Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Anthony has posted a story about a laughable analysis of the cost of propping up renewables through subsidies. And long-time WUWT contributor KD helpfully pointed me to the document itself. Now that I have the actual document, here’s what they say about subsidies (all emphasis mine).
First, they point out that the cost of shifting to renewables will be on the order of $800 billion dollars per year. Overall, they say the cost will be $45,000,000,000,000 ($45 trillion dollars) by 2050, and could be as high as $70 trillion.
In other words, a substantial “clean-energy investment gap” of some $800 billion/yr exists – notably on the same order of magnitude as present-day subsidies for fossil energy and electricity worldwide ($523 billion). Unless the gap is filled rather quickly, the 2°C target could potentially become out of reach.
Now, a trillion is an unimaginable amount of money. Here’s a way to grasp it. If I started a business in the year zero AD, and my business was so bad that I lost a million dollars a day, not a million a year but a million dollars a day, how many trillion dollars would I have lost by now?
Well, I wouldn’t have lost even one trillion by now, only about $735 billion dollars … in other words, less than the estimated PER-YEAR cost of switching to renewables.
Then they go on to claim that hey, $800 billion per year is no big deal, because fossil fuel subsidies are nearly that large.
While the clean-energy investment gaps (globally and by region) may indeed appear quite sizeable at first glance, a comparison to present-day energy subsidy levels helps to put them into context. According to estimates by the International Monetary Fund and International Energy Agency, global “pre-tax” (or direct) subsidies for fossil energy and fossil electricity totaled $480–523 billion/yr in 2011 (IEA 2012b; IMF 2013). This corresponds to an increase of almost 30% from 2010 and was six times more than the total amount of subsidies for renewables at that time. Oil-exporting countries were responsible for approximately two-thirds of total fossil subsidies, while greater than 95% of all direct subsidies occurred in developing countries.
Now, this is a most interesting and revealing paragraph.
First, despite what people have said on the previous thread, they have NOT included taxes in their calculation of subsidies.
Next, to my great surprise an amazing 95% of all subsidies are being paid by developing nations. This underscores the crucial importance of energy for the poor.
In addition, they say that most of the money used to pay the fossil fuel subsidies comes from … wait for it … the sale of fossil fuels.
Next, it means that nothing that the developed world does will free up much money. Only 5% of the subsidies are in developed nations, they could go to zero and it wouldn’t change the big picture.
It also means that since these subsidies are not going to drivers in Iowa and Oslo, but are propping up the poorest of the global poor, we cannot stop paying them without a huge cost in the form of impoverishment, hardship, and deaths.
Finally, unless we shift the fuel subsidy from fossil fuels to renewables, which obviously we cannot do, the comparison is meaningless—we will still need nearly a trillion dollars per year in additional subsidies to get renewables off of the ground, over and above the assistance currently given to the poor … where do the authors think that money would come from?
I fear that like the pathetically bad Stern Report, this analysis is just another batch of bogus claims trying to prop up the war on carbon, which is and always has been a war on development and human progress, and whose “collateral damages” fall almost entirely on the poor.
And at the end of the day, despite their vain efforts to minimize the cost, even these proponents of renewables say it will cost up to $70 trillion dollars to make the switch, with no guarantee that it will work.
Sigh …
w.
The Usual Disclaimer: If you disagree with someone, QUOTE THEIR WORDS. Don’t go off about something like “I see that you are claiming that X will do Y, I think that’s wrong blah blah blah”, that goes nowhere because we don’t know what you are objecting to. Please have the courtesy to quote the exact words that you disagree with, so we can all be clear about the substance and nature of your objection.
[UPDATE]
I see that in the study they make much of the disparity between fossil fuel subsidies ($523 billion annually) and renewables subsidies, which they proudly state are only about a sixth of that ($88 billion annually).
However, things look very different when we compare the subsidies on the basis of the energy consumed from those sources. To do that, I use the data in the BP 2014 Statistical Review of World Energy spreadsheet in the common unit, which is “TOE”, or “Tonnes of Oil Equivalent”. This expresses everything as the tonnes of oil that are equivalent to that energy. I’ve then converted the results to “Gallons of Oil Equivalent” and “Litres of Oil Equivalent” to put them in prices we can understand. That breakdown looks like this:
Fuel, Subsidy/Gallon, Subsidy/Litre
Fossil fuels – $0.17 per gallon, $0.04 per litre
Renewables – $1.19 per gallon, $0.31 per litre.
