Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I take as my subject for this post a claim made over at Forbes Magazine, viz:
I saw that and said “Whaaaa”? My urban legend detector light started flashing bright red at that claim that we’re on the primrose path to the epocalypse.
Me, I always want to go the actual study instead of the media interpretation. In this case, the underlying study is by the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. It uses a most unusual definition of “subsidy”. Normally, subsidies are divided into direct and indirect subsidies.
A direct subsidy is money given to a producer or consumer. It’s actual cash.
An indirect subsidy, on the other hand, doesn’t involve actual cash, although it has a defined monetary value. An indirect subsidy includes things like tax rebates or R&D grants or the like.
The IMF definition, on the other hand, is quite bizarre. I’ve looked at a lot of studies of fuel subsidies, and only people with an axe to grind use one like this:
This paper updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries.
To highlight the difference between the standard definition and the IMF definition, let me give you a crystal-clear example of what the IMF considers to be a subsidy for “environmental costs” to the evil oil industries … but first I am obliged to warn you this stuff is not for the lily-livered or the faint of heart. So I’ll offer you a chance to avoid spoiling your digestion … any takers? OK, for those remaining hardy souls, one of the IMF’s many environmental subsidies is …
The cost of fixing the potholes on the road to my humble abode.
Truly. I’m not making this up. Pot-hole repair is part of their environmental “subsidy” that they claim is going to the energy companies.
And what are “environmental subsidies” when they are at home? I thought you’d never ask. Fortunately, they give examples, viz:
local air pollution mortality, broader costs associated with the use of fuels in road vehicles, and global warming
In the strange IMF parallel universe, the cost of fixing each of those is considered as a SUBSIDY TO EXXON AND SHELL! Fixing potholes as a subsidy to the energy companies! Have you ever heard such a daft thing?
Let me pause a moment here. They say that we should include “broader costs associated with the use of fuels in road vehicles”, meaning building the roads, building the bridges, and maintaining both of them.
But if you’re going to include that, how about the “broader costs associated with the use of fuels in building construction”? Buildings, like roads, are built using fossil fuels and run on fossil fuels. So … why include the costs of one and not the other?
These kinds of sort-of-related-not-really-costs are generally called “externalities”. The HUGE problem with using them is once you start to include anything but direct costs … where do you stop? Why include the cost of road construction and maintenance, but not the cost of building construction and maintenance?
From the study, the claimed reason for including the road costs is:
Environmental costs are just as real as supply costs, and undercharging for an unbiased (albeit uncertain) estimate of them is tantamount to undercharging for the true social costs of consumption.
Well … no. For many reasons. First, supply costs have an actual dollar figure to them, to the penny. Environmental “costs” do not. You can just pick a number.
Next, if your estimate is “uncertain”, how on earth would you know if it is “unbiased”.
Next, there is no rule or even rough guideline regarding what to include. Roads? Bridges? Potholes only? The possibilities are endless.
Next, if you need a clear example of how ludicrous this process is, consider the total impossibility of putting a dollar figure on the last item in their list, “global warming”. Seriously?
And finally, here is the real difficulty—in calculating the “externalities”, they are only including the external COSTS that they claim are associated with fossil fuels. They are totally ignoring the external BENEFITS of fossil fuels. Yes, there is a cost to fixing the roads, but there are also benefits.
These benefits, of course, are just as hard to put a price on as are the external costs. How much is it worth to have a good road to take me to the hospital after my seizure in November? Well … to me, a hell of a lot, although of course YMMV. I discussed this whole problem of monetizing externalities here.
And to me, this is why you should NEVER mix real costs and “monetized externalities”. One is real and very measurable. The other is an “accordion variable”, one that you can make as wide or as thin as you wish.
In other words, this IMF study has nothing to do with actual subsidies. The IMF:
• calculates an imaginary “efficient” price level that the authors think fuel would be supplied at on some kind of imaginary ideal planet,
• adds in the price of everything but the kitchen sink, e.g. they’ve added in the cost of “traffic congestion”, the cost to repair potholes, and even the imaginary cost of “global warming”,
• subtracts from that giant bulked-up number the actual price, and
• calls the difference a “subsidy”.
