OT: Why is Germany so (apparently) stupid to give up nuclear

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 12:27:03 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:56:48 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 9/18/19 6:35 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

The reason for constantly increasing reactor sizes is mainly
political. It is very hard to get a license to build a new reactor, so
for a specific amount of red tape, build as big as possible.

The other is the NIMBY effect, so it is very hard to start a new
nuclear site. In practice, you can only build new reactors on old
nuclear sites, in which a large part of the population work with the
old reactors.

There has been a lot of plans building small modular reactors.
However, the only standardized built I know of is the two KLT-40S
nuclear icebreaker reactors  built on the Akademik Lomonosov barge.
The barge was just recently towed to Pevek in Northern Siberia and
should start to generate power and district heat for the local
community at the end of this year.

Folks whose other alternative is freezing in the dark (in a Siberian
Arctic winter, no less) tend to be more realistic about these things.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


there's no money in fission power generation and never was without heavy
government support and subsidization (like a bunch of other industries
you could mention.)

As a free-market enterprise where it didn't have the luxury of shoving
most its liabilities onto other people trying to stand on its own merits
it falls down bad.

So would solar.

"The federal solar tax credit, also known as the investment tax credit (ITC), allows you to deduct 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system from your federal taxes. The ITC applies to both residential and commercial systems, and there is no cap on its value"

That's just the fed subsidy here, some states are also subsidizing it
on top of that. And in virtually all states, consumers of electricity
are subsidizing it because solar homes and businesses are either zero
users of grid electricity or near zero, so they are not paying for the
huge costs of the infrastructure. Half my electric bill is for that.
So, if you have a $150 a month electric bill, $75 is going to support
the grid, without which your neighbor who is paying zero, would have
no power at night, nor any way to put his excess power into the grid
for profit. Put that $75 charge onto the solar house and suddenly
the solar miracle doesn't look the same.

Try to learn the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction, because apparently you don't know.
And the tax credits are a scam. The credit is for the installer, not you. You get the credit, sure, but all they're doing is returning the extra money the installer charged you. That would be extra in the sense of being above and beyond what they would have accepted if there was no credit. Your net savings is zero.

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 12:27:03 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:56:48 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 9/18/19 6:35 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

The reason for constantly increasing reactor sizes is mainly
political. It is very hard to get a license to build a new reactor, so
for a specific amount of red tape, build as big as possible.

The other is the NIMBY effect, so it is very hard to start a new
nuclear site. In practice, you can only build new reactors on old
nuclear sites, in which a large part of the population work with the
old reactors.

There has been a lot of plans building small modular reactors.
However, the only standardized built I know of is the two KLT-40S
nuclear icebreaker reactors  built on the Akademik Lomonosov barge.
The barge was just recently towed to Pevek in Northern Siberia and
should start to generate power and district heat for the local
community at the end of this year.

Folks whose other alternative is freezing in the dark (in a Siberian
Arctic winter, no less) tend to be more realistic about these things.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


there's no money in fission power generation and never was without heavy
government support and subsidization (like a bunch of other industries
you could mention.)

As a free-market enterprise where it didn't have the luxury of shoving
most its liabilities onto other people trying to stand on its own merits
it falls down bad.

So would solar.

"The federal solar tax credit, also known as the investment tax credit (ITC), allows you to deduct 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system from your federal taxes. The ITC applies to both residential and commercial systems, and there is no cap on its value"

That's just the fed subsidy here, some states are also subsidizing it
on top of that. And in virtually all states, consumers of electricity
are subsidizing it because solar homes and businesses are either zero
users of grid electricity or near zero, so they are not paying for the
huge costs of the infrastructure. Half my electric bill is for that.
So, if you have a $150 a month electric bill, $75 is going to support
the grid, without which your neighbor who is paying zero, would have
no power at night, nor any way to put his excess power into the grid
for profit. Put that $75 charge onto the solar house and suddenly
the solar miracle doesn't look the same.

Yes, that is not uncommon for technologies that need a few years of assistance to ramp up production to lower the cost to a usable figure. The nuclear industry had it's day in the subsidy sunlight as has the petroleum industry, yet we still subsidize. So why all the outcry about subsidizing an energy technology that in a very few years will be walking on it's own two legs? Why no outrage of subsidies to the petroleum industry which makes record profits? What we should be doing there is not allowing all the mergers that happened over the last decade or so. The petroleum industry is one where the practical economics is well served with 10 or 20 major petroleum companies. The petroleum industry wants to coalesce into just two or three at most. If they thought it would be allowed they would merge into one company! It's not like the airlines where competition is fierce and smaller airlines get edged out in legal ways. Or the cell networks where being a little bit smaller makes it harder to provide all essential coverage.

I would like to see solar subsidized for another decade in decreasing amounts. It needs to be tapered off with adequate notice so it can be used with confidence. There are places where the utilities have gotten the state legislature to reverse the laws requiring them to buy residential solar energy at the same price as they sell to residences. Such an abrupt cut off creates FUD and prevents others from investing, which was the entire point of the program in the first place.

--

Rick C.

--- Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 19 Sep 2019 09:26:54 -0700 (PDT), Whoey Louie
<trader4@optonline.net> wrote:

On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:56:48 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 9/18/19 6:35 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

The reason for constantly increasing reactor sizes is mainly
political. It is very hard to get a license to build a new reactor, so
for a specific amount of red tape, build as big as possible.

The other is the NIMBY effect, so it is very hard to start a new
nuclear site. In practice, you can only build new reactors on old
nuclear sites, in which a large part of the population work with the
old reactors.

There has been a lot of plans building small modular reactors.
However, the only standardized built I know of is the two KLT-40S
nuclear icebreaker reactors  built on the Akademik Lomonosov barge.
The barge was just recently towed to Pevek in Northern Siberia and
should start to generate power and district heat for the local
community at the end of this year.

Folks whose other alternative is freezing in the dark (in a Siberian
Arctic winter, no less) tend to be more realistic about these things.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


there's no money in fission power generation and never was without heavy
government support and subsidization (like a bunch of other industries
you could mention.)

As a free-market enterprise where it didn't have the luxury of shoving
most its liabilities onto other people trying to stand on its own merits
it falls down bad.

So would solar.

"The federal solar tax credit, also known as the investment tax credit (ITC), allows you to deduct 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system from your federal taxes. The ITC applies to both residential and commercial systems, and there is no cap on its value"

That's just the fed subsidy here, some states are also subsidizing it
on top of that. And in virtually all states, consumers of electricity
are subsidizing it because solar homes and businesses are either zero
users of grid electricity or near zero, so they are not paying for the
huge costs of the infrastructure. Half my electric bill is for that.
So, if you have a $150 a month electric bill, $75 is going to support
the grid, without which your neighbor who is paying zero, would have
no power at night, nor any way to put his excess power into the grid
for profit. Put that $75 charge onto the solar house and suddenly
the solar miracle doesn't look the same.

Simple solution: disconnect the solar users from the grid.

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 1:27:48 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 12:27:03 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:56:48 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 9/18/19 6:35 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

The reason for constantly increasing reactor sizes is mainly
political. It is very hard to get a license to build a new reactor, so
for a specific amount of red tape, build as big as possible.

The other is the NIMBY effect, so it is very hard to start a new
nuclear site. In practice, you can only build new reactors on old
nuclear sites, in which a large part of the population work with the
old reactors.

There has been a lot of plans building small modular reactors.
However, the only standardized built I know of is the two KLT-40S
nuclear icebreaker reactors  built on the Akademik Lomonosov barge.
The barge was just recently towed to Pevek in Northern Siberia and
should start to generate power and district heat for the local
community at the end of this year.

Folks whose other alternative is freezing in the dark (in a Siberian
Arctic winter, no less) tend to be more realistic about these things.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


there's no money in fission power generation and never was without heavy
government support and subsidization (like a bunch of other industries
you could mention.)

As a free-market enterprise where it didn't have the luxury of shoving
most its liabilities onto other people trying to stand on its own merits
it falls down bad.

So would solar.

"The federal solar tax credit, also known as the investment tax credit (ITC), allows you to deduct 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system from your federal taxes. The ITC applies to both residential and commercial systems, and there is no cap on its value"

That's just the fed subsidy here, some states are also subsidizing it
on top of that. And in virtually all states, consumers of electricity
are subsidizing it because solar homes and businesses are either zero
users of grid electricity or near zero, so they are not paying for the
huge costs of the infrastructure. Half my electric bill is for that.
So, if you have a $150 a month electric bill, $75 is going to support
the grid, without which your neighbor who is paying zero, would have
no power at night, nor any way to put his excess power into the grid
for profit. Put that $75 charge onto the solar house and suddenly
the solar miracle doesn't look the same.

