"Spill. Baby. Spill"

[JayB]

 

As things stand now are there any renewables that generate total outputs that are worth more than the total value of the inputs required to generate them? That is, that generate power that's worth more than it costs to generate it?

 

In short yes. You're obviously not familiar with what is going on in this country, even this state, regarding windpower. In CA and NV there are large scale (2,000 MW) projects going in, Scotland has leased tidal and wave projects with up to 200 MW per project, off shore wind is huge in the EU - and yes it's on a commercial scale, viable, and on the grid. Naysay on this and you're just uninformed dude.

 

I'm aware of the existence of the projects - just not of any that were funded, continue to operate, etc without direct subsidies.

 

I'm not raising these points because I dislike the idea of alternative energy. I think its great. I hope that the technology matures to the point where they generate enough free cash flow to be commercially viable on their own, and enough energy to keep the lights on everywhere tomorrow.

 

They aren't. They won't be anytime soon. By all means keep funding R & D but I'm not down with the turning over the infrastructure necessary to keep civilization going to fantasy spawned by the energy equivalent of Trofim Lysenko.

 

 

 

[Fairweather]

 

They aren't. They won't be anytime soon. By all means keep funding R & D but I'm not down with the turning over the infrastructure necessary to keep civilization going to fantasy spawned by the energy equivalent of Trofim Lysenko.

 

 

 

An absolutely beautiful response.

[prole]

Unfortunately, another bit of mystification at history's expense. This time obfuscating the role that the State has always played in planning, channeling scarce resources, and propping up infrastructural projects that the "private sector" has no interest or no business being involved in. Neo-Luddites and Chinese capitalists are wetting themselves with glee at the prospect of a post-infrastructural America. Oh, that's right, we always have Halliburton on the case...

[Fairweather]

Apparently, you're unaware of Lysenko's "theories" or their tragic results. Another one of those pesky details the commissar forgot to tell you about.

[prole]

As usual, your FoxNews-conditioned brain is incapable of separating hyperbole from reality. You're so far gone, it's a wonder anyone engages you at all.

[Crux]

 

 

The Ongoing Administration-Wide Response to the Deepwater BP Oil Spill

[Fairweather]

Crux: cc.com's own White House apologist.

 

"Assets Deployed To Date

 

Total response vessels: Two Coast Guard cutters

 

Total response aircraft: Four helicopters and one rescue plane"

 

This is an overwhelming response from our brave leader!

[j_b]

Subsidies for the US oil sector ($15-30billions/year):

 

* Construction bonds at low interest rates or tax-free

* Research-and-development programs at low or no cost

* Assuming the legal risks of exploration and development in a company's stead

* Below-cost loans with lenient repayment conditions

* Income tax breaks, especially featuring obscure provisions in tax laws designed to receive little congressional oversight when they expire

* Sales tax breaks - taxes on petroleum products are lower than average sales tax rates for other goods

* Giving money to international financial institutions (the U.S. has given tens of billions of dollars to the World Bank and U.S. Export-Import Bank to encourage oil production internationally, according to Friends of the Earth)

* The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

* Construction and protection of the nation's highway system

* Allowing the industry to pollute - what would oil cost if the industry had to pay to protect its shipments, and clean up its spills? If the environmental impact of burning petroleum were considered a cost? Or if it were held responsible for the particulate matter in people's lungs, in liability similar to that being asserted in the tobacco industry?

* Relaxing the amount of royalties to be paid

 

[j_b]

Not only has nuclear been heavily subsidized over the years but it got much higher subsidy per kW-hour than any renewable is getting today.

[Jim]

 

As things stand now are there any renewables that generate total outputs that are worth more than the total value of the inputs required to generate them? That is, that generate power that's worth more than it costs to generate it?

 

In short yes. You're obviously not familiar with what is going on in this country, even this state, regarding windpower. In CA and NV there are large scale (2,000 MW) projects going in, Scotland has leased tidal and wave projects with up to 200 MW per project, off shore wind is huge in the EU - and yes it's on a commercial scale, viable, and on the grid. Naysay on this and you're just uninformed dude.

 

I'm aware of the existence of the projects - just not of any that were funded, continue to operate, etc without direct subsidies.

 

I'm not raising these points because I dislike the idea of alternative energy. I think its great. I hope that the technology matures to the point where they generate enough free cash flow to be commercially viable on their own, and enough energy to keep the lights on everywhere tomorrow.

 

They aren't. They won't be anytime soon. By all means keep funding R & D but I'm not down with the turning over the infrastructure necessary to keep civilization going to fantasy spawned by the energy equivalent of Trofim Lysenko.

