Newsweek: Green subsidies aren't working

Asf ar as I am concerned, both of these “automobile” deals are giant scams on the American Taxpayer. Talk about corporate welfare; these two scams take the cake; and I can’t decide which of the two is worse; they are both impractical pipe dreams of people who have more political clout, than common sense.
If either of them believed in their product concept; they should be able to sell it to astute investors. The fact that they are unable to do that is testimony to the stupidity of both.
I once was a co-founder of a start-up high tech company in Si-valley. Our initial business plan called for $750,000 of initial funding. Venture capitalists wanted to give us $1meg, so we could get going faster; and they only wanted 80% of the company stock for their $meg, leaving the eight founders, family and friends with 20%. We said thanks; but no thanks; so we cut the budget in half and reached into our own pockets, along with family and close friends. Our little startup on $375K opened on April 1 1970, and we shipped $80,000 in product starting with a $10 shipment in early July 1970.
Our first full year; 1971 we shipped $1.4 meg, followed by $14meg, and $26 meg in 1972, and 73. Around then we finally let some venture capital into our thing. Before we were finished, our little venture was the largest (shipping dollars) LED company in the world. We eventually sold it off to a giant conglomerate; after suffering some reverses due in part to lousy advice and guidance from some of our outside directors; who were supposed to be astute business people. But yes we did make the critical choices based on their lousy guidance; that prevented it from becoming one of the big success stories.
I get a little furious; when I see some scam artist con the US tax payers out of a half billion dollars to fund their pipedream play things. But it does point the interested student as to why Si-valley is full of people with their hands out for other people’s money; and they aare not against fleecing the taxpayer.
The goose that laid the golden eggs, was killed off years ago; and the cockroaches now feed on its carcass.

Well actually, what Jack Kilby got his patent for was hardly an integrated circuit; but call it microcircuit if you will; an assemblage of transistors in wafer form that hadn’t been broken up, and were externally soldered together with little jumper wires.
It was Bob Noyce at Fairchild; who actually formed all of the circuitry directly on the Si wafer; using the “planar” process that was the invention of Jean Hoerni; another one of the Fairchild fabulous seven, that included Gordon Moore of Moores’s law.
Both Noyce and Kilby are credited with “inventing” the IC; but only Kilby got a Nobel for it since Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously.
Of course most of the fabulous seven, and some other Fairchild greats eventually jumped ship and founded Intel in 1969.
I worked at Fairchild for Victor Grinich, who was the only EE among the fabulous seven, that really got Silicon Valley off and running. (well Hp and Varian got other aspects of it rolling); but it is to the Fairchild seven; who were basically turned out by William Shockley; who told them if they thought their silly planar process was a great way to make a transistor; they should go out and try it themselves; They did !
As to the Micro-Processor which also bears Kilby’s name, along with someone at Intel; there was a guy by the name of Gary Boone, who worked at TI and had more than a lot of input tot he design of the first real microprocessor and has patents to prove it. I actually hired him into our LED company, where he designed an even more revolutionary programmable microproceesor chip that we used to make hand held calculators.
But bottom line is that government subsidies had essentially nothing to do with all that great innovation; it was very bright scientists and engineers, and a lot of entrepeneurial spirit.

Climate Heretic (14:59:19) :
Hotrod said
“If all direct and indirect subsidies to oil …”
I would ask what subsidies in particular are being referred to?

There are a host of hidden subsidies to oil, the classic example is the blenders tax credit I mentioned above, that subsidy is usually pointed to as a subsidy to ethanol but in reality it usually goes in the pocket of the oil refinery for the privilege of using a high octane blending agent they did not produce which allows them to blend in lower octane gasoline fractions they normally could not use without further processing because they would not meet minimum gasoline standards.
The other big one is of course the indirect defense costs our Military expends to protect access to off shore suppliers. It is not a simple answer, unfortunately the web page that I found which neatly summarized some of those costs is now a dead link so I will have to dig that info up again.

Roger Sowell (15:11:16) :
hotrod,
ARB’s website for bio-ethanol is shown below. Scroll down to see the Staff Report and Appendices.

