gov]... both from the US Department of Energy, a branch called the "US Energy Information Administration".
Biomass: $1.7 subsidy per million BTU generated
Natural gas, crude oil, coal, nuclear, wind+solar+geothermal: $1 subsidy per million BTU generated
Hydro: $0.7 subsidy per million BTU generated
It seems like renewables already get roughly the same tot
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Fossil fuel gets a free to pollute as much as they want subsidy, renewable do not. What right do you claim to pollute the air I breathe when an alternate is available regardless of cost.
Fossil fuel, free to poison every one on the planet subsidy. Fossil fuel free to cause climate change with trillions in damages subsidy. Yeah, they get a whole bunch more subsidies than renewable, a insane amount more, apparently including the right to pollute the air every human on the planet breathes.
Think it is OK, why d
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Those installers signed up for the job and are getting paid for it, and that payment includes covering the risk of death. That's the opposite of a free subsidy.
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Both your links are 404, looks like a copy/paste error. I wanted to see if they include things like the cost of healthcare to deal with the pollution from fossil sources, which is a massive subsidy.
How can they calculate the subsidy for nuclear? The unlimited liability insurance provided by the government is literally priceless. The nuclear subsidy is $infinity per million BTU generated.
There is a huge difference between subsidies for established energy sources like fossil and nuclear, and subsidies for rap
It doesn't matter (Score:2)
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Their intermittency is a significant problem, making their levelized cost differ dramatically from their geometrically increasing deployment cost. This is due to them more often overproducing during good times, which either has to be curtailed or stored in batteries that are an order of magnitude too expensive to act as base load; and underproducing during bad times, which means that all the current base load capacity (coal, gas, nuclear) still has to be maintained.
We need good-enough solutions now, not in
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So what is this intermittency problem you speak of for [solar]?
Night.
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Solar power is also seasonal -- here in the UK on a clear summer day grid solar peaks at about 6GW. In winter on a clear sunny day the same grid-connected solar generation capacity will produce maybe 0.5GW since the sun is a lot lower in the sky. In addition since it's only above the horizon for about 6 hours in mid-winter means the total amount of power generated through the day is a small fraction of the summer peak value.
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Solar power is also seasonal -- here in the UK on a clear summer day grid solar peaks at about 6GW.
There in the UK you are also in an optimal position (no matter where you are in the UK, really) for offshore wind. If you stay in the EU, then maybe you can work out a reasonable deal with your neighbors to share power generation and transmission so that you can effectively ship power back and forth to where it's needed, as the wind ought to be blowing somewhere in the UK all the time. Otherwise, they will absolutely ream you with fees, and you will deserve it. HTH, HAND!
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So what is this intermittency problem you speak of for renewables? It can't be that it doesn't run 24/7, because nukes don't.
You are correct that nuclear power plants don't run all the time. But it is common for any given nuclear power reactor to have a capacity factor of 90%+, and do so in any kind of weather. This means that with a small fleet of nuclear power plants a utility can expect to get 90% of the rated capacity of this fleet at any given time, barring some common failure mode.
With wind and solar there are common failure modes every day. It's called "night' for solar power and "calm winds" for wind power.
How could we
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So what is this intermittency problem you speak of for renewables? It can't be that it doesn't run 24/7, because nukes don't.
You are correct that nuclear power plants don't run all the time. But it is common for any given nuclear power reactor to have a capacity factor of 90%+, and do so in any kind of weather. This means that with a small fleet of nuclear power plants a utility can expect to get 90% of the rated capacity of this fleet at any given time, barring some common failure mode.
With wind and solar there are common failure modes every day. It's called "night' for solar power and "calm winds" for wind power.
So there you go again, assuming the wind dies down everywhere on an entire continent at the same time, usually at night it would seem, that it does this with great frequency and that there is nothing but solar and wind in your mix. At least you are now acknowledging the existence of batteries. Say what you want about wind, solar and batteries, they do not blow up and irradiate millions of square kilometres of arable land because some corporate drone either wanted to save some money by skimping on safety fea
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There you go again, assuming every nuclear reactor was built like Chernobyl.
The RBMK reactor is unique to Russia, inherited from the former USSR, and those that haven't been decommissioned, had construction halted before going critical, or had a rapid self disassembly event, is now in operation only because of significant modifications to the design and operation.
