Teh biggest problem with anything new is building a new infrastructure for it... so the answer is always yes, but it would cost more then using the old stuff that already had it's costs amortized (heh, didn't know the word was the same in english too).
Alternative =/= renewable =/= clean
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I don't know about others, but I believe that our taxpayer dollars are very important, and should only be spent where we know the investment will pay of significantly. Most of the alternative energy sources have progressed to the point where they are almost competitive to existing energy sources, and spending tens of millions of dollars to close that last 5% gap isn't worthwhile when that gap will be closed naturally by mass manufacturing, competition, etc.
Further, a lot of this money and research results in patents that companies use to prevent use of their research. I don't believe taxpayer money should be going to private industry to fund patentable research, unless the patents are opened up to public use. Yet this is what results not just in private research, but particularly in university research. Then the universities and researchers benefit from the money the gov't spent for a decade while we all sit on our thumbs.
Consider, for example, fusion research. The US government spent billions of dollars on that research because of one faulty research paper suggesting that it was possible. It came to absolutely nothing - if you want to blame any particular reason why the government isn't investing in new energy, blame the fusion debacle.
Eventually existing alternative energy technologies will be competitive with existing energy technologies.
Further, a lot of this money and research results in patents that companies use to prevent use of their research. I don't believe taxpayer money should be going to private industry to fund patentable research, unless the patents are opened up to public use. Yet this is what results not just in private research, but particularly in university research. Then the universities and researchers benefit from the money the gov't spent for a decade while we all sit on our thumbs.
Consider, for example, fusion research. The US government spent billions of dollars on that research because of one faulty research paper suggesting that it was possible. It came to absolutely nothing - if you want to blame any particular reason why the government isn't investing in new energy, blame the fusion debacle.
Eventually existing alternative energy technologies will be competitive with existing energy technologies.
tl;dr
There is no need to pour taxpayer dollars into an industry (clean/alternative energy) that is thriving right now.
So they should only put money in stuff that's going bankrupt?
Also, isn't most of the fossil fuel industry in the US subsidized anyway?
For whoever mentioned it... there is a LOT of research going on right now with regards to nuclear fusion. There are a few facilities I know of under construction right now to test various types of containment on a large scale. One of the bigger problems is trying to find materials that can actually withstand the insane heat and radiation at the centre of the reaction. Apparently using lasers to help contain the reaction is making a comeback over the various magnetic plans that have been popular.
As much as I love clean energy, I honestly think we should divert those billions into...
- Fixing our water and sewage systems
- Fixing our roads and bridges (ESPECIALLY the bridges, which are unsafe and reaching/past their life limits)
- Investment into better wireless technology (because fiber optic cable costs too much to put out in the boonies and those areas NEED internet access)
- Expansion of rail (so it actually goes places people want to go)
We can last a bit longer on coal and oil, but we really can't last too much longer with our current infrastructure problems.
- Fixing our water and sewage systems
- Fixing our roads and bridges (ESPECIALLY the bridges, which are unsafe and reaching/past their life limits)
- Investment into better wireless technology (because fiber optic cable costs too much to put out in the boonies and those areas NEED internet access)
- Expansion of rail (so it actually goes places people want to go)
We can last a bit longer on coal and oil, but we really can't last too much longer with our current infrastructure problems.
That's all well and good but they're predicting that fusion technology will barely be feasible by 2050 at the current rate of development. If the population continues to grow at it's current pace we will most certainly have passed peak oil production by that time and will be in dire need of other options. I suppose we do have more than enough coal to keep everything going for a while after that but that will only be able to supply our needs for a finite time as well.
Besides, it seems most large fusion research projects are going on in Europe anyways.
I can't say for sure in the USA, but be careful whenever you see the accusation of an industry being "subsidized." Often all it means is "they're not paying as much as some other country somewhere, and thus the government theoretically could be getting more from them, therefore they are being subsidized." I've seen non-producing and/or tiny countries being trotted out as examples of this actually being used in an argument, but it happens in bigger ways too.
