"Climate Finance" is a bigger business than oil and military combined!

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: ketsuko

And they matched the criteria for the study, whether they like it or not.

But then the study is cited everywhere as proof that scientists claim there is definite Man Made Global Warming. The criterion used to determine what studies were chosen to fall into the so-called "consensus" essentially took their words out of context. Had they been asked if they believe in MMGW, they would have said no or said any that exists is not a problem.

This is false. In such studies the investigators have personally asked the authors and confirmed the interpretation and consensus separately.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

Opinion pieces hold little weight. Here's the scientific journal reply itself.

www.sciencedirect.com...

Here's what you never see from the discussion: large scale rejection of this 97% from practicing, publishing climate and geophysical scientists.

If there were such a strong rejection, you'd see hundreds of papers at American Geophysical Union conferences.

a reply to: jrod

So far nothing, however it is clear that must who do not accept AGW, do not come get to debate the science, they are here to simply car doubt on the science using what mc_squared call 'mental gymnastics'.

It’s par for the course with the contrarian crowd of course, but threads like this really show the lack of critical thinking in all its glory. I mean, it takes a special kind of gullible to believe what was written in the title and OP of this thread.

You can see right off the bat every realist here either immediately demanded sources or burst out laughing. But deniers just star, flag and mindlessly accept anything that fits the desperate quest for confirmation bias.

They wouldn’t know what actual skepticism looked like if it posed on the cover of their favorite magazine.

a reply to: Robotswilltakeover

Climate Finance is a business with a yearly expenditure of between $1.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, depending on the source. All of the major oil companies combined have a yearly profit of less than $100 billion. The American military has a yearly expenditure of about $600 billion, and which is by far the biggest spender on military overall.

The fossil fuel industries (coal, gas, oil) get $5.3 trillion PER YEAR in government subsidies (i.e. your tax dollar going directly into the pockets of those private capitalist corporations).

Where the heck is your outrage over the fossil fuel subsidies?

originally posted by: rnaa
a reply to: Robotswilltakeover

Climate Finance is a business with a yearly expenditure of between $1.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, depending on the source. All of the major oil companies combined have a yearly profit of less than $100 billion. The American military has a yearly expenditure of about $600 billion, and which is by far the biggest spender on military overall.

The fossil fuel industries (coal, gas, oil) get $5.3 trillion PER YEAR in government subsidies (i.e. your tax dollar going directly into the pockets of those private capitalist corporations).

Where the heck is your outrage over the fossil fuel subsidies?

Trillion, with a 'T'

Source, please.

originally posted by: mbkennel
a reply to: SlapMonkey

Here's what you never see from the discussion: large scale rejection of this 97% from practicing, publishing climate and geophysical scientists.

What would be considered 'large scale rejection'? Got a number?

If there were such a strong rejection, you'd see hundreds of papers at American Geophysical Union conferences.

Considering only 41 out of the 11,944 climate papers Cook examined actually spelled out an assertion to AGW I can point to several thousand documents that do not support the 97% in his own 'study'. His outcome depends on subjective rating systems. It was a pretty shabby paper, perfect for non-critical thinkers who don't actually think through an issue and depend on sound bites.

a reply to: Robotswilltakeover

Fossil fuels subsidised by $10m a minute, says IMF

Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund.
...
The IMF estimate of $5.3tn in fossil fuel subsidies represents 6.5% of global GDP. Just over half the figure is the money governments are forced to spend treating the victims of air pollution and the income lost because of ill health and premature deaths. The figure is higher than a 2013 IMF estimate because new data from the World Health Organisation shows the harm caused by air pollution to be much higher than thought.
...
The costs resulting from the climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions account for subsidies of $1.27tn a year, about a quarter, of the IMF’s total. The IMF calculated this cost using an official US government estimate of $42 a tonne of CO2 (in 2015 dollars), a price “very likely to underestimate” the true cost, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Check that last paragraph again... $1.27tn a year is what it costs the worlds economy to respond to the climate change caused by the fossil fuel industries. What were your figures again, Robots? $1.5tn? So, does that mean there is $2.77tn going into "climate change industries"? Or is that double counting? If it is double counting, does that mean that your complaint about the "climate change industries" and the $1.5tn per year is really a complaint you should be leveling against the fossil fuel industry?

What exactly are you complaining about, anyway? You seem to be saying that the fossil fuel industry makes a profit selling a needed product, and that is cool (never mind that it takes $5.3tn worth of subsidies to 'earn' that $100bn profit you claim); but the 'climate change industry' isn't making a profit and isn't producing a needed profit and is getting paid $1.5 trillion a year to do what? Nothing? And the companies that provide these various mitigation services (a service that is certainly needed just as much as the fossil fuel industry product) you think are losing money? Could you explain to us just how that works again, please?

