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Comment by geysersam | Hacker News Reader

What is financially viable independent of politics? What doesn't have subsidies? Did the petroleum industry pay for the millions that were lead poisoned? Do they pay for the environmental damage caused by climate change? Those are also subsidies.

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This is a non-answer that doubles as a tacit admission that the cost/benefit ratio for wind power is terrible (it is)

Is that still true if the costs of oil/gas stop being socialized? Basically the people pay for oil cleanups, for air polution, etc, the cost is still there it's just not currently born by the oil companies. Also, how do the costs stack up if you drop all oil subsidies?

If the math is arbitrary enough then yes wind power is the 100% ideal perfect energy source.

At least it doesn't disrupt the gulf stream

I don't know much about wind power economics so you should certainly not take my "tacit" word for it.

It's saying that society pays a price for fossil fuel emissions, in terms of damage to our climate and our health. Millions of people die every year from fossil fuel emissions. If we attach a price to that death and destruction, and apply that as a cost towards fossil fuels, it makes the financial subsidies of wind and solar insignificant.

> Millions of people die every year from fossil fuel emissions

Citation needed. “Millions a year” is undoubtedly using some flimsy justification for the figure.

nope

https://hsph.harvard.edu/climate-health-c-change/news/fossil...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38030155/

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/29/air-poll...

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1819989116

https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj-2023-077784

there is tons of data to support this, and it's a widely accepted reality

These all seem to reference the same model, the actual studies are all pay walled, and there’s no way to get access to the model. Priesthood vibes

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