Posts by Rational Debate

Rational Debate

Um, Tim, (Mr. Reporter guy), my friend, can we have a private little chat?

You see, I do believe you have managed to rather royally "step in it," so to speak, with this article of yours. You see, for $$ comparisons of energy subsidies to make any sense what-so-ever, one has to compare those subsidies to the amount of power that each item subsidized is producing - in other words, on a dollar/cost per unit energy produced. If you try this little experiment, you will find that the amount of subsidies for renewables are vastly LARGER than subsidies for fossil fuels.

According to the Energy Information Administration the relative subsidies for various energy sources, includes the fact that wind and solar get in the neighborhood of 100 times the subsidy that oil and gas do per unit of energy produced. For all of the various energy sources, they show $23.50 per MwH for wind, $24.50 for solar, hydroelectric (dams) $0.60 -- whereas oil and gas get only $0.25, coal gets $0.44, and nuclear gets about $1.60.

Meanwhile the majority of subsidies for oil and gas, including LPG (cooking gas) are direct subsidies in third world nations that primarily help the poorest people. Their governments are trying to help keep them from freezing to death, or starving, or dying of food poisoning or disease from using dung and/or indoor wood burning stoves. To remove these subsidies would make those who can least afford it that much poorer and less healthy (or dead).

Furthermore, I'd bet that the numbers you quote do not account for all of the taxes we pay on gasoline, which I gather is about $11 per KwH. Put another way, roughly 20% to 30% of the price you pay at the pump consists of federal, state, and local taxes.

Meanwhile, we've been heavily subsidizing renewables for about five decades now. Even with the massive subsidies, none are even remotely competitive or practical for large scale use. Plus, an increasing number of studies are finding that all too often these sources may not even save any appreciable CO2 emissions, and they have all sorts of unintended consequences, cause environmental damage and/or kill wildlife, etc.

All of this for a very dubious claim, scientifically speaking, that CO2 emissions might be causing global warming. Whats worse is that even the strongest anthropogenic global warming supporters who have calculated the effects of efforts such as fully implementing the Kyoto treaty worldwide will tell you that the affect on temperature even 100 years in the future will be very minimal - insignificant even.

But at least if we are going to compare subsidies, let us do it on some meaningful basis - e.g., the subsidy amount per unit energy produced. Otherwise all you are doing is disseminating a grossly misleading set of numbers.