Krugman on the Climate Change Conspiracy

Post by Retric » Mon, Jun 29, 2009, 10:21 PM UTC

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #50

Retric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what infrastructure will be useful in 20 years I expect we will still have wind in 20 years and using infrastructure to turn wind into electricity seems obvious. The other real advantages to wind farms is you get energy sooner and it is simpler to scale exponentially. AKA 1billion wind farm = 50 mil profit and next year you have 1.05 billion wind farm which makes a 5.25 million profit so you now have a 1.125 billion…

if "green" energy was profitable why would you need to subsidize it? people would do it voluntarily.

The profit from "green" energy needs to exceed the interest on the loan it takes to build it. Today the loans are still slightly more costly than the profit. It's like 5.9% profit vs 6% cost of a loan. The math get's complex as you need to take into account inflation, the rate of depreciation of your assets, and taxes.

This magnifies the amount of wind farm you can build today. If you had a billion and wanted to donate it to "clean energy" then you could get a loan for 5 billion in wind farms and use your billion to make up the difference. By the time the loan was paid off you would still have some money, but far less than if you had invested it well.

If on the other hand you a billion dollars and built a wind farm without borrowing money then you can keep expanding indefinitely. You would still have less profit but there would be little risk.

PS: With subsidy it is profitable today which is why we are building so many wind farms, but that's just the government handing out money.

Post by lanaer » Tue, Jun 30, 2009, 2:47 AM UTC

TriinT wrote: post #35

lanaer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you recognize that you are not in perfect command of the language, then follow his suggestion and use a dictionary! “Climate” does not refer to basic laws of physics at all. “climate: the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period” In other words, climate is just the type of conditions (in terms of temperature, rainfall, winds, storms, etc.) generally observed in an area over a long…

Please note that you defined "climate" in terms of "weather", and "weather" in terms of "climate". "in terms of temperature, rainfall, winds, storms" Temperature and precipitation can be measured. Windspeed can also be measured. One can't really measure a storm, but one can measure how violent the storm is, roughly speaking. If you discretize physical space and assign values of temperature, pressume, etc to each cell…

The dictionary definition of climate was in terms of weather. My own definition of climate which followed was explicitly written to get rid of the mention of weather. I then defined weather myself, in terms of climate.

I didn’t enter the argument of change vs. crisis in my post, though I do think crisis makes more sense.

Re: Krugman on the Climate Change Conspiracy

Re: Krugman on the Climate Change Conspiracy