So despite the fact that renewable subsidies are only a sixth of the fossil subsidies, per unit of energy they are seven times as large as the fossil subsidies.
This, of course, is extremely bad news for the promoters of the subsidies. It means that to get the amount of energy we currently use, without using fossil fuels and solely from renewables, it would require seven times the current fossil fuel subsidy, or $3.5 TRILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR.
And of course, since there’d be no fossil fuel sales at that point, there’d be little money to pay for the subsidy.
Sometimes, the idiocy of the savants is almost beyond belief.
There are only two ways to pay for one’s energy (or anything for that matter).
1. Pay for what you need.
2. Someone else pays for you.
No 2. is know today as a subsidy. The point being that the cost is still there, but the tax payer AKA everyone pays it. (even if they don’t actually use much energy). Businesses pay it and they have no choice but to pass the expense down to their customers.
So in the case of subsidized “renewables” the normal person in the street pays 1. The Price, 2. Pays more through his taxes, 3. Pays the rest through the cost all goods and services – including the price of food which has a farm and transport cost element in it.
I mean this is very basic economics.
How can energy subsidies be even considered by sane people? The notion that subsidies will help the economy through “green” jobs is absolutely insane!
I wish Milton Friedman was alive today to see this mess brewing!
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
For context see IEA’s World Energy Investment Outlook 2014 Factsheet Fossil Fuels
One small thing: there was no year zero AD.
For those wondering about where the oil subsidy shows up, it is in places like Venezuela and related Socialist Paradises… where gasoline and kerosene can cost 50 Cents / gallon or less due to subsidy to the poor. NOT in London or New York City…
Willis: Nicely done. I’d thought of taking on that article, but was too busy with other stuff. You did a better job of it anyway 😉
One thing ignored in this is the fixed cost of existing capital stock. For ONE SMALL example. Cars. To convert to non-fossil fuel, we need “Fleet Change”. The existing car and truck (and train and boat and planes and…) stock needs to be changed to those that do not consume oil as fuel.
As a first approximation, there’s about one car per 2 people in the USA. Figure about 150,000,000 vehicles. Now a new car costs about $30,000. So that’s about $45 x 10^11 to replace the fleet. Call it $4.5 Trillion. Can’t put electrons into a 1999 Suburban…
Given that the average life of a car in the USA today is nearly a dozen years, if you want to have fleet change in less than that time, you need to pay extra. AND, we are not presently designing nor building that ‘new car’ for most all cars makers. Figure another 5 to 10 years for that. So, without excess force, we have about 17 to 22 years of ‘fleet change’ ahead of us. IFF we were started already, which we are not…
Now that’s just the USA.
And it ignores longer life span vehicles like airplanes, trains, ships at sea…
Just not going to happen in my lifetime.
Mike T says:
July 3, 2014 at 6:25 pm
I figure there was, but it was “one very very small thing”, stuck between 1 BC and 1 AD …
Of course … you’re right …
w.
the Australian Govt is presently trying to overturn the Renewable Energy Target (RET), which is partly responsible for the ever-increasing electricity bills that are particularly hurting low-income customers. there are vested interests who are not happy about this, and who have had to reveal what the public barely realises – their retirement funds have been invested in risky, ever-changing CAGW policies. everyone who doesn’t want their retirement funds invested in this way should be putting their objections in writing to their pension fund managers:
4 July: Australian Financial Review: Phillip Coorey: Lower RET target would hit superannuation funds
The federal government’s plan to circumvent Clive Palmer and water down the renewable energy target will have adverse effects for the retirement savings of millions of Australians, says the Investor Group on Climate Change.
In a letter to businessman Dick Warburton, the head of a government review of the RET, the investor group’s chief executive Nathan Fabian warns that plans by the government to drop mandated renewable energy production from 41,000 gigawatt hours to 26,000 gigawatt hours by 2020 would hurt those who had already invested in the sector.
These include industry superannuation funds which own renewable energy firm Pacific Hydro.