Yes, that is not uncommon for technologies that need a few years of assistance to ramp up production to lower the cost to a usable figure. The nuclear industry had it's day in the subsidy sunlight as has the petroleum industry, yet we still subsidize. So why all the outcry about subsidizing an energy technology that in a very few years will be walking on it's own two legs? Why no outrage of subsidies to the petroleum industry which makes record profits?

Because they aren't really "subsidies" would be a good place to start:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/drillinginfo/2016/02/22/debunking-myths-about-federal-oil-gas-subsidies/#605347c66e1c

For example:

Master Limited Partnerships ($3.9 billion “subsidy”) – Ending the MLP “subsidy” would result in MLP’s being considered corporations that must be taxed before their distributions are passed along to shareholders. Therefore, any MLP income would be taxed at the corporate level and then again at the dividend level.

You'd have to be a real loon to consider that a subsidy. The income from
the oil well is still being taxed, it's taxed as income to the owners
in the partnership. It's basically the same thing as a Sub S corporation.
Is the govt "subsidizing" the local hardware store, car dealer, supermarket
too? Many of those are run as Sub S, where the income is not taxed at
the corporate level, it shows up on the owners income tax returns as
income to them and they pay the tax.

"Intangible Drilling Costs ($3.5 billion “subsidy” – low estimate is $780 million) - Intangible Drilling Costs are essentially the cost of drilling a new well that have no salvageable value. Currently, most exploration companies are allowed to deduct 100% of the costs in the year they are incurred with the majors able to deduct 70% of the costs immediately with the remaining 30% amortized over 5 years. "


What's so unreasonable about being allowed to expense immediately certain
expenses or with the majors expense them over 5 years? How is writing
off an actual expense against income a "subsidy"? It's nothing like
the solar subsidy, where you don't have any profits, you just get
to deduct 30% of the cost straight off your income tax. That's nothing
like the above oil examples.











> What we should be doing there is not allowing all the mergers that happened over the last decade or so. The petroleum industry is one where the practical economics is well served with 10 or 20 major petroleum companies.

And who picked that magic number? What evidence do you have that
there isn't enough competition? Why can't libs leave things that work
alone?


The petroleum industry wants to coalesce into just two or three at most. If they thought it would be allowed they would merge into one company!

And you know this how? Fly on the wall? But just for arguments sake,
the cell phone business is down to about three. How about the the
OS market? MSFT dominates, lump in Android, Linux? It's three.
That busted, not working?

> It's not like the airlines where competition is fierce and smaller airlines get edged out in legal ways. Or the cell networks where being a little bit smaller makes it harder to provide all essential coverage.

It's in fact exactly like those markets, competition is working, leave
them alone.

I would like to see solar subsidized for another decade in decreasing amounts. It needs to be tapered off with adequate notice so it can be used with confidence. There are places where the utilities have gotten the state legislature to reverse the laws requiring them to buy residential solar energy at the same price as they sell to residences. Such an abrupt cut off creates FUD and prevents others from investing, which was the entire point of the program in the first place.

How about we start making solar customers pay their fair share of the
cost of the grid? Like half the amount of their neighbor's bill?
I'd expect you libs would be outraged, it's unfair to the poor, unfair
to minorities. They can't afford to put in a $20K solar system, but
they are paying $75 a month to give the rich yuppies with that solar
system a free ride. There's a real subsidy for you.

--

Rick C.

--- Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 5:58:05 AM UTC-7, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 12:04:21 AM UTC-4, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

In the future the builders and regulators start learning the habits of
each other, thus the price of new reactors is going to drop...

Total speculation based on BS. "learning the habits" That is too rich. The same paperwork will be filed. The same safety systems will be required.

Why would that be? Technology CHANGES, why do we have fossilized
forms to fill out? You've never in your life been constrained to do things
the same way your grandfather did. What 'safety systems' of today
match those of fifty years ago?

> The same billions of dollars will have to be spent to build a full size reactor.

Technology changes, as do 'full size' scales. Costs aren't fixed-in-stone by our
grandfathers.

>That's why they want to increase the size of new facilities, so the various fixed costs can be amortized over more kWh.

Unclear. Large factories (millworks) gave way to (usually) smaller shops when steam
and line shafts were replaced by small electric motors..

When line losses are considered, multiple small generating facilities seems a more economic
solution. NIMBY issues aside, that is.

 

This is to everybody but you got the reply because you were last.

The US averages like 37ÂşN, Germany 51ÂşN. We have areas in this country where solar isn't worth a shit, in fact even satellite.

But Germany's government is extremely leftist and most leftists do not think out the consequences of their (knee jerk) reactions. They are talking about building a whole lotta stuff, and that is going to drive energy costs up.. But let them, that will turn the state conservative as they find that this bullshit does not work.

Nuclear is the best tradeoff with viability and not polluting. Going solar is wonderful but it takes alot of land, that is something they don't really have.

When the new tech has advanced enough then switch, but don't force it now. not yet.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, September 20, 2019 at 2:31:08 AM UTC+10, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 10:02:21 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 1:33:08 AM UTC+10, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Tuesday, September 17, 2019 at 10:55:19 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 17/09/2019 15:40, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

<snip>

Trder4's nuclear trade association lists fifty as "under construction". The examples in the US and the UK all seem to be way behind schedule and way over budget, and likely to be cancelled, but that's not the kind of information a trade association puts out.

Wow, you finally figured out how to use google yourself, eh?

The point was always to find out where you were getting your information.

You never revealed that, but eventually it became obvious what you were working from.

> Thanks for confirming for all that what I posted, that there were over 50 nukes under construction, was correct.

A nuclear industry trade publication claims that there are fifty-odd nuclear reactors under construction. They aren't all power stations.

It's your OPINION that because some are behind schedule, they will be
cancelled.

It does seem likely, and has happened before. Your source ignores the possibility that this might happen.

> Of course if it was some lib govt project, which are ALWAYS behind schedule and over cost, why then there would be no such issue there of course.

Which "lib govt project" do you have in mind?

This is a rhetorical question. We all know that you are a right-wing propaganda shill, who won't reveal his sources because that would make it obvious how unreliable they were.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 4:59:13 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 1:27:48 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 12:27:03 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:56:48 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 9/18/19 6:35 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

The reason for constantly increasing reactor sizes is mainly
political. It is very hard to get a license to build a new reactor, so
for a specific amount of red tape, build as big as possible.

The other is the NIMBY effect, so it is very hard to start a new
nuclear site. In practice, you can only build new reactors on old
nuclear sites, in which a large part of the population work with the
old reactors.

There has been a lot of plans building small modular reactors.
However, the only standardized built I know of is the two KLT-40S
nuclear icebreaker reactors  built on the Akademik Lomonosov barge.
The barge was just recently towed to Pevek in Northern Siberia and
should start to generate power and district heat for the local
community at the end of this year.

Folks whose other alternative is freezing in the dark (in a Siberian
Arctic winter, no less) tend to be more realistic about these things.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


there's no money in fission power generation and never was without heavy
government support and subsidization (like a bunch of other industries
you could mention.)

As a free-market enterprise where it didn't have the luxury of shoving
most its liabilities onto other people trying to stand on its own merits
it falls down bad.

So would solar.

"The federal solar tax credit, also known as the investment tax credit (ITC), allows you to deduct 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system from your federal taxes. The ITC applies to both residential and commercial systems, and there is no cap on its value"

That's just the fed subsidy here, some states are also subsidizing it
on top of that. And in virtually all states, consumers of electricity
are subsidizing it because solar homes and businesses are either zero
users of grid electricity or near zero, so they are not paying for the
huge costs of the infrastructure. Half my electric bill is for that.
So, if you have a $150 a month electric bill, $75 is going to support
the grid, without which your neighbor who is paying zero, would have
no power at night, nor any way to put his excess power into the grid
for profit. Put that $75 charge onto the solar house and suddenly
the solar miracle doesn't look the same.

Yes, that is not uncommon for technologies that need a few years of assistance to ramp up production to lower the cost to a usable figure. The nuclear industry had it's day in the subsidy sunlight as has the petroleum industry, yet we still subsidize. So why all the outcry about subsidizing an energy technology that in a very few years will be walking on it's own two legs? Why no outrage of subsidies to the petroleum industry which makes record profits?