Yeah, when you add in highly suspect cost estimates of repairing potholes and traffic congestion and “global warming” as “subsidies” to fossil fuels, it’s easy to get up to a really, really big number. And that big number is many things. It’s impressive. It’s alarming. It scares children.
But it’s not a subsidy of any kind, direct or indirect. It’s a morass of monetized externalities, but only costs, not benefits.
For comparison, let’s look at real numbers. The US Energy Information Agency keeps records of actual subsidies. These cover both direct and indirect subsidies, viz:
• Tax expenditures: the amount of tax benefits or preferences received by taxpayers and forgone by the federal government
• Direct expenditures to recipients (i.e., both producers and consumers): the amount of grants, loans, or other financial assistance awards made directly to recipients
• Research and development (R&D) support: the amount of grants, loans, or other financial assistance awards made for R&D
• DOE loan guarantees: financial support authorized to be provided by DOE for innovative clean energy technologies that are typically unable to obtain conventional private financing because of their high technology risks.
This is the standard definition of subsidies. No nonsense about externalities. No ridiculous attempt to add in the fantasy cost of “global warming”
From Table 3 in the document linked to above, the total of direct plus indirect subsidies for oil and natural gas is about $2 billion dollars per year. For coal, it’s about $1.15 billion per year … a far, far cry from their claimed $649 billion.
Grrrr …
Intermezzo:
I took a break to go visit the ocean with my gorgeous ex-fiancée. Analyzing this kind of IMF garbage tends to angrify my blood. We went to the point out at the mouth of Bodega Bay. No whales today, big waves though. The waves are supposed to keep building for a couple days, the surf spot at Mavericks will be pounding …
We went out on the point where there is a curious kind of Stonehenge-like monument to the men and women who go to sea, and to those who don’t return. That good woman and I used to fish commercially out of this harbor, so it holds many memories for us. Here’s the monument, set up like the bow of a ship, with a boat’s steering wheel hidden on the back side of the square center stone. You can stand there, hold the wheel, and look out to sea:
And here’s the brass plaque on the center stone:
We walked out to the point, and looked out over the channel between the shore and a nearby offshore island, the narrow entry that she and I would use to bring the boat back to harbor, the passage that the sailors call “between the rock and the hard place” …
And the wind and the sea did their usual magic, soothed my blood and left me enjoying the very last day of 2019.
But I digress …
To return to the article that I’m analyzing, the headline comparing subsidies with education expenditures is very deceptive. To begin with, their calculated “subsidy” (which is nothing of the kind) is $649 billion per year. This is a huge, monumental, unbelievable exaggeration … but let’s pretend it’s real for just a moment. This is indeed about ten times larger than FEDERAL spending on education.
But what they don’t bother to mention is, the Feds are only responsible for a tiny bit of US spending on education, only about $59 billion.
Most spending on education is at the state and local level. Between Federal, state, and local direct cash outlays, we spend $1.23 TRILLION on education, about twice the amount of even their bogus figure. See here for details.
And the final problem with their analysis? It is that you cannot just look at raw subsidy numbers as they are doing. Once again, it’s a “cost/benefit” deal, and once again, they have left out the benefits. Consider: which one is better … spending $100 to subsidize the production of lots of energy, or spending $10 to subsidize a business like Solyndra that crashed and burned?
Obviously, the $100 option is far preferable to the $10 option. Raw subsidy numbers are meaningless.
So here’s a graph of those same EIA direct and indirect subsidies discussed above, but this time expressed per barrel of oil equivalent energy produced.
As you can see, per the amount of energy produced, we’re spending a hundred times more subsidizing renewables than we spend subsidizing natural gas and oil.
SUMMARY:
• Total US subsidies for fossil fuels, both direct and indirect, are about $3.2 billion dollars with a “b”. Their $649 billion dollar figure is nonsense.