“Multiple IGCG members invested in renewable energy assets on behalf of their superannuation fund beneficiaries as a result of the current 2020 renewable energy target,’’ the letter says. “Some 5 million Australians are financially exposed to these assets via their Australian-based superannuation funds, which hold equity stakes in . . . the Australian energy company, Pacific Hydro.
“Many IGCG members also have public equity exposures to Infigen energy and private equity exposures to companies that operate in renewable energy markets. Additional exposures are held via infrastructure asset managers,” Mr Fabian said.
He warns any cut to the RET would result in lower revenue for exiting assets, greater difficulty in servicing debt, lower or no distributions to investors and “negative movements in periodic asset valuations, directly flowing through to investment and retirement account balances’’… http://www.afr.com/p/national/lower_ret_target_would_hit_superannuation_qWK3dxuaNyzUQGhLhwiJWP
These are important points to keep hammering home, because the econuts continue to lie by omission with their selective quoting of subsidies. They frequently (as in almost always) fail to point out that the developed world actually has very low subsidies for fossil fuels –just humor me and call the depletion allowances subsidies– and they ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS fail to normalize the subsidies by the amount of energy produced. It really ruins the narrative.
” E.M.Smith says:
July 3, 2014 at 6:42 pm
One thing ignored in this is the fixed cost of existing capital stock. For ONE SMALL example. Cars. To convert to non-fossil fuel, we need “Fleet Change”. The existing car and truck (and train and boat and planes and…) stock needs to be changed to those that do not consume oil as fuel. ”
Yes…and no. One of the prime ‘outcomes’ is to get rid of private ownership of vehicles. So, fleet replacement is purposefully not factored in. The ultimate ‘green’ idea…bicycles, if you are lucky.
subscription required for remainder of article:
29 April: Australian: Bjorn Lomborg: Renewables pave path to poverty
THE Australian government recently released an issues paper for the review of the renewable energy target. What everyone engaged in this debate should recognise is that policies such as the carbon tax and the RET have contributed to household electricity costs rising 110 per cent in the past five years, hitting the poor the hardest.
A Salvation Army report from last year found 58 per cent of low-income households were unable to pay their electricity bills on time. Lynne Chester of the University of Sydney estimated last year that 20 per cent of households are now energy poor: “Parents are going without food, families are sitting around the kitchen table using one light, putting extra clothes on and sleeping in one room to keep warm, and this is Australia 2013.”…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/renewables-pave-path-to-poverty/story-fni1hfs5-1226898730123?nk=b87523c7b34d534d032de8d98da81d2c
excellent analysis Willis
somemore info on the Investor Group on Climate Change:
30 June: Herald Sun: Andrew Bolt: Clive Palmer and Al Gore become convenient allies
Gore is a co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, which manages and advises on green investments of the kind Gore’s climate scaremongering helps whip up.
Among the businesses it “participates” in is Australia’s $1 trillion Investor Group on Climate Change, which comprises Goldman Sachs and many of our bigger super funds.
Those funds invest big in renewable energy and are scared the Government will soon slash or scrap the Renewable Energy Target, which forces electricity suppliers to use more expensive wind and solar power.
IGCC has protested that “changes to the RET scheme could undermine the value returns on investments made to date” and “we do not favour any changes”…
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/clive-palmer-and-al-gore-become-convenient-allies/story-fni0ffxg-1226971201707
Investor Group on Climate Change: Who are we?
Current members of IGCC, listed below, represent total funds under management of approximately $1 trillion…INCLUDES:
Australian Super
Cbus
Christian Super
Generation Investment Management LLP
Goldman Sachs
Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation
Merrill Lynch
Mirvac
Morgan Stanley
Local Government Super
The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia Limited (ASFA)
UniSuper
VicSuper
http://www.igcc.org.au/who_are_we
[Might be worth a complete topic by itself here. Consider writing something up for consideration. .mod]
Sorry Willis
“And at the end of the day, despite their vain efforts to minimize the cost, even these proponents of renewables say it will cost up to $70 trillion dollars to make the switch, with no guarantee that it will work.
Sigh …
My comment work to do what? Switch to renewables like going to the moon as a goal. Or spending $70 trillion dollars because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. It was your closing line Sigh…
The word ‘subsidy’ only appears once in the document (and once in the list of references).