For fairness and completeness (and because I DO do my own research, unlike those you are complaining about), not everyone agrees with the IMF's methods of calculations: The IMF's Absurd Calculations Of Fossil Fuel Subsidies: It's Really Not $2,200 For Every American . But the author of that article does not find fault with the calculation of the $1.27 trillion subsidy to fossil fuels for climate change remediation, indeed he says it is down right important that that figure be built-in to the pricing structure so that "The costs of air pollution and climate change: yes, the standard economists’ toolbox says that consumers should be paying for the cost of these." What the author disagrees with are the IMF's inclusion of costs not associated with the type of fuel used - for example, congestion is the same whether internal combustion engines or electric motors are used. What he misses with that argument is that the electric motors use electricity generated with fossil fuels.

More information:

Wikipedia: Energy Subsidies

A 2009 study by the Environmental Law Institute[27] assessed the size and structure of U.S. energy subsidies in 2002–08. The study estimated that subsidies to fossil fuel-based sources totaled about $72 billion over this period and subsidies to renewable fuel sources totaled $29 billion. The study did not assess subsidies supporting nuclear energy.

The three largest fossil fuel subsidies were:

1) Foreign tax credit ($15.3 billion)
2) Credit for production of non-conventional fuels ($14.1 billion)
3) Oil and Gas exploration and development expensing ($7.1 billion)

The three largest renewable fuel subsidies were:

1) Alcohol Credit for Fuel Excise Tax ($11.6 billion)
2) Renewable Electricity Production Credit ($5.2 billion)
3) Corn-Based Ethanol ($5.0 billion)

Notice that bio-fuels (Corn-Based Ethanol) is a gigantic anti-environmental boondoggle and should be given a respectful, but immediate burial. That means that the main 'renewable fuel' subsidy is the $5.2 billion dollar Electricity Production Credit. A bargain compared to the fossil fuel subsidies.

Get the Energy Sector off the Dole

Wikipedia: cost of electricity by source
Even with the huge subsidy advantage that fossil fuels have, on-shore wind is cost competitive with coal and natural gas. TODAY.

Graph: cost comparison of electricity generation

Edit: I corrected my repartition of your claim of oil companies profit. I originally said you said $500 billion ( probably a very low figure) but you really said $100 billion (gob-smackingly absurd) - $100 billion is a low-ball approximation of only the top 5 US oil companies - foreign companies and 'smaller' players are not included; it is worthless and misleading.

a reply to: CharlieSpeirs

At the risk of sounding obvious...


The 97% only encompasses Climate Scientists...


Just for future reference.

At the risk of sounding obvious: the above assertion is 100% false... Just for future reference.

a reply to: ketsuko

Calling them fossil fuel subsidies is incorrect, that would mean the government is paying them money to produce.

Direct 'pre-tax' price support subsidies in the US is about $13 billion per year. World wide it is around $500 billion. (source)

The government is not. Instead, they are at most receiving things like tax breaks or credits, same as you and I can for buying government preferred goods or services.

No, you and I are not able to get tax breaks or credits like the fossil fuel industry gets - that is absurd - unless we are exploring for oil and gas in our back yards - and we'd never get a license to do that anyway. Or unless we are polluting the atmosphere to the point where we are causing health problems in the community that need to be accounted for in the health budget. Or unless we are polluting the ground water supply that needs to be cleaned up 50 years after we have abandoned our production facilities. Or... you get the picture. Industry gets LOTS of subsidies that we don't get.

We actually are paying subsidies to prop up "clean" energy like ethanol

Ethanol is NOT a 'clean' energy. It is expensive, wasteful, environmentally disastrous. It's only reason for existence is as a direct subsidy to farmers - a politicians hat tip to an important voting block. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to do with 'clean' energy. By the way, did I say it was expensive - even with the subsidies - it can't go away fast enough?

, wind and solar in order to make them competitive with fossil fuel and other similar sources. In fact, Big OIl is getting in on the clean energy sector in order to get that money. Why not?

Fossil fuel gets at least THREE times the subsidy that wind and solar gets, and yet on-shore wind is price competitive with coal (soft and hard) and natural gas.

Take away ALL the subsidies for both renewable fuels and for fossil fuels, and renewable would be far cheaper.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

Yes, you could say the same about "deniers" (or, better termed to be "skeptics"),

No. "deniers" is the correct word. "skeptics" implies a scientific method to validate a conclusion. Deniers are just deniers.