This is continually the story behind "green" technologies. Interest groups and corporations hoodwink vast numbers of people so they can get rich quick.

Unfortunately for Mongolia, that makes no difference. Even if people abandoned wind turbines tomorrow, the price of rare earths would still jump off the charts. They're so useful in building almost everything modern, from computers to superconductors.

Rare earths eh?...I wonder who has lots of that?

The Chinese do these things to themselves. And the quote from the elderly Maoist hanger-on- priceless.

Yes, Western eco-twits love purporting their "green" acumen all the while ignoring what goes on in China.

And all this for ineffective, expensive "green" energy.

What the f***?

Does ANY enviro geek have an answer to this?

Pisses me off to no end. Just follow the money and see what you find.

HELLO enviro geeks! We will poison this world LONG before it warms up and that poison is in China, India, Russia and the rest of the 2 bit dictatorships in the world.

Wake up and "save ALL the planet". Not just Canada's %3 Carbon emissions.

Everytime I see an article like this I just get more and more mad.

Just another reason China might someday send 200 million single men over to get fresh water...... they will have poisoned all that they had.

Rant over...... terrible rant btw.... just too mad right now to put into words how the "environmental" movement has failed.

The windmill scam, brought to the world by green idiots, venal politicians,
their business buddies, and tax hungry progressive bureaucrats.

"Rare earth" minerals are quite common and widely distributed in areas of mineralization worldwide.
What is rare is competing low cost producers. Once the curtain is pulled back everyone can see the
Chinese communists will quickly undersell any ordinary startup competition in another country into
bankruptcy given their cost advantage of recklessly ignoring all pollution standards.

The greens will start nonstop demos in front of all Chinese embassies starting in - five - four - three - .............
.

It's Green! In fact, it's glowing green...

Does ANY enviro geek have an answer to this?
~Jeff K

Well they'd have to be dealing in facts instead of feelings and.....OH, look over there...it's a PANDA, isn't it cute?!!!

See China is taking care of the cute rare endangered pandas and they can therefore do no wrong./off low-watt enviro geek

I could almost smell the lake while reading the article.

To think people are still being suckered by the likes of WWF et al.

You know, the cherry on top of this farce is that all this filthy activity is taking place in China -precisely- because greenie activity has made it far too expensive to do things in Europe, Canada, America...

Thanks, greenies!

The Phantom at March 22, 2011 1:39 AM

I think that the unions deserve some of the credit too.

The gov't of B.C. is in process of approving 130 turbines in Hecate Strait, the body of water between the Queen Charlotte Islands (now Haida Gwai) and the mainland. This whole area was fought for by both greenies and aboriginals as being so unique as to be untouchable.

If I'm not mistaken, parts of the Islands are a UNESCO site and national park. There is absolute opposition to both double hulled tanker traffic and the building of a pipeline into the Kitimat area.

So what's the chief concern in the local lefty newspaper: birds and whales. But the Chinese people? Well, there's too many of them anyway, aren't there.

And the price for powering 130,000 homes on an intermittent basis: $ 2 billion dollars. That's what's claimed, but when gov't and green industry bed down together that's probably optimistic.

I think those windmills are a blot on the landscape.
Looks like nuclear energy is kaput.

Krauthammer: 'Nuclear Energy Is Dead' After Japanese Crisis

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/03/20/charles-krauthammer-after-japanese-crisis-nuclear-power-america-dead

But people; the efforts of our governments to stop GLOBULL warming have been wildly successful, I have never experienced such a cold and long winter, almost 5 months here in Alberta, so I take that as a runaway triumph over the current bogeyman. Now I hope it warms up so ALL my calves don't die. Thanks here in Alberta goes out to our environment minister Rob Renner. Almost singlehandedly his ministry stopped this scourge called globull warming, his boss RedEd cpmmitted 2.5 billion to slay this dragon, and damn it has worked. RedEd was quick to fire, our Ag minister, George Greneveld without explanation to as to why, but this embarassment Renner continues to blow Billions on secastration of the "EVIL CARBON" unabated. Please Ed, you have been a decent and good man, but your appointments to some portfolios have been duds, face it. There was no Y2K, there is no bogeyman, and there is only a SCAM called globull warming, drop the whole windmill thing before every electronic component in rural Alberta is as fried as Charlie Sheen and Raj Sherman.

Windmill motors, Prius batteries, cell phones . . . all run on rare earth elements.

