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Obama Says Commitment to Clean Energy Will Boost Jobs

Scarecrow Akhbar said:
So you're trying to argue that there's only one shade of red?
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No, only one definition of nationalized. You define words as you jolly well feel like, unilaterally changing definitions to suit your arguments as you so please without any regard for their actual definition. I actually stick to their real definitions. Not imaginary definitions I make up on the spot.

That it?
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Sorry. I don't change definitions whenever I feel like to suit my ideological bias. You do.

He has the personal authority to control who drills where and who looks where for what.
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So? That's not nationalized. By your argument, every industry is nationalized since government controls access and permits.

Since the Left's goal in nationalizing the American oil industry is nothing more or less than the closing of it, the President's exercise of power to increasing restrict drilling sites is all they need or want to do at this time.
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Yawn. More ideological vomit without basis in reality.

No, it's a bogus car because it's technology was obsolete the day the stupid thing was revealed on the market. Outside of the rubber wheels and motor-thingy, it's no different in concept than the million candle-power spot light I have plugged into the wall for later use when I want to signal the crew on the space station or blind airline pilots, even though what I really use it for is to signal other boats that my sail boat is HERE, just in case they don't see all the other lights in the rigging.
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Obsolete = Bogus? There you go again. Defining words however you feel like with no regard for their actual definition. Stick to their actual definitions or put a disclaimer that you aren't using English.

But, it's got a battery, it's got a charger, it turns AC into DC, it runs down, and one of these days I'll have to replace the whole spotlight because it won't be economical to replace the battery.
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So all batteries and battery systems are identical? :2wave:

Yes.

Learn economics someday. Money doesn't grow on trees. It has to be stolen from someone else first before one useless company can be subsidized over another.
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You seem to subscribe to the notion of finite wealth that can never grow. And you say I need to learn economics. One must wonder how you think that the size of the pie can never increase.
 
UtahBill said:
Barbbtx made no mention of PRICE.
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So? price is important. Especially in the context of security and our enemies.

If we have to pay more to stop getting oil from our enemies, it will be worth the price.
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But in the process we'll just be making them richer in the process. That makes no sense. The only way we can avoid this is by nationalization, by isolating our market for oil from the world's and thereby limiting the impact of price rises upon the cash flow to our enemies. Without understanding how commodity markets work, any talk about more drilling in the context of security fails.

And Nuclear in the USA is not subsidized, no more than is coal or gas.
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But coal and gas are subsidized. As is the nuclear industry. Nuclear gets subsidized per kilowatt hour.

Loan guarantees are not loans. Even if the billions were direct loans from the govt, they have to be paid back....
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That's still subsidization.
 
Slainte said:
Also, I do not believe anyone has stated the exact number of jobs that will be created, 'over 800,000 is just an estimate. I do not think it's that unreasonable.
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I agree about the 800,000 maybe plausible considering 2012 is approx. 16 months away and boils down to 50,000 jobs a month. On the other hand we need generate approx. 150,000+ jobs a month to make any positives changes in the unemployment.
 
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obvious Child said:
So? price is important. Especially in the context of security and our enemies.



But in the process we'll just be making them richer in the process. That makes no sense. The only way we can avoid this is by nationalization, by isolating our market for oil from the world's and thereby limiting the impact of price rises upon the cash flow to our enemies. Without understanding how commodity markets work, any talk about more drilling in the context of security fails.



But coal and gas are subsidized. As is the nuclear industry. Nuclear gets subsidized per kilowatt hour.



That's still subsidization.
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If we are goint to subsidize clean energy, nuclear deserves more subsidies than coal. 2 power plants of equal output, if the nuke is producing 23 tons of "waste", the coal plant is producing 300,000 tons of ash, plus mercury, SO2, NO, etc. plus a lot more radioactive crap than the average nuke plant.
Nuke "wastes" can be reprocessed into more fuel. Coal wastes can not be reprocessed, has little use, gets buried, messes up water supplies, and breaks thru retaining walls severely polluting rivers....

There are a few dozen old design coal plants being built right now, with pollution levels equivalent to 22 million cars. Didn't we just buy a bunch of clunkers to boost the economy and help clean the air? Why do we subsidize old and dirty technology?
 
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drz-400 said:
Good point, so the question to answer is:

Can renewable energies make money for individuals?

Lets look at ethanol for example. For that I will refer to the paper Goldenboy219 cited. Ethanol produced in Brazil is cost competitive with oil. Brazil has comparative advantage when producing ethanol. So, to continue the growth of the US ethanol industry we have created a system that subsidizes ethanol ($.51) and places a tariff on ethanol to prevent this subsidy from leaving the country and to protect US industry. Without the subsidy or tariff, ethanol would still be cost competitive only it would be made in Brazil.
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Ethanol may not be a good example. But let's put that aside for a second. Apply the same functionality to wind, solar and geothermal. All three of those alternative energy solutions require actual power source to be created but rather, a device to harness the power source that already exists around us. Until the market shows that putting up wind turbines or solar panels can pay itself off in a shorter amount of time and with less initial cost as compared to fossile fuels - no amount of subsidy's will create a demand. The only way to do it is to artifically raise fossile fuel costs such that alternatives are more cost effective.
 
