RG - absolutely. You are preaching to the converted.
Oz has more sun than any country on the planet, and more than enough room to generate the electricity needs of the entire planet many times over in perpetuity, yet solar power isn't even on the agenda due to price and no infrastructure is yet being invested in despite available and vastly improving technologies.
Insanely, our PM went to see GW 2 months ago and came back talking about nuclear power for Australia!? What absolute horse ! We have massive renewable energy resources in Australia - wind, solar, geothermal and tidal - and yet because we have cheap, abundant coal, the coal power generators aren't made to pay for the cost of their pollution (and control the politicians through donations), renewables are artificially expensive and thus coal remains our primary energy source. It SICKENS me the shortsightedness of our politicians, trapped within a myopic system, and the wilfull ignorance of the opiated masses...
Yup. Coal and oil production is subsidised to a much greater extent than people realize.
If you REALLY want free-market economics to work, you have to get rid of the subsidies to these industries. This will make renewables cost effective, especially as time passes and the true cost of these energy sources is tallied up.
why tap into sun? build one at home - nuclear fusion, the lasting solution to all our energy problems.
Nuclear fusion may indeed be possible at some future point.
Solar energy is possible today, and offers the side benefit of building up industrial infrastructure in space.
For the billions (trillions?) that one would have to spend to get working fusion reactors, one could build an extensive space-based infrastructure that would have the added benefits of allowing human beings to survive something bad happening to the Earth.
There is no solution to the worlds oil problems. There are too many politicians, CEO's, etc. making billions of dollars on petroleum for them to just find a solution just like that.
The world is a joke...if it takes less than a month to build a fast food joint on your corner, it shouldn't take 200 years to find cheap, clean energy.
RG, I'd be careful the way you phrase that. Oil and coal aren't subsidised in the strictest sense - instead, they are not required to pay for their pollution (a form of subsidy, but not the direct form most people invisage from that word), although oil and gas exploration gains tax credits which is a form of direct subsidy.
The free market will NOT solve this problem because it labels damage to public goods (ie. pollution of atmosphere, water, land, etc) as EXTERNALITIES - that is, "external" to the economy. Of course, this is a misnomer since our economies are entirely reliant on the resources and ecosystem processes generated by a healthy environment. It is the role of govts to regulate and in doing so "internalise" the externalities, make the polluters pay for their pollution. This in turn leads either to polluters reducing their pollution (which generally increases the market price of said commodity) and/or consumers using price signals to switch to other comparable technologies.
eg. coal-fired electricity in Aust. currently comes at about $35-40/MWh because producers do not have to pay for the air pollution, fine particulate pollution and environmental degredation of mine sites. If this were all factored into the cost of the electricity it would be $70-80/MWh. At that price range, renewables suddenly become viable as solar thermal and wind power cost about $70-80/MWh, and with emerging sliver cell technology, solar pv will soon be at or below that price.
Be careful with the terminology you use because the neo-con economists will denounce and rip you to shreds if you can't discuss this stuff at their level.
The secretly-designed-in-collaboration-with-energycos head national energy plan gave $15B to the super-highly-profitable energycos for "research". No strings or auditing attached, aka a direct subsidy.
Last edited by boutons_; 08-15-2006 at 11:19 PM.
Energycos - petroleum company?
, I can't believe anyone gets a grant without auditing!? I work in science policy in Oz, and no grant, whether $10,000 or $100,000,000, is given out without strict auditing procedures.
and building infrastructure and then transporting that energy down to earth wouldn't cost billions (trillions?)?
Makes far more sense to build solar arrays throughout the deserts of the world, which make up 1/3 of the land area.
I read somewhere that a 50kmx50km solar array in the Australian desert, using current technology, could power the entire world.
Micro-solar/wind power (ie. making individual houses and buildings energy self-sufficient through small solar/wind arrays) also makes massive sense, although you still need base power generation underlying it. We also need the capacity to convert excess electrical capacity into hydrogen, a great way of storing electricity for re-release overnight or when the wind stops.