• Total US spending on education, combining Federal, state, and local, is about $1.23 trillion dollars with a “t”, or about five hundred times as much as we spend on fossil fuel subsidies. Their $59 billion figure is only about 5% of the total educations expenditures.
• Per unit of energy produced, subsidies on renewables (solar, wind, biomass) are about a hundred times as large as the subsidy on oil.
CONCLUSION:
• Epocalypse canceled, sorry, no ticket refunds.
My very best New Years wishes to all,
w.
PS: Misunderstandings are the bane of the intarwebs. When you comment, please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS you are discussing, so we can all be clear just what and who you are referring to.
Welcome to the Twilight fringe, where you can have your baby and plan her, too.
I’m not sure how much USA collects in gasoline tax but feds take in 36 billion annually and California 16 billion. I won’t be surprised if total state and federal gasoline tax revenue was over 100 billion.
It varies by state. according to:
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/motor-fuel-tax-revenue
In 2015, the states pulled in $43.8 Billion from gas taxes ($5.7 billion of that just from California) Add that to your $36 billion number gets us close to $80 billion, and considering gas taxes have increases in several states over the past 5 years and your $100 billion estimate probably isn’t too far off the mark
Thank Willis.
These folks would divide by zero, given the chance.
As to potholes, I frequent a four-way stop, 3 paved, one gravel. They keep filling the potholes on the gravel and eroded asphalt with gravel. If they extended the fossil fuel a little farther, they wouldn’t have quite the problem of vehicles turning corners. Also frequented by hikers, bikers, even occasional horse. Need to figure in cost of incompetent education.
I have been to the big rift of Bodega Bay area, have a picture of huge surf, big rip knocking down breaker. I prefer running aground on mud or sand.
Federal highway funds (from the federal gas/diesel tax) goes to States to help maintain the Interstate highway system, at least that is the intent. But that is drop in the bucket compared to what the States, counties, and cities also spend on local highway road maintenance budgets, money that comes from a State gas tax and/or property taxes.
The Federal gasoline tax / diesel tax is: $0.184/gal / $0.244/gal.
State fuel taxes range from:
Lowest: $0.1466/gal / $0.144/gal (Alaska), $0.1742/gal / $0.1742/gal (Missouri – lower 48)
Highest: $0.612/gal +2.25% sales tax / $0.8693/gal +9.25% sales tax (California)
My Arizona is $0.19/gal / $0.27/gal. One of the lowest. Gas around Tucson right now is about $2.45/gal (and no sale tax on top of that.)
Whereas just down the road in San Diego, gas prices today $0.90 higher, around $3.30-$3.35 / gal.
That difference is an additional $20 to fill up a Chevy pickup ~(22-23 gallons) like I own.
The crazy thing of course are the states that have a sales tax on top of the total retail fuel price. So they are applying a sales tax to the fuel (excise) tax to generate more revenue, and when wholesale gas prices go up, so too does the state’s revenue. This gas sales tax is mostly confined to Blue States where the Democrats can never turn down an opportunity to slap on another tax. The only exception is Indiana, which is generally considered Red toady but was Democrat controlled when the fuel sales tax was enacted.
Like any sales tax on an essential item for getting to/from work, these fuel taxes are highly regressive, hitting the lowest incomes the hardest. Where for the rich, these fuel taxes are a minuscule as a fraction of wealth/income.
Of course, EV’s pay no “fuel” tax. But an EV is pricey compared to a comparable ICE vehicle, and they are essentially a luxury item affordable to the affluent and unaffordable/impractical for the blue collar working family making less than $60K/yr. So the lack of an EV fuel tax is a subsidy to the rich.
On this topic, I frequently think of the Atlas Shrugged movie scene where protagonist Dagney Taggert fills up her car and its something like $850, which she can easily afford because she is rich.
I think for 2020, I need to re-watch that 3-part movie based on Ayn Rand’s novel.
Who is John Galt?