Only the USSR has ever built a reactor with a high positive void coefficient like the RBMK and derivatives. It would in fact be illegal to constr
Re:Nukes are intermittent. Ask France. (Score:4, Informative)
So there you go again, assuming the wind dies down everywhere on an entire continent at the same time, usually at night it would seem, that it does this with great frequency and that there is nothing but solar and wind in your mix.
Continent-scale low-loss transmissions to smooth out the variability of wind and solar doesn't exist yet, and what's there is way below the capacity needed of redistributing that much energy.
At least you are now acknowledging the existence of batteries.
Batteries aren't a replacement for nuclear though (nor for coal, gas, hydro, biomass and geothermal), as batteries are an order of magnitude too expensive to act as base load, instead being used as fast-burst sources to pick up temporary slack in other sources.
Say what you want about wind, solar and batteries, they do not blow up and irradiate millions of square kilometres of arable land because some corporate drone either wanted to save some money by skimping on safety features or thought it would be a good idea to build a nuclear plant in a tsunami zone in a geologically unstable area.
Fission reactors does have the non-negligible risk of putting all its externalized costs into one single catastrophic event. But averaged over time, nuclear is the safest option [ourworldindata.org] for base load, compared to its competitors. That's not accounting for the fact that the risker plants designs that did fail were from the 60's and 70's. Gen 3.5 and later reactor designs makes the potential hazard a largely moot point.
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Continent-scale low-loss transmissions to smooth out the variability of wind and solar doesn't exist yet, and what's there is way below the capacity needed of redistributing that much energy.
Yes, but that's a problem we should fix no matter what, because...
Fission reactors does have the non-negligible risk of putting all its externalized costs into one single catastrophic event.
...fission reactors are TOO BIG TO FAIL. If a nuke plant does go down, even if it doesn't fail catastrophically, it leaves a massive hole in the grid — usually for at least days. If the pro-nuclear crowd around here gets its way, there will be molten salt involved, and if that cools off for any length of time then the restart time is quite significant. So just to hedge against operating problems at nuclear plants which don't endanger li
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For objective measures, one could look at the capacity factor [wikipedia.org] (average energy output out of installed capacity), which using the article's examples and [ref, page 110] [google.com] can be as high as 90% for nuclear, 50% for offshore wind, 20-40% for non-offshore wind, and 30% for solar.
Then there's the availability factor [wikipedia.org] (amount of time the plant is neither in maintenance, refueling, nor unscheduled downtime), which is about 83% for nuclear[ref, page 7] [worldenergy.org], 95% for wind and 98% for solar[ref] [energymag.net].
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That is utter bullshit. Most scrap metal dealers would be very happy to recycle the aluminium, copper and steel that wind turbines are made of.
Recycling coal spoil tips is very expensive, and the producers almost never pay. Recycled nuclear waste has to be inspected "forever" and the integrated cost of "forever" is $infinite.
It is possible that some wind turbines, somewhere, are subsidized, somewhere, but here in Europe, they a
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Since you ask:
Given the extremely low wear involved in rubbing against the wind, wind turbine blades have a very long life, and here is so little material being scrapped that it is not a significant business.
The main components are: wood (biodegradable), glass fibre (not much different from sand) and carbon fibre (also biodegradable). Not sure why you think this counts as e-waste. Landfill (for turbine blades) is mostly illegal, or taxed ou
Wrong, again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oil companies (at least in the US) don't receive ANY money from the federal government. Look it up. This "fossil fuel subsidies" bullshit never goes away even though its a complete lie.
If you own a business (again, in the US, not speaking otherwise), you get to deduct certain costs, typically expansion related activities, R&D etc. In the oil and gas industry this is basically drilling and exploration. So the only "subsidies" that the oil industry gets is the same deductions that any other business in and other industry receive. The only way you could change this is to remove the tax deductions across the board for every business in the US, which would probably cause the economy to go into free-fall. According to US law (IIRC BC IANAL), it would otherwise be illegal for Congress to pass a law punishing any one given industry over another.
As much as I *loathe* the combination of these two words in print in general, this is the epitome of "Fake News."
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We spent about $6 Trillion over 10 years in Afghanistan and Iraq for gas and oil procurement -- how much of a subsidy are you looking for?