I can’t believe it is used correctly. What does “IMF (2013)” say?
(the word ‘subsidies’ is more common)
Nafeez not attracting the usual army of CAGW zealots with this one — only six comments as i post this:
3 July: Guardian: Nafeez Ahmed : World Bank and UN carbon offset scheme ‘complicit’ in genocidal land grabs – NGOs
Plight of Kenya’s indigenous Sengwer shows carbon offsets are empowering corporate recolonisation of the South.
Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 500 million acres of land in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean was acquired or negotiated under deals brokered on behalf of foreign governments or transnational corporations…
The World Bank’s Natural Resource Management Programme (NRMP) with the Kenyan government, launched in 2007, has involved funding for projects in the Cherangany Hills under the UN’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programme, including “financing REDD+ readiness activities” some of which began in May 2013.
Under the REDD scheme companies in the developed world purchase carbon credits to invest in reducing emissions from forested lands. Those credits turn up on the companies’ balance sheets as carbon reductions. In practice, however, REDD schemes largely allow those companies to accelerate pollution while purchasing land and resources in the developing world at bargain prices.
A FPP background brief on the role of the World Bank claims that the implementation of NRMP – overseen by the very same KFS forces conducting a scorched earth campaign in Cherangany – violates the Bank’s own operational safeguard policies…
A letter to the Bank in March by No REDD in Africa network (Nran) – a group of African civil society organisations – signed by over 60 international NGOs accused the Bank with the above words of “both admitting its complicity in the forced relocation of the Sengwer People as well as offering to collude with the Kenyan government to cover-up cultural genocide.”…
As “carbon credit financier and broker”, the World Bank is “aiding and abetting the forced relocation of an entire Indigenous People through its Natural Resource Management Plan (NRMP) which includes REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), in the Cherangany Hills”, said the letter….
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jul/03/world-bank-un-redd-genocide-land-carbon-grab-sengwer-kenya
.pdf: (12 pages) Report: Status of Forest Carbon Rights and Implications for Communities, the Carbon Trade, and REDD+ Investments
http://www.rightsandresources.org/documents/files/doc_6594.pdf
2 July: Washington Times: Valerie Richardson: Obama grants wind industry permit to kill eagles, ruffling more than feathers
By sacrificing a few bald eagles, the Obama administration may have opened a can of worms.
In a bid to give alternative energy sources a boost, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has quietly granted a California wind energy farm a permit to kill a limited number of endangered bald and golden eagles that get sliced up in its giant turbines. But last week’s free pass is sparking anger from wildlife advocates and from free market advocates who ask why they don’t qualify for the same dispensation…
The American Bird Conservancy filed a lawsuit last week against the 6-month-old federal rule expanding permits for killing bald and golden eagles from a maximum of five to 30 years, charging the Interior Department with “multiple violations of federal law.”
Conservancy spokesman Bob Johns said the organization is on board with green energy but the Obama administration has gone too far with incentives for the wind industry. The incentives include optional guidelines on environmental rules and production tax credits…
Last week, the Fish and Wildlife Service ruffled feathers by issuing what officials called a first-of-its-kind permit that allows a 50-turbine Northern California wind farm to kill up to five golden eagles over five years. In exchange, the developer agreed to retrofit 133 utility poles to reduce eagle deaths by electrocution…
Michael Sandoval, an energy analyst with the Independence Institute in Denver, said there is inevitably enormous outrage when sea gulls or ducks are coated with oil after a spill, but much less concern over wind turbines that chop eagles in half or cause bats to explode.
“Preferred energy policy favoring wind produces double standards…
Since the 1980s, wind turbines have killed an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 eagles, but the industry has paid only one fine, Mr. Johns said.
“If you or I get caught with an eagle feather, we’ve got some serious explaining to do. We’re going to pay a hefty fine,” said Mr. Johns (Conservancy spokesman Bob Johns). “There’s no exception noted in the law for the wind industry. The notion that somehow they’re entitled when the law doesn’t provide for it is ridiculous.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/2/california-grants-wind-industry-permit-to-kills-ea/
Willis Eschenbach, good post. And thanks for the conversion: FUEL, SUBSIDY PER GALLON, SUBSIDY PER LITRE
Fossil fuels – $0.17 per gallon, $0.04 per litre
Renewables – $1.19 per gallon, $0.31 per litre.