In Washington State (not the D.C. place) a few years ago, we voted in higher gas taxes (and studies are underway about a per mile charge for EVs or maybe all vehicles).
There has been a growing need of highway repair and improvements. New standards (think safety — ex: Impact Attenuators) raise costs, as do higher wages and materials cost.
Improvements, see: https://i90wildlifebridges.org/
And lets not forget the Federal Tax Credit (subsidy) for the first 200,000 EVs produced by a manufacturer.
See https://www.energy.gov/eere/electricvehicles/electric-vehicles-tax-credits-and-other-incentives
Tesla’s tax credit is completely gone as of today.
That’s the Federal EV tax credit. Some states (and even some other countries) may still have their own tax credits and/or other subsides that Tesla and/or Tesla buyers are still eligible for.
And the Canadian federal tax credit of $5,000 on the base Model 3 and other entry level EVs started last April. Quebec and British Columbia have additional provincial credits on most EVs.
There’s a lot of market outside the U.S. and a lot of sales without subsidies.
Tax credits are not subsidies? Really?
Some people were, and are, buying Tesla cars and neithr receiving a tax credit or a subsidy. The end of the U.S. subsidy isn’t automatically the end of Tesla. Certainly the stock value didn’t collapse Dec 31.
The Canadian federal subsidy only started nine months ago, and is only on the base Model 3. There had been Provincial subsidies or credits in some provinces before that, and more are sold with than without it.
And before Tesla, Canadian government and provincial subsidies and tax breaks have been granted feom time to time to makers and end users of trucks, trains, aircraft, cars, hydro dams, combines, nuclear power plants, wheel loaders, video cards, a national Oil Company ‘PetroCanada’…
So, tax credits are subsidies, thanks for clearing that up. Now, you got actual proof that tesla buyers are not receiving the subsidies you clearly admit exist?
2hotel9 : Tax credits are not subsidies? Really?
Yes and no.
On the no side: Technically a tax credit is not a subsidy as a subsidy is the government giving money to a business where as a tax credit is the government not taking your money from you in the first place. so by the strict definition it’s not unless you assume all your money belongs to the government and any that they let you keep is a subsidy.
On the yes side: Certain tax credits (such as the EV tax credit), however, have the same ultimate effect as a subsidy – assisting a business by enabling them to get sales (and thus more money) then they otherwise would not have without the tax credit. which is why such credits often get technically mislabeled as subsidies.
My point all along, Electric Vehicle sales receiving tax credits are a subsidy. EVs are a niche market item. Until auto makers come out with an electric vehicle which has a generator onboard supplying electricity for them to run they are still just a gimmick, not a viable option for people who actually use vehicles.
And there are tax “credits” that come to you even if you pay no tax, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. Two or even three of my tax returns ended with money coming to me even though I paid no tax. I said then (though maybe not out loud) that “credit” was mislabeled.
I know quite a few people who only get a “tax refund” because of EITC and they are smug about it, saying they are getting over on the government.
The end of the U.S. subsidy isn’t automatically the end of Tesla.
No, but it’ll likely lead to a drop in sales. Everywhere else EV tax credits have disappeared have seen a drop in EV sales follow, I see no reason why Tesla would buck that trend.
Certainly the stock value didn’t collapse Dec 31.
the two aren’t well correlated. Tesla hasn’t made a profit in any year that it’s been in existence, and that hasn’t hurt it’s stock value. If Tesla’s stock value matched the companies performance, it’d be a penny stock.
Blue state-red state thing is silly.
Categorization tends to be on Presidential voting, and he has no influence on state gas taxes or sales taxes. In some states, governors are often the opposite part of the alleged red state-blue state categorization.
not silly, though obviously not a 100% match either. However, it does tend to reflect the general political spectrum of those states. The “blue” states tend to be more liberal, and the “red” states tend to be more conservative (and not just when it comes to picking the President). Of course some “red” and some “blue” states are actually more “purple” in that they’re more evenly split between the two sides of the spectrum.
“Epocalypse”? Is that a creative variation on apocalypse similar to “Anthropocene”. I suggest “ecopocalypse” as being closer in describing alarmist predictions.