Because they aren't really "subsidies" would be a good place to start:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/drillinginfo/2016/02/22/debunking-myths-about-federal-oil-gas-subsidies/#605347c66e1c

For example:

Master Limited Partnerships ($3.9 billion “subsidy”) – Ending the MLP “subsidy” would result in MLP’s being considered corporations that must be taxed before their distributions are passed along to shareholders. Therefore, any MLP income would be taxed at the corporate level and then again at the dividend level.

You'd have to be a real loon to consider that a subsidy. The income from
the oil well is still being taxed, it's taxed as income to the owners
in the partnership. It's basically the same thing as a Sub S corporation..
Is the govt "subsidizing" the local hardware store, car dealer, supermarket
too? Many of those are run as Sub S, where the income is not taxed at
the corporate level, it shows up on the owners income tax returns as
income to them and they pay the tax.

"Intangible Drilling Costs ($3.5 billion “subsidy” – low estimate is $780 million) - Intangible Drilling Costs are essentially the cost of drilling a new well that have no salvageable value. Currently, most exploration companies are allowed to deduct 100% of the costs in the year they are incurred with the majors able to deduct 70% of the costs immediately with the remaining 30% amortized over 5 years. "


What's so unreasonable about being allowed to expense immediately certain
expenses or with the majors expense them over 5 years? How is writing
off an actual expense against income a "subsidy"? It's nothing like
the solar subsidy, where you don't have any profits, you just get
to deduct 30% of the cost straight off your income tax. That's nothing
like the above oil examples.

Explain to me how the cost of a well with no value is any different from any other well? Yes, business expenses are deductible and there should be no need for special deductions, right?

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/10/6/16428458/us-energy-coal-oil-subsidies

This should be enough info even for you to understand.

What we should be doing there is not allowing all the mergers that happened over the last decade or so. The petroleum industry is one where the practical economics is well served with 10 or 20 major petroleum companies.

And who picked that magic number? What evidence do you have that
there isn't enough competition? Why can't libs leave things that work
alone?

Uh, it isn't a number, it's a range. The issue is why can't the oil industry leave things alone? Why do they have to merge over and over until there are only a handful of companies? The answer is because the fewer the number, the less competition there is.

Part of your problem is that you can't actually think without applying inappropriate labels. What does "lib" have to do with the soundness of an idea.. As long as you think in terms of "lib" ideas and whatever else there is, you aren't looking at the ideas themselves.

The petroleum industry wants to coalesce into just two or three at most.. If they thought it would be allowed they would merge into one company!

And you know this how? Fly on the wall? But just for arguments sake,
the cell phone business is down to about three. How about the the
OS market? MSFT dominates, lump in Android, Linux? It's three.
That busted, not working?

The government tried to bust up Microsoft, but they weren't good enough to fight Gate's lawyers. They even tried to unbundle internet explorer, but the lawyers convinced the judge it would wreck the OS. lol

BTW, Android isn't a desktop OS.

It's not like the airlines where competition is fierce and smaller airlines get edged out in legal ways. Or the cell networks where being a little bit smaller makes it harder to provide all essential coverage.

It's in fact exactly like those markets, competition is working, leave
them alone.

Again, you miss the mark. There are many markets where airline mergers have resulted in two or three carriers are now one and prices have jumped significantly. This is well documented if you want to learn about it.

I would like to see solar subsidized for another decade in decreasing amounts. It needs to be tapered off with adequate notice so it can be used with confidence. There are places where the utilities have gotten the state legislature to reverse the laws requiring them to buy residential solar energy at the same price as they sell to residences. Such an abrupt cut off creates FUD and prevents others from investing, which was the entire point of the program in the first place.


How about we start making solar customers pay their fair share of the
cost of the grid? Like half the amount of their neighbor's bill?
I'd expect you libs would be outraged, it's unfair to the poor, unfair
to minorities. They can't afford to put in a $20K solar system, but
they are paying $75 a month to give the rich yuppies with that solar
system a free ride. There's a real subsidy for you.

So you want the non-solar customers to be subsidized by the solar customers? Here I thought you were about fairness.

Everyone pays for the grid if they use it. The greater grid is charged as "transmission" on your bill. The local grid is billed as "distribution". I don't know of any states that allow a residential supplier to be paid for their electricity. They can be credited against future use. Again, this is about getting an industry jump started. In a few more years there won't be any more subsidies on EVs or residential solar. Then what will you find to complain about?

 

What 'safety systems' of today
match those of fifty years ago?

None. They had common sense. Don't drive into things, keep your hands away from that saw blade when it is turning, keep one hand in your pocket when messing with electricity, bob your hair if it is long when working with heavy machinery like lathes etc.

I would never let anyone use my machines unless they are at least 50 years old. That includes guns. I have refused the kid because I did not believe he was mature enough for a gun. Told him that he was likely to get into more trouble with it and solve nothing, and of course possibly wreck his life.

But the Germans were experts with machines, really. Better than us actually.. More productive with better precision, and this has been true for quite some time. There is a REASON they came so close to taking over half of Europe.

He was a boon to Germany, and responsible for Wolksvagon. I wonder how much he and Ford picked each other's brains, they were pen pals and had quite a bit of mutual respect. They were doing about the same thing - making cars people could afford.

But he got out of hand. He got too much against the Jews, in fact it took him a while to get the people up to it even though they had been the ones fucked. I would have regulated them. That is what Putin does. Seems to be working, Russia is in great shape now. The media might say otherwise but look it up for yourself and see the numbers. And when they lie, they usually lie against him, not for him.

Like Pussy Riot, what hapened to them ? Some locality where they caused trouble at the entrance to an Olympic event and then Putin said he thought the sentence was a bit too harsh. They didn't disappear. All this about his enemies disappearing, well if Pussy Riot ain't one then there are none. They are still there.

I hear from people over that side of the pond that even though their government is liberal, a hell of alot of them are not. And look at Brexit, the supposedly liberal, progressiv Brits voted that they are sick of the interference, and the immigration policies of the EU and want their sovereignty back. Some will not understand that but I do. they want to rule themselves and not have some foreigners telling them what to do about immigration or anything else. AND IT PASSED. What does that tell you ?

I know what Slowman would say here and really wish he would choke on a peanut, or a big dick. Globalist socialists are my enemy. I want my guns. I want my three acre yard where I have enough room to have a party even though many of my friends hate each other. Well not really hate but... And I want to earn the money for all this, not have it given to me. I want the freedom to use the Nword without going to jail, if I get busted I want my day in court. I will never again take a plea bargain unless they get me drunk driving, then that is really your best option. But anything else I will stand for myself in court. If they come and decide to search the house for whatever I want the right to say - got a warrant ? They want permission, no. Wake the judge up, umm, (taking out my wallet) Spanagel's number is, fluff trough all the shit in my wallet and say " was right here, must be in the house, want me to get it for you ? (Spanagel is a judge in this town)

So as nice as Germany is, I doubt I would like to spend much time there. Like retire or anything. There are much better countries suited to me. At one time I might have considered it but they have too conservative of a government.

 

[Robert Baer]

Jeroen Belleman wrote:

John Doe wrote:
I keep wondering why Germany is being misled into giving up nuclear
power. Something is wrong, that's obvious. Not saying it portends
something else, but it could.

[...]

At the time, the world, Germany included, was well underway to
re-embrace nuclear power, to reduce CO2 emission and all that.

And then Fukushima happened.

Jeroen Belleman

....and the CO2 emission problem DID NOT CHANGE; ditto regarding GW.
Hell, even Santa did not change his protocol...
Ditto regarding our favorite ball players.
Ditto regarding astronomers.
Or the weather reporters.
Or the way circuit boards are designed and made.
GET IT?
Not related.

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 8:33:19 PM UTC-4, Robert Baer wrote:

Jeroen Belleman wrote:
John Doe wrote:
I keep wondering why Germany is being misled into giving up nuclear
power. Something is wrong, that's obvious. Not saying it portends
something else, but it could.

[...]

At the time, the world, Germany included, was well underway to
re-embrace nuclear power, to reduce CO2 emission and all that.

And then Fukushima happened.

Jeroen Belleman
...and the CO2 emission problem DID NOT CHANGE; ditto regarding GW.
Hell, even Santa did not change his protocol...
Ditto regarding our favorite ball players.
Ditto regarding astronomers.
Or the weather reporters.
Or the way circuit boards are designed and made.
GET IT?
Not related.