We need to keep supplying cheap affordable oil and that can be done for the foreseeable future through shale-oil, but the trouble is the procedure to extract shale-oil, clean it and refine it, since it is a heavy-grade, is much more harmful to the environment than drilling a normal well of sweet crude, but as you said, these externalities aren't considered when the politicians are writing the nation's energy policy.
I think we need to think of a ways to reduce CO2 levels already in the atmosphere and in the oceans before we go spending all this money on wind and solar energy. Perhaps an engineered organic or mechanical micro-organism that eats CO2 or coverts it to Oxygen, but has a regulated lifespan? Now that would be something.
dan, we have already invested the money in solar and wind, and the price of both is becoming considerably cheaper as we do. It will drop even further with economies of scale in production if only people were switching to it.
If we can reduce emissions to 1994 levels and keep them there, the CO2 conc will level out at 500ppm (about double the 280ppm "natural" level pre-industrial revolution) by 2050. That's why we need clean renewable technology now - to start re ing our CO2 emissions.
Oh, and BTW, there is a lot of oil shale, but currently there is one 1 shale refinery and none under construction. They take 10-15 yrs to build. So, effectively, shale oil output is at capacity until someone builds another refinery. Shale is not the answer.
Oh, and WHY do we need to keep supplying CHEAP OIL? How about people taking rising oil prices as a signal to change their behaviours and reduce consumption? Keeping oil cheap will just maintain the damaging and dangerous status quo, the last thing the world needs right now (we are already locked into political inertia on this matter, why propogate it???).
"I can't believe anyone gets a grant without auditing!? "
Please find where head is monitoring the use and results of his $15B gift to the energ co's.
There's an article in today's Express-News about the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer which supplies north Texas corn farmers as well as those all the up the central corn plain to the Dakotas.
Corn famers are already moving away from corn, not because there's no market for it (although they are guaranteed a market of the federal buying program when prices drop), but because the Ogalalla water table has dropped 40 ft in 50 years, the water pressure has dropped too, and the cost of fuel to farm has risen so much. The inputs to the corn are costing more than the revenue from the corn, even with federal price supports which somehow are considered not to be the demon socialism when the farmers are getting their pockets stuffed with tax dollars. ie, the farmers love government intervention when it gives them $$$ but hate government intervention as "socialism" when it restricts the farmers' abuses.
Last edited by boutons_; 08-16-2006 at 10:09 AM.
That was exactly what I meant as when I said subsidized.
If coal and oil companies were really made to pay the true costs of what they produce, instead of essentially stealing from society with pollution, then renewables would be WAY more compe ive.
As for the rest of it:The free market will NOT solve this problem because it labels damage to public goods (ie. pollution of atmosphere, water, land, etc) as EXTERNALITIES - that is, "external" to the economy. Of course, this is a misnomer since our economies are entirely reliant on the resources and ecosystem processes generated by a healthy environment. It is the role of govts to regulate and in doing so "internalise" the externalities, make the polluters pay for their pollution. This in turn leads either to polluters reducing their pollution (which generally increases the market price of said commodity) and/or consumers using price signals to switch to other comparable technologies.
eg. coal-fired electricity in Aust. currently comes at about $35-40/MWh because producers do not have to pay for the air pollution, fine particulate pollution and environmental degredation of mine sites. If this were all factored into the cost of the electricity it would be $70-80/MWh. At that price range, renewables suddenly become viable as solar thermal and wind power cost about $70-80/MWh, and with emerging sliver cell technology, solar pv will soon be at or below that price.
Be careful with the terminology you use because the neo-con economists will denounce and rip you to shreds if you can't discuss this stuff at their level.
I agree whole-heartedly.
I am better at economics and finance than most neo-cons, and that drives them nuts. >
Infrastructure=economic base
Transporting that energy to the earth is as simple as setting up an antenna to catch harmless microwave energy.
I am not saying we shouldn't develop fusion at some point. I am saying that given a choice between spending a dollar on research that MAY eventually produce fusion, and spending a dollar on something that WILL increase the survivability of our species, I would rather have the industrial infrastructure first.
you are talking about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite
it's an interesting concept.
