Wrongo. We have artificially-low prices to the end-user, with actually high prices that are masked by the subsidies that the end-user doesn't necessarily realize he's paying. Yes, it's bringing prices down faster, and it's bringing ACTUAL production costs down faster, and it will do so until solar power is cheap enough that subsidies are no longer necessary..... but that doesn't mean the subsidies will go away. Look at any other heavily-subsidized industry: Coal, oil, pharmaceuticals, wheat and corn. These are industries that pump money into politicians' election funds to ensure that their beloved tax breaks and subsidies will never go away. Renewable energy is approaching that point where they have extreme control over politics, except they have one extra benefit in that they have the undying support of the citizens as well. If we continue these ridiculous subsidies, they will never go away and we will forever be paying way too much for our energy.

That being said, I am in favor of government funding for research, so long as that research remains public and is patented by the government and licensed free of charge, or not patented at all. All subsidies need to be eliminated... people need to know just how much money they're paying for that gallon of gas, loaf of bread, or kWh of solar power.

So Apple is going to have to get a license from Oracle in order to use Sun's energy?

FTFY

They do that as a safety precaution. If an actual zombie uprising happens to occur during the exercise, they need to be able to discern real zombies from fake ones, so they make the fake ones orange. It's standard emergency preparedness exercise protocol.

Wow, you have put a significant amount of consideration into this..... you planning something?

You're absolutely right. Maybe not about the actual number (I honestly have no clue exactly what amounts of money the oil and coal industries receive from the government), but at least the idea. I, for one, am in favor of elimination of subsidies in all industries... alongside a broad tax cut that would approximately equal the amount of money that's no longer being given to them. People need to realize just how much money they're paying for that gallon of gas, or that loaf of bread... or that kWh of solar power. Right now, much of that cost is paid for by our taxes so the actual cost is shrouded by the check we write to the IRS every year. That makes it extremely difficult to make informed decisions about any sort of investments or purchases. Of course, the industries love their subsidies because that's guaranteed government money that's not affected by the marketplace... and because of that, subsidies only serve to stifle innovation by reducing or eliminating incentive to develop ways to ensure efficiency and profitability. If you're receiving subsidies that do that for you, then what's the point?

Remove subsidies from oil and coal. Remove subsidies from wind and solar. Hell, remove subsidies from wheat and corn while we're at it. I support some government-funded public research, but once the research is done it had better be able to support itself in the independent marketplace.

There are powerful companies and trillions of dollars at stake on both sides. Oil companies have been privately researching renewable and clean fuels so that they will still be viable when the market inevitably shies away from fossil fuels, as well as doing what they can to protect their current market. There are many companies out there trying to profit off the environmentalist side... solar, wind, this "carbon credit" bullshit, etc... and they are also doing what they can to make themselves relevant, which includes taking advantage of the infinite amount of misinformation out there about what is actually happening to our planet (and what we might be able to do to reverse it) and using such information to drive a psychological emotional response in their favor among citizens and politicians. What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that very little of the allegedly-"green" technology that's currently in wide use is even nearly profitable. Instead, almost all of it has to be propped up by significant subsidization and legislation in order to stay afloat... and that's just not economically sustainable. RATHER than allowing a few extra years to develop technologies that COULD actually be profitable on their own, the world has been tricked into believing that our planet will surely shrivel and die if we don't take action IMMEDIATELY. So now we're stuck paying for these incredibly expensive, incredibly inefficient technologies (that are for the most part less than a decade old) to supply an incredibly small amount of our nation's energy needs.... while today we are getting very close to having some real progress in the sustainable energy field with technologies that are inexpensive and efficient enough to support themselves without ridiculous subsidies. And that's without mentioning nuclear power which people still have an irrational fear of.... even though it would solve (and more) our environmentally-unfriendly energy production with its extreme efficiency, inexpense, and safety record.

Why is that? Just drive out through the hole you made when you drove in.

See? It goes both ways... and this is precisely the emotional bickering that I'm talking about. We will never reach any real conclusions until we stop listening to the stupid zealots on the extreme ends of BOTH sides... because they're BOTH wrong and BOTH retarded. But the human race is bullheaded and emotional, so I guess we're forever destined to have massive amounts of our money wasted by the sky-is-falling zealots and we're forever destined to watch the everythings-fine-jesus-will-save-us zealots make fools of themselves on CNN. Well... I guess both parties are guilty of the latter.

While phrased facetiously and fairly modded down for it... the AC has a point. There are a hell of a lot of things that are blamed on global warming... and it's very easy for laymen to point that out and very easy for other laymen to say "well a global trend in warming can cause strange, unpredictable results in this chaotic weather system". I say stop BLAMING things on global warming. Droughts are the result of climate change, because they're a change in climate. Global warming, global cooling, global stayingthesameing, they're all going to affect weather in strange ways... what we have is an upward trend in temperature that may or may not be the direct result of human activity and droughts that may or may not be a direct result of this upward trend in temperature. I can tell you this much: We had a drought here in California that lasted several years and actually ENDED last year and we've been having record-breaking rains (and snow) that lasted well into July (SKIING IN TAHOE FOR JULY 4TH??) and then we had our first rains a couple weeks ago... is that caused by global warming too? Maybe. Who knows? Who cares? Does it really matter? No not really. The only thing that all these situations definitely have in common is that they are all occurring. If global warming is truly caused by human activity (which the jury is still firmly out on), we need to take rational action to solve it based upon scientific research... and that does not mean throwing money at anybody who claims to have the solution. Articles like this only serve to fuel the emotional bickering which has absolutely no place in science.

Then what the hell are you doing here?

A police officer can look up a VIN and see if a vehicle is registered, when it was registered, whether there's a license plate assigned to it, and what the plate is. He cannot see whether the owner of the vehicle has actually received his plates.... so as long as the vehicle was registered less than 6 months ago, and the driver possesses the temporary registration tag, an officer can't write a citation for missing plates.

I drive 80 miles to work and 80 miles home. In traffic. Every day. The "interesting" part of driving would become extremely uninteresting about halfway to work the first morning I drove my "interesting" car.

A better world, but at what expense? We are throwing billions of dollars into this sustainability pit because everybody is being made to believe that if we DON'T throw billions of dollars at it RIGHT NOW then we will all drown or starve or burn. I'm all for finding cleaner sources of energy, but we as humans tend to rush things that don't need to be rushed when we believe we're in an emergency situation. Therefore, the most popular "sustainable" energy sources being built and used right now are horribly expensive, inefficient, and need legislation that force people and utilities to give them money even when their services are not needed in order for them to stay afloat. THAT is not the proper way of going about making a better world, because such business models can only last for so long before people decide they don't want their money going towards subsidizing inefficient and expensive methods of energy generation and then all the sustainable power sources crumble and we're left worse off. We need to take a few years to breathe and figure out better ways that don't need to be propped up by taxpayers.

It's not like anybody clicks those things... so why bother?