So it looks like 'Rapidly Moving Clouds' is reason why solar projects are bankrupt, unable to payback government $$$

Looks like there are pretty much always bad consequences for failing. Where did you get this childish notion that there are no bad consequences for failing when the government is involved?

Let's see, the 2008 bank bailout ("financial crisis")?

Except that firms in the market place beg for and receive support from government actors to avoid those consequences.

You've described crony capitalism quite well. But Obama can no longer pick the winners/losers any more. Unfortunately, the Republicans in Congress have too much incentive to keep the system going for now.

Science lover wrote:

Umm, can you guys stop pissing about green enviro disasters? I'm trying to figure out if there's actually any science behind this "rapidly moving clouds" claim. Where to loook?

Sooo... no one knows still? I don't want to invest in solar if they haven't solved this rapid clouds problem yet.

SILENCE! The science is settled.

Accountant me wrote:

Taxpayers subsidize the oil and gas industry to the tune of $4 billion a year.... $100 mil in the oil industry is a lot of money.

Exxon made $25b gross last quarter (1/4 of year), on revenue 4 times that. $100m is peanuts, a round-off error (0.1%) on a yearly basis. They pay much more in taxes ($30b typically) than the $4b subsidies (which is to the whole industry), it's only a small counterbalance.

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The great benefits of the oil companies can't just be measured in profits. Look at how many advances in applied mathematics have come about (mesh integration techniques) spurred on by the desire to find oil. Unfortunately, in the last decade many of the top companies (like BP) decided they could make more profit by preening for the government $$$ for "green" energy projects, that end up waste of money, brains, and time (WOMBAT). If not for the forward-looking fracking put forth in USA and now ready to explode in China, compared to almost-defunct "green" energy, who knows how close to descending back to the Dark Ages we would be (think if Al Gore had been elected).

Precious Roy wrote:

Oil gets massive civil penalties because they cause immeasurable harm to the environment whenever they have a spill. When a solar project fails, no one dies. No waterways are contaminated. You just have a bunch of excess materials that can be auctioned off and reused later down the road.

Fossil fuel good ol' boys clubs are holding back progress.

The Pentagon just admitted to losing $1bn worth of weapons in the Middle East and you're freaking out about 1/10 of that for a project that was actually trying to improve the world.

Wow

Precious Roy wrote:

...

Oil gets massive civil penalties because they cause immeasurable harm to the environment whenever they have a spill.

...

The damage is immeasurable because it's so small. The deepwater horizon spill was supposed to cause un-repairable damage to the gulf coast which would last for generations. Nope, it didn't. A few people with shovels went to the beaches and cleaned up the mess, and the gulf itself took care of the rest. Where is the "immeasurable damage"? It didn't happen.

Oil is constantly leaking out of the earth into the oceans. Its part of nature. If oil leaks were catastrophic events and a threat to sea life, then all sea life would have vanished long ago without help from our drills.

All of this is just more environmental scare tactics with no basis in science.

Always remember, it aint science.

Accountant me wrote:

Actually, almost every solar company is struggling since their subsidies went down.

Which makes Tesla's share price that much more insane. They acquired Solar City (which was losing something like $6 dollars for every $1 in revenue at the time) to allow their board members to offload their bad investment in Solar City (all but one board member had significant shares in Solar City). And yet when you ask some Tesla investor why their stock is worth so much when they lose so much money on the cars they make, their argument is always that they are diversified and make solar panels (which is another industry where no one seems to be making any money). The roof top tiles they are making are already offered by multiple companies and costs considerably more than large scale solar PV projects.

The only company that I know of that made any money in the solar arena was First Solar [who is an American company that makes a viable product that doesn't require subsidies(although they obviously help)], and even their financials went in the tank when the subsidies dropped in 2016.

To heck with Australia, if you want to see a failed solar project, you need look no further than the Ivanpah solar thermal plant on the California / Nevada border. It has delivered only about 2/3 of it's promised power production in it's first 4 years in existence, has burned to death countless numbers of birds, taken away a large chunk of BLM land (habitat for the endangered desert tortoise) and about 25% of it's power production has come from burning natural gas. It's another in a long line of Obama and Pelosi's pork projects that has failed miserably. Ironically, when it opened it was already technologically obsolete, costing about 2-3 times what a comparable Solar PV facility would cost today and taking up considerably more land. Don't worry it only cost taxpayers $600 million in grants and guarantees on $1.6 billion in loans. Don't completely villainize the industry though, as project like Springbok actually make decent sense (and don't require the subsidies).

DiscoGary wrote:

The damage is immeasurable because it's so small. The deepwater horizon spill was supposed to cause un-repairable damage to the gulf coast which would last for generations. Nope, it didn't. A few people with shovels went to the beaches and cleaned up the mess, and the gulf itself took care of the rest. Where is the "immeasurable damage"? It didn't happen.

Oil is constantly leaking out of the earth into the oceans. Its part of nature. If oil leaks were catastrophic events and a threat to sea life, then all sea life would have vanished long ago without help from our drills.

All of this is just more environmental scare tactics with no basis in science.

Always remember, it aint science.

Well Louisiana lost $20 billion in tourism but I guess that didn't hurt anyone

Burt Macklin wrote:

DiscoGary wrote:

The damage is immeasurable because it's so small. The deepwater horizon spill was supposed to cause un-repairable damage to the gulf coast which would last for generations. Nope, it didn't. A few people with shovels went to the beaches and cleaned up the mess, and the gulf itself took care of the rest. Where is the "immeasurable damage"? It didn't happen.

Oil is constantly leaking out of the earth into the oceans. Its part of nature. If oil leaks were catastrophic events and a threat to sea life, then all sea life would have vanished long ago without help from our drills.

All of this is just more environmental scare tactics with no basis in science.

Always remember, it aint science.

Well Louisiana lost $20 billion in tourism but I guess that didn't hurt anyone

Maybe next time the people of Louisiana will push back against this idea that an oil spill is an apocalyptic event which will poison the waters for the next 1,000 years. That's what kept the people away. We need to stop overreacting to these things and put them in their proper perspective. Some environmental dangers are real, and others are sold as scare tactics for political purposes. Screaming that the sky is falling for every environmental issue undermines the whole movement and makes it's leaders look like hacks.