Maybe for Earth Day, the morons can be convinced to give up rare earth elements instead of turning off lights for 1 useless hour.

The birds that fall in their tailings pond are consumed by the chemicals. Why no outrage here in Canada by the Green Communists and their useful idiots in the MSM.

It's funny, but the environazi crowd, that cares so much about cute polar bears and such, also cars about 'social justice' issues beyond our borders, or at least seems to, but perhaps that's a picky choosy kinda thang.

This crowd seems to give a hoot about 'fair trade' coffee, where they have the moral superiority of paying at least double for their coffee, and other products, because they are saving the world by doing it.

And then they look the other way for toxic pollution....out of sight, out of mind, or save the world......hmmmmm......what's a left wing greenie social justice advocate to do?

this is a problem of new capitalism piled onto old communism, not green technology.

naturally the right wing overlooks that key fact.

read fast !!!! before the green monster eb gets on a censoring frenzy !!!!

You know ... there is 70 000 tons of Thorium in the tailings pond at Xinguang village:

"At the western end of the village stands an 11-kilometer-square tailings dam, which has been collecting waste from processing rare earth and iron for 45 years.

According to Du Youlu, the director of the environmental protection office at Baogang Group, the tailings are made up of 9.3 million tons of rare earth, and 70,000 tons of thorium, a radioactive substance used in producing nuclear power and other materials.

"It is a pool of treasure," Du told the Global Times." (http://www.peopleforum.cn/viewthread.php?tid=55007)

No wonder the Chinese have announced that they will aggressively pursue Thorium Molten Salt Reactors or LFTRs. They could power their economy merely by cleaning up the tailings ponds.
Anyone care to estimate how much Thorium is in the approx. 60 000 0000 tons of rare earths believed to be at Thor Lake, NWT.?

Nothing has changed, it is not about the climate or windmills or pollution or rare earth elements or any of that stuff.

It's about taking out freedom and capitalism and making all but the ruling elite peasants in servitude ... and have far fewer of us around to make the planet so untidy.

The Eco foot soldiers are not aware of this 'higher purpose' they are useful idiots, zombies and they are there as a distraction.

Do not tolerate those people, they are trying to kill us (and ultimately themselves), just as much as the Islamic jihad boys and girls are. They just don't know it yet.

What makes this especially amusing is that I got lectured about the merits of wind energy and free trade coffee by the same person in the same conversation last week. I'm going to have to ask her about free trade energy and see if her little NDP head explodes.

According to current climate history, the medieval warming period was a great time of expansion of the human species. Warmer climate freed up more habitable area and allowed for more food production, better health, more fresh water, more animals to eat for the carnivores among us.

The scenario does not fit well in the big plans of people like George Soros, Prince Charles (the idiot), Maurice Strong, Al Gore and other megalomaniacs ... now does it.

Their goal is population reduction. A much cooler planet would help that along.

Ah .. I'm probably just being paranoid.

this is a problem of new capitalism piled onto old communism...

Yeah, it's called communitarianism. Mix anything with socialism and it will be poisoned.

Yeah, this has been known for some time. Here's a 2009 article from the NY Times (which, according to the prevailing view around here of the liberal MSM, ought to have suppressed the story -- huh): nytimes.com/2009/12/26/business/global/26rare.html?_r=1&ref=global.

And here's one from CNN (whose foreign correspondents SDA commenters were fantasizing about being killed a mere four blog posts ago): youtube.com/watch?v=yO94WHkqHg4.

So, the story isn't exactly being ignored. You're just late getting to it.

Regardless, is it an argument that "green" energy technologies have their own environmental problems and therefore should not be treated by "greenies" as the Earth's shining, flawless salvation? Yes.

Is it an argument that "green" energy technologies should be abandoned in favour of "traditional" energy techologies (whose own environmental records are, at best, no better than "green" energy technologies)? No.

Is it an argument that "green" energy technologies need to be improved (just as coal technologies, and crude oil technologies, and hydroelectric technologies, and nuclear technologies, etc., were all incrementally improved upon over time), along with China's environmental regulations and standards? Yes.

The Phantom: "You know, the cherry on top of this farce is that all this filthy activity is taking place in China -precisely- because greenie activity has made it far too expensive to do things in Europe, Canada, America..."

Interesting that when given the choice, your instinct is to argue that rare earth metal mining is too expensive in Canada, rather than too cheap in China.

