Nilatai wrote:
gbaji wrote:
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The others, with the exception of nuclear energy, are essentially free aside from start up and maintenance costs.
Um... No they aren't. It's exactly this kind of repetition of false "facts" that prevents alternatives from really becoming viable. If you can't honestly and correctly assess the relative costs and value of competing products, you will eternally fail to implement any of them properly.
Do you have to conduct multi-million pound exploratory surveys to find wind, sun, water?
Of course you do. You have to find places that have good sources of those things, then do environmental studies to determine the impact of tapping into them, then you have to convince people that those impacts are worth the "free" energy you'll get. You don't actually think that the most expensive part of finding oil is finding it, do you?
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Do you have to pay out for drilling rights or mining rights?
Anything that requires the use of a plot of land is going to have those same problems. Moreso given that most alternatives take up much more surface land (which is what we tend to have the most legal squabbles over btw) compared to the amount of energy generated. Do you have any idea how large an area you need to use to generate as much power using Solar as it takes to generate the same power with coal or oil?
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As you rightly said, nuclear energy start up costs are a lot higher than they should be. Do you think that might have anything to do with the political power oil and petroleum companies hold worldwide?
Do you? I don't. I think it mostly has to do with well meaning environmentalists who've managed to convince people that nuclear energy is just too dangerous to use. While I'm sure the coal folks aren't sad about this, they are not even close to the biggest culprit here.
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Simple fact is, green and nuclear alternatives are just going to get cheaper and cheaper in comparison to fossil fuels as time goes by.
This is true. As fossil fuels become less available they will become more expensive to utilize. Also, as our technology and methodology improves, the alternatives will become less expensive. Eventually, the alternatives will be more viable. But that day isn't today. Not when they're assessed with anything remotely like a fair market comparison.
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Now is the time to start the contingency plan for that, and invest in these alternatives. Sure, it might be more expensive in the short term, but in the long term? I don't think so.
There's a difference between "investing" in alternative energy and subsidizing the creation of said alternative or artificially inflating the costs of coal/oil in order to make the alternatives more attractive. At the risk of being obvious, in order for both of the factors which will make alternatives *actually* more viable, we need to both use coal/oil until they reach greater scarcity *and* improve the cost efficiency of the alternatives.
Artificially manipulating the market doesn't actually do either of those. It wont just cost more in the short term, but for a very very long term if we do it this way. Let the needs of the market drive which energy sources we use. It'll work better.
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Seriously, gbaji, you're not an expert on everything.
You wound me!