Renewable Revolution

MKing,
If you are NOT aware of what "happened" in the 1980s, to KILL renewable energy by Hook and by Crook, you are uninformed. If you are aware and you are reaching for some make believe COST/SUPPLY curve, then you are engaging in rank mendacity.

Reagan is a key reason we have only about one-sixth of the soaring global market for windpower — an industry we once dominated: “President Reagan cut the renewable energy R&D budget 85% after he took office and eliminated the wind investment tax credit in 1986. This was pretty much the death of most of the US wind industry” (see “Anti-wind McCain delivers climate remarks at foreign wind company“).
 
Reagan gutted Carter’s entire multi-billion dollar clean energy and energy efficiency effort. He opposed and then rolled back fuel economy standards. Reagan turned all such commonsense strategies into “liberal” policies that must be opposed by any true conservative, a position embraced all too consistently by conservative leaders from Gingrich to Bush/Cheney and now to John McCain.

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/who-got-us-in-this-energy-mess-start-with-ronald-reagan-4ca0f6a9614/

ALL THE ABOVE was going on while the massive subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power actually INCREASED. The double hulled new tanker bottom regs in the pipeline for oil tankers BEFORE the REAGAN Administration were cancelled UNTIL THE Exxon Valdez forced them onto a reluctant oil pig loving administration. TEN **** YEARS the oil pigs put money in their pockets by not having to convert to double hulls.

Do you want to talk about tanker hold regs? Probably not! Where do you get all this BULLSHIT about COST/SUPPLY? The whole **** operation was a losing proposition for fossil fuels then, like it is today.

They only stayed profitable because they COULD fill the tanker holds with sea water and dump it willy nilly when they returned to pick up another load (among MANY other bennies to **** on the environment that they were allowed to get away with).

And then you come here and talk about COST/SUPPLY curves. HORSESHIT!

Do you know what the Coast Guard fine for a TANKER that didn't "pass inspection" for various environmental features they were supposed to have like tank cleaning updated equipment (BUT DIDN'T for at least a decade!)? Around $25,000. THAT's NOTHING when you are hauling millions in crude.

Were you THERE in the Reagan Administration when they DIRECTED the Coast Guard to BE NICE to the tankers and cut them "slack" on the regs to help with their PROFIT? NO, you don't know a thing about that, DO YOU?

I wrote a long article on it and pissed Ilargi off at TAE over a year and half ago. He, like you, has this interesting idea about cost/benefit.

I don't know if you have noticed, but I NEVER claimed oil was "running out". I am not a peak oiler. Regardless of how much there is on earth, there is a lot more on Titan in the form of hydrocarbons so the SUPPLY is ENDLESS, for all practical purposes. In your "interesting" view of energy, if the supply is endless, THEN you should KEEP USING IT regardless of environmental "externalities".

That's unethical BULLSHIT. It's a mendacious cost benefit analysis too!

You think Renewable Energy was TOO EXPENSIVE in the 1980s (your fossil fuel pals claimed it cost 4 times as much as energy from fossil fuels!).

Sure, YOU get the massive subsidies and YOU don't pay for trashing the environment and YOU get cheap leases and interest rates on capital investments from coal to oil to gas and YOU don't pay for health costs of the affected populations. Such a DEAL! 


But you fossil fuelers aren't done with your massive energy "playing" field rigging. Oh no! You are just getting started. ANY renewable energy technology ALREADY proven, in the pipeline and ready for scaling up due to the Carter Administration's efforts are surrounded with ZERO capital investment, ZERO government sponsored low interest loans, lack of cheap Government land leases and access,  hysterical claims about environmental "damage", "waste" of tax payer funds and "ridiculous subsidies" that CRUSH wind, solar and solar power towers along with limiting CSP plant size when all these technologies were ready for prime time.

SURE, of course, by the INVISIBLE HAND OF THE FREE MARKET COST/SUPPLY CURVE, fossil fuels were much, much "cheaper" than renewable energy.


Keep believing it. PAL!