You aren’t reading carefully. Anyone familiar with Cory’s opinions will understand that these “technical problems” are equivalent to the figuring out how to get the tanks to Berlin to defeat Hitler. None of this is a downside that would give him any moment to say “Hm. Is subsiding wealthy investors in the renewables industries really a good idea?” He considers it a 100% good idea.
Well, by that screwy thinking, direct payments to the poor are subsidies for the rich, and nationalizing the Internet infrastrure is a money grab for Comcast.
You’d have to be totally out of the loop to hold the impression that Solyndra and the other DoE supported greenfails went down because of fierce competition. There’s no way for me to catch you up all by myself. The entire industry is propped up by government policy. It would be like saying that a manufacturer of bombers failed because of all the bomber manufacturers out there.
The EPA and the DoE have a tight noose on the oil industry, while granting a carte blanche to the renewables industry. You don’t care about the birds but they do. Petroleum companies can and are fined 10s of 1000s of $$ for the deaths of migratory birds that are killed by landing in an oil reservoir. Solar panel production creates serious long-lived toxins that filter into the environment.
None of this makes me want to put renewable companies out of business. There’s no such thing as clean energy production. But the government is currently the investor and customer of these expensive sources of energy with OUR money — actually not our money. With borrowed money. With our grand-children’s money. And the actual players are using the public/private revolving door to get rich.
But like the endangered raptors slaughtered wholesale by windfarms, you don’t care about that. Because it’s not about utility.
These statements contradict each other. Either I can get your point by reading carefully, or I have to be familiar with Cory’s opinions to get your point. The latter seems more representative of your argument, so I’ll take that as a concession that the text of the OP doesn’t really support your argument.
But ignoring that, you said this:
If this article is to be believed, you are wrong. Apparently, renewables are always good no matter what.
This is in response to me pointing out that the OP is about tradeoffs; I responded to your statement above by pointing out that the OP does acknowledge tradeoffs w/r/t renewable energy sources. And that’s the end of that. You made a false statement that was shown, rather trivially, to be false.
Now, that doesn’t imply that Cory’s summary of the tradeoffs involved in renewable energy sources in the OP is exhaustive or even correct; it certainly doesn’t imply that I agree with it. However, none of that is relevant to the object level question: you asserted that the OP did not acknowledge any tradeoffs w/r/t renewable energy sources, and I showed that it does (again, a potentially incorrect or incomplete acknowledgement, but an acknowledgement nonetheless). You were quite simply wrong.
Of course, even if the OP did not discuss such tradeoffs, that would not imply that no such tradeoffs exist. But even if we take that implication as a given, I personally am not bound to that implication and I can still acknowledge the existence of said tradeoffs.
Which makes me wonder what the point of this was in the first place:
If this article is to be believed, you are wrong. Apparently, renewables are always good no matter what.
Are you trying to goad me into arguing that all of Cory’s opinions are correct? That there is no case in which I disagree with him? What is the intent behind this speech act?
You’re being ridiculous. Neither of this is analogous to the case of substitution between different energy sources (your first example isn’t even a market). But in some twisted way, you’re kind of correct. Direct payments to the poor, if they prevent the poor from engaging in theft and property destruction, are subsidies for the rich who would otherwise have to experience deadloss from stolen merchandise, pay to repair destroyed property, pay police to round up all the criminals, and pay to have them jailed (or executed I suppose). And it seems quite likely to me, given what I know about regulatory capture, that Comcast would probably come out quite nicely in the nationalization of the internet infrastructure.
You could at least point me in the direction of material that could make your claims more credible.
You’re arguing that Solyndra failed because of an unviable business plan. Would that business plan still be unviable if petroleum prices were significantly higher? No? Well what do you know, maybe competition has something to do with the problem after all.
Again: if this noose is so tight, why is the oil industry the most profitable industry in the world, ever? Aren’t nooses things that cause death by strangulation? Is that really a remotely appropriate metaphor for the current state of the fossil fuel industry?
In all honesty, I expect an irreversible financial disaster within the next few decades. Spending fake money to develop technology that might yield some benefit to an economy that can’t sustain current levels of output seems worthwhile to me.
Edit: that said, I don’t really hold out much hope that the renewables that are experiencing subsidies will really survive the fossil fuel industry. Maybe we are throwing good money after bad in this respect. Oh well, at least we’re creating jobs, right?
I suspect there’s a lot of people using the public/private revolving door to get rich that you don’t worry so much about. I just get this sense like you’re operating under some kind of political bias that blinds you to when your putative allies do the exact same things as your putative enemies. Can’t put my finger on what it is…
And likely will work again. Russia’s reserve fund of foreign currency, which is largely supplied by oil revenues and is designed to insulate the economy against price shocks, is currently rumoured to become empty by some point in 2016. (For comparison: it had approximately US$90,000,000,000 in various currencies in it at this point last year.)
Actually I worry about them all, because unlike you I don’t believe in “fake money”.
In China, perhaps. If we want lots of local blue collar jobs we should sink our government “fake money” into the petroleum and coal industry. I don’t think we should, but…whatever.
From the article you posted:
"The results should be taken with a grain of salt. As U.S. News noted, each study used a different methodology to come up with their numbers. [quote from energy director for Audubon California, told the magazine.] In addition [that is, in addition to the underlying bogus data], some of the research used is outdated, and does not take into account that renewable power stands to increase in the United States. For example, the study used to estimate bird deaths from United States wind power was from 2009, and wind power has increased substantially in the United States since then. "
But this will not change your mind. All you cared about was a misleading headline and a chart which is why I’m not going to waste my time gathering links. As an example, I will demonstrate how much work it is to provide the explanatory reading material to correct just ONE trivial faulty economic premise…
LInks Below:
It isn’t. Exxon is probably the most profitable petroleum company year by year because it ha already paid for much of it’s infrastructure and its supply chains are world wide. Currently it’s return on equity is just over 13%. When the price of oil spikes, it’s profits spike too because it has paid for inventory at a lower price and sells it higher. But when prices drop, it’s profits drop precipitously for the opposite reason. Also, when prices go up, people use less of their product and so, Exxon --over the long term makes no more proft when the oil prices are $100/barrel than they do when it is $50/barrel.
So Exxon’s ROE is 10% to sometimes almost 30% short term. But that is nothing compared to a successful software company. If Apple’s ROE were that low, its stock would sink like a rock and the company would be broken up for parts.
People did, however, figure out how to get the tanks to Berlin to defeat Hitler. As I understand it, there was significant government involvement in the process.