This is exactly the case with Timber between Canada and the USA right now, and the source of an ongoing trade dispute. Canada's resource royalties for logging on Crown land (government-owned things are called "Crown-whatever" because we're technically a monarchy btw) is significantly lower than what the USA charges for the same type of thing, and so the USA is accusing Canada of subsidizing the logging industry in Canada. No money is going from the Government to the companies, but it's being called a subsidy because we aren't charging as much as the USA is for the same thing, and thus the costs for the companies is less, and our lumber is cheaper for the same product.
This is what I understand is often accused of Oil companies as well. Are there actual cases of being given money straight-out? Maybe, but (in Canada at least) I've never heard of such. Tax incentives do exist, such as if the price of oil is below a certain amount, the amount of Royalties for oil from the Oilsands in Alberta go down drastically (It's not worth it to work it in the first place if it's not above a certain threshold, so the idea is to keep the industry working and employing people rather than shutting down since it will swing back up), and IIRC there's some type of deal with some of the offshore stuff off of Newfoundland, but I'm much less sure on that one.
GasBandit
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FTFY.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, and half your vocabulary doesn't even mean what you think it means.
Sorry , you are NOT adamant toward alternative/clean fuels. Of course...that was one word in an entire paragraph. Not even close to half.
Seriously though, that was kind-of mean.
GasBandit
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Did you forget who you were dealing with?
I am not "curmudgeonly" toward clean energy, either. As I've said repeatedly, we need all the energy we can get from all the sources we can find. The usual narrative however on these is that they are supposed to replace or supplant our dependence on fossil fuels somehow. That's not going to happen. The most promising avenue is nuclear, but that makes people a-scared. And it's hard to fill up your car with nuclear energy (as it is, naturally, with solar or wind), at least if you don't want to stop to charge it every 12 hours.
Well, the U.S. Energy Information Administration seems like a decent source to start looking for statistical information on all things having to do with electricity in the US.
Here is a breakdown of energy generation.
Oh curmudgeonly, well I was going just by I've read from the account of posts where you kept putting the phrase "unicorn farts" so I made a logical assumption. You seemed grumpy in that reguard.
Now I do agree on Nuclear power some what, however for me its not so much that I'm scared but that the nuclear waste created is generally impossible to get rid of. Almost all storage is temporary and there are not many long term solutions. Unless we find a way to handle waste more efficiently I'll stay on the fence with nuclear energy. Also said fence on-age includes burying it, I've only heard the side of the nuclear people on that one.
I believe I have seen battery comparisons which put the energy available in gasoline as being one of the most efficient ways to store energy by size/weight. The trouble comes in translating that stored energy into useful energy for other purposes (e.g. powering laptop computers). This does explain why petroleum/gasoline has been hanging on for so long, though.
--Patrick
Grow up, man. No need to play the "Hehe, I alter your post to be a douche" game.
That, and there's the downright rampant stupidity that happens with nuclear energy. I saw an article about a California utility that runs a nuke plant along the coast that wanted to run a study to see what effects, if any, an earthquake near their plant would have... you know, so that if something similar to the Sendai quake in Japan happened in California, they'd know if the plant would survive, and if the reactor vessels would remain contained, minor stuff like that. The state government refused to allow them to perform the test because they wanted to use high-pressure air cannons to simulate the quake, and they would pose too much of a threat to nearby marine life. So we'd rather protect all the pretty starfish and cute widdew seaws than know for sure, one way or another, if a major reactor plant would fail in an earthquake. But at least California isn't known for having too many... oh, wait.
GasBandit
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Are you kidding? That game is practically the halforums official national pastime.
So? I'm not interested in playing it. If you want to argue with me, I'm happy to do it. I don't want my quotes misrepresented, though. It basically says you are saying to me "I'm done and have nothing to add".
GasBandit
Staff member
You know perfectly well it will be a cold, cold day in hell when I am done and have nothing to add.
Very well. Pretend I instead replied, "No, what you'd like is somebody to tell you a comforting lie."
"NOW WAS THAT SO HARD?"
GasBandit
Staff member
It's not an argument against spending money on it, it illustrates the absurdity of trying to replace fossil fuels with it.
I just want to say that when steinman used the spoiler tags in response to a comment about nuclear research developments, I thought it was going to be a reveal of something awesome.