Thanks I will take a look at them!
Larry

“”” hotrod (13:53:18) :
Roger Sowell (13:17:54) :
Larry, (hotrod), ethanol from corn is a net energy consumer – not producer. California’s Air Resources Board and federal EPA both concur.
Care to site the sources?
There is just as much bogus science in the net energy calculations of biofuels as there are in the global warming debate. In many cases they are not counting co-products and including energy expenditures for infrastructure that they ignore when calculating net energy yield for petroleum. Pimentel is the Michael Mann of the green energy studies. He is the only researcher that consistently finds negative values and continues to turn out crap studies based on out of date research and flawed accounting and assumptions.
Current technology ethanol from corn has a positive energy balance with proper accounting methods.
http://www.usda.gov/oce/reports/energy/aer-814.pdf
Larry “””
Well Larry, there are good tests of your thesis. If you recall, we actually started with nothing but free renewable clean green energy; spending most of our waking hours clambering around in fig trees to gather the green renewable (solar) energy.
Then we realized that the little monkeys were a lot more adept than we were and could get out to the ends of the smaller branches where the really good fruit was. So we let the monkeys gather the figs, and then we killed their little A**** and ate them; much more efficient way to get energy. We noticed that a lot of critters on the ground got a hell of a lot bigger than us, by eating cellulosic solar energy; AKA grass; which we couldn’t process.
So we got down out of the trees and figured out how to kill the bigger grass eaters; which essentially allowed us to eat grass too.
But it wasn’t until we tamed fire, and discovered stored chemical energy; that our numbers started growing exponentially to today’s 6+ billions.
But what you have to keep in mind is that this whole system was built by bootstrapping itself from its own energy outputs. There was no government subsidy generated from other energy sources; because there were no other energy sources, than the ones we exploited.
So we already know that the present energy system exists, and grew itself without inflationary input from some non-earthly subsidy.
So to prove that your free green renewable clean alternative energies are also energy positive; I suggest a pilot program to exploit your favorite candidate; using absolutely no carbon bearing fossil fuel or other polluting energy inputs. That means every single thing and person involved in the enterprise, and their families have to be supported and fuelled, from the OUTPUTs of your favorite clean green free renewable alternative energy; without any subsidies from the system that bootstrapped itself to success.
Onl;y if you can do that and end up with salable energy left over after running your sytem; will you be able to claim that you did the accounting properly, and that there really is a net gain in available energy supplies.
The sun spend 4+ billion years transporting solar energy to be stored on earth for our use. If you think that the present shipment rate from the sun is fast enough for our needs; then have at it, and prove it can run itself from its own energy output.
The latest SciAM magazine, has a paper promotoing a scheme to provide 100% of ALL of the entire world’s energy need in all forms for all uses from free clean green renewable alternative energy sources (solar). They say it would use about 1% of the entire earth surface to gather that much energy from the sun. I believe that that 1% figure is about the same as the total amount of the earth surface, that humans have so far adapted for all of their existence, and all of their endeavors.
Oh and they are going to do this by 2030, using only technology that already exists; so that should be a perfect demonstration of a renewable self bootstrapping replacement for our usage of the sun’s 4.5 billion years of energy shipments to planet earth.
Have at it; if you want to try your hand at something useful.

Here is a easy to understand flow chart of the energy inputs based on research done by Argonne National Laboratories in about 1995.
As you can see they computed it took an input of 1.23 million BTU of fossil fuel to deliver 1 million BTU to the consumers fuel tank as gasoline, and it took an input of only 0.74 million BTU to deliver the same fuel energy as fuel ethanol to the consumer.
Only about 17% of that energy input is in the form of petroleum based energy, the majority is from natural gas, electric and coal. Ethanol provides a gateway to convert difficult to use power like coal to a transportation fuel.
The hidden clinker in many studies that show ethanol as a negative energy balance fuel is to include obsolete data like 1960’s vintage crop yields, conversion efficiencies, and fertilizer uses, or to quietly slip the solar energy captured in the ethanol as one of the energy inputs, as if you had to pay for that energy twice once to create the farming environment to grow the fuel and then again as if it was a direct energy input to the ethanol production process.
Note that both of them include the output of co-products.
http://www.ethanolmt.org/images/argonnestudy.pdf
The gasoline energy cost of .74 out for 1.00 in, has not changed much but ethanol has improved substantially since the mid 1990’s as efforts are made to reduce energy inputs, through heat recovery, using the DDGS wet so no drying energy is required, and burning corn waste in the plant. Some plants are able to generate surplus electricity which they sell back to the grid, or use co-generation such as bio-gas from cow manure to free them from natural gas energy inputs.
Larry

Off topic: Are you kidding me, “Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet”
This is insane, but goes to show how far AGW proponents are willing to go in controlling people’s behavior.
It’s a recipe for “soilent green” results where the rich eat steak and the middle class and those below don’t even eat hamburger (Al Bore will definitely continue eating meat).
As the article reports: “People will need to consider turning vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.”
“In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: ‘Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.'”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece#
From my cold dead hand will you pry my corn fed prime rib steak.
The lunacy seems to be unending.
But this passes the limit — Man-made global warmers are teaming up with PETA.
This claim likely will be the one that turns the stomach of Joe Six-pack against this steaming pile of garbage.
As if the attempt to set up “one world government” with taxing, redistributing of wealth, and enforcement power was bad enough, this Copenhagen treaty has in it, as Lord Mockton (not all Lords are bad) has pointed out.
“No meat”, say’s my Lord.
Answer: Go to hell you SOB!!