And on up to totals.
The petroleum industries’ subsidies follow a fairly simple and fundamental business economics concept.
Suppose, you buy a brand new milling machine or a lathe from South Bend, Indiana; well these days, more like communist red China. Or alternatively maybe you put up a 150 metre 5 MW wind turbine; or even as I once did, you buy yourself a 4 million dollar Ion Implant PMOS/CMOS silicon wafer fab factory.
Well you are going to use these things to make useful products that you can sell for a profit, so you can employ people to earn a living.
Well your Chinese lathe is going to gradually wear out its bearings, and the bed will get curved. Your wind turbine is going to shake itself to pieces, due to the synchronous wind shear pulsed loading , and my PMOS wafer fab will soon be obsolete, and its products, unsalable.
So somewhere down the road, you will need a new lathe or perhaps it will have to be an NC milling machine to be competitive with the new gadgets. The wind turbine, after it blows itself up, will have to be replaced, by a 10 MW one, to be competitive, and I’m going to have to pay 10 million for a new silicon wafer fab.
No this is not a result of inflation, although some of that will occur. My 4 million dollar wafer fab made 3 micron geometry devices, and it will cost 10 million for me to go down to 1 micron, or I won’t be cost competitive.
MOS wafer fabs, now cost almost as much as aircraft carriers, and they are making devices with something like 25 nm critical dimensions, to power our teraflop ipad/ped/pid/pod/puds.
That 100 foot piece of pipe you banged into the ground 100 years ago for petroleum to come gushing up out of, now has to be drilled down 10,000 feet or more under 5,000 feet of water, in .order to get at the oil underneath the stuff that used to gush out..
It is technological obsolescence, that keeps on driving up the REAL cost of new plants and equipment.
So in order to stay in business, you have to stash away, a lot of profit money, in a piggy bank, to be able to pay for that new profitable facility, that will replace your slowly aging and semi obsolescent current profit maker.
The inevitable decrepidation of your present legal means of support, means your plant assets, slowly wither and die. It’s called DEPRECIATION in the tax business, and it is simply a periodic allowance for you to bank a portion of your profits, to build up a nest egg to replace your plant with a future competitive one, so you can continue to supply useful products.
So ALL businesses, are allowed to “depreciate” (aka “write off”) a portion of the value of their old machinery (capital equipment) to prepare for the inevitable replacement of it.
Did you catch that part where, the value of your existing toaster oven, is not nearly enough to pay for a brand new artificially intelligent toaster, that knows when to make breakfast.
So profit alone, is not sufficient to replace your plant on just depreciation. You also will need new investment of venture dollars from people who see your new widget, as more valuable, than the old way of doing things. Without profitability for your shareholders, nobody, is going to put new money into your gig.
The guy who gambled on drilling a hole in the ground for petroleum, knows that in time, it will run dry, just like the bearings in your old Chinese lathe, and he needs to depreciate the value of his hole in the ground, in order to be able to drill a new and much deeper one.
Fossil fuel “subsidies”, are nothing more than the ordinary capital equipment depreciation schedules, that ALL businesses need to practice, in order to continues to stay in business.
And there isn’t any sugar daddy somehow printing gold, to “subsidize” everything else.
Giving free food or clothing or shelter to somebody (or some country) who does not have the means to pay for it, is NOT a subsidy. Whether it is “food stamps”, or these days disguised in the form of an EBT card (Everybody, But Taxpayers), it is not a subsidy; it is “welfare.”
That is not any moral or value judgment or criticism. It’s a simple fact. There always will be many who perhaps for no fault of their own, or maybe entirely their fault, won’t make it on their own.
It is part of being human, that we prefer to not let people fall through the cracks, even if it is their own fault. We can all make mistakes, and many do not; they simply got caught out in the rain.
So we prefer the charity of “welfare” of say a possible resort to criminal activity; because the will to survive is very powerful.
But it isn’t a subsidy. It’s a built in cost of being different from the animals, who operate entirely by the rule of survival of the fittest. Natures rule of survival is not just the best rule of survival, it is the only rule of survival. She doesn’t waste scarce resources on the unfit; that just risks the survival of all.
