Originally Posted by FloggingSully

Cost who less?

Right now it costs everyone less. Let me give you a little example.

The Cincinnati Zoo just fininshed an 11million dollar solar panel project. The 4 acres of solar panels are supposed to generate 20% of the zoo's electricity (they hope). The zoo's annual electric bill is 700k dollars. (20% of that is 140k.) So the zoo just spent 11mill to save 140k per year. At that rate it will take 78.57 years to start to see savings. And that is if there is absolutely no maintenance costs added on in those 78 years. Does that remotely make sense to anyone? And to make things even better, 80% of the 11mill was tax payer dollars! That means 8.8mill in tax money was spent to build something that virtually no one who is alive today will see any benefit of.

I am all for clean energy, but right now it makes no sense. If companies can't offer anything better than what the zoo got, then drill baby, drill!


Cincinnati Zoo going solar

Originally Posted by FloggingSully

You're only considering the cost to the person buying the power, there are plenty of additional costs paid by others...

What do you mean specifically? I'm not sure who the "others" are.

Solar and wind take up large amounts of affordable land that people could live on, therfore forcing people to live in ghetto's. Give me a break, how about the cost of corn sky rocketing because of corn crops going to ethenol. Solar and Wind both have to be subsidiesed by fossil fuels so they are no better.

You might also attributed the rise in the cost of goods to the demand for better wages. The more you pay people the more you have to charge for your goods and services.

Originally Posted by FloggingSully

Well, to start with an obvious one, fossil fuels cost the 11 guys who died when the rig blew up in the gulf a lot more than wind/solar. Fossil fuels cost the fishing industry in the gulf a lot more recently than solar/wind.

There are also lots of less obvious (and less easy to pin on a single company) costs from fossil fuels. Burning coal can lead to increases in acid rain which decreases crop yields which costs farmers money. Increases in air pollution from burning fossil fuels might increase the instances of asthma which increases the costs of treating asthma. These costs have to be paid by someone, and it tends not to be the person who's buying the energy.

lol. You can not be serious! The fishing industry is the most dangerous job in the world. Try going out the the Bering Sea. You said 11 people as if that is a huge number. Believe me, people dying is nothing to laugh at, but many more than 11 die every single year fishing or farming or mowing grass or crossing the street. Come on, man!

When Bush was president people blamed him and his "big oil buddies" for the increase in oil prices. Now that it's Obama, no one blames him. It's really gotten stupid. Did you really say an increase in acid rain? Are you trying to convince people that if America gets more solar panels that there will be less acid rain?

Not burning coal means we all are without electricity. When you plug in your electric car, what do you think makes the electricity that you just plugged in to? It's coal! That's what makes you able to turn on your lights in your house or make your computer work. Until you can come up with a better solution that is affordable, then your arguments are ridiculous.

I don't mean to sound pissed or anything because I'm not. I am actually laughing as I type this because I think the "environmentalist" argument is funny. Everything they do is because of coal, oil or natural gas, but they try and convince others to get off of it. They would do better to further the cause if they actually worked only under solar or wind. But we all know they can't because it isn't a viable solution. As soon as your house or car or computer works only on solar or wind, Sully, let me know.

I should also point out that the oil companies do not set the price of oil, or natural gas it is all set by the market.