Robert, I considered “ecopocalypse”, but I had a couple considerations. One is that it’s too complex at five syllables. The other is that it sounded too much like “eucalyptus”.
So I settled on “epocalypse”.
w.
Bodega Bay… isn’t that the bay in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Birds’ ? Look out for crows.
Kinda true … the church is in the nearby town of Bodega, which is a small town between our house and Bodega Bay. Church and schoolhouse used in the film are still there.
But the bay in the movie was not Bodega Bay, it’s somewhere in SoCal nearer to the movie studios.
w.
This is politically motivated accounting so it would get a big fat ‘F’ in an accountancy exam, unless corruption is involved? Also, it’s just making any old connection with made up stuff to make an implausible plot work, a bit like a really bad B movie.
actually this is the kind of thing that gets you an A now days.
Willis, The ratio of subsidies in relation to the total fossil fuel industry vs renewables compared to that of energy produced doesn’t seem right to me. I might be wrong but I would have thought that in relation to energy produced the ratio would get worse not better!
John, the more energy you produce from a given source, the less you are paying per unit of energy in subsidies to that source.
Regards,
w.
This article brings us another good example of ‘Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics’. renewables are Unsustainables.
Even the $3.2 billion “subsidy” is almost entirely fictitious as it is nothing more than depreciation, which all companies take advantage of and from a financial point of view, is entirely defensible.
Willis,
On the external benefits of fossil fuels, you will recall Judge William Alsup’s dismissal of San Francisco’s ridiculous action against Chevron and other Oil companies reported here by Anthony on June 25, 2018-
“Breaking: California Judge tosses global warming lawsuit against oil companies.”
In the memorable words of his Honour-
“With respect to balancing the social utility against the gravity of anticipated harm,it is true that carbon dioxide released from fossil fuels has caused ( and will continue to cause) global warming.But against that negative, we must weigh this positive,our industrial revolution and the development of our modern world has literally been fuelled by oil and coal.”
End of argument.
Now if only someone would explain that to the IPCC, Al Gore and Greta Thunberg.
RE: Now if only someone would explain that to the IPCC, Al Gore and Greta Thunberg.
The IPCC is corrupt, Al Gore is a divinity major turned corrupt politician turned eco-profiteer and Greta is a teenage mentally ill school drop-out. You’d have better results explaining Special Relativity to the average dog.
“Environmental costs are just as real as supply costs, and undercharging for an unbiased (albeit uncertain) estimate of them is tantamount to undercharging for the true social costs of consumption.”
“Environmental costs” are real, it’s just that they are hard to calculate as they appear to vary with each and every item, location, and timing. The shoreline environmental cost of a “king” tide in a rising sea level scenario is somewhat different than at low tide. And then again, every king tide is not the same. Hence, sea level rise impacts are variable, as, I might say, they have been for a while now.
“local air pollution mortality, broader costs associated with the use of fuels in road vehicles, and global warming”
We should expect the health morbidity and mortality impact of air pollution from diesel fuel vehicles to be measurable in Paris these last multiple summers; Beijing, which is polluted every year by dust from the Gobi Desert; or, New Delhi and the pollution from farmers burning their rice crop residue every year. These are big measurable pollution events and still…it is hard to measure increased morbidity let alone mortality. All estimates are by model. Now, the London Fog of 1952, with its more modern day measurements of excess mortality (12 K) although itself a modeled number, did spark renewed legislative action to reduce home coal use which had been of concern since the 13th Century.
It is important to use a benchmark that we all can agree upon. Deaths is such a distinct and agreed upon benchmark, so that we are talking likes-to-likes. Otherwise, we get off track which seems, in my mine to be the point of extremists, confusing real numbers with made up model numbers.
Calculating environmental impact costs with made up numbers for those who are effected is hardly a way to convince the public at large that one’s view point has validity.
“• calculates an imaginary “efficient” price level that the authors think fuel would be supplied at on some kind of imaginary ideal planet,”
In other words, the IMF just became another SOVIETOID organization.