 

 

 

Can you provide some specifics? For instance, the Solar Millennium project in the CA mojave (which I'm working on) is going in right now. 200 MW - the only incentive they are getting is some good deal on BLM land leases (as all energy projects get including coal and oil) and the benefit of an accelerated depreciation. There is no money from the state or feds in it. You can point to the renewable energy goals of Or, WA, and CA among other states as altering the market I suppose - but the coal, oil, and gas industries get way more tax incentives and outright handouts than the peanuts provided to renewables.

 

While the EU is nearing 10% of their capacity, right now, with stringent goals to get to 20% by 2020 - you're drowning in your theories again and ignoring reality.

[j_b]

I'm not down with the turning over the infrastructure necessary to keep civilization going to fantasy spawned by the energy equivalent of Trofim Lysenko.

 

Let's face it, beneath the smooth talking veneer you have never been much more than a knuckle-dragging red-baiter.

[JayB]

I'm not down with the turning over the infrastructure necessary to keep civilization going to fantasy spawned by the energy equivalent of Trofim Lysenko.

 

Let's face it, beneath the smooth talking veneer you have never been much more than a knuckle-dragging red-baiter.

 

I'll leave it to you to mount a passionate defense of Lysenkoism, comrade! Have at it.

[JayB]

 

As things stand now are there any renewables that generate total outputs that are worth more than the total value of the inputs required to generate them? That is, that generate power that's worth more than it costs to generate it?

 

In short yes. You're obviously not familiar with what is going on in this country, even this state, regarding windpower. In CA and NV there are large scale (2,000 MW) projects going in, Scotland has leased tidal and wave projects with up to 200 MW per project, off shore wind is huge in the EU - and yes it's on a commercial scale, viable, and on the grid. Naysay on this and you're just uninformed dude.

 

I'm aware of the existence of the projects - just not of any that were funded, continue to operate, etc without direct subsidies.

 

I'm not raising these points because I dislike the idea of alternative energy. I think its great. I hope that the technology matures to the point where they generate enough free cash flow to be commercially viable on their own, and enough energy to keep the lights on everywhere tomorrow.

 

They aren't. They won't be anytime soon. By all means keep funding R & D but I'm not down with the turning over the infrastructure necessary to keep civilization going to fantasy spawned by the energy equivalent of Trofim Lysenko.

 

 

 

Can you provide some specifics? For instance, the Solar Millennium project in the CA mojave (which I'm working on) is going in right now. 200 MW - the only incentive they are getting is some good deal on BLM land leases (as all energy projects get including coal and oil) and the benefit of an accelerated depreciation. There is no money from the state or feds in it. You can point to the renewable energy goals of Or, WA, and CA among other states as altering the market I suppose - but the coal, oil, and gas industries get way more tax incentives and outright handouts than the peanuts provided to renewables.

 

While the EU is nearing 10% of their capacity, right now, with stringent goals to get to 20% by 2020 - you're drowning in your theories again and ignoring reality.

 

http://www.dsireusa.org/summarytables/index.cfm?ee=1&RE=1

 

We can chose the state and go from there. Without the mandates, there'd be no project for you to work on.

 

I'd be more than happy to end all subsidies for all energy production tomorrow. How about you?

 

If we're going to compare subsidies, is it more valid to compare gross subsidies, or subsidies that are normalized by output - e.g. subsidies per kilowatt hour. How about you post a table with that breakdown?

 

As I said before, subsidies have to come from somewhere else. I'm not sure that the somewhere else in question - the US economy - spins out enough output to foot the bill. At least not if people want to eat.

 

I'd be happy to add more about the real economy, but it's also worth asking how the political economy would work out. Once output per dollar goes out the window and it's purely a matter of Uncle Sugar picking winners, are you really confident that eco-virtue will be rewarded above all else. If that's the case, how do you explain the chart below?

 

 

I'm excited about the potential of wind, solar, etc but I'm not confident that an orgy of rent-seeking conducted under a "Green Energy" banner is the best way to realize it.

 

As far as Euroland goes, their only prayer is to increase the efficiency with which they translate energy consumption into GDP growth more rapidly than their generation costs increase. Between skyrocketing public debt and plummeting birth-rates, their capacity to subsidize loss-making energy ventures is limited and declining. Greece is just the beginning.

[Peter_Puget]

[quote=Jim

Can you provide some specifics? For instance, the Solar Millennium project in the CA mojave (which I'm working on) is going in right now. 200 MW - the only incentive they are getting is some good deal on BLM land leases (as all energy projects get including coal and oil) and the benefit of an accelerated depreciation. There is no money from the state or feds in it. You can point to the renewable energy goals of Or, WA, and CA among other states as altering the market I suppose - but the coal, oil, and gas industries get way more tax incentives and outright handouts than the peanuts provided to renewables.

 

/quote]

 

Gohere:

 

http://www.solarmillennium.de/Investors/Information_for_Shareholders_and_Interested_Parties_,lang2,4.html

 

Download latest Annual Report

 

Go to page 71.

