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Firstly I believe you are referencing a number from a study that includes all fossil fuel subsidies. Secondly it's completely bogus, for example they include the black lung benefit. That is paid by mining companies and they try and justify it as subsidy because there is no income tax paid by the beneficiaries, in other words no tax on the tax.
The total subsidy or tax break for the oil industry is about 5 billion, this works out to fractions of one penny per gallon of gasoline. Exxon's revenue would exceed it it a few days.
One important thing to understand when comparing these subsidies is the amount relative to production, it's minuscule for the fossil fuel industry. For example the primary tax break for coal industry is tax breaks on pollution controls. For renewables it is very high and is used to subsidize production helping to make them competitive.
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and even more in farm subsidies for things like corn syrup.
Clearly there is problems with the farm subsidies that need to be addressed but these should never be eliminated. Their purpose is to guarantee an adequate food supply and keep prices low. Farming has a unique problem in that the market for their product can have enormous swings because Mother Nature is unpredictable. If the have good growing season they have plenty of product to sell but no market for it, if they have a poor growing season their product has plenty of value but very little of it to sell. The subsidies guarantee they overplant providing an adequate food supply and keeping prices low. If left to their own means they will underplant and this will lead to food shortages and high food prices during bad growing seasons.
Complete nonsense. A heat engine -- an ICE is a heat engine -- is at best 35% efficient.
The batteries and motor in an electric car are 90%+ efficient.
Therefore you're producing far less CO2 to drive the vehicle the same distance using an EV powered by coal.
.
??? I was using 15% efficiency for an ICE. If we use your 35%, and deduct the 10% motor/battery loss, then ICE comes out as 35% and the EV at 3%. It's really 15% : 3%. ...We really needn't argue about it because nobody has power purely from coal anymore. It's just a comparison to show that EVs don't make as much sense as one might expect unless the power comes strictly from non-fossil sources.
OTOH- nuclear is the way to go to replace fossil fuel when it's depleted- reliable and adjustable to demand...takes up less habitat than PV or wind installations....doesn't disrupt riparian ecosystems like dams...waste disposal is a drawback, but not insurmountable.--after all- the stuff came out of the ground in the first place.
BTW- most of us have an unrealisitc view of "farm subsidies." It ain't the "direct payments" thing from the Nixon yrs: https://farm.ewg.org/subsidyprimer.php
Last edited by guidoLaMoto; 02-13-2019 at 05:21 AM..
I think you're confused. You get about the same energy out of oxidizing the C-C & the C-H bonds whether they come from solid hydrocarbons or liquid hydrocarbons.
The energy converted to kinetic energy in a vehicle of mass M to go a speed V is the same for ICE or EV. Only 15% of the chemical energy in the gasoline actually produces the KE....For coal generated Electricity, 35% of the chemical energy leaves the generator as juice. Then ~7% is lost in transmission and another 10-20% is lost in charging the car.(and it can be more). 35-7-15 = 13% left for KE (I'll give you a break and ignore the inefficiency of the E -motors themselves.)
EVs are losers if they're powered only on coal.
Since coal costs much less on a BTU basis than gasoline, it's a money maker and more importantly, emissions are lower than with an ICE.
You efficiency argument falls apart when any other primary energy source is used for electricity. Natural gas conversion is 55-60% efficient so your math would become 55 - 7 - 15 = 33% and the EV is over twice as efficient. And cleaner.
........OTOH- nuclear is the way to go to replace fossil fuel when it's depleted- reliable and adjustable to demand...takes up less habitat than PV or wind installations....doesn't disrupt riparian ecosystems like dams...waste disposal is a drawback, but not insurmountable.--after all- the stuff came out of the ground in the first place.
..........
WHICH STUFF?
The fuel or all the stuff which has been irradiated over the years such as the containment, the coolant, the packing, etc..?
It's not progress they're resistant to. It's losing their voice in decisions that affect them; decisions made by those who think they have all the answers, who know better than everyone else, who feel they have the right to dictate to others, and it's their way or the highway.
I am a righty who gets excited about both electric and hybrid vehicles. They are new, they are fun. Not sure yet if they are any great progress. But the last thing I'd want is some snarky kid or government agency to take away my choices, or to force me into compliance with their own agenda.
Or fake information regarding how the energy used to create the ability to charge a battery is mostly old school fossil fuels. We are a long way from complete solar or hydro.
I want an EV so I can park in the front row and drive in the carpool lane.
The fuel or all the stuff which has been irradiated over the years such as the containment, the coolant, the packing, etc..?
Does it make any difference?. It's not like using nuclear fuel generates new nuclear activity-- it's only transferred from original source to materials now contaminated.. Even in the woods west of the UofC where they just dumped the wasted material from the Manhattan Project on the ground, you can't see any evidence it's there...Please document any health problems caused by 70 yrs of disposing of nuclear waste. ..Not that we can be cavalier about it-- but technology supplies an adequate solution.
It's always a matter of risks vs benefits. Alternative energy is not without its own set of environmental costs.
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Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer
I want an EV so I can park in the front row and drive in the carpool lane.
...and I bet you go to the club every day to work out for an hour and a half, but fight over the parking place closest to the door.
Does it make any difference?. It's not like using nuclear fuel generates new nuclear activity-- it's only transferred from original source to materials now contaminated.. Even in the woods west of the UofC where they just dumped the wasted material from the Manhattan Project on the ground, you can't see any evidence it's there...Please document any health problems caused by 70 yrs of disposing of nuclear waste. ..Not that we can be cavalier about it-- but technology supplies an adequate solution.
U235/238 is not very radioactive, but fission byproducts and irradiated material like CO60 are highly radioactive. The process produces substantially more radioactive waste than one starts with.
U235/238 is not very radioactive, but fission byproducts and irradiated material like CO60 are highly radioactive. The process produces substantially more radioactive waste than one starts with.
So you're saying we can take an energy source like Uranium, draw out substantial energy from it, waste another bunch of its energy (2nd Law) and still wind up with more energy at the source than we started with. What a miracle!
According to Wikipedia, decay of U-235 releases ~4.6MeV and Co-60 `~2.7MeV
Sounds to me like we're pulling more energy out of the ground than we're putting back in.
True, U-235 only emits alpha particles which are not particularly dangerous- short trajectory; can be stopped by a sheet of paper. I had a Gilbert Chemistry Set in the late 50s that included an "Alpha Source"- a little kaleidoscope type tube about the size of a shotgun shell. You held it to your eye in the dark and could see little green streaks every few seconds-- while Co-60 decays with gamma photons-- potentially more of a problem to deal with, but -- again I have to ask-- We've been dealing with this for more than 70 yrs-- Please document any problems caused by disposal.
Cars kill 40,000 Americans every year. How many die in nuclear accidents? Shouldn't we auto law autos before we consider outlawing nuclear reactors?
The energy derived from fission has nothing to do with decay energy. The process is fission, not decay.
The radioactivity of unburned fuel vs burned fuel and irradiated sources is huge. It is safe to handle U235 with bare hands. You clearly have no understanding of the physics involved.
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