We get some of the strangest posts from otherwise normal sounding people.

What's up with that?

--

Rick C.

-+- Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, September 20, 2019 at 10:52:50 AM UTC+10, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 8:33:19 PM UTC-4, Robert Baer wrote:
Jeroen Belleman wrote:
John Doe wrote:
I keep wondering why Germany is being misled into giving up nuclear
power. Something is wrong, that's obvious. Not saying it portends
something else, but it could.

[...]

At the time, the world, Germany included, was well underway to
re-embrace nuclear power, to reduce CO2 emission and all that.

And then Fukushima happened.

Jeroen Belleman
...and the CO2 emission problem DID NOT CHANGE; ditto regarding GW.
Hell, even Santa did not change his protocol...
Ditto regarding our favorite ball players.
Ditto regarding astronomers.
Or the weather reporters.
Or the way circuit boards are designed and made.
GET IT?
Not related.

We get some of the strangest posts from otherwise normal sounding people.

What's up with that?

Robert Baer is a baer of very little brain. He rarely sounds normal.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, September 20, 2019 at 9:38:49 AM UTC+10, John Robertson wrote:

On 2019/09/18 8:38 p.m., Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 12:49:02 PM UTC+10, John Robertson wrote:
On 2019/09/18 7:10 p.m., Bill Sloman wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 2:10:41 AM UTC+10, John Robertson wrote:
On 2019/09/17 9:06 p.m., Bill Sloman wrote:
On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 4:05:08 AM UTC+10, John Robertson wrote:
On 2019/09/17 9:42 a.m., bitrex wrote:
On 9/17/19 12:25 PM, bulegoge@columbus.rr.com wrote:

Anti-green propaganda doesn't seem to need to be plausible or credible to drag in gullible suckers. The depressing thing about youtube is that it's offering don't have provenance.


I don't mind most Greens, as various forms of pollution are a serious
problem, micro-plastics as an example of a contentious issue that is
being researched. And many environmental issues are critical - do
managed forests burn more or less than untended forests, etc.

It is simply when they stop debating and start preaching that my hackles
go up. Like the video link I posted above from around 2010.

Science is supposed to be about falsifiable proofs. Yet when some
scientists call into question the premise that weather is worse now than
in the past and have the audacity to use the government meteorological
(NOAA) own statistics, instead of other scientists proving them wrong,
they simply raise the equivalent of religious edicts and fatwas against
the infidels.

When 290 of the top 300 climate scientist think that the evidence for anthropogenic global warming is persuasive, and the remaining ten contain at least two born again Christians (John Christy and Roy Spencer) a more rational observer would draw a different conclusion.

Please cite where you found this information about the 290 of 300
climate scientists.

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107?sid=aaba9166-d154-4b4a-93e1-c768efca61a5

It's famous, and I posted a link to here when it first came out.

Debate and evidence are what is important, not feelings, suppositions,
and claims of the moral high ground from the apparent climate religious
fanatics.

I wouldn't call John Christy or Roy Spencer religious fanatics,but they were clearly happier with evidence that lined up with their religious convictions, and took quite a lot of persuasion before they got around to recognising the sloppy corrections that had created the "evidence".


Again, please cite where you got this information.

Oops. It was John Christy and Roy Spencer.

Spencer and Christy both have Wikipedia pages which go into the satellite controvesy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Christy

"Part of the discrepancy between the surface and atmospheric trends was resolved over a period of several years as Christy, Spencer and others identified several factors, including orbital drift and decay, that caused a net cooling bias in the data collected by the satellite instruments.[5][6] Since the data correction of August 1998 (and the major La NiĂąa Pacific Ocean warming event of the same year), data collected by satellite instruments has shown an average global warming trend in the atmosphere."

This is a form of words which ignores the fact that Christy and Spencer were very slow to recognise the effects of orbital drift and decay, and the "others" had to demonstrate exactly what was going on before Christy and Spencer would correct their data.

It was a famous scandal at the time.

https://skepticalscience.com/uah-misrepresentation-anniversary-part1.html

I wouldn't call them religious fanatics either. The fanatics (in many
cases) appear to primarily be on the climate disaster side.

That's a very dubious claim. Where's your evidence? I didn't have any trouble digging out mine.

I notice that you did not have an argument with my point that science
needs to be falsifiable - and that people who propose theories must also
include ways to acceptably disprove the theory.

Who would? It's central to the way science works - though Popper's "falsifiability" isn't actually the way it works.

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo19722848.html

Polanyi's "personal knowledge" got published in 1958, and my father bought a copy at the time. I read it as an undergraduate.

There is a theory that storms have increased in intensity in the recent
past. However if you take weather back to the mid-1800s you discover
that the trend is essentially flat for storm intensity. Does that not
disprove the theory?

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

Actually, it doesn't. There haven't been enough extra "more intense" storms to establish a statistically significant trend, which reflect that fact that half the global warming we've seem so far has happened since 1980, and there aren't that many hurricanes per year.

So, according to you: "There haven't been enough extra "more intense"
storms to establish a statistically significant trend". Or in other
words, there is no smoking gun, just a theory that has yet to be proved.

It certainly hasn't been falsified.

"Essentially flat" fits the increase we've seen. It certainly doesn't invalidate that particular prediction, even if it doesn't provide statistically significant support for it.

Really, when there are supposed scientists who are claiming that the
storms we are seeing recently are both wetter and stronger because of
climate change, but have no statistics to back them up?

The claim isn't based on statistics, but rather on an understanding of how hurricanes work. You need an area of ocean more the three degrees away from the equator to be warmer than 26C down to fifty meters ion order to spawn a hurricane.

The way it works is that bigger areas spawn more intense hurricanes (which proceed to drain that stock of stored energy) rather than spawning more of them.

Statistical confirmation of this point of view would be nice, but needs more particularly destructive hurricanes than we've had so far.

There's more to science than the blind application of statistics.

Not if you want people to accept that you have proved something.

Very few scientific discoveries are dependent on statistical evidence for acceptance, Consilience tends to be much more persuasive.

This is a point I've made here before in discussion with you. Is your memory failing? Or are you hoping that mine is?


No, you say that statistical proofs don't matter as proof in the science
of climate, and I say they do.

That's not what I said. They are a usual form of evidence, but by no means the only form of evidence.

And you seem to be claiming that a real and visible effect which hasn't manifested itself quite often enough to pass tests for statistical significance should be ignored, even when it knocks down most of the building on an island in the hurricane belt for the first time ever.

We will have to agree to disagree, as I
accept that you can't prove your position, and I can't prove a negative.

You want to think that I can't prove my position, and your idea of what might constitute negative proof is a trifle bizarre - to the point of being totally irrational.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 8:22:45 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 4:59:13 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 1:27:48 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 12:27:03 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:56:48 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 9/18/19 6:35 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

The reason for constantly increasing reactor sizes is mainly
political. It is very hard to get a license to build a new reactor, so
for a specific amount of red tape, build as big as possible.

The other is the NIMBY effect, so it is very hard to start a new
nuclear site. In practice, you can only build new reactors on old
nuclear sites, in which a large part of the population work with the
old reactors.

There has been a lot of plans building small modular reactors.
However, the only standardized built I know of is the two KLT-40S
nuclear icebreaker reactors  built on the Akademik Lomonosov barge.
The barge was just recently towed to Pevek in Northern Siberia and
should start to generate power and district heat for the local
community at the end of this year.

Folks whose other alternative is freezing in the dark (in a Siberian
Arctic winter, no less) tend to be more realistic about these things.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


there's no money in fission power generation and never was without heavy
government support and subsidization (like a bunch of other industries
you could mention.)

As a free-market enterprise where it didn't have the luxury of shoving
most its liabilities onto other people trying to stand on its own merits
it falls down bad.

So would solar.

"The federal solar tax credit, also known as the investment tax credit (ITC), allows you to deduct 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system from your federal taxes. The ITC applies to both residential and commercial systems, and there is no cap on its value"

That's just the fed subsidy here, some states are also subsidizing it
on top of that. And in virtually all states, consumers of electricity
are subsidizing it because solar homes and businesses are either zero
users of grid electricity or near zero, so they are not paying for the
huge costs of the infrastructure. Half my electric bill is for that.
So, if you have a $150 a month electric bill, $75 is going to support
the grid, without which your neighbor who is paying zero, would have
no power at night, nor any way to put his excess power into the grid
for profit. Put that $75 charge onto the solar house and suddenly
the solar miracle doesn't look the same.