UtahBill said:
Your last statement, I agree with 100%.
The rest of your post....read the following...
Energy Report - Government Financial Subsidies
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I think incorrect to look at total energy subsidies when nuclear energy is only used for electricity. Why should oil, gas, and ethanol even be related to nuclear power when they are used mainly for transportation. Also, I would like to point out that the bulk of coal subsidies are for refined coal, which is a clean energy product.
 
Ockham said:
Ethanol may not be a good example. But let's put that aside for a second. Apply the same functionality to wind, solar and geothermal. All three of those alternative energy solutions require actual power source to be created but rather, a device to harness the power source that already exists around us. Until the market shows that putting up wind turbines or solar panels can pay itself off in a shorter amount of time and with less initial cost as compared to fossile fuels - no amount of subsidy's will create a demand. The only way to do it is to artifically raise fossile fuel costs such that alternatives are more cost effective.
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I somewhat agree with you on wind, solar, (and I'll throw in clean coal) as they are very dependent upon subsidies to produce electricity. However, that does not mean they are not profitable with a subsidy included. I would argue the opposite. Come visit eastern CO and you'll see what I mean. I think you should also recognize that the cost of burning fossil fuels (coal specifically for electricity) is much higher than what the price is on the market because of the pollution it creates. There are good reasons for taxes on pollution, because they allow the market to take such costs into account. It makes the market more efficient.
 
UtahBill said:
If we are goint to subsidize clean energy, nuclear deserves more subsidies than coal. 2 power plants of equal output, if the nuke is producing 23 tons of "waste", the coal plant is producing 300,000 tons of ash, plus mercury, SO2, NO, etc. plus a lot more radioactive crap than the average nuke plant.
Nuke "wastes" can be reprocessed into more fuel. Coal wastes can not be reprocessed, has little use, gets buried, messes up water supplies, and breaks thru retaining walls severely polluting rivers....

There are a few dozen old design coal plants being built right now, with pollution levels equivalent to 22 million cars. Didn't we just buy a bunch of clunkers to boost the economy and help clean the air? Why do we subsidize old and dirty technology?
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We subsidize the older technology very little, something like $.44 megawatt hour. Although I do agree we should continue to move away from that. One thing I think that holds back large scale nuclear energy development is although the waste relatively speaking is less, there is NO good way to get rid of it. Most power plants are just storing their own nuclear waste.
 
drz-400 said:
I think incorrect to look at total energy subsidies when nuclear energy is only used for electricity. Why should oil, gas, and ethanol even be related to nuclear power when they are used mainly for transportation. Also, I would like to point out that the bulk of coal subsidies are for refined coal, which is a clean energy product.
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We are almost agreeing....refined coal may be cleaner, but it is not clean. IF I dust half my coffee table, it is cleaner, but it is not clean. I might try to say it is, but the boss lady disagrees. And I cringe when I hear a politician say we can import less oil from the Middle East if we just produce more electricity. Even one of the AZ Corporation Commisson members said that in his campaign, and he WON !!!

Apples and Oranges, people, apples and oranges...
 
drz-400 said:
Good point, so the question to answer is:

Can renewable energies make money for individuals?

Lets look at ethanol for example. For that I will refer to the paper Goldenboy219 cited. Ethanol produced in Brazil is cost competitive with oil. Brazil has comparative advantage when producing ethanol. So, to continue the growth of the US ethanol industry we have created a system that subsidizes ethanol ($.51) and places a tariff on ethanol to prevent this subsidy from leaving the country and to protect US industry. Without the subsidy or tariff, ethanol would still be cost competitive only it would be made in Brazil.
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It takes 3 gallons of water to make one gallon of ethonal. Those 3 gallons come out of the other end as waste water. Figured out what you're going to do with that? I don't think it would be wise to turn our food and water supply into our fuel supply. It would be self defeating.
 
apdst said:
It takes 3 gallons of water to make one gallon of ethonal. Those 3 gallons come out of the other end as waste water. Figured out what you're going to do with that? I don't think it would be wise to turn our food and water supply into our fuel supply. It would be self defeating.
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I have figured it out, see the clean water act for details.
 
apdst said:
It takes 3 gallons of water to make one gallon of ethonal. Those 3 gallons come out of the other end as waste water. Figured out what you're going to do with that? I don't think it would be wise to turn our food and water supply into our fuel supply. It would be self defeating.
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Water is fairly easy to extract from the wastes, or vice versa. But it takes energy that further reduces the profitability of the ethanol process. The cheapest way is probably evaporation ponds, but they don't work very well during the winter months.