Then I clicked on the spoiler tags, and discovered nothing but quiet, reasoned logic.
It was like going to see a Paul WS Anderson film, but then finding out it was a Wes Anderson film.
I came out feeling more intellectually stimulated and informed, having arguably spent my time in a much better fashion, but yet also sad and disappointed.
Then I clicked on the spoiler tags, and discovered nothing but quiet, reasoned logic.
It was like going to see a Paul WS Anderson film, but then finding out it was a Wes Anderson film.
I came out feeling more intellectually stimulated and informed, having arguably spent my time in a much better fashion, but yet also sad and disappointed.
The e-cat fusion reactor is very, very interesting, but is shrouded in so much mystery that I can't be excited about it yet.
It's worth getting very excited about if it'sn't a hoax.
Unfortunately, the alternative is to have someone else verify your findings and then have that same someone else acquire the rights to technology critical to your project and charge you out the wazoo or beat you over the head with a (preemptive) patent. This makes it hard to tell the cautious from the fakers.
--Patrick
Necronic
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No, it was clear, but I don't think I was. Businesses do the development as well. I work in an R&D facility for a major company, and you are right that for the most part what we do isn't the innovation/invention. We do *some*, and in the legal sense we do a lot, but most of what we do is look through interesting tech from universities and figure out if we could develop it into something commercial. Once we play around with it on a small scale from a commercial perspective (development), that's when we send it up to our engineers for the major scale-up (application).
This is true. Oil is a freaking miracle liquid no joke. It stores so much energy in such an accessible way and it has tons of amazing byproducts (from plastics to vaseline to butyl rubber)
Subsidy is a more acceptable word then protectionism...
But in the end giving them money or letting them keep more of it it still giving them an advantage over the competition, and that's what the whole point of any subsidy is.
People keep forgetting, the reason why oil stores so much energy is because it's been "cooking" for a very long time, and if we actually take into account that it's probably way less energy efficient then all of the other energy generation methods...
And get off his lawn too you young whipper-snappers.
It's because it's a hydrocarbon, and it's not that hard to make. We can synthesize oil using a variety of methods, it's just not as cheap as taking existing oil out of the ground and processing it.
But the current medium scale demonstrations using biological methods to produce oil from waste products (plant based, mostly) show that it's not much more expensive per barrel than the most expensive barrels of oil we've had in the recent past.
I suspect that long before peak oil hits we will be synthesizing enough hydrocarbons ourselves that we won't really have to worry about our oil based industries.
as a broadcasting nerd, this post reminds me of the sad story of Phil Farnsworth. And now I'm sad.
I think the old "I don't want my tax dollars funding that" excuse is lame and over used.
I think it has to do more with environmentalism being considered weak and unmanly by conservatives, more so than any fiscal benefits gained from not researching technology that'll help humanity survive past 1000 years from now. I don't buy that "oh it's going to happen eventually so lets not waste our tax dollars on it" mentality.
Wow. Even the current congress and Obama administration with their trillion dollar per year deficit has nothing on your fiscal policy.
To be clear, "lets fund everyone that asks us for an energy grant" is a really, really bad idea.
Not sure how to approach the rest of your post. Telling me that I think alternative energy is weak and unmanly and that's why I oppose it rather than due to fiscal responsibility as I explained suggests that no matter what I say, you already have me binned and thus there's no point in trying to convince you otherwise.
Virtually all money going into "green/alternative" energy by government is for subsidies and not research. The subsidies are useless. 99% of the companies taking them are doing zero to almost-zero basic research (they're doing "how do I make my fancy solar panel cost 5% less to manufacture this year" which is completely useless), thus it's doing jack shit to advance the industry in anything but market share. Better to spend X billion dollars on ACTUAL research at universities and such. And for those business-minded, find a way to make places like Xerox PARC and the old Bell Labs (you know, where the TRANSISTOR was invented?) and stuff like that better on the tax returns so that companies WANT to set up research centres and do more of that type of thing.
You do realise that just supports my argument that oil is more efficient because it's already been processed and there's an infrastructure in place for it.
Also: "than the most expensive barrels of oil" might not be the best argument to use. Especially since the market price is influenced by demand and supply way more then the price/effort of digging it out.
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