One thing that has always puzzled me about the ‘New Green Jobs’ is what they are for. Or more specifically what do the taxpayers think they are for?
If they are ‘new’ in the sense of new to ‘green’ but shifted from somewhere else one has to assume that the people promoting the benefits of this as an economic strategy are being economical with their announced truth.
If those in authority actually think they are indeed new jobs AND that there will be a net increase in jobs due to the change to ‘green’ methods then what they are saying is either that the standard of living for the people in those jobs will fall compared to now so that the net costs are the same for the same energy output … or energy is going to cost a lot more. A whole lot more and for the entire consumable energy generation and distribution system. And that assums that demand remains stable.
If the planning is for increased demand with much lower carbon output then one can only assume that even more costs will accrue – which seems counter intuitive to the increase in demand on a per capita basis so perhaps it all hinges on migration.
Obama’s statement about the potential for coal fired power stations to be bankrupted out of business may have been intended to pursuade people that a like could be drawn and all would be well with prices once coal was eliminated whereas the reality seems to be somewhat different if all of the new ‘jobs’ are to be sustainable.
So if the retail cost of electricity quadruples and perhaps becomes an unreliable source, how much travelling will people undertake in their electric only cars ? Will the massive investment required in an infrastructure to service the anticipated demand ever be recovered?
Just think what the children and grandchildren are going to have to pay to keep warm and eat cooked food. For that reason alone I don’t understand why more people have not shouted out about the clear fiction implied in the ‘green jobs’ story. Perhaps the education system has been ‘improved’ more than we think.

Tax subsidies are market-inefficient Goreboggles, like pouring fertilizers on a concrete pavement while praying to Gaia for a bountiful crop of Goreblurries. When only some very expensive Goreweeds start growing, blame the problem on insufficient rain due to global Gorebaloney, root out those withered Goredenier Goreweeds, add more tax fertilizer, and pray for a Goremicle. When will taxpayers wise up to this Goreidocy, get Gorewise and dump the Goremats in the Gorewhitse and Gorecongross?

JimB, I wonder what the first 10 hits would be if I “googled” Global Warming, or Climate Change?
The Blenders’ credit USED TO BE $0.51/gal. NOW it’s $0.46 gallon. That’s just to show you that you have to be careful what you pick up when you start “googling.”
Now, about that $1.97: Yes, that is BEFORE it’s blended, thus, before the Blenders’ credit is Applied. We used to provide Billions/Yr ($9 Billion in 2006, I think it was) in payments to farmers to subsidize overproduction. Now, we don’t pay any of those. The 0.9 was, I assume, “disaster” payments, etc.
Okay, that $1.97 was from unsubsidized corn, and had not been subsidized to the blender. That was a totally unsubsidized product being sold by an American Company on the open market. Now, here’s the neat part, the only reason ethanol is that high is because we have the latest corn harvest in history. We’re, quite possibly looking at $1.70 Ethanol in three or four weeks. Which is quite competitive with $2.05 unleaded at wholesale.
As for price at the pump, The Univ of Iowa published a study last year that estimated the presence of ethanol in the marketplace saved Americans approx. $0.35 Gallon at the Pump.

hotrod,
“There are a host of hidden subsidies to oil, . . .
The other big one is of course the indirect defense costs”
Would you also be willing to mention the NOT hidden direct costs to oil companies, the billions upon billions of dollars forced upon them to comply with burdensome regulations? Lead phase-out, sulfur elimination, SOx and NOx reduction, PM10 reduction, benzene reduction, oxygenate additions, vapor pressure adjustments, just to mention a few. Also increased octane requirements over the years?
And where are the so-called benefits to the oil companies of receiving the “hidden subsidies?” Their profitability is nothing spectacular – in fact, it is quite ordinary. If one really wanted to enter a highly profitable business, go into making and selling liquor.
Oh wait. That is what you are advocating! Ethanol.

George E. Smith,
As for your proposition: It would be very easy to run the whole operation w/o outside energy. But it wouldn’t make sense. Let me explain. For every gallon of ethanol you get about 6 lbs of distillers grains. Distillers grains contain about 8,400 btus/lb. You could burn 70% of the distillers grains and provide enough energy to fuel the entire process. Farming, producing the fertilizer, and distilling the alcohol.
However, the distillers grains are much more valuable than nat gas. It would be silly. That being said, many refineries are getting away from fossil fuels, and going to ag waste (corn cobs,) wood waste, municipal solid waste, landfill gas, etc. Google Chippewa Valley Ethanol, Corn Plus, Poet – to name a few.
Oh, the really neat news on “Bluefire Ethanol.” California drug their feet, and made them jump through so many hoops that they are doing their second refinery in Fulton, Ms instead of California. Yea, California.