or not, depending on which side of the coin ur on..

No, what politically motivates protests about such things as wind farms is simply locals saying....'not in my backyard....ugly shite'....and being 'clever' enough to NOT state it as such....as it'd apply equally everywhere.

Instead they claim decimation of a yellowbelliedsapsucker or 'yon peat will die' and concoct 27 8×10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used against us in a court of law.

I can guarantee the same response if it were to be a Prison or better yet an Asylum....

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/the-wind-farm-scam/

I recently asked an energy executive why his company was investing in wind-power so heavily, when we both know it doesn't make any economic sense to do so. His reply was that it’s all about the government subsidies. Once those run out, they intend to forgo any further – very expensive – maintenance, run the things till they break down and then forget about them. 

That first picture is going to haunt my dreams.  Curse you.

Such short-sightedness saddnes me.

The same goes for oil and coal. Water pollution that costs billions. Air pollution that clouds the skies and reduces life expectancy. Sulfur from coal plants in the air that leads to acid rain and sterilizes lakes in large areas and reduces the health of forests.

And you should also compare the total cost of running windmills for 100 years to the total cost of running coal and oil and gas plants for 100 years into the future ...

Take for example shale oil. Isn't it a total shame that it costs about as much energy (from hydro-electric plants) to extract it from the ground as it yields? And then it has to be transported and refined (costs a lot of energy again) and burnt in our terribly inefficient cars (again a big loss). Someone rational would think ... WTF! WTF are we doing! It makes no sense! Stop this nonsense right away!

But we're not rational people... we're shortsighted and selfish, we don't give a damn about people next door, let alone on the other side of the world, let alone 100 years into the future on the other side of the world. It's just too damn difficult to imagine and not worth the trouble because all we need to do right now is to flip a switch and there's light! And it costs us almost nothing! For us, at this very moment, energy is fairly cheap but still way too expensive. Always too expensive. We rather spend our money on more luxurious goods, which require ever more energy and resources to produce, and very few think... hey, what are we doing... what is the real price of this beautiful car ... what are the consequences if we, as a people, go on doing this. Because, if you think about it, you'll realize that we are crazy, mad as cows, and nobody want to be called crazy. Because we're all sane people and we're all happy and everything is peachy and we don't need to think about all the bad that's going to happen because of the simple, everyday things we do today. Because we do it everyday. And our parents did it everyday. It's normal, it's our way of life! What can be wrong with that? Nothing, really? But then again... will this way of life still be possible for our children, or children's children, or their children perhaps? Oh but wait... who cares about those, they aren't even born yet! They have no rights, they have nothing to say, because they don't exists. And there doesn't exist a problem either... yet. Because we are doing nothing wrong.

I was refering to Canadian shale oil which was mined from the surface, not the more modern fracking. Fracking has different issues. Tiny oil fields, hard to exploit ... and it's sold like it's a game changer for the world. To me it's more a sign of desperation. The big, easy to exploit oil fields are almost a day of the past. So what are we happy with nowadays? Tiny, hard to exploit oil fields. I think it's just pathetic. And when those are depleted, then what? Will we all go back to using coal? There is plenty of coal around, to keep us going for a few hundred years. But it is extremely polluting, it yields less energy per tonne than oil and it contains lots of unwanted elements ... sulfur, heavy metals, radioactive elements. Hurray. And you know what, it'll be sold as modern progress, as the next great revolution, the age of coal! Well there's nothing great about it, it's going to be a complete disaster.

And for those who think that coal can be "clean" by filtering the exhaust fumes, well, you can only filter so much and the scale at which we'll be burning coal if we continue like this will be unimaginable. And poorer countries won't filter their fumes. Even China prefers rampant pollution by their coal plants instead of spending some extra money on making them clean. They just don't give a damn about it. And since people will remain the same, in the next 50 years we'll just see more of the same. As cheap as possible, and at the cost of everything else.

No it's not, that's the real myth. The real myth is that technology will solve every problem. Technology comes with a price and the more technology you need, the more energy you have to use. People always marvel at technology (me too) but they forget it doesn't come cheap.

Step one was: drill a hole and catch the oil. No cost at all.

Step two: drill a hole and add a pump. Still dirt cheap!