Yes, that is not uncommon for technologies that need a few years of assistance to ramp up production to lower the cost to a usable figure. The nuclear industry had it's day in the subsidy sunlight as has the petroleum industry, yet we still subsidize. So why all the outcry about subsidizing an energy technology that in a very few years will be walking on it's own two legs? Why no outrage of subsidies to the petroleum industry which makes record profits?

Because they aren't really "subsidies" would be a good place to start:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/drillinginfo/2016/02/22/debunking-myths-about-federal-oil-gas-subsidies/#605347c66e1c

For example:

Master Limited Partnerships ($3.9 billion “subsidy”) – Ending the MLP “subsidy” would result in MLP’s being considered corporations that must be taxed before their distributions are passed along to shareholders. Therefore, any MLP income would be taxed at the corporate level and then again at the dividend level.

You'd have to be a real loon to consider that a subsidy. The income from
the oil well is still being taxed, it's taxed as income to the owners
in the partnership. It's basically the same thing as a Sub S corporation.
Is the govt "subsidizing" the local hardware store, car dealer, supermarket
too? Many of those are run as Sub S, where the income is not taxed at
the corporate level, it shows up on the owners income tax returns as
income to them and they pay the tax.

"Intangible Drilling Costs ($3.5 billion “subsidy” – low estimate is $780 million) - Intangible Drilling Costs are essentially the cost of drilling a new well that have no salvageable value. Currently, most exploration companies are allowed to deduct 100% of the costs in the year they are incurred with the majors able to deduct 70% of the costs immediately with the remaining 30% amortized over 5 years. "


What's so unreasonable about being allowed to expense immediately certain
expenses or with the majors expense them over 5 years? How is writing
off an actual expense against income a "subsidy"? It's nothing like
the solar subsidy, where you don't have any profits, you just get
to deduct 30% of the cost straight off your income tax. That's nothing
like the above oil examples.

Explain to me how the cost of a well with no value is any different from any other well? Yes, business expenses are deductible and there should be no need for special deductions, right?

The intangible deduction applies to either well. It's just allowing the
expense to deducted in the current year or over 5 years, instead of
capitalized over the life of the well.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/10/6/16428458/us-energy-coal-oil-subsidies

This should be enough info even for you to understand.

ROFL. Great objective source. Except you can smell the shit from
the very opening:


For one thing, it leaves out the annual $14.5 billion in consumption subsidies — things like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps lower-income residents pay their (fuel oil) heating bills. (There are better ways to help poor people, but let’s leave that aside for now.)


What kind of asshole does it take to come up with that nonsense?
That energy assistance for the poor somehow could be equated to subsidizing
coal and oil companies?





"Most significantly, OCI’s analysis leaves out indirect subsidies — things like the money the US military spends to protect oil shipping routes, or the unpaid costs of health and climate impacts from burning fossil fuels."


More silly lib nonsense. Like they want to kiss their asses for being so
fair, they didn't add the cost of the US military in as a subsidy.

ROFL! ROFFL!


Then finally they get down to what they do consider "subsidies"
and right on the list is what I already explained to you, BS like
claiming that because master partnerships pass the income through to
the partnership OWNERS who then pay the taxes on it, it's a "subsidy".
By that definition then the local supermarket chain, car dealer, hardware
store are "subsidized" too because they are Sub S corps and treated the
same way. But you libs wouldn't understand that, because you know zippo
about running a business, but think you should be able to tell others
what to do and how it works.

What we should be doing there is not allowing all the mergers that happened over the last decade or so. The petroleum industry is one where the practical economics is well served with 10 or 20 major petroleum companies..

And who picked that magic number? What evidence do you have that
there isn't enough competition? Why can't libs leave things that work
alone?

Uh, it isn't a number, it's a range.

Good as anything you've ever pulled out of your ass then, so why should
anyone question it.


>The issue is why can't the oil industry leave things alone? Why do they have to merge over and over until there are only a handful of companies? The answer is because the fewer the number, the less competition there is.

There's more than a handful and there is ZERO evidence there is any
market problem. It's just you whining. Not even your Democrats in
Congress are whining, except some of those fools running for president
that are rabid socialists and think all business is evil.

Part of your problem is that you can't actually think without applying inappropriate labels.

Not inappropriate at all. I see what libs stand for, what libs rant about.
And here you are, proving it.


What does "lib" have to do with the soundness of an idea. As long as you think in terms of "lib" ideas and whatever else there is, you aren't looking at the ideas themselves.
>

I've looked at lib ideas, a lot of lib ideas:

high taxes
big govt
more govt programs
sanctuary cities
sanctuary states
refusal to build a wall to help control illegal alien flow
refusal to amend asylum laws that are flagrantly being abused
supporting illegal aliens over Americans.
obsession with the alleged evils of businesses, especially big businesses
believing that whenever there is an imperfection in any system, govt is the
answer

Did I leave out anything?

The petroleum industry wants to coalesce into just two or three at most. If they thought it would be allowed they would merge into one company!

And you know this how? Fly on the wall? But just for arguments sake,
the cell phone business is down to about three. How about the the
OS market? MSFT dominates, lump in Android, Linux? It's three.
That busted, not working?


The government tried to bust up Microsoft, but they weren't good enough to fight Gate's lawyers. They even tried to unbundle internet explorer, but the lawyers convinced the judge it would wreck the OS. lol

Yes, oh the horrors as a result! How will we ever survive? A PC cost
$3K thirty years ago. Now one that's twenty times better costs $300.
Yes, let's fix that!

BTW, Android isn't a desktop OS.

Who said it was? But it clearly is competing with PCs, which is why
PC sales are declining as people use tablets and smart phones.
Which again shows why there was no need to break up Microsoft.
More fundamentally, under the law, being large and successful is not
a crime. That's another thing with you libs. For some reason you
eschew success and want to reward failure. Why is that?

It's not like the airlines where competition is fierce and smaller airlines get edged out in legal ways. Or the cell networks where being a little bit smaller makes it harder to provide all essential coverage.

It's in fact exactly like those markets, competition is working, leave
them alone.

Again, you miss the mark. There are many markets where airline mergers have resulted in two or three carriers are now one and prices have jumped significantly. This is well documented if you want to learn about it.

Heh snowflake, the world ain't perfect. Butch up. So the airlines are
finally making some money, it's still a very tough business. I suppose
you'd rather it be GM so the govt could bail it out.

I would like to see solar subsidized for another decade in decreasing amounts. It needs to be tapered off with adequate notice so it can be used with confidence. There are places where the utilities have gotten the state legislature to reverse the laws requiring them to buy residential solar energy at the same price as they sell to residences. Such an abrupt cut off creates FUD and prevents others from investing, which was the entire point of the program in the first place.


How about we start making solar customers pay their fair share of the
cost of the grid? Like half the amount of their neighbor's bill?
I'd expect you libs would be outraged, it's unfair to the poor, unfair
to minorities. They can't afford to put in a $20K solar system, but
they are paying $75 a month to give the rich yuppies with that solar
system a free ride. There's a real subsidy for you.

So you want the non-solar customers to be subsidized by the solar customers? Here I thought you were about fairness.

WTF? The people with solar installed are being subsidized by their
neighbors, including their poor, minority neighbors who can't afford
$20K for a solar system. The solar customers need and use the grid,
they would have no power at night and would not be able to sell their
excess energy into the grid, without the grid. Yet they aren't paying
for the grid, because their electric bills are zero or close to it.
Yet the poor family they pay $150 for electric, about $75 of that is
to pay for the grid. If everyone had a zero electric bill, there would
be no grid, capiche?

Everyone pays for the grid if they use it. The greater grid is charged as "transmission" on your bill.

Solar customers have no bill, stupid.



> The local grid is billed as "distribution". I don't know of any states that allow a residential supplier to be paid for their electricity.

Most states,maybe all, do allow it. Why would a state want to disallow it?
That would be stupid, states want more solar, they want to encourage it,
they want more solar going into the grid. And of course it's billed as
distributions, based on your kwh of usage:

Rich yuppie family with $20K solar system:

Bill: 0
Distribution charge for 0 Kwh, $0


Poor family bill: $150 total
Distributions charge ~half, $75
Energy charge $75






ROFL

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 10:28:21 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 8:22:45 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 4:59:13 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 1:27:48 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 12:27:03 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:56:48 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 9/18/19 6:35 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

The reason for constantly increasing reactor sizes is mainly
political. It is very hard to get a license to build a new reactor, so
for a specific amount of red tape, build as big as possible.