IMF’s thinking reminds me of an old quote:
“Any road will get there if you don’t know where you;re going”.
The IMF study puts anything that has ever been taught about public finance to shame. They define some imaginary price they would like on oil and gas and if this price is not being met by the market, that’s a subsidy then. So, if one country taxes the Bejesus out of its own population driving them into poverty, they are the good ones as they don’t subsidize energy. And those with a light hand on their own people are horrible subsidizers. Asking your entire population for fewer takes is no subsidy. Its called a government that does not sledgehammer its own people. A subsidy is money or monetizable. Which means that Oil & Gas don’t get subsidies in developed countries. They pay taxes.
Willis I hate to nit pick, but the X-axis label reads Years, rather than Energy Sources.
Of course you’re dead on as usual.
Pinche cabrón, now I gotta fix it.
Many thanks,
w.
“They are totally ignoring the external BENEFITS of fossil fuels”
Exactly. We’ve been using fossil fuels for a while, let’s round it off to one hundred years.
Before fossil fuels, we had to rely on animals, and we were animals ourselves back then because “manpower” included slaves and women. Without fossil fuels, that is still where we would be. Using whale oil probably.
So think of everything as it is now compared to what life was like back one hundred years ago; what a difference. And that difference, rounded off a bit, is fossil fuels. In history, the development of fossil fuels is just about as big as the discovery of fire.
No, no and no again.
This is about the price of something, that’s all. The benefits are totally irrelevant.
The price of water is set by how much it costs to produce, not the benefits of staying alive. That’s why water is cheap and Ferraris are expensive.
Oil may well provide benefits, but if in producing it I make lots of noise, I should compensate my neighbours for that and charge my consumers accordingly.
Sorry Phoenix44 but you are dead wrong. You can’t just look at one side of the ledger. That’s *not* how cost/benefit analysis works. You look at *both* sides to determine if the cost is greater than the benefits or vice versa and then act accordingly.
w. ==> Never fear — even nuttier things are done in the name of Saving The Planet From Climate Change.
NASA/NOAA still add the imaginary GIA Adjustment to the Global Mean Sea Level — it is not, of course, even pretended to be an actual increase in sea surface height — but, despite the fact that it does not increase the height of the sea surface, they add it in as if it did. This is not even hidden — it is openly admitted. In the satellite era, the not-actually-an-increase-in-sea-surface-height GIA Adjustment has added just over 13mm or 1/2 inch to “GMSL”. Spent much of yesterday confirming this from raw sat data.
Ya gotta hand it to the Climateers — they really know how to jigger the data.
Happy New Year.
“• Tax expenditures: the amount of tax benefits or preferences received by taxpayers and forgone by the federal government”
So, when I file my taxes and claim, let’s say, $100 in deductions, that means that the government (and my fellow taxpayers) are subsidizing me to the tune of $100?
No, I won’t accept that definition as valid. Figuring out how to legally keep a little more of my money is not a subsidy.
Anyone that makes the mistake of assuming that the federal education budget equals the total government education budget in the US is a fool that “literally knows nothing.”
Let us assume that the well-connected twentysomethings at the IMF indeed “know nothing.” No big deal. But this went all the way up the chain of command. So, are we to assume that the top dogs at the IMF are equally clueless?
And so the twentysomethings at Forbes also “literally know nothing.” But whatabout the layers of editors?
Thank you, Willis, for your service!
There is no longer any accountability for anything that anybody states……MSM or most other realms.
There is only a main objective to convince people of something they think is important……….like “saving the planet” or “global socialism” or “President Trump must go” using false narratives, manufactured realities and fake news with the ends justifying the means.
The biased sources use convincing sounding words/verbiage, along with pretending to have science and morals on their side while smearing anybody that disagrees with them.
In the case of the MSM, many of whom are progressive activists in a profession intentionally chosen because it allows them to impose their belief system on readers/viewers as they abuse ethical and professional journalistic standards…….but get away with it because of freedom of the press laws.