I suppose it depends on just what is in the waste besides the water.

I use to live near a potato processing plant that dumped its waste water onto farmers fields. It smelled bad, but made alfalfa
grow like the proverbial weed.
 
washunut said:
We have been talking about this problem for more than 30 years. There is never a convienient time to fix this problem. America passes along hundreds of billions annually because this has not been fixed.
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Unsubstantiated speculation.
washunut said:
A reason why the free market has a hard time coming up with an answer is that the oil cartel can fix the price. So if/ when we start working on alternatives, they could increase supply lower costs and make the projects uneconomic. Who would invest billions on finding a solution and building capacity faced with this?
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Why would oil companies not diversify if, according to the grossly ignorant, the petroleum supply is unsustainable for the near future? Would they just shrug their shoulders and go out of business when all the oil is gone?
washunut said:
The type of thinking above which is heard from a majority of Americans assures we will never fix one of the greatest structural problems we have.
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We will if/when it becomes economically feasable.
washunut said:
People who think like that should probably take a basic logic course.
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I took Logic 101 in the spring of my freshman year in college. When did you take it?
 
UtahBill said:
Water is fairly easy to extract from the wastes, or vice versa. But it takes energy that further reduces the profitability of the ethanol process. The cheapest way is probably evaporation ponds, but they don't work very well during the winter months.
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Evaporating ponds will only cause us to relive history, when coporation weren't following government regulation on proper lining of subterrainial vessels. The only difference will be, that this time, they're doing it with the government's blessing.

I suppose it depends on just what is in the waste besides the water.

I use to live near a potato processing plant that dumped its waste water onto farmers fields. It smelled bad, but made alfalfa
grow like the proverbial weed.
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Ethonal has rust inhibitors and algaecides.

This sounds like ground water contamination, waiting for a place to happen.
 
drz-400 said:
I have figured it out, see the clean water act for details.
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Care to show us where in the clean water act, that it describes the procedure for cleaning the waste water created by ethonal production? Thanks in advance.
 
UtahBill said:
If we are goint to subsidize clean energy, nuclear deserves more subsidies than coal.
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No disagreement there. I'm just pointing out that nuclear has a huge amount of subsidies behind it. And that more drilling doesn't make us any more secure. Especially looking at best possible extraction rates compared to most optimistic conservative demand growth over the next 50 years. Highest increases in supply with lowest increases in demand is pretty grim. So going to reasonable extraction and reasonable growth is desperate.

Why do we subsidize old and dirty technology?
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Cuz Congress is a bunch of whores. Or as one of my favorite old shows say "Parliment is full of genetic defects."
 
Chappy said:

My sense is that these initiatives are how industry and government can cooperate effectively to create opportunities for Americans today as we transition to clean energy tomorrow.
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2012, hmmmm I wonder what's significant about that year.
 
apdst said:
Care to show us where in the clean water act, that it describes the procedure for cleaning the waste water created by ethonal production? Thanks in advance.
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Ethanol is already being refined in the US, and therefore it has to comply (and already is in complience) with the clean water act. Therefore I can deduce there is already a procedure. The clean water act simply states the requirements such a process would have to fullfill. I am sure you could look up the actual process if you are interested.

I am also sure a procedure exists because we have been drinking (and refining) beer for centuries.

Of course of oil refineries, petrochemical plants, chemical plants, natural gas processing plants and other industrial sources have their own waste water problems to deal with as well.

I am sure the procedure uses stokes law in some way.
 
I do not want us to escalate the use of ethanol for fuel much beyond what is used now. We just don't want our farmland turned over to producing fuel. It is fine used as an additive.
 
drz-400 said:
Ethanol is already being refined in the US, and therefore it has to comply (and already is in complience) with the clean water act. Therefore I can deduce there is already a procedure. The clean water act simply states the requirements such a process would have to fullfill. I am sure you could look up the actual process if you are interested.

I am also sure a procedure exists because we have been drinking (and refining) beer for centuries.

Of course of oil refineries, petrochemical plants, chemical plants, natural gas processing plants and other industrial sources have their own waste water problems to deal with as well.

I am sure the procedure uses stokes law in some way.
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The problem with ethanol and water is not the potential for water pollution, it is the massive amount of water required to make ethanol. Dozens of towns have rejected ethanol plants because they fear the plant will drain the aquifers where there drinking water comes from.
 
Gill said:
The problem with ethanol and water is not the potential for water pollution, it is the massive amount of water required to make ethanol. Dozens of towns have rejected ethanol plants because they fear the plant will drain the aquifers where there drinking water comes from.
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Buy water from the store or drink gas tainted tap water. What's it going to be?
 
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