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This is incorrect. The purpose of government involvement is not to reduce the cost but to create price stability. The oil companies, who benefit from these policies are still trying to maximize their profits. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] as an example.
Re:Wrong, again... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's all this then:
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/r... [eia.gov]
Re:Wrong, again... (Score:4, Interesting)
This "fossil fuel subsidies" bullshit never goes away even though its a complete lie.
Partial lie, IMHO.
If we don't add environmental damage and military protection as costs on the fossil fuel tab, then yes, it must be cheaper than changing to alternative energies.
If we are using the word "subsidies" in a strict sense, which I think was the purpose of the article, then yes I am persuaded by your argument. However (and still only IMHO), the environmental damage and military protection costs are significant enough to warrant a change in strategy.
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Now, now, protecting Saudi Arabia has allowed them to, get this, change their laws so that their women of over 21 yrs can now get passports and travel WITHOUT permission from a male guardian. Before you rejoice in their new found liberation, we must also recognize that there is no rule of written law in Saudi Arabia, it is oral law mostly derived from the Koran where all laws are deemed to originate. Very convenient loophole for the autocratically minded. Why, before you know it, they'll change the laws aga
They get to offset their costs onto us (Score:3)
Something else that nobody ever seems to talk about is that the oil was in the ground for centuries before we decided who "owns" it. This is a once in a million years bonanza. Go read the Ring World books by Larry Niven that talk about a civilization on artificial ring worlds. One of the plot points is that the civilizations can never advance because they lack the natural resources we have.
What I guess I'm saying is this: It's odd that the people who get to
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Go read the Ring World books by Larry Niven that talk about a civilization on artificial ring worlds. One of the plot points is that the civilizations can never advance because they lack the natural resources we have.
Or the Mote saga, where the Moties are stuck in an endless cycle because of resource scarcity in their home system, for that matter.
remember leaded gas? Got Asthma?
Yep. Yep.
Oh, and I completely forgot about Fracking (Score:3)
Those numbers are absurd. Someone is cheating. (Score:3)
Part of the problem is that the IMF is inventing a new definition of "subsidy". One that has no relationship with the actual meaning of the word.
Here's how a dictionary will define subsidy:
"a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive."
Here's how the IMF is redefining it so that they can cite however much money they want:
"fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations)"
So, (total consumption)*(market price - what someone wants fuel to cost) = total nonsense because one of the factors is made up.
Here's an article explaining what exactly the "subsidies" are in the US. https://www.forbes.com/sites/d... [forbes.com]
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To nitpick, that is actually not how a dictionary would define subsidy. Your definition seems to be a direct quote from the news article: https://www.clickondetroit.com... [clickondetroit.com]
You are however correct that any common dictionary (that I could find at least), includes a direct monetary transfer.
But adding to that, a subsidy has in usage come to include more than actual money transfers, one example being tax breaks. Examples of such usage can be found concerning disputes of unfair trade. https://www.investopedia.com [investopedia.com]
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It says right there that they are including an estimate of presumed health and climate effects as a subsidy! Estimates of assumed external costs are not subsidies.
You're right. They are not subsidies.
Not even close.
You're wrong. Permitting an industry to knowingly push the cost of these externalities off onto others is an effective subsidy.
Use the real number for subsidies (Score:2)
Re:Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how every day Slashdot posts 100 articles a day saying how sunshine and windmills are already 1/billionth the cost of regular power and we're paying trillions a day unnecessarily when every man woman and child would instantly become as rich as Bill Gates if they would just switch. Which they could already do instantaneously and painlessly by tomorrow because all the infrastructure is already in place and already 100x superior in every way. Yet the vast majority of jurisdictions on the planet except for a few geographically favored ones stubbornly insist on sticking to paying through the nose for the usual mix of conventional power and nuclear instead of reaping this bounty of infinite clean energy and a fat sack of cash in the sky raining down infinite money for some reason. Even though they've done a billion things they really didn't want to do inexplicably this one thing they almost down to the man refuse to do.
Yes, funny that.
I'd like someone to give some real numbers on how this green energy revolution is supposed to work. I've seen real numbers on how it won't work. I'll share a few links to these numbers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
https://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
http://www.renewable-energysou... [renewable-...ources.com]
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
I keep being "reminded" that wind and solar costs less than natural gas. That's what my research tells me as well. If wind and solar is cheaper than natural gas then why would anyone bother to build a new natural gas fired power plant? The answer to that is simple, natural gas is a store of energy from which we can draw upon on any time, wind and solar can't do that. Then I get people that "remind" me about...