The other is the NIMBY effect, so it is very hard to start a new
nuclear site. In practice, you can only build new reactors on old
nuclear sites, in which a large part of the population work with the
old reactors.

There has been a lot of plans building small modular reactors.
However, the only standardized built I know of is the two KLT-40S
nuclear icebreaker reactors  built on the Akademik Lomonosov barge.
The barge was just recently towed to Pevek in Northern Siberia and
should start to generate power and district heat for the local
community at the end of this year.

Folks whose other alternative is freezing in the dark (in a Siberian
Arctic winter, no less) tend to be more realistic about these things.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


there's no money in fission power generation and never was without heavy
government support and subsidization (like a bunch of other industries
you could mention.)

As a free-market enterprise where it didn't have the luxury of shoving
most its liabilities onto other people trying to stand on its own merits
it falls down bad.

So would solar.

"The federal solar tax credit, also known as the investment tax credit (ITC), allows you to deduct 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system from your federal taxes. The ITC applies to both residential and commercial systems, and there is no cap on its value"

That's just the fed subsidy here, some states are also subsidizing it
on top of that. And in virtually all states, consumers of electricity
are subsidizing it because solar homes and businesses are either zero
users of grid electricity or near zero, so they are not paying for the
huge costs of the infrastructure. Half my electric bill is for that.
So, if you have a $150 a month electric bill, $75 is going to support
the grid, without which your neighbor who is paying zero, would have
no power at night, nor any way to put his excess power into the grid
for profit. Put that $75 charge onto the solar house and suddenly
the solar miracle doesn't look the same.

Yes, that is not uncommon for technologies that need a few years of assistance to ramp up production to lower the cost to a usable figure. The nuclear industry had it's day in the subsidy sunlight as has the petroleum industry, yet we still subsidize. So why all the outcry about subsidizing an energy technology that in a very few years will be walking on it's own two legs? Why no outrage of subsidies to the petroleum industry which makes record profits?

Because they aren't really "subsidies" would be a good place to start:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/drillinginfo/2016/02/22/debunking-myths-about-federal-oil-gas-subsidies/#605347c66e1c

For example:

Master Limited Partnerships ($3.9 billion “subsidy”) – Ending the MLP “subsidy” would result in MLP’s being considered corporations that must be taxed before their distributions are passed along to shareholders. Therefore, any MLP income would be taxed at the corporate level and then again at the dividend level.

You'd have to be a real loon to consider that a subsidy. The income from
the oil well is still being taxed, it's taxed as income to the owners
in the partnership. It's basically the same thing as a Sub S corporation.
Is the govt "subsidizing" the local hardware store, car dealer, supermarket
too? Many of those are run as Sub S, where the income is not taxed at
the corporate level, it shows up on the owners income tax returns as
income to them and they pay the tax.

"Intangible Drilling Costs ($3.5 billion “subsidy” – low estimate is $780 million) - Intangible Drilling Costs are essentially the cost of drilling a new well that have no salvageable value. Currently, most exploration companies are allowed to deduct 100% of the costs in the year they are incurred with the majors able to deduct 70% of the costs immediately with the remaining 30% amortized over 5 years. "


What's so unreasonable about being allowed to expense immediately certain
expenses or with the majors expense them over 5 years? How is writing
off an actual expense against income a "subsidy"? It's nothing like
the solar subsidy, where you don't have any profits, you just get
to deduct 30% of the cost straight off your income tax. That's nothing
like the above oil examples.

Explain to me how the cost of a well with no value is any different from any other well? Yes, business expenses are deductible and there should be no need for special deductions, right?

The intangible deduction applies to either well. It's just allowing the
expense to deducted in the current year or over 5 years, instead of
capitalized over the life of the well.






https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/10/6/16428458/us-energy-coal-oil-subsidies

This should be enough info even for you to understand.

ROFL. Great objective source. Except you can smell the shit from
the very opening:


For one thing, it leaves out the annual $14.5 billion in consumption subsidies — things like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps lower-income residents pay their (fuel oil) heating bills. (There are better ways to help poor people, but let’s leave that aside for now.)


What kind of asshole does it take to come up with that nonsense?
That energy assistance for the poor somehow could be equated to subsidizing
coal and oil companies?





"Most significantly, OCI’s analysis leaves out indirect subsidies — things like the money the US military spends to protect oil shipping routes, or the unpaid costs of health and climate impacts from burning fossil fuels."


More silly lib nonsense. Like they want to kiss their asses for being so
fair, they didn't add the cost of the US military in as a subsidy.

ROFL! ROFFL!


Then finally they get down to what they do consider "subsidies"
and right on the list is what I already explained to you, BS like
claiming that because master partnerships pass the income through to
the partnership OWNERS who then pay the taxes on it, it's a "subsidy".
By that definition then the local supermarket chain, car dealer, hardware
store are "subsidized" too because they are Sub S corps and treated the
same way. But you libs wouldn't understand that, because you know zippo
about running a business, but think you should be able to tell others
what to do and how it works.









What we should be doing there is not allowing all the mergers that happened over the last decade or so. The petroleum industry is one where the practical economics is well served with 10 or 20 major petroleum companies.

And who picked that magic number? What evidence do you have that
there isn't enough competition? Why can't libs leave things that work
alone?

Uh, it isn't a number, it's a range.

Good as anything you've ever pulled out of your ass then, so why should
anyone question it.


The issue is why can't the oil industry leave things alone? Why do they have to merge over and over until there are only a handful of companies? The answer is because the fewer the number, the less competition there is.

There's more than a handful and there is ZERO evidence there is any
market problem. It's just you whining. Not even your Democrats in
Congress are whining, except some of those fools running for president
that are rabid socialists and think all business is evil.





Part of your problem is that you can't actually think without applying inappropriate labels.

Not inappropriate at all. I see what libs stand for, what libs rant about.
And here you are, proving it.


What does "lib" have to do with the soundness of an idea. As long as you think in terms of "lib" ideas and whatever else there is, you aren't looking at the ideas themselves.


I've looked at lib ideas, a lot of lib ideas:

high taxes
big govt
more govt programs
sanctuary cities
sanctuary states
refusal to build a wall to help control illegal alien flow
refusal to amend asylum laws that are flagrantly being abused
supporting illegal aliens over Americans.
obsession with the alleged evils of businesses, especially big businesses
believing that whenever there is an imperfection in any system, govt is the
answer

Did I leave out anything?




The petroleum industry wants to coalesce into just two or three at most. If they thought it would be allowed they would merge into one company!

And you know this how? Fly on the wall? But just for arguments sake,
the cell phone business is down to about three. How about the the
OS market? MSFT dominates, lump in Android, Linux? It's three.
That busted, not working?


The government tried to bust up Microsoft, but they weren't good enough to fight Gate's lawyers. They even tried to unbundle internet explorer, but the lawyers convinced the judge it would wreck the OS. lol

Yes, oh the horrors as a result! How will we ever survive? A PC cost
$3K thirty years ago. Now one that's twenty times better costs $300.
Yes, let's fix that!






BTW, Android isn't a desktop OS.

Who said it was? But it clearly is competing with PCs, which is why
PC sales are declining as people use tablets and smart phones.
Which again shows why there was no need to break up Microsoft.
More fundamentally, under the law, being large and successful is not
a crime. That's another thing with you libs. For some reason you
eschew success and want to reward failure. Why is that?






It's not like the airlines where competition is fierce and smaller airlines get edged out in legal ways. Or the cell networks where being a little bit smaller makes it harder to provide all essential coverage.

It's in fact exactly like those markets, competition is working, leave
them alone.

Again, you miss the mark. There are many markets where airline mergers have resulted in two or three carriers are now one and prices have jumped significantly. This is well documented if you want to learn about it.

Heh snowflake, the world ain't perfect. Butch up. So the airlines are
finally making some money, it's still a very tough business. I suppose
you'd rather it be GM so the govt could bail it out.







I would like to see solar subsidized for another decade in decreasing amounts. It needs to be tapered off with adequate notice so it can be used with confidence. There are places where the utilities have gotten the state legislature to reverse the laws requiring them to buy residential solar energy at the same price as they sell to residences. Such an abrupt cut off creates FUD and prevents others from investing, which was the entire point of the program in the first place.