EDIT: also on fusion power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power
and ITER: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
Last edited by velik_m; 08-16-2006 at 11:56 AM.
Yes indeed. See a few previous posts for other links. NASA is looking into this as well.
There are a LOT of interesting outgrowths to this.
90% of the cost of lifting a pound of matter into orbit is the cost of lifting the fuel for that pound of matter. The apollo moon rocket was so big because it needed a LOT of fuel just to get off the earth.
Imagine a spacecraft that used microwave energy beamed to it from an orbiting satellite to do most of the work of getting something to orbit. You have just brought down the cost of getting into orbit by 90%.
Having industrial infrastructure already in orbit would reduce even further the amount of stuff you would need to get into orbit in the first place, providing economies of scale.
Corn acres were down 5% this year by march estimates. I wouldn't say that's moving away from corn when the year before it was up 1%, before that, up 4%. Where are you getting that corn inputs cost more than the return? That's pure bull . Take the subsidies away and most good operators are still making a profit. Don't believe me? Alot of land put into CRP loses its basis and yields and will not be elgible for govt. payments. Why is that land being farmed with not payments besides LDP's (what was referred to as federal supports in your post) available?
BTW: CRP payments are factored into the farm bills and liberals usually assume that that money is just more subsidies when in reality the govt does it for enviromentalists. Not only that but to accept subsidies you have to abide by all sorts of standards, which involve maintaining wetlands, no new ditching, no taking down of trees, no tillage on highly erodible land.......
Its yet another way of the govt. forcing its enviromental standards on the people, yet we have the same liberals ing about the use of GMO's and Roundup, one of the safest chemicals there is.
You don't think for a minute i would take a hands off approach and if it meant you starving or developing weak bones bc of high milk prices I wouldn't? You because you can. The govt. does not want a free farm market or they would have done so. If its so lucrative, your welcome to join us. After all, farming is considered one of the most dangeous, stressfull, risky jobs there is.
As for the whole Ogallala aquifer thing, anyone who has to depend on irrigation for raising corn isn't in prime corn country. Maybe those half-assed ranchers that try to be farmers in Texas need to but the majority of the corn-belt does NOT irrigate, save for western nebraska. Get that out of your head already. Corn yields are improving at a rate of 2-2.5% EVERY YEAR due to genetics. Last years corn was the 2nd best on record yet it was the 15th driest on record. This year's corn crop is expected to be better, even though it is another drought. Texas and the rest of the country that wants to be cornfarmers isn't a model to look at. That's why you import corn and can't raise it even with your vast reserves.
Lastly, try talking to a ing corn farmer before you make half assed assumptions about loving the govt subsidies. Most hardworking farmers hate them along with the bankrupcty proceedings because it gives most of the poor farmers an way to compete. If you know the ins and outs of the ASCS system, it doesn't matter how poor you farm.
Take a look at number 33 in the top '04 receipients in SoDak last year. He's the head of the ASCS department. You don't think that's shady?
http://ewg.org/farm/top_recips.php?f...page=1&yr=2004
Water issues will limit the amount of water available for irrigating corn in marginal areas. THAT will be the utimate barrier to corn production, even more than the land itself.
As I keep saying corn ethanol will be a SMALL part of our energy solution, but given the energy that has to be used in getting each new unit of water for each new unit of plant-based ethanol will provide a point at which it costs more energy to produce a new unit of ethanol than you get out of it.
That point WILL be FAR shy of even coming close to meeting our energy needs even with great strides in crop output or production efficiency.
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...9&postcount=19
Just in case you missed it.
Once again, I am NOT arguing against ethanol. I think that free-market forces will mean that ethanol will be part of our energy solution at some level.
I just think that certain constraints will limit that to a minor portion of our energy mix.
My HEB is selling E85 today at $2.40.
RG, I figured you understood the economics, but if you use that word "subsidised" without explaining it, most people will assume you mean that the govt gives money to petroleum companies directly. Just pointing out that you need to be really clear with people about this stuff or they'll wilfully misinterpret what you are saying, that's all.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
