Economic Meltdown (seconda parte)

[kandrathe]

But, our goals are the same. I would like to see more implementations of alternative energy, where they make economic sense. What doesn't work is when the government gives a few billion dollars to GE to make wind turbines and they end up installed everywhere, including many places without wind. Or, when government decides to subsidize ethanol, and require it's use to create an artificial demand.

I'm against the blood sucking companies who derive their profits through subsidy, regulation, and bailouts rather than through wealth creating competition and innovation.

I agree, but this I don't call subsidy I call it plain old fraud. This is going on for years....look at all the new devices they invent to keep us safe in airplanes.....all those interesting security gates that are replaced every three years......we all know who makes those.

Yes, I agree. And, before with Bush we had the whole no-bid contracts handed out to Halliburton and other administration cronies. Obama's crony capitalism is no better with his cozy relationship to Goldman-Sachs, and Jeff Immelt from GE, and his lobbyist Linda Daschle (Tom's wife)​ to name just a couple.

Same as the bioethanol thing.....this was just another present to the oil industry by the Bush family (of course payed with tax dollars). With as extra negative impact that people start not believing IPCC scientists anymore (even though they have nothing to do with that).

The shenanigans of the IPCC scientists deserve scrutiny, and jeopardize their credibility when they introduce bias into their findings. I think the biggest promoters of biofuels were both republicans and democrats from farm states who saw it as a way to curry favor with their constituents. But, like other "technology", politicians lacked the wisdom to think through the unintended consequences of trading food for fuel, and understand that the input energy to produce the fuel was larger than its net output. Big oil see's the brick wall of peak oil in the future, so they are certainly attempting to preserve their control of the energy market by adapting to the next big thing be it hydrogen, electric, or biofuels. The bottom line is that we need to be wary when politics mixes with science, or meddles in promoting a product on the market.

But when people are urged to buy solar panels for their roofs by giving them tax rebates, all kinds of companies (american and foreign) will start competing.

I don't know that solar panels on everyone's roof is the correct answer. I've done the math for my home, and it is not cost effective. It would cost me more money to keep my home outfitted with solar panels, than I would ever get back in savings from energy costs. The environment here is extreme and harsh, with seasonal temperature variations from -34 C in January to 43C in July, coupled with severe storms delivering many feet of snow in winter, to tornado's, hail, and torrential rain in spring and summer. It's really a weatherman's dream and nightmare to try to predict what is brewing out over the prairie, or swinging up out of the Gulf of Mexico. The point being that maintenance costs for anything exposed to the elements is higher, and useful life spans are reduced. But, being that I live in a fairly sparsely populated eastern broad leaf forest, I'm looking at high efficiency wood stoves and possibly steam power as a backup. Our local power provider(Xcel) has invested heavily into adding wind power with about 2500 MW out of a potential of 75,000 MW. Currently, peak electricity demand is in July at about 22,000 MW, in winter heating is performed by natural gas and fuel oil. So, as petroleum fuels are replaced with electric heating, and electric transportation you'd expect the needs to about double.

But, for people in Phoenix, and for small needs well off the grid it is a good solution. Southern Minnesota is like the Saudi Arabia of wind power. Other areas are coastal and may be able to derive power from tidal forces, others have abundant sources of natural gas, others are near coal deposits and might benefit from clean coal gasification. If we allowed local economics to drive the decision making, then regionally they'd have a solution that may fit better to their local situation.

I'm a big advocate of proper distribution of smaller producers rather than one or a few large production facilities. You can extrapolate this to many networks, including energy, food distribution, computing, water, sewage treatment, broadcasting, etc. With redundancy and distribution across a network, a single outage will not affect much of the network. The added overhead cost of maintaining multiple sites is still a harder sell even at a company scale, until their one site gets hit by a natural or man-made disaster.

I have said this before. If we don't add in 'environment' in the total cost-balance of a gallon of gas we are fooling ourselves. This is nothing else than indirect subsidization.

Ignoring the environmental effects of civilization is a historical fact. We've come along way in the past 50 to 100 years in understanding pollution, and being able to measure it's obvious and covertly detrimental effects. It's taken us about 100 years to understand the impact of 'dumping' emissions into the atmosphere. My goal would be to "leave no footprints" on the environment. When I see the effects of dumping wastes in the ocean, rivers, land and atmosphere I am appalled. I'm just realistic to the idea that unless people SEE it or be harmed by it they won't change their behavior.

I remember back when I was a teen, and a friend of mine found a skeleton of a huge elk in the local creek. Being that there were no elk in Minnesota, I asked my father what happened to all the elk. He told me about how Minnesota used to be covered in old growth forest, and was a prime habitat for elk. But then the railroads came through, and they hired loggers to clear the land to be able to sell it to homesteaders coming from Europe. I imagined how that was, before, and after and it made me very, very sad for what we did to the land. It still does, but I live here.