How about we start making solar customers pay their fair share of the
cost of the grid? Like half the amount of their neighbor's bill?
I'd expect you libs would be outraged, it's unfair to the poor, unfair
to minorities. They can't afford to put in a $20K solar system, but
they are paying $75 a month to give the rich yuppies with that solar
system a free ride. There's a real subsidy for you.

So you want the non-solar customers to be subsidized by the solar customers? Here I thought you were about fairness.

WTF? The people with solar installed are being subsidized by their
neighbors, including their poor, minority neighbors who can't afford
$20K for a solar system. The solar customers need and use the grid,
they would have no power at night and would not be able to sell their
excess energy into the grid, without the grid. Yet they aren't paying
for the grid, because their electric bills are zero or close to it.
Yet the poor family they pay $150 for electric, about $75 of that is
to pay for the grid. If everyone had a zero electric bill, there would
be no grid, capiche?






Everyone pays for the grid if they use it. The greater grid is charged as "transmission" on your bill.

Solar customers have no bill, stupid.



The local grid is billed as "distribution". I don't know of any states that allow a residential supplier to be paid for their electricity.

Most states,maybe all, do allow it. Why would a state want to disallow it?

Which ones allow it? I have checked into this and you cant' get paid for generating electricity. At most you get credit on your bill toward future electricity use. Many states limit that either in amount or by duration. Kinda like saving up vacation at work.

That would be stupid, states want more solar, they want to encourage it,
they want more solar going into the grid. And of course it's billed as
distributions, based on your kwh of usage:

"Distributions"? What does that mean?

Electricity bills have Generation, Transmission and Distribution in addition to taxes and possibly other fees. Sometimes Generation and Transmission are lumped together since they are both charges from third parties and not the local utility... at least not always.

Rich yuppie family with $20K solar system:

Bill: 0
Distribution charge for 0 Kwh, $0

Here they have a fixed base amount everyone pays for distribution. So that won't be zero. The rest of the bill should be zero if they are not using any net electricity. Do you pay for things you don't use? One of the taxes is also a fixed fee, so not zero with zero usage.

Poor family bill: $150 total
Distributions charge ~half, $75
Energy charge $75

LOL, so everyone else is "poor"?

> ROFL

ROFL indeed.

Not much point trying to discuss any of this with you. You literally can't see reason or appreciate facts. Everything you look at is through a biased point of view.

So enjoy.

--

Rick C.

-++ Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 4:38:49 PM UTC-7, John Robertson wrote:

Really, when there are supposed scientists who are claiming that the
storms we are seeing recently are both wetter and stronger because of
climate change, but have no statistics to back them up?

What do you mean, 'supposed' scientists? Making a projection based
on theories IS science, of the theoretical type. There's no point in
developing theories from observation if you can't use the theories to
project into unexplored regions (like, the future).

Using theory, like reporting observations, is respectable science.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, September 20, 2019 at 12:50:01 PM UTC+10, whit3rd wrote:

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 4:38:49 PM UTC-7, John Robertson wrote:

Really, when there are supposed scientists who are claiming that the
storms we are seeing recently are both wetter and stronger because of
climate change, but have no statistics to back them up?

What do you mean, 'supposed' scientists? Making a projection based
on theories IS science, of the theoretical type. There's no point in
developing theories from observation if you can't use the theories to
project into unexplored regions (like, the future).

Using theory, like reporting observations, is respectable science.

John Robertson is confusing hurricanes with other extreme weather.

There were a couple of studies reported a couple of years ago that did demonstrate a significant increase4 in extreme weather.

What he's been parading here is a study restricted to hurricanes - which are a particular, rather infrequent, example of extreme weather, where there haven't been enough recently for the increase in intensity to have become statistically significant.

It's the usual denialist shell game, delivered with more moral posturing than usual.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, September 20, 2019 at 11:19:25 AM UTC-7, Whoey Louie wrote:

Electricity bills have Generation, Transmission and Distribution in addition to taxes and possibly other fees. Sometimes Generation and Transmission are lumped together since they are both charges from third parties and not the local utility... at least not always.

IDK where here is, but it's not that way in NJ or most states. Which
is why the fact that solar people aren't paying for distribution is a problem
that some states are starting to address.

Oh, no, there's zero marginal cost to 'distribution'. You have a paying
customer who already pays for distribution, who sometimes runs his 'consumption'
meter backward. The so-called problem is a money grab, pure and simple.

Distant generation capacity costs a lot to distribute to our locality; but widespread
solar on residential rooftops doesn't mean you have to build new long links..

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 10:43:54 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 10:28:21 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 8:22:45 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 4:59:13 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 1:27:48 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 12:27:03 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:
On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 9:56:48 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 9/18/19 6:35 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

The reason for constantly increasing reactor sizes is mainly
political. It is very hard to get a license to build a new reactor, so
for a specific amount of red tape, build as big as possible.

The other is the NIMBY effect, so it is very hard to start a new
nuclear site. In practice, you can only build new reactors on old
nuclear sites, in which a large part of the population work with the
old reactors.

There has been a lot of plans building small modular reactors.
However, the only standardized built I know of is the two KLT-40S
nuclear icebreaker reactors  built on the Akademik Lomonosov barge.
The barge was just recently towed to Pevek in Northern Siberia and
should start to generate power and district heat for the local
community at the end of this year.

Folks whose other alternative is freezing in the dark (in a Siberian
Arctic winter, no less) tend to be more realistic about these things.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


there's no money in fission power generation and never was without heavy
government support and subsidization (like a bunch of other industries
you could mention.)

As a free-market enterprise where it didn't have the luxury of shoving
most its liabilities onto other people trying to stand on its own merits
it falls down bad.

So would solar.

"The federal solar tax credit, also known as the investment tax credit (ITC), allows you to deduct 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system from your federal taxes. The ITC applies to both residential and commercial systems, and there is no cap on its value"

That's just the fed subsidy here, some states are also subsidizing it
on top of that. And in virtually all states, consumers of electricity
are subsidizing it because solar homes and businesses are either zero
users of grid electricity or near zero, so they are not paying for the
huge costs of the infrastructure. Half my electric bill is for that.
So, if you have a $150 a month electric bill, $75 is going to support
the grid, without which your neighbor who is paying zero, would have
no power at night, nor any way to put his excess power into the grid
for profit. Put that $75 charge onto the solar house and suddenly
the solar miracle doesn't look the same.

Yes, that is not uncommon for technologies that need a few years of assistance to ramp up production to lower the cost to a usable figure. The nuclear industry had it's day in the subsidy sunlight as has the petroleum industry, yet we still subsidize. So why all the outcry about subsidizing an energy technology that in a very few years will be walking on it's own two legs? Why no outrage of subsidies to the petroleum industry which makes record profits?

Because they aren't really "subsidies" would be a good place to start:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/drillinginfo/2016/02/22/debunking-myths-about-federal-oil-gas-subsidies/#605347c66e1c

For example:

Master Limited Partnerships ($3.9 billion “subsidy”) – Ending the MLP “subsidy” would result in MLP’s being considered corporations that must be taxed before their distributions are passed along to shareholders. Therefore, any MLP income would be taxed at the corporate level and then again at the dividend level.

You'd have to be a real loon to consider that a subsidy. The income from
the oil well is still being taxed, it's taxed as income to the owners
in the partnership. It's basically the same thing as a Sub S corporation.
Is the govt "subsidizing" the local hardware store, car dealer, supermarket
too? Many of those are run as Sub S, where the income is not taxed at
the corporate level, it shows up on the owners income tax returns as
income to them and they pay the tax.

"Intangible Drilling Costs ($3.5 billion “subsidy” – low estimate is $780 million) - Intangible Drilling Costs are essentially the cost of drilling a new well that have no salvageable value. Currently, most exploration companies are allowed to deduct 100% of the costs in the year they are incurred with the majors able to deduct 70% of the costs immediately with the remaining 30% amortized over 5 years. "


What's so unreasonable about being allowed to expense immediately certain
expenses or with the majors expense them over 5 years? How is writing
off an actual expense against income a "subsidy"? It's nothing like
the solar subsidy, where you don't have any profits, you just get
to deduct 30% of the cost straight off your income tax. That's nothing
like the above oil examples.

Explain to me how the cost of a well with no value is any different from any other well? Yes, business expenses are deductible and there should be no need for special deductions, right?

The intangible deduction applies to either well. It's just allowing the
expense to deducted in the current year or over 5 years, instead of
capitalized over the life of the well.






https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/10/6/16428458/us-energy-coal-oil-subsidies

This should be enough info even for you to understand.