Who has weather records on their computer to check them when they present every weather extreme as unprecedented or caused by the climate crisis?
Who even understands climate well enough and would check to see that they actually rewrote climate history(with the hockey stick graph) to wipe out the Medieval Warm Period?
Who knows that the last 40 years on this greening planet has featured the best weather/climate for life in at least the last 1,000 years?
Instead, they rely on the fake 97% of climate scientists narrative repeated over and over which mis-characterizes what scientists actually believe?
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/41293/
Who knows that 80% of scientists are liberals and up to 50% of them are at the extreme end of that spectum with strong political views and not all unbiased Mother Theresa’s with white coats that don’t vote or let politics or money(funding) or group think, ego and reputation affect their views?
How many know that our colleges have become an ideal location to indoctrinate our young people into the climate religion cult?
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/42610/
The age of information has become the age of using these powerful communication tools to push propaganda on a people who are losing their ability to do critical thinking and too lazy to do the work to check facts because its so much easier to have them handed to you on a silver platter.
I did all the work for you in these discussions:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/27864/
If it was all about the authentic science, then experts in authentic science would be the messengers, using authentic science……..empirical data, observations……realities.
Instead, we have marketing schemes and sensationalism.
For example, using a 16 year old know nothing about science spouting absurd, end of the world, catastrophic scenario’s that have nothing in common with the truth, authentic science or actual conditions of this current climate optimum.
Or Al Gore and his climate snake oil selling charade and never ending, greatly exaggerated/failed predictions.
Or physics/energy defying Green New Deal plans that have a zero chance of being viable or working.
This is what defines the new reality here in 2020. You can say anything that you want and never be held accountable. Especially if its about something that is coming in a decade………which was supposed to happen already and was supposed to happen a decade ago before that (as it almost always is not as bad as predicted) but somehow, turns into one of those false narratives of being “worst then expected”.
Every good creature/life form on the planet is threatened with extinction, while the exact same conditions will cause every bad creature/life form to thrive and experience explosive growth.
Again, it’s no longer about authentic science and it doesn’t even make sense when you think about it rationally/critically but that no longer matters. You can state anything without being held accountable here in 2020.
In fact, in 2019/20, you can be 16 years old and spout complete anti science nonsense, while hoodwinking millions and because of that………be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and recognized as the person of the year by Time Magazine and seen as a hero.
60 years ago, before climate science was hijacked, if you had asked scientists what temperature was best for life on this planet, 97% would have said with confidence: WARMER!
If you had showed them statements similar to what Greta makes, they would have thought you were nuts, laughed or told you to leave them alone.
Subsidizing The Epocalypse = Apocalypse.
I’ve had the discussion many times with alarmists who claim that fossil fuels are subsidized more than renewables, which is laughable on it’s face. But the reason they think so is that:
1. They count any tax deduction/credit taken by oil companies, even if that tax deduction/credit is not specific to oil/gas companies, but is available to any company and is simply an artifact of the tax code. The best example is the tax deduction taken by oil companies for failed discovery investments (like any company or individual can deduct investment losses). This is simply not a subsidy by any reasonable definition.
2. They don’t count green energy mandates as subsidies. Of course it’s a subsidy, it’s just harder to unwind exactly how much they are getting due to market distortion. If I force you to use a product a certain % of the time, or force a price for the product above the free market price, then that’s a subsidy.
However, this article you reviewed goes even beyond these two ludicrous stances. The intellectual dishonesty of these people is breathtaking.
I’m quite sure that when trees are mowed down to build a road to the top of a mountain, where a wind turbine is built, the cost of that road will not be counted as a subsidy… By the way, I suppose EVs are specially conceived that they can “functionally ignore” potholes? Or do we need street segregation: fossil fuel vehicles one one road, EVs on the other road?
EVs are the precursor of (long promised) flying cars, so to them potholes don’t matter.
Potholes? where we’re going we don’t worry about potholes (with apologies to Doc Brown).