BATTERIES!
Okay then, how much do those cost? You can see from my references above that the price difference between natural gas and any "green" energy is very small, this means that the storage costs must be minuscule to make it compete. This also ignores the potential for these batteries to be used with conventional energy sources to lower costs, improve reliability, lower CO2 emissions, or whatever else batteries offer for wind and solar.
So, please, tell me more about batteries. I'd like to know how they, with wind and solar, will come to replace natural gas and nuclear power in the future. Tell me how much they will cost. Tell me how there will be sufficient production capacity to meet the demand for electricity as coal and nuclear power plants are retired.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
How does this get modded down as a troll?
I'd like someone to give some real numbers on how this green energy revolution is supposed to work. I've seen real numbers on how it won't work. I'll share a few links to these numbers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
https://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
http://www.renewable-energysou... [renewable-...ources.com]
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
I keep being "reminded" that wind and solar costs less than natural gas. That's what my research tells me as well. If wind and solar is cheaper than natural gas then why would anyone bother to build a new natural gas fired power plant? The answer to that is simple, natural gas is a store of energy from which we can draw upon on any time, wind and solar can't do that. Then I get people that "remind" me about...
BATTERIES!
Okay then, how much do those cost? You can see from my references above that the price difference between natural gas and any "green" energy is very small, this means that the storage costs must be minuscule to make it compete. This also ignores the potential for these batteries to be used with conventional energy sources to lower costs, improve reliability, lower CO2 emissions, or whatever else batteries offer for wind and solar.
So, please, tell me more about batteries. I'd like to know how they, with wind and solar, will come to replace natural gas and nuclear power in the future. Tell me how much they will cost. Tell me how there will be sufficient production capacity to meet the demand for electricity as coal and nuclear power plants are retired.
I guess it's easier to mod this down to where fewer people will see it than give an honest answer. I really do want to know how much these batteries will cost and how that is reflected in the rates people will have to pay. If there is no answer then batteries aren't an answer either, just fucking magic that will solve all of our problem. Real solutions are actual machines. FM vs. AM, fucking magic vs. actual machines. Actual machines cost money, I'll admit to th
So, please, tell me more about batteries .... (Score:2)
So, please, tell me more about batteries. I'd like to know how they, with wind and solar, will come to replace natural gas and nuclear power in the future. Tell me how much they will cost. Tell me how there will be sufficient production capacity to meet the demand for electricity as coal and nuclear power plants are retired.
Some 100 Mw of battery storage retails at $66 million (Tesla's Hornsdale battery pack) So $370 billion will buy you 5606 Hornsdale battery packs which comes out to 560 gigawatts of storage or around 600 gigawatt hours of duration. For comparisons the entire US electrical generation capacity is around 1,072.46 gigawatts (in 2027). And no, the wind will not die down, the water will not stop flowing the sun will not stop shining, the earth will not stop generating geothermal energy and biomass will not stop bu
Re: (Score:2)
So, please, tell me more about batteries. I'd like to know how they, with wind and solar, will come to replace natural gas and nuclear power in the future. Tell me how much they will cost. Tell me how there will be sufficient production capacity to meet the demand for electricity as coal and nuclear power plants are retired.
Some 100 Mw of battery storage retails at $66 million (Tesla's Hornsdale battery pack) So $370 billion will buy you 5606 Hornsdale battery packs which comes out to 560 gigawatts of storage or around 600 gigawatt hours of duration. For comparisons the entire US electrical generation capacity is around 1,072.46 gigawatts (in 2027). And no, the wind will not die down, the water will not stop flowing the sun will not stop shining, the earth will not stop generating geothermal energy and biomass will not stop burning, etc., etc., ad nauseam .... all at the same time, all of the time, making nuclear the only viable option. Your worst case scenario is storing excess wind and solar energy in battery packs or some other energy storage mechanism (there are alternatives to batteries) during the day and bleeding it off over the night when energy consumption drops by something like 65%. You could buy 18 gigabytes of battery storage for the $12 billion held in the US nuclear disaster insurance fund alone.
That's 1,072.46 gigawatts in 2017 not 2027.
