Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

Lonewolf

kemmer

Trump is bored with morning intel briefs, even when they’re dumbed way down with cartoons and multi-colored graphs. Advisors have to keep saying his name and title so he won’t wander off to watch TV.

Common_Sense_Matters

Supposedly even that is failing now.

woodguru

How many people has he fired because they come out and openly disagree with him?

kemmer

That, and details bore him. His attention span is 10 minutes tops.

jimpack123 Loc: wisconsin

Amen

Fit2BTied Loc: Texas

I'm a little confused. Current statistics are a little hard to come by, but if you look at the EIA's (US Energy Information Administration) data https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/ you find that in FY 2016, while renewable energy sources (biomass, hydroelectric, wind, solar, and geothermal) provided slightly more than 12% of the energy the US produced, it received 45% of various energy subsidies (this is under key findings below the table), while "fossil fuels" (natural gas, crude oils, coal, and nuclear) provided almost 88% of the energy we produced. It looks to me like renewable energy sources are already getting a pretty huge slice of the subsidy pie compared to what they yield in terms of product. These are facts and I believe they counter your argument.

Comment Loc: California

Another BB bad joke.

Common_Sense_Matters

I am sure much of the money spent on those are for infrastructure that will be needed to utilize those sources and likely for continued research to improve upon them, at least I would hope that is the reason for the discrepancy.

kemmer

Windmills and solar farms don’t spring magically from the ground.

Common_Sense_Matters

They don't???? Well damn, maybe that is why the windmill I planted hasn't grown into an actual windmill yet.

Fit2BTied Loc: Texas

You say you are sure, then you hope...not very convincing. Another interesting article from Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/05/30/why-do-federal-subsidies-make-renewable-energy-so-costly/#3b15193a128c shows the same information in a different way. Interesting points:

- Between 2010 and 2016, federal subsidies for solar were between 10¢ and 88¢ per kWh and subsidies for wind were between 1.3¢ and 5.7¢ per kWh. Subsidies for coal, natural gas and nuclear are all between 0.05¢ and 0.2¢ per kWh over all years.
- (If you include state subsidies which in many cases are greater than federal ones) There is no doubt that these subsidies incentivize renewables, but what do they do to the cost of the electricity generated by them? They actually increase the cost. However, this cost is transferred from the ratepayer to the taxpayer, and so goes unnoticed by most Americans.

That's right...subsidies - state or federal - are just another way politicians take money from taxpayers and put it in the pockets of those who lobby them and support their campaigns. While I don't mind reasonable incentives to investigate newer forms of energy production, trying to shut down the coal industry or increasing "clean energy" subsidies by billions of dollars isn't based on sound economic logic.

Fit2BTied Loc: Texas

Ok...but neither did Starbucks, or Dell Computing, or any number of other companies that started with ideas, vision, and hard work. If an idea is worth it, private investors find it and bring it to the marketplace. Why in heavens would we pick the time at which the US has become a net energy exporter and choke it out by restricting the engine that got us to this point??

Yet another article on the subject:
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/263214-the-hard-truths-about-renewable-energy-and-subsidies

By the way, George Kaiser and his buddies who were the major shareholders of Solyndra would like to thank folks who think the way you do, and encourage you to keep up the fight!

Common_Sense_Matters

First off, let me thank you for such a laggy site to check, I tend to avoid sites that hog bandwidth/computer resources as I typically have a lot of tabs open doing many things at once and don't need the lag.

What that site doesn't seem to take into consideration is that some of those subsidizes go towards the private sector AS WELL as the public sector. There are/were many subsidizes available for those that wished to go green privately, at their own homes/businesses. Those aren't measured as they are not monitored, it is personal/business consumption.

How much of those subsidies went top the private sector, I don't know, wouldn't know how to check into that without a ton of legwork and I have other things I need to do at this time so I won't be doing that legwork but you are free to do so if you like.

Of course even if you did that legwork, it still won't help in figuring out how much their power creation would affect the graph as there is no way to know how much power they generated.


Edit: You also fail to consider that IF much of that budgeting was towards research into making a more efficient infrastructure, that expense may well pay for itself in efficiency and cleaner air/water over time. Another thing you didn't take into consideration is that coal/oil/gas ISN'T an inexhaustible source, wind and solar are.