Yes, Jesse, I do buy into that arguement. If you permit me, I will
exclude DailyKos Kos Kids from your evidence, as the are far from a
disinterested party in this matter. Whatever the politics, whatever the
polemics, a technology has to do this, be successful. If solar is
always just a fraction of the world's energy, despite decades and
bilions, then I have some problem with proposing it. Or a successful
solar tech, that powers all human activity, forever, may be 200 years
away, for some unknown reason. What should we do until that glorious
day? We can say exactly, the same with fusion. Tax payer subsudies are
fine, if they work. But I surmise these companies live for the
subsidies, and not the big win in the market place. Hence, my
alternative of a grand prize to spur innovation, and win a giant profit
that will wipe out an investors debts. I say we as a society have
waited way too long, doing things the Statist way, lets let innovatoes,
innovate, for the reward of an avalanche of prize money, plus tons of
profits. I sense we are standing still, otherwise.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jesse Mazer <laserma...@gmail.com>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Nov 9, 2013 2:25 pm
Subject: Re: Our Demon-Haunted World
On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 12:50 PM, <spudboy...@aol.com> wrote:
Chris, I just read a study by the U of Colorado, published in the
Journal, Bioscience, claiming that up to 1 million bats have been
killed by green energy wind turbines. The arrival of solar power, its
decline in price, and thus it will power all human civilization never
arrives.
Why would the decline in price of solar power mean it can never power
all human civilization? The lower the price the better for its
prospects for large-scale adoption, no?
Its what the math people call asymptotic, which in this case means, it
never achieves target, it never gets there. The same with nuclear
fusion, despite happy reports. It never gets there after decades of
research. Thus, it cannot be Relied Upon to substitute for Dirty energy
sources. What might prime the technological pump is the market place,
where supply and demand are invoked, and there is commercial reason to
produce minus government hand outs to crony companies, in Germany, and
in the US. With tax payer monies, these companies vanish, like farts in
a high wind, like Solyndra did. Unreliable substitutes are non
substitutes.
It sounds like you are buying into the myth that Solyndra was somehow
representative of government investment in solar power in general. It's
not, the department of energy invested money in a large portfolio of
clean energy businesses and most did well while a few like Solyndra did
not, and then opponents of investing of clean energy cherry-picked an
example of a failure. See these articles:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/energy-department-loan-guarantee-charts/64932/
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/09/28/fox-puts-its-solyndra-blinders-on-again/190200
The second of the two articles mentions that "only 3 out of 26 loan
guarantees dispersed under the Department of Energy's 1705 loan
guarantee program have gone to companies that later filed for
bankruptcy. One of those three, Beacon Power, is still operating, has
repaid most of its loan guarantee, and rehired most of its employees."
It also mentions at the bottom that Fox news is promoting the idea that
declining prices of solar panels are bad for solar power in general (as
opposed to just some individual manufacturing companies), so perhaps
you got that puzzling idea above from Fox or some other conservative
media source--but as the graph at the bottom of the article shows,
solar installations (and the corresponding total energy output from
solar) have surged in the last few years, probably thanks in part to
government investment.
In case you don't trust the left-leaning Media Matters site, here's a
piece from Forbes magazine arguing for the overall success of
government investment in clean energy so far, and for the important
role played by such investment in promoting innovation in this field:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2011/09/02/solyndras-failure-is-no-reason-to-abandon-federal-energy-innovation-policy/
'Solyndra’s failure, while unfortunate, is hardly an indictment of
federal energy technology policy. Failure is to be expected with
emerging, innovative companies, whether they are financed by the
government or the private sector. The success of the Department of
Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program (LGP) should thus be judged not by any
one investment but by the performance of the entire portfolio.
Critics have seized on the news of Solyndra’s bankruptcy to condemn the
Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program, which provided a $535
million loan guarantee in 2009. The National Review’s Greg Pollowitz
writes that Solyndra’s failure shows “why the government should not
play venture capitalist.” Yet the fact is that, when judged by its
entire diverse portfolio of investments, the LGP has performed
remarkably well. Indeed, with a capitalization of just $4 billion, DOE
has committed or closed $37.8 billion in loan guarantees for 36
innovative clean energy projects. The Solyndra case represents less
than 2% of total loan commitments made by DOE, and will be easily
covered by a capitalization of eight to ten times larger than any
ultimate losses expected following the bankruptcy proceedings.
The broad success story of the LGP shows why federal investment in
clean energy is necessary to help early-stage clean energy technologies
achieve scale and reach commercialization. The inherent uncertainty in
investing in novel technologies, coupled with the high capital costs
and long time horizons, prohibits most venture capital funds from
investing in large-scale clean energy projects. Financing tools and
direct investment from the federal government can help bridge this
well-known “Commercialization Valley of Death,” and the LGP is an
effective way of doing that.
Instead of “picking winners and losers,” as the program’s critics
allege, the program actually reduces risk for a suite of innovative
clean energy technologies and allows venture capitalists and other
private sector investors to invest in the best technology. Rather than
picking winners, the LGP enables innovative companies to compete in the
marketplace, allowing winners to emerge from competition. And while
Solyndra is shutting its doors, companies like SunPower, First Solar,
and Brightsource Energy, which also received loan guarantees and other
support from the federal government, are industry leading success
stories.'
Finally, here's an article that details many of the conservative media
sources (many with major ties to the oil industry) that have been
promoting the Solyndra story as an excuse to stop investing in clean
energy:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/14/1016840/-The-Phony-Solyndra-Solar-Scandal
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris de Morsella <cdemorse...@yahoo.com>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Nov 9, 2013 12:12 am
Subject: RE: Our Demon-Haunted World
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
spudboy...@aol.com
Sent: Friday, November 08, 2013 5:49 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Our Demon-Haunted World
If you hold the Rational Optimist view aka Matt Ridley, people will act
altruistic much more, if they get a reward, then in they get jack.