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How about you cite some sources that explain how this works. Here's mine that says your plan is bullshit.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
https://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
Is there enough wind to supply the energy we use today? Could we produce enough batteries to hold this energy for when it's needed? It's quite possible the answer to both is yes. The problem lies in the cost in effort, time, materials, and e
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
And for nukes, NOTHING ELSE will work.
I think you had your head stuck on wind and solar power for so long that you don't realize that not all nuclear power plants have to be shutdown for maintenance at the same time. When the sun sets all your solar power disappears. When the wind stops all the windmills stop producing power. But a nuclear power plant can use another nuclear power plant to back it up. It doesn't have to be coal or hydro.
This is already common practice for a nuclear power plant to have multiple reactors and stagger the refue
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear is a very expensive way to provide "backup" power, not that it's actually needed. With a decent amount of geographic distribution wind is just as reliable. If the wind stopped blowing everywhere then keeping the lights on would be the least of our worries, we would be experiencing some catastrophic world-ending event that has yet to be conceived by wildest science fiction authors.
How much battery storage do you think you can buy for the price of one nuclear reactor?
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Nuclear is a very expensive way to provide "backup" power, not that it's actually needed. With a decent amount of geographic distribution wind is just as reliable. If the wind stopped blowing everywhere then keeping the lights on would be the least of our worries, we would be experiencing some catastrophic world-ending event that has yet to be conceived by wildest science fiction authors.
How much battery storage do you think you can buy for the price of one nuclear reactor?
You could buy a whole shit ton of it just for the insurance costs. No private party wants to insure nuclear plants. Nuclear plants usually need state guaranteed insurance or they are operated by the state for insurance and safety reason among other things such as security and fissile material theft by terrorists. If one of these things blows and renders the crops of entire countries down wind of it radioactive for the foreseeable future the various insurance costs alone would probably bankrupt these insuran
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Only $12bn for nuclear accidents? Fukushima suggests that the liability from a major accident could easily be much greater than that. I guess they would just have to pay the rest from general taxation.
Re:Nukes demand hydropower backup (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure that's very helpful in places like Japan and Hawaii.
Indeed, they have excellent offshore wind resources. Japan has the 7th longest coastline in the world.
I don't know, and my earlier posts asking this same question got moderated down.
It's about $200/kWh, plus some overhead costs for the system that don't scale linearly.
Hinkley Point C is projected to cost $24bn, although that's probably a under-estimate and doesn't include the $55-60bn extra that will be paid for energy generated by it due to the subsidised strike price. Anyway, let's say $24bn for the sake of argument.
That would pay for a battery capable of storing 120GWh. Let's call it 100GWh with the overheads included. That could power the entire UK for about 3 hours, which is of course ludicrous but a fun little stat.
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Nice try, but I'm using a recent example of the newest plant built in the UK, where I used to live (current country doesn't have any nukes at all), not one I cherry picked as you imply. It's a modern design, the cost is actually lower than it would be for a completely new plant as there are already other reactors at the site and all the associated infrastructure.
Hinkley C isn't atypical either, when comparing it to other new plants recently constructed in Europe.
I'm also comparing it to the most recent wind
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Hinkley C isn't atypical either, when comparing it to other new plants recently constructed in Europe.
Then why not provide the costs for other typical projects? You know, to show just how typical this is.
For grins and giggles I thought I'd put "Hinkley C" in the search bar of my browser to see what I could find. The first link not to Wikipedia was this...
https://www.theguardian.com/ne... [theguardian.com]
They called Hinkley C the most expensive power plant in the world. I read through the article quickly and found out why it was so important for the UK to complete this power plant. They know that the nuclear power plants
Re: (Score:3)
And for nukes, NOTHING ELSE will work.
I think you had your head stuck on wind and solar power for so long that you don't realize that not all nuclear power plants have to be shutdown for maintenance at the same time. When the sun sets all your solar power disappears. When the wind stops all the windmills stop producing power.
So you are basically assuming that the wind stops blowing everywhere in the US, Europe, Asia at the same time, that it does this very frequently and that we have not invented the battery yet?
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Re: (Score:2)
In other words you have no idea how much these batteries will cost that are needed to backup wind and solar power.