ROFL. Great objective source. Except you can smell the shit from
the very opening:


For one thing, it leaves out the annual $14.5 billion in consumption subsidies — things like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps lower-income residents pay their (fuel oil) heating bills. (There are better ways to help poor people, but let’s leave that aside for now.)


What kind of asshole does it take to come up with that nonsense?
That energy assistance for the poor somehow could be equated to subsidizing
coal and oil companies?





"Most significantly, OCI’s analysis leaves out indirect subsidies — things like the money the US military spends to protect oil shipping routes, or the unpaid costs of health and climate impacts from burning fossil fuels."


More silly lib nonsense. Like they want to kiss their asses for being so
fair, they didn't add the cost of the US military in as a subsidy.

ROFL! ROFFL!


Then finally they get down to what they do consider "subsidies"
and right on the list is what I already explained to you, BS like
claiming that because master partnerships pass the income through to
the partnership OWNERS who then pay the taxes on it, it's a "subsidy".
By that definition then the local supermarket chain, car dealer, hardware
store are "subsidized" too because they are Sub S corps and treated the
same way. But you libs wouldn't understand that, because you know zippo
about running a business, but think you should be able to tell others
what to do and how it works.









What we should be doing there is not allowing all the mergers that happened over the last decade or so. The petroleum industry is one where the practical economics is well served with 10 or 20 major petroleum companies.

And who picked that magic number? What evidence do you have that
there isn't enough competition? Why can't libs leave things that work
alone?

Uh, it isn't a number, it's a range.

Good as anything you've ever pulled out of your ass then, so why should
anyone question it.


The issue is why can't the oil industry leave things alone? Why do they have to merge over and over until there are only a handful of companies? The answer is because the fewer the number, the less competition there is..

There's more than a handful and there is ZERO evidence there is any
market problem. It's just you whining. Not even your Democrats in
Congress are whining, except some of those fools running for president
that are rabid socialists and think all business is evil.





Part of your problem is that you can't actually think without applying inappropriate labels.

Not inappropriate at all. I see what libs stand for, what libs rant about.
And here you are, proving it.


What does "lib" have to do with the soundness of an idea. As long as you think in terms of "lib" ideas and whatever else there is, you aren't looking at the ideas themselves.


I've looked at lib ideas, a lot of lib ideas:

high taxes
big govt
more govt programs
sanctuary cities
sanctuary states
refusal to build a wall to help control illegal alien flow
refusal to amend asylum laws that are flagrantly being abused
supporting illegal aliens over Americans.
obsession with the alleged evils of businesses, especially big businesses
believing that whenever there is an imperfection in any system, govt is the
answer

Did I leave out anything?




The petroleum industry wants to coalesce into just two or three at most. If they thought it would be allowed they would merge into one company!

And you know this how? Fly on the wall? But just for arguments sake,
the cell phone business is down to about three. How about the the
OS market? MSFT dominates, lump in Android, Linux? It's three.
That busted, not working?


The government tried to bust up Microsoft, but they weren't good enough to fight Gate's lawyers. They even tried to unbundle internet explorer, but the lawyers convinced the judge it would wreck the OS. lol

Yes, oh the horrors as a result! How will we ever survive? A PC cost
$3K thirty years ago. Now one that's twenty times better costs $300.
Yes, let's fix that!






BTW, Android isn't a desktop OS.

Who said it was? But it clearly is competing with PCs, which is why
PC sales are declining as people use tablets and smart phones.
Which again shows why there was no need to break up Microsoft.
More fundamentally, under the law, being large and successful is not
a crime. That's another thing with you libs. For some reason you
eschew success and want to reward failure. Why is that?






It's not like the airlines where competition is fierce and smaller airlines get edged out in legal ways. Or the cell networks where being a little bit smaller makes it harder to provide all essential coverage.

It's in fact exactly like those markets, competition is working, leave
them alone.

Again, you miss the mark. There are many markets where airline mergers have resulted in two or three carriers are now one and prices have jumped significantly. This is well documented if you want to learn about it.

Heh snowflake, the world ain't perfect. Butch up. So the airlines are
finally making some money, it's still a very tough business. I suppose
you'd rather it be GM so the govt could bail it out.







I would like to see solar subsidized for another decade in decreasing amounts. It needs to be tapered off with adequate notice so it can be used with confidence. There are places where the utilities have gotten the state legislature to reverse the laws requiring them to buy residential solar energy at the same price as they sell to residences. Such an abrupt cut off creates FUD and prevents others from investing, which was the entire point of the program in the first place.


How about we start making solar customers pay their fair share of the
cost of the grid? Like half the amount of their neighbor's bill?
I'd expect you libs would be outraged, it's unfair to the poor, unfair
to minorities. They can't afford to put in a $20K solar system, but
they are paying $75 a month to give the rich yuppies with that solar
system a free ride. There's a real subsidy for you.

So you want the non-solar customers to be subsidized by the solar customers? Here I thought you were about fairness.

WTF? The people with solar installed are being subsidized by their
neighbors, including their poor, minority neighbors who can't afford
$20K for a solar system. The solar customers need and use the grid,
they would have no power at night and would not be able to sell their
excess energy into the grid, without the grid. Yet they aren't paying
for the grid, because their electric bills are zero or close to it.
Yet the poor family they pay $150 for electric, about $75 of that is
to pay for the grid. If everyone had a zero electric bill, there would
be no grid, capiche?






Everyone pays for the grid if they use it. The greater grid is charged as "transmission" on your bill.

Solar customers have no bill, stupid.



The local grid is billed as "distribution". I don't know of any states that allow a residential supplier to be paid for their electricity.

Most states,maybe all, do allow it. Why would a state want to disallow it?

Which ones allow it? I have checked into this and you cant' get paid for generating electricity. At most you get credit on your bill toward future electricity use. Many states limit that either in amount or by duration. Kinda like saving up vacation at work.

Oh, BS. Google broken?


https://www.seia.org/initiatives/net-metering

Net Metering

Net metering allows residential and commercial customers who generate their own electricity from solar power to sell the electricity they aren't using back into the grid. Many states have passed net metering laws. In other states, utilities may offer net metering programs voluntarily or as a result of regulatory decisions. Differences between state legislation, regulatory decisions and implementation policies mean that the mechanism for compensating solar customers varies widely across the country


And why would they limit or ban a utility for paying for it? The greenies
want more power generated, want more solar used. They are paying for
commercial installations that generate power, why would govt ban a homeowner
from making a few bucks? Makes no sense. Now some POWER companies may
try to not have to pay for it, but that's not the general case.

That would be stupid, states want more solar, they want to encourage it,
they want more solar going into the grid. And of course it's billed as
distributions, based on your kwh of usage:

"Distributions"? What does that mean?

Distribution, have you not looked at a typical electric bill?

Electricity bills have Generation, Transmission and Distribution in addition to taxes and possibly other fees. Sometimes Generation and Transmission are lumped together since they are both charges from third parties and not the local utility... at least not always.


Rich yuppie family with $20K solar system:

Bill: 0
Distribution charge for 0 Kwh, $0

Here they have a fixed base amount everyone pays for distribution. So that won't be zero. The rest of the bill should be zero if they are not using any net electricity. Do you pay for things you don't use? One of the taxes is also a fixed fee, so not zero with zero usage.

IDK where here is, but it's not that way in NJ or most states. Which
is why the fact that solar people aren't paying for distribution is a problem
that some states are starting to address. Here the bill is two parts,
generation and distribution, it's about evenly split.

Poor family bill: $150 total
Distributions charge ~half, $75
Energy charge $75

LOL, so everyone else is "poor"?

No, not everyone, but everyone in the many states that bill as describe
is giving solar customers a subsidy, including poor families.

ROFL

ROFL indeed.

Not much point trying to discuss any of this with you. You literally can't see reason or appreciate facts. Everything you look at is through a biased point of view.

So enjoy.

Yeah, right, I'm the one that doesn't know the facts. I had to explain
that what you thought were subsidies to the oil industry is essentially
Sub S tax treatment, the same thing a typical car dealer, supermarket,
hardware store uses. And that the intangible drilling "subsidy",
is merely allowing smaller oil companies to expense some of the costs
of drilling a new well in one year, big oil companies in 5 years,
instead of spreading it out over a longer period. It's not a subsidy.
And obviously you're clueless about net metering too.