 

Edited May 6, 2010 by Peter_Puget

[prole]

I'm not down with the turning over the infrastructure necessary to keep civilization going to fantasy spawned by the energy equivalent of Trofim Lysenko.

 

Let's face it, beneath the smooth talking veneer you have never been much more than a knuckle-dragging red-baiter.

 

I'll leave it to you to mount a passionate defense of Lysenkoism, comrade! Have at it.

 

There seems to be a lot of this "legitimize my absurdist claims and accept my faulty premises by arguing against me" going around lately.

[olyclimber]

TOUCHE BITCHES!

[j_b]

I'm not down with the turning over the infrastructure necessary to keep civilization going to fantasy spawned by the energy equivalent of Trofim Lysenko.

Let's face it, beneath the smooth talking veneer you have never been much more than a knuckle-dragging red-baiter.

I'll leave it to you to mount a passionate defense of Lysenkoism, comrade! Have at it.

 

thank you for making my point, again.

[JayB]

I'm not down with the turning over the infrastructure necessary to keep civilization going to fantasy spawned by the energy equivalent of Trofim Lysenko.

Let's face it, beneath the smooth talking veneer you have never been much more than a knuckle-dragging red-baiter.

I'll leave it to you to mount a passionate defense of Lysenkoism, comrade! Have at it.

 

thank you for making my point, again.

 

Ditto!

 

Heaven forbid anyone should question the sacred legacy of that misunderstood genius, Trofim Lysenko, and the agricultural miracle that he spawned in the Soviet Union.

[j_b]

Anatomy of an Oil Disaster: Heckuva Job, Kenny!

Commentary by Nikolas Kozloff

 

Who is responsible for the great environmental disaster arising from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? As the country reels from the sheer magnitude of the accident, the media has rightly pointed the finger at BP. Yet, not nearly enough attention has been paid to the role of Ken Salazar and his derelict Department of Interior, a government entity which, in theory, regulates offshore oil drilling.

 

[...]

 

Western Cowboy Rides into Town

 

The ascendance of Ken Salazar at Interior was supposed to change the oily nature of politics at Interior. A westerner whose roots stretched back to the 16th century, Salazar was rarely seen without his trademark cowboy boots and hat. Obama’s nomination of Salazar to head Interior cheered some groups which had fought to protect remote backcountry and pristine watersheds from oil and gas drilling. Before becoming a Democratic Senator from Colorado, Salazar served as the state’s director of Department of Natural Resources. He also worked as an environmental and water attorney in private practice.

 

As Secretary of Interior, Salazar pledged to clean up the sleaze. During his confirmation hearings, he said he said there might be certain areas that could be off limits to offshore oil production. Overall, some groups said, Salazar had a pretty strong environmental record as Senator. To his credit, he clashed with the Bush administration over oil and gas drilling on public lands and promoted his home state of Colorado as a renewable energy leader.

 

Sounds all fine and good, but look beneath the surface and there was more than enough to give one pause. A politician with ties to old time western extractive industries like ranching and mining, Salazar joined with Republicans in actually threatening to sue the federal government if the black-tailed prairie dog was declared endangered.

 

Even more ominously, he also sided with Republicans in proposing an energy policy which included relaxing restrictions on offshore oil drilling. Indeed, in 2006 Salazar voted yes on the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, which ended protections for Florida’s Gulf Coast and opened up 8 million acres off the coasts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana for oil and gas drilling.

 

Believing that Obama had betrayed his campaign promises to bring about change, outraged wildlife advocacy groups sent a letter to the president protesting Salazar’s nomination as Secretary of the Interior. A better choice, they argued, would have been Democratic representative Raul Grijalva of Arizona who had ultra green credentials.

 

Writing in the New Mexico Independent, environmentalist and former oil and gas man Jim O’Donnell remarked “Mr. Salazar is not a visionary. He is not a change agent. Mr. Salazar has a very interesting and compelling story as a fellow Westerner. However, from my viewpoint, he has little interest in protecting biodiversity and even less interest in a fossil fuel-free economy. This is not the change we need.”

 

The Waffler

 

“The word on Ken Salazar,” opined the New York Times in January, 2009, “…is that he is friendly, approachable, a good listener, a genial compromiser and a skillful broker of deals.” But, the paper added, “That is also the rap on Ken Salazar.” Fundamentally, the Times argued, “What the Interior Department needs right now is someone willing to bust heads when necessary and draw the line against the powerful commercial groups — developers, ranchers, oil and gas companies, the off-road vehicle industry — that have long treated the department as a public extension of their private interests.”

 

Over the next year and a half, Salazar did little to challenge the Times’ mild depiction of his character. At issue for the new secretary was the hot button issue of offshore oil drilling. In the final days of the Bush presidency, both Congress and the White House allowed a federal ban on offshore oil drilling to expire which stood to open new areas along the U.S. coastline to exploration.