This leads me to believe plans like the Green New Deal is just an opium dream. Maybe people that are proposing the use of battery backed wind and solar power need to actually stop to think how, or if, their plan has a chance of working before proposing it as a law. Especially considering the impact this could have on the economy.
Re: (Score:2)
In other words you have no idea how much these batteries will cost that are needed to backup wind and solar power.
This leads me to believe plans like the Green New Deal is just an opium dream. Maybe people that are proposing the use of battery backed wind and solar power need to actually stop to think how, or if, their plan has a chance of working before proposing it as a law. Especially considering the impact this could have on the economy.
The green new deal that you asked if others had read in another post and in which you made numerous false assertions, does in fact not specify neither wind, solar nor batteries.
You don't even have to read the document as it is searchable: https://ocasio-cortez.house.go... [house.gov]
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Yet the vast majority of jurisdictions on the planet except for a few geographically favored ones stubbornly insist on sticking to paying through the nose for the usual mix of conventional power and nuclear instead of reaping this bounty of infinite clean energy and a fat sack of cash in the sky raining down infinite money for some reason.
A quick search of the googs for municipal solar projects revealed that even in the midwest munis are signing up for solar. If you've got a lot of people using AC on sunny days then it's a no-brainer, you get clean power right when you need it most.
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It is more interesting to note that you are looking at the wrong cause in this cause/effect scenario.
Track the deficit against who controls the House of Representatives. You know, the governmental body responsible for ALL federal spending bills.
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Re: (Score:3)
In which country?
Hint: I know it will come as a shock to you, but America is not the whole world.
Re: Subsidy? (Score:2)
Big oil makes pennies per gallon, us govt gets dollar(s) in State & federal taxes per gallon - if big oil shut down tomorrow, there would be a huge funding issue.
Re: (Score:2)
...how much of fuel cost at pump is taxes
Well, in California (Wait, what? There's more to America than California?!?), taxes are something like 70 cents per gallon. Gas costs something like $3.70-$4 now so that's about 20-23%.
That's the direct taxes. You could get more elaborate if you wanted. For example, how much corporate income tax does Arco pay? How about the oil drilling lease fees? Those are baked into the price of the gas too.
Re:Subsidy? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to a Greenpeace list, US Govt. "subsidies" to Big Oil includes several categories, some of which might reasonably be considered "subsidies" but are in fact not for Big Oil specifically. Rather they are tax code elements that are available for any business, primarily in the realm of accelerated depreciation of capital assets. There are also loan guarantee and construction bond programs; again, these are available for all industry, not just Big Oil. Perhaps Big Oil utilizes these tax code items more frequently than other industries, but that does not make these "Big Oil subsidies".
The biggest "subsidy" is in fact not a subsidy at all. Some years ago, the Government leased oil fields and agreed on a per barrel royalty structure. When oil was $30/BB, the royalties seemed reasonable to all parties, so the contracts were signed. In some cases, the Government failed to stipulate any royalties at all! Now, though, those royalties are a pittance and the Government wishes it had structured the royalties differently. The difference between what they are making and what they *wished* they were making is often included in the calculations of "Big Oil subsidies". Congress has moved in the past to try to retroactively modify the contracts and demanded that the oil companies accept new leases.
Greenpeace includes a few clunkers, though. For example, they include Sales Tax breaks. Last time I checked, the US Govt. does not impose Sales Taxes on any products. But somehow that's a Big Oil subsidy.
Greenpeace also includes several intangibles in their "Big Oil subsidies" list. Things such as
* Giving money to international financial institutions
* The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve
* Construction and protection of the nation's highway system
* Allowing the industry to pollute
Keep the nature of these fake "subsidies" in mind when discussing the issue. The "Green" industry partakes of several of these same subsidies: Modified Accelerated Cost-Recovery System (MACRS), R&D credits, etc., but also receive direct no-doubt-about-it subsides. Like ethanol's $0.50/gallon production subsidy (not to mention ag subsidies used to prop up the growing of the corn that goes into ethanol, billions of dollars every year going intot he pockets of Big Ag), or EV $7500/car subsidy, solar subsides over the years.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We also don't know if some of these so-called subsidies don't wind up producing economic benefits that exceed the subsidy cost. If you pay $1 to get people to do something that returns $5 in economic output, the subsidy is really an investment, not a dead-weight loss.