Step three: build oil platforms and get oil from the seas. A lot more expensive already.

Step four: drill a hole and inject seawater to keep the pressure up. Yes, we still get oil but for how long.

Step five (fracking): drill a hole and inject chemicals to fracture the rock. Yay! We get oil, but not for long because they have a limited fracking range. Compared to the previous steps this is incredibly clumsy and costly.

Step six: [future] drill holes everywhere, frack everything, inject (sea)water to squeeze out the last drop. Even clumsier.

Step seven: we're done, it's just impossible to get more oil unless we actually dig it up or detonate nukes below ground. We'll burn coal instead.

You see the same in medicine. More and more people can be saved and cured and be kept alive. The first 99% was easy: just some cheap antibiotics. Then come expensive treatments for cancer. Then Aids. Expensive medical equipment to treat complex diseases. And so on. Sure it's possible, and it's great! But it comes at a cost: it's very expensive. And expensive means: less money available for other goodies.

I kinda agree with that, although I'm not so keen on having a nuclear reactor in my backyard... I hope the ideas for nuclear fusion and/or for thorium reactors will one day become a reality.

And as for solar energy: why not... Germany has the guts to go for it, why not other countries?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

I wish my country had the guts (the Netherlands) but my government is cheap and is afraid to invest in something that's real. They rather import oil and burn it into thin air.

Because then you can't make sure that the people who supported your election with giant piles of money get the subsidies.  Duh!

Except that you're ignoring that a large part of the benefit of the improvement in technology is making each step in these processes more efficient and cheaper.  But other than that minor detail, you're exactly right.

Your drug metaphor proves my point.  What was an expensive and exclusive treatment 15 years ago is cheaper and more widely available now and will be cheaper still 15 years from now.  There is no doubt that if you are wealthy you have access to the best cancer drugs and have a greater chance of survival than someone in the exact same circumstances but without access to the experimental treatments.  However as technology progresses those experimental treatments become mainstream and both more widely available and cheaper and ultimately they benefit more people.  The early access by wealthy people subsidizes the eventual wide spread access for all.  It's not perfect, but it works.  The same can be said for complex diagnostic equipment.  

And as for solar being cheap... my dad has brand new solar panels on his house.  The unsubsidized payback on the system once you account for local energy prices, his energy consumption, inflation and the rise of prices and all the factors you can think of is something like 25 or 26 years on a system with a 20 year life expectancy.  It's only the subsidies, given directly to the production companies by government, that make it even worth considering (and then the break even point is about 7 years).  It's not "cheap".  It's just someone else's money.  They're not the same thing.

Oil isn't expensive.

The Fed has tripled the base money supply, we're in a depression though so no one has noticed the inflation yet.  Our trade partners have done the same insanity, they'll all inflate with us at a similar rate when the economy gets out from under the spending binge.  The oil market noticed.  $110 oil isn't a high price, it's $35 a barrel five years ago if you're a forward looking individual that knows the paper you just got is worthless.

When lending picks back up, hyper-inflation sets in and all that money OPEC is raking in starts shrinking.  Either that or the Fed puts the brakes on and sends us back into a sharp recession like Volcker did in the 80's, except massively worse thanks to the absurdly high level of money creation they've achieved with multiple rounds of quantitative easing and over seas bailouts.

There's one last anecdote I want to share with you. Here in the Netherlands we have a gigantic gas bubble at about 6km depth or so. It was discovered in the 60's. Since then, other gas fields were discovered but all of them were really small. And since its discovery, half of the gas has been exploited. What was once gigantic is now less so. And in another 50 years, it'll be gone. It is so obvious to me, that resources are finite and that once they're gone, they'll never come back. And what did our government do with all that money? It was all spent on building a nice welfare state. And that's no joke. All that extra income... gone, wasted on nice ideals from really nice politicians but who don't have a clue about long-term planning.

Damn near no hurricanes and now this.

Gustav was in 2002 - it is the latest first hurricane forming in the Satellite age (since before then so many went undiscovered).  Humberto beat it by 3 hours.

And he is correct in one respect.  The law of averages will catch up to us.  The question is - in this new paradigm (ACE 70% below the old average), what is the new average?