Posted by zog
on June 13, 2009, 11:18 pm, in reply to "king coal, now with sequestration"
For coal, about as profitable an industry as there is. And people get all bent out of shape if solar or windpower gets some tax credits saying it can't "compete". The coal industry and their customers could pay for that project. Same as the oil industry and the stealth tax we all pay to keep other hugely profitable companies running by providing security in the form of massive military expenditures. What does it REALLY cost for us to not have electric vehicles now? How many more trillions in stealth subsidies for the oil companies to keep the Mideast oil flowing? We don't see it at the pump, but we are still paying for it directly out of our taxes. Oh and then some folks kvetch about the domestic ethanol subsidy..drop in the bucket compared to having half the military farting around in the mideast...
Solar and wind and small scale hydro and ground loop geothermal and just a heckuva lot more insulation and other assorted renewable energies would be more than able to compete if the OTHER energy industries had to make do with their own resources and not rely on the government to keep them propped up.
And those other industries just perpetuate central one or a few big vendor lockins, either a local monopoly or a general cartel price fixing action. Solar and wind offer joe sixpack the only viable way to get energy independent. They get peanuts, just one coal plant here gets a billion.
And it doesn't matter if it is some new whizzbang method to sequester carbon or not, they should eat the costs themselves, then pass the costs on to the consumers, real capitalism that way. Then we could sort out the real costs better. Just like nuke power, subsidized for decades by the government, developed and built by the government, who knows how many buhzillions went into developing nuke tech, and they still provide the bulk of the insurance and the security, because nuke plants *can't get* full total private insurance. I wonder why that is?
I was an insurance agent, I'll say why...because it would be covering a "pre existing condition", something the insurance companies hates to do..the condition is it is risky as all get out.
They know one serious accident or attack (nuke plants routinely fall to wargames scenarios by just small teams of attackers..*routinely*) and the entire insurance company would be beyond bankrupt, that's why, so they won't cover it, so the tax payers have to eat it, a stealth subsidy the pro nuke guys and monopoly centrally supplied electricity supplier cartel supporters always forget about when they talk about how cheap their fav methods are.
Clean, decentralized power (that you could actually pay off, own outright yourself) WOULD be a lot cheaper in comparison if the old established energy industries really had to cover all their costs themselves.
The most annoying thing to me though is how much superinsulation technology is ignored. It works, was in the biz, it is simply amazing. You just can't really get it until you've been in a home with NO heating running in the winter and it is warm inside, or conversely, be sitting in a house when it is over 90 outside and it is cool and the AC only comes on like once a day or something, not every other half hour. We wouldn't *need* new generating plant one if we as a nation would embrace superinsulation and better energy efficiency. But see, they big cartels wouldn't be able to send you that big bill every month either. The big wall street investment wealth skimming class wouldn't be able to price gouge, because so many little folks would be given jobs then to do retrofits locally, they couldn't control it or monopolize it.
Insulation is a one off cost, there are no recurring monthly bills! That's why it is always at the bottom of the list in these great energy debates, because energy is run from the top at wall street and by their paid off sock puppets in DC, and they like all those profits. Sell you insulation once, or keep selling you buckets of therms forever..it's a no brainer from *their* perspective.
They want you on their energy subscription plan, they don't EVER want you to get energy independent, which superinsulation and small scale solar and wind could do, both for your home and also for your transportation. Here is an interesting link, check out what tech is out there now that could be used if it was just pushed more. The government wants to stimulate the economy, they could be shelling out big grants/tax credits/very low interest loans for this sort of tech and advertising it..at least as much as they have been doing with the DTV converter boxes for example..
Solar Decathlon (teams compete to build self powered homes including the transportation, check the links for past entries and winners)(ya, the government promotes it..then it dissolves into the ether until the next competition, they never *do* anything with it, it is never pushed hard)
Superinsulation
People like to rag on Carter a lot, but tell ya what..he was the ONLY big politician we ever had who fully understood energy and what it would take to really help the US..and he was a professional nuke engineer by training! He was still in favor of a lot more insulation and a lot of decentralized solar panel action...because that is the tech that will work long range. And it is safer than most other forms of energy production, and would be cheaper done in mass quantities, they could put some of the rust belt areas back to work. And solar is the ONLY practical fusion power we have, now, or probably for the next..who knows, they have been trying to artificially recreate the sun, when all they have to do is GO OUTSIDE. It's already been "discovered"! Free for the taking! Nuclear fusion power is here! No hundred focused super lasers floating in a magnetic bubble gee whizz tech that might work next century needed, it's here and now, solar PV and solar thermal are already here, we just need a thousand fold increase in adoption, then economies of scale kick in. Look at computers in just ten years from 1990 to 2000, then from 2000 to now. 1/10th the cost, 100 times the power, in one generation, because we got mass adoption and economies of scale applied to it. 3 grand computers at 8mghz with 640 k RAM and ..shoot..just dual floppies back then, are now 300 buck computers at 2.5 ghz. with 2 gigs of RAM and half a terrabyte hardrives. For three hundred bucks at discountmart or wherever.
Energy could be the same way, just the fatcats don't want it cheap and decentralized and for having every homeowner being able to routinely pay it off just as part of a normal mortgage, nope, they want it the opposite way, they control the political scene and the major news media and how congress acts.
115
Message Thread:
« Back to thread