We aren’t like Mother Nature. We are willing to take the risk of investing in the less able, who may be able to contribute in other less obvious ways.
That sightless person, that Mother Gaia, would just let the lions eat, might just turn out to be able to play the most beautiful organ music; or write thoughtful poetry.
And besides; it could just as easily be me. Well in fact it was.
OPEC can afford to subsidize their own countries oil consumption because they make huge profits selling to other countries. The so-called oil subsidy is just a reduction in profit. Can renewable energies sell at equal price to oil and make huge profit? It’s easy to give subsidies once you have huge profits to finance it. So the real issue is: are renewables cheaper? Make money first, decide later how to give it away.
BTW if climate sensitivity is < 1 C per doubling of CO2 as some studies indicate, we have to quadruple CO2 to 1,400 ppm to attain 2 C. We will ran out of oil.
” … where do the authors think that money would come from? …”
Disingenuous answer: we could just print more? (as if that’s not happening already)
Willis, Do you agree that the commenters here are mostly agreeing with you! And they are preaching to each other. Meanwhile, the original bad report is sailing freely through the mass media, the flack in WUWT is no more than a ripple in the seaway. Until someone you or some other good person actually takes the perpetrators to court and have them correct their report it will continue to be regarded as the “revealed truth”.
Dr. Strangelove,
Subsidies as touted by green “economists” definitely refers to the government using taxpayers money – in this case to make people use renewables. Wherever the government gets the cash from, it is still taxpayers money being spent, but in fact the vast majority comes from citizens pockets.
Of course we could have 100% taxation and have our government ration everything fairly and equally to every citizen. Oops I forgot, thats been tried before. Perhaps we need to study recent history seriously and with an open mind.
Actually “green economists” are the biggest clueless bunch I have ever heard “economic” ideas from.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
$70 trillion is an order of magnitude more than the money involved in the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, starting a process which is not over yet.
And for this incredible amount of money we are supposed to buy what? A complete switchover from reliable baseload power generation to intermittent sources, which means frequent blackouts for the poor in spite of high rates, the need to install large battery packs with diesel generator backup for wealthy households and an impossible situation for industry. On top of that land use of the energy sector is to increase by two orders of magnitude, turning much of the countryside into an industrial zone.
Until we have cheap large scale energy storage facilities, still a future technology if attainable ever, don’t even think about it.
hillrj says:
July 3, 2014 at 11:55 pm
Thanks, hillrj.
Are commenters here mostly agreeing with me? Yes … and given the response to my recent posts and comments, it’s a pleasant change. However, I don’t write for the commenters … I write for the lurkers.
Is the report “sailing through the media”? Sure. It has big money behind it, you can’t hire IIASA on the cheap.
However, regarding “correcting their report” and taking them to court … you might not have noticed, but I didn’t find a single error in their report. In fact, I’ve used their figures throughout my analysis. So exactly what were you planning to charge them with in court? Being right?
To misquote the poet, the fault, dear hillrj, is not in our stars but in ourselves … the report is correct, it’s the interpretation of the facts and the conclusions drawn from those facts that are at fault.
As to whether “WUWT is no more than a ripple in the seaway”, I’m of the opposite opinion. I’m constantly amazed at the reach of this website. It is read by nearly all of the major players on both sides of the climate aisle. It’s about number 3,300 on the list of all US websites, which for an independent volunteer-staffed guest-author science website is pretty amazing. By comparison, the website of “Popular Science” magazine is about number 2,900 in the US … and that’s a professionally produced website with employees, and money to pay writers. And the website of Nature magazine, one of the top scientific journals, is about number 2,400 in the US. So WUWT is definitely a major force in the blogosphere.
Would I like to have a greater effect on the debate? Of course. But at present, this is the place where I feel I have the most leverage. Posts that I’ve published here have been re-blogged all over the web, and quoted in mass media from the New York Times to the Sidney Herald … hard to know where else I might get this kind of exposure.
All the best,
w.
What one sees in WU’WT is often a starting point – there are no walls around it.
Those that lurk and comment here have a far wider voice, That is what WOM is all about. If an idea or fact has flight, one person tells two, two people tell four etc etc. etc.
As for the USA’s favourite sport, “litigation”? Give it a break, lawyers be damned.