“I never understood wind,” Trump said. “I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right?”Does Trump have a random word generator in his head?
“So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air,” he continued.
Beyond the bizarreness of this particular rant, one might observe that Trump doesn't give a shit about the fumes and gases that are emitted from coal-fired electricity generation plants. He's bent on rolling back rules affecting them.
So, for IMPOTUS, it makes a difference who is spewing.
14 comments:
Makes perfect sense to me. And it drives the libruls crazy. Sarcasm intended.
While I don't hate wind. It is not now, nor will be soon, a viable replacement of coal and nuke power generation.
I understand your tds, though I don't understand why you have it, but how can you seriously propose wind as anything near viable?
Do you have a windmill in your yard?
This is senile dementia progressing right along.
This is further evidence that Fergus is a dangerous idiot.
Why are wind turbines and solar panels manufactured elsewhere, when we know they're about to become a huge portion of the manufacturing sector?
Fergus hates windmills because they put some of them near his golf course in Scotland, and for that he wants to let us get our lunch eaten yet again by other countries not laboring under his and the Republicans' mental deficiencies, and using our own technology to do so.
Fergus is a joke as a president, although not a funny one.
-Doug in Oakland
He riffs on this because he lost the lawsuit in Scotland over wind farming in sight of his golf course, and had to pay up.
It gnaws at him so.
Thus wind = bad.
He can’t be like Elsa, and “Let it go.”.
Let’s see, GE is the third largest producer of wind turbines...the Chinese don’t hit the list till number 7...
Wind power is extremely viable, especially when used as a supplement to conventional plants, but some people won’t accept that because it interferes with their arguments that it’s no good. Much like solar, it isn’t an answer on its own without huge batteries, but it is a solution to avoiding building huge conventional plants for very occasional usage.
Trump is a tool of the carbon lobby. They've told him to denigrate wind, solar, hydro-anything not carbon cartel related. Putin or MbS speaks, trump follows orders. He knows his income depends on it.
CP: the issue is that we have to use our existing plants in order to support wind when it fails. And you can't ramp up a coal/steam turbine quickly, so the plant cannot be efficient when the wind IS running. And most wind power farms only ever actually end up producing about half of their nameplate power.
Now natural gas turbines with cogeneration......Those you CAN ramp up quickly enough to work with the variable output wind farms.
But the other thing about wind is that NO ONE ever builds wind plants without subsidies. They simply aren't economically feasible unless someone else (generally the taxpayer) pays for about half the cost while the wind farm owner takes the profit.
Fossil fuels are subsidized as well, B.
It should be noted that other forms of energy also receive subsidies. “Every energy technology we’ve had … has benefited quite substantially from the federal government,” said Jay Bartlett, a senior research associate at the independent nonprofit Resources for the Future.
Natural gas and oil producers, for instance, receive tax preferences for exploration and development costs, and receive additional tax breaks related to extraction, among others.
According to reports from the Department of Energy and the Congressional Research Service, fossil fuels have historically received more support than renewables, but in recent years the trend has flipped — and on a per unit of energy basis, renewables currently receive far more. Because many of the renewable tax subsidies are set to expire, the CRS report estimates that fossil fuels will receive more tax benefits than renewables in 2028
Greenhouse gas emissions are also not currently factored into the costs of various forms of energy. Instead, lawmakers have generally opted for subsidies for energy sources that have lower carbon footprints, including wind.
“We subsidize because they’re emerging tech we care about, and by doing so we can lead them down this path to lower costs,” said Bartlett.
Short of a tax on carbon, Bartlett said subsidies are an “imperfect, but at least somewhat reasonable way to reward the non-carbon emitting element of wind or solar power.”
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/07/does-wind-work-without-subsidies/
And you fail to see my point:
If it were not for subsidies, NO ONE would ever build windmills. They are economically unfeasable.
Not so with Fossil fuels.
"“We subsidize because they’re emerging tech we care about, and by doing so we can lead them down this path to lower costs,” said Bartlett."
"Care about" being the operative words. The price per (nameplate) Megawatt hasn't come down so far, either.
Show me one wind farm that works without subsidies. You can't.
And if you use FactCheck as a source, then you are a fool. It is biased as much as Facebook.
Yeah, B, so let's just keep on shitting in our nest until we can't breathe the air.
I remember the air in the seventies, and notice how much better it is now with every breath.
Fergus' own EPA says that the increased particulates due to the relaxed regulations are expected to kill +/- 1,500 people early each year, which, I guess, is no big deal as long as one of those early deaths isn't you or someone you care about.
-Doug in Oakland
Altamont wind Farm has been around for 38 years, B. It generates 1.1 TWatts per year.
And you still ignore that fossil fuels have been And Will continue to be subsidized for the foreseeable future.
If you squint hard enough, then yes, Fossil fuels are sorta subsidized.
But not like Wind and Solar and other non economically viable methods of producing (unreliable) power.
When one must have a subsidy for more than 50% of the infrastructure just to make it feasible, then there is an issue. When there has to be a MANDATE that the utilities buy and use said power, then there is an issue.
There is a reason no big firms build without the subsidy or the protection for the product. It is, and will continue to be a boondoggle. With few exceptions, no one builds wind farms unless someone else pays for them and their associated infrastructure.
Those who depend on them as a primary source of power learn to live in the dark or the cold.
Sure, B, sure:
Conservative estimates put U.S. direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20 billion per year; with 20 percent currently allocated to coal and 80 percent to natural gas and crude oil. European Union subsidies are estimated to total 55 billion euros annually.
https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs
So, you have to squint to see 20 billion dollars?
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