 

Faced with some difficult political and moral choices, Salazar delayed. The secretary declared that new offshore oil drilling would be put on hold and in the meantime the government would hold a six-month public comment period. Environmentalists were somewhat encouraged, but they noted that the move failed to stop offshore oil development per se.

 

In April, 2009 Salazar went personally to Alaska where fishermen pleaded with him not to go ahead with new Outer Continental Shelf oil development in Bristol Bay. Rebecca Noblin, an Anchorage-based attorney for the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, a group that sued to list polar bears under the Endangered Species Act, told the Anchorage Press that she was disappointed Salazar didn’t call upon scientists and environmentalists during the hearing.

 

“It’s difficult to know what impressions the event may’ve left with Secretary Salazar,” the Anchorage Press noted. “Shortly after Noblin’s testimony, he gave some informal closing remarks that indicated that he’d heard the comments, but little else,” the paper added. “In a subsequent briefing for reporters just before departing, he was noncommittal.”

 

Salazar continued his travels, heading on to another hearing in New Orleans. There, he was confronted once again by concerned environmentalists who took the microphone to explain that expanding offshore oil development would do great damage to sensitive ocean ecosystems. Darryl Malek-Wiley of the Sierra Club called for a detailed analysis of oil spills, declaring that hundreds of millions of gallons of crude had leaked in recent hurricanes, in part due to aging oil and gas infrastructure.

 

If Salazar was moved by the environmentalists’ entreaties, he made no mention. The nation needed a “comprehensive energy plan,” he said, though he wouldn’t specify whether such an approach ought to include more offshore oil drilling along the U.S. coastline.

 

The Future of Offshore Oil Exploration

 

Perhaps the hearings were all just a smoke screen for Salazar and a mere public façade. As we now know, Interior ignored the warnings put forth by the NOAA while Salazar quietly crafted a horrible offshore oil plan with the White House. In March of this year Obama, much to the chagrin of environmentalists, finally announced that he would conduct a major expansion of offshore oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico amongst other areas.

 

In the wake of BP’s massive oil spill off Louisiana, the White House announced that it would put a hold on new offshore oil exploration. But what is really needed now is a complete and total moratorium on ALL offshore oil exploration. In light of his track record, Ken Salazar is hardly the most appropriate bureaucrat to carry out such an ambitious agenda which would necessarily entail a switch from fossil fuels to alternative energy.

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0505-oil_kozloff.html

[j_b]

Ditto!

 

Heaven forbid anyone should question the sacred legacy of that misunderstood genius, Trofim Lysenko, and the agricultural miracle that he spawned in the Soviet Union.

 

what the fuck does this have anything to do with what has been discussed? beside, having the red-baiter in you wanting to insinuate that some of us are the equivalent of Lysenko?

[j_b]

I'd be more than happy to end all subsidies for all energy production tomorrow. How about you?

 

in other words, the claim that you support clean energy is purely rhetorical, i.e. it's an empty commitment. You'd let emerging renewables develop their infrastructure and compete with entrenched form of energy that have seen their infrastructure paid by the taxpayer over decades of direct and indirect subsidy. Since you'd ignore external cost, teh end result would be predictable: coal would be our entire future.

 

If we're going to compare subsidies, is it more valid to compare gross subsidies, or subsidies that are normalized by output - e.g. subsidies per kilowatt hour. How about you post a table with that breakdown?

 

what nonsensical babbling. Comparing subsidies is a huge job that isn't even done properly by the federal government.

 

are you really confident that eco-virtue will be rewarded above all else. If that's the case, how do you explain the chart below?

 

 

very simple, corporatists like yourself ignored what scientists said about biofuels (they aren't sustainable) because they saw an opportunity for corporate welfare.

 

As far as Euroland goes, their only prayer is to increase the efficiency with which they translate energy consumption into GDP growth more rapidly than their generation costs increase. Between skyrocketing public debt and plummeting birth-rates, their capacity to subsidize loss-making energy ventures is limited and declining. Greece is just the beginning.

 

our economy is no better than Europe's

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Ditto!

 

Heaven forbid anyone should question the sacred legacy of that misunderstood genius, Trofim Lysenko, and the agricultural miracle that he spawned in the Soviet Union.

 

what the fuck does this have anything to do with what has been discussed? beside, having the red-baiter in you wanting to insinuate that some of us are the equivalent of Lysenko?

 

YEAH! TAKE THAT YOU REGRESSIVE KNUCKLE-DRAGGER REGRESSIVE OIL-COMPANY CORPORATE TOOL SHILL!!! I SHOWED YOU!!!!

 

[Nitrox]

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

[Fairweather]

Somewhere in Bellingham is an eight-grade leftist teacher who finally got through to an impressionable young punk. Too bad little j_b didn't take his education beyond that year...