For all we know, they're including the total costs of me washing my deck every spring (water, soap, my labor, the cost of the brush and hose, etc), because some tiny percentage of the dirt can be tied back into the fossil fuel industry.
Re: (Score:3)
A reasonable definition of subsidy (the one wikipedia uses) is:
"A subsidy is a form of financial aid or support extended to an economic sector generally with the aim of promoting economic and social policy."
Your suggestion to exclude profit making businesses from that definition would make the word mean something quite different so please, try to stick to the commonly held meaning of words and try to pose your argument differently.
Re: (Score:2)
We also don't know if some of these so-called subsidies don't wind up producing economic benefits that exceed the subsidy cost.
That's the $350 billion question, isn't it? It's the question about all subsidies. I cynically suspect it's not true for any subsidy. It's pretty hard to prove one way or the other because it's so hard to perform controlled experiments.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re-definition of common words and phrases is part of the brain washing of the left.
Most normal people find the *idea* of "Concentration Camps" abhorrent, due to historical references (namely Nazi Germany). So, if we call detention facilities for people have committed a crime, "concentration camps", it raises the emotions of those who aren't thinking critically, and low and behold, kneejerk reaction occurs.
This is by design and is purposeful. It works. But if we are being honest about it, the calling of dete
Re:It's really perplexing, renewables usually go u (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason oil based fuel is cheaper is because the damage to the environment is not counted, it's the curse of the public goods. It serves industry very well, they get to screw up the environment for everyone else because they don't have to pay for it.
Re:It's really perplexing, renewables usually go u (Score:4, Insightful)
I would argue that the cost of "environmental damages" is counted, when the effects actually are felt. The cause / effect cycle has a large time separation, but it still exists. We'll pay for those costs (either which way) in the long run.
The problem with counting the costs before they actually accrue is the crux of the problem. We are notoriously poor at forecasting anything in a very complex system. The reason skeptics exist is because stupid "predictions" that don't come true. WHY should we believe the costs associated with "Global Warming" when we can't even predict something simple, like glaciers disappearing, or the polar Ice Caps being gone?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/20... [wattsupwiththat.com]
In the end, Humans will adapt and survive. We lived in Ice Ages without modern conveniences. We'll adapt and survive this. It won't be convenient, but we'll survive.
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I looked at the article. I'm a rebel like that.
It spends a lot of words to say exactly nothing. It has the same issue as the article under discussion, in that for the most part it doesn't bother to define "subsidy", and when there is a window into what they are talking about, it isn't what normal people would call a subsidy.
So either state what your figure of $26 billion is composed of, or fuck off.
Re:There is no climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
By your own argument, if _you_ could get over, that some people who does some things to fight climate change, don't really mean what they are actually doing, _you_ would agree with the positive things that they do.
This seemingly calls for the end of the discussion while you, if you want to reach consensus, seek help elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
No, my argument is that the so-called champions of climate change show, through every action they take, that they don't care about it. This reveals them to either be hypocrites, or to be in possession of knowledge that indicates it's all lies.
So some wealthy people are hypocrites. For this you want us to stop the presses? Oy.
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You don't have to believe them. You should believe the science, though.
Re: (Score:3)
The Wash. Ex. is a right-wing nutjob rag purporting to be a newspaper. By the way, see Greenland, category of "melting". If it totally melts, then we get a few feet of sea level rise.
By the way, most physicists have no problem understanding anthropomorphic caused global warming. They have PhDs too, they get paid to understand this stuff. And your qualifications appear to be you are capable of reading and believing right-wing propaganda because global warming might impact their life style, or it is a giant l
Re: Wrong, asshole (Score:2)
We have yet to see if Obama's statement was correct. The other quotes are all goofy, at least they seem so when taken out of context.
But so what? Do you think an ad hominem argument is going to sway anyone of consequence?
Out of context quotes [Re: Wrong, asshole] (Score:2)
We have yet to see if Obama's statement was correct.
Obama didn't say that; it was reported by the Guardian.
The other quotes are all goofy, at least they seem so when taken out of context.
I don't see how what I quoted is "out of context"...
The context for the first quote was that (when the article was written) Obama had only four more years in office, so if he was going to act, he had only four years to do so.
And yes, the rest of the quotes were: one misinformation post on a political blog (yes, wattsup is a political blog), and one scare headline that mangles out of context information.