>>A dictatorship of your own preference is suitable for many, but
not for most. Plus, think about pure materiality. If a cruel dictator
has his goon point a semi-automatic at each of our heads and demands of
us to immediately produce an energy source that will power his
civilization for the rest of his life, and unless we can produce this
energy source, bang goes the gun. I will shout shale gas or even tar
sands. If you shout out sun and wind, bang goes the gun against your
skull. Why? Because even after decades of work, even after daily
advances, there's no city on earth that is now powered by sun or win,
were that it was so. My point is we cannot legislate reality. I will
take the marketplace with all its flaws versus coercive government.
Which would you choose?
I do not subscribe to your Manichean world view, in fact I find it ill
reflective of the complexity and nuance of reality. You like to see
things in a either this or that kind of way, and maybe that works for
you, but it doesn’t work for me.
Are you really that certain you know your energy facts. Global
installed solar consumption went from 2.1 TWh in 2001 to 55.7 TWh in
2011; growing by a factor of more than 20X in 10years; this is
reflected in the growth in installed capacity, which went from a little
over 2GW of installed solar capacity in 2001 to around 20GW of
installed capacity in 2011. In fact there is so much solar and wind
electric capacity already installed in Germany that on days which are
favorable for wind and solar power, the overabundance of supply can
drive the wholesale price into sharply negative territory. The market
inverts and in order to shed load onto the grid – when supply exceeds
demand beyond the capacity of the grid to manage it -- you need to pay
the grid operators because the grid cannot accept any more energy
without becoming unstable – the grid is a balancing between
instantaneous supply and demand (act at the speed of electricity) The
cost per kwh of solar PV is following a Moore’s Law type progression in
falling costs and the dollar per kwh of solar PV are closing in on the
cost of coal generated electricity, which has been the least expensive
(largely because it can externalize hundreds of billions of dollars per
year of costs incurred by mining, and burning coal onto the commons).
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris de Morsella <cdemorse...@yahoo.com>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thu, Nov 7, 2013 9:44 pm
Subject: RE: Our Demon-Haunted World
-----Original Message-----From:
everything-list@googlegroups.com[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of spudboy100@aol.comSent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 4:26
PMTo: everything-list@googlegroups.comSubject: Re: Our Demon-Haunted
World >>Not to be sarcastic, but probably yes. Money from
bitumin brings money forresearch into environmental remediation. It
also helps liberate people frompouring cash into the OPEC world, which
seems to only inflame Muslimpassions. Plus the Canadians are world
class technologists and will likelyinvent more efficient engines, and
also fund the green technologies that youcrave. Theres a reason why
poor nations do not do technology well. You have a cornucopian view
that we can go on making horrible messes on thisplanet without worrying
about the consequences because somehow it will allget magically
remediated.... yeah like that actually happens in the realworld.
Remediation is a cost center NOT a profit center; it is done only
tothe minimum level necessary in order to stay just this side of the
law. Youare free to say whatever you want of course, but I find it
difficult tobelieve your hypothesis that the very same humans who
profit from raping theearth will -- after the fact and after they have
lined their pockets withill-gotten wealth -- will somehow do a 180
degree turn and start behaving inthe altruistic noble manner you seem
so certain they will. Are you saying that the Arabs would be happier if
they had no oil wealth...that all this money has made them hopping mad?
Green technologies arealready proving themselves -- without your plucky
Canadian tar sandbillionaires (some of whom are Texans by the way)
deciding to invest theirprofits in green technology -- as if they
would. -----Original Message-----From: Chris de Morsella
<cdemorse...@yahoo.com>To: everything-list
<everything-list@googlegroups.com>Sent: Thu, Nov 7, 2013 3:29
pmSubject: Re: Our Demon-Haunted World Those plucky Canadians -- as you
term them -- are criminally destroying vastswaths of Alberta turning it
into a poisoned chemical saturated moonscape aswell as sucking up vast
amounts of water from other potential uses --including agriculture.
Will the bitumen sweated out of that sand be worththe ultimate costs to
get it? On Thursday, November 7, 2013 11:24 AM, Jesse
Mazer<laserma...@gmail.com> wrote: On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 9:50
AM, <spudboy...@aol.com> wrote:Fursure, that was the truth. Now
we got's shale gas, which seems to pay a lotbetter, is safer to go
after, and is cleaner, carbon-wise. Unless you arebuying into
technological unemployment (robots, software) then we have toface the
fact. BHO's Keynesian way has fallen on its ass and has stayeddown,
like a fighter throwing a fight, after a payoff. I've read Keynesians
like Paul Krugman say that the level of stimulus wasactually not enough
by Keynesian standards (and too much went to tax cuts),but certainly
the US economy with its level of stimulus did much better thanmost of
the states that more thoroughly rejected Keynesianism and insteadchose
austerity in the midst of a recession, like the UK...see variousgraphs
at http://graphsagainstausterity.tumblr.com/ (click on any graph tosee
the original article it came from) Increased government employment
doesn't seem to generate tax revenue verywell. Except government
employment hasn't increased under Obama, it's actuallybeen steadily
decreasing during his presidency (apart from a brief spikewhen the
decennial census was taken and they needed a lot of temporarycensus
workers), due mostly to the Republicans in Congress, whereas
underGeorge W. Bush government employment was steadily increasing
(thiscollapsing of the public sector is probably contributing quite a
bit to theslow recovery). See the two graphs showing private sector and
public sectorjobs under Bush and Obama
here: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2013/04/public-and
-private-sector-payroll-jobs-bush-and-obama.html -- You received
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