Is it an argument that governments should not be forcing taxpayers to massively subsidize forms of electricity that are not only expensive and unreliable but are also more environmentally damaging that a modern "dirty" coal plants, NG generators, hydro plants or nuclear reactor? yes.

And before the discussion turns to the subsidization of conventional sources, take a look at the this chart.

No Guff - Don't the whale and dolphin fans in B.C. kmow that the dreadful hum from those wind bird/bat slaughters confuses the sonar waves of sea mamals. It ruins the inner ear balance in people and land animals too but nobody seems to care about people as evidenced by the greenie fanatical disregard for the human life in China. People here don't mind buying all their consumer goods made in Chinese sweat/slave shops, why would anyone care about the contaminated landscape in the land of slaves?

Abe, you are not paranoid. Greenies are useful idiots and/or self/human haters. Heaven help the rest of us.

This reminds me of that huge slag heap near Sudbury. Apparently Hitler et al bought it in the late 30's....but a war prevented it getting shipped. I saw this mountain of crap in the 50's and later jsut a remnant.....turns out there were a whack of difficult to obtain minerals in the slag.
Thorium reactors.....the ash from coal fired generators is very high in Thorium....
It seems to indicate more and more that petroleum and coal are abiotic...associated with extinction event magnetic reversals....and coal has a signifigant amount of uranium, iridium....as well.
Then the main reason spent reactor fuel is stored not reprocessed is because of the green lobby....what a waste...typical.

LC Bennett: "Is it an argument that governments should not be forcing taxpayers to massively subsidize forms of electricity that are not only expensive and unreliable but are also more environmentally damaging that a modern "dirty" coal plants, NG generators, hydro plants or nuclear reactor? yes."

Actually, no. Unless you have a good retroactive argument for why the coal, oil, natural gas, hydro, and nuclear industries deserved massive taxpayer-funded government subsidies when they first emerged (and for many years afterwards), but not wind or solar.

"And before the discussion turns to the subsidization of conventional sources, take a look at the this chart."

Again, modern wind and solar are emerging energy technologies. Comparing their 2007 subsidy levels to mature and established energy technologies is like comparing apple seeds to orange juice.

Every established energy technology listed on your chart is viable today in no small part because it received significant state subsidies when it was starting off. Add up all of the subsidies ever received by, say, the petroleum industry throughout its 100+ year global history, and the amounts currently being provided to "green" technologies will pale in comparison.

Neo-AGW Progress Report: A twofer.

"*Bob Rae blasts Harper 'jihadis'"

...-

"Winnipeg bracing for wintery blast"

"The snow might not melt that quickly. A 60% chance of more flurries and a high of -4 C is expected on Wednesday, followed by highs of -5 C on Thursday and -6 C on Friday."

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2011/03/22/17708296.html

...-

*H/T Red-Green Mao Stlong's nephew, Liberal Count Ignatieff's Liberal MP Bob Rae.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2011/02/24/17396346.html

Got any numbers to detailing historical subsidies to conventional sources?

Regardless, the industrial revolution did not originate under government control but by the ingenuity of individuals. Later on government adopted proven winners and expanded their development to increase living standards and lift its citizens out of poverty. Nation's economies and its citizens flourished with the production of affordable, reliable energy.

Wind and solar power are the exact opposite of this model. The government has taken these proven losers and forced citizens to subsidize and buy forms of energy that will lower their standard of living and make them poorer. Expensive, unreliable energy not only hurts consumers but negatively affects private business. Private business then relocates to areas with a better business environments, compounding the pain for working families. All this under the guise of wind and solar being "green energy", which the linked article and other evidence indicates it is not.

LC Bennett: "Got any numbers to detailing historical subsidies to conventional sources?"

There's no single source; you'll have to cobble a picture together by looking at estimates from different years and time-frames. Also, the numbers vary widely, since there's no comprehensive data source or agreed upon methodology for estimating total subsidies. Even looking at recent years, though, gives you a fair indication of the extent to which fossil fuel subsidies dwarf renewable energy subsidies. For example:

- According to estimates by the Global Subsidies Initiative, global subsidies for fossil fuels may be on the order of US$ 600 billion per year (globalsubsidies.org/en/research/kinds-subsidies-who-uses-them-and-how-big-they-are-0). Remember: that's one year, and that's for established technologies. Global annual subsidies for renewables, meanwhile, amount to ~$50-60 billion.

- According to an estimate by the Environmental Law Institute, between 2002 and 2008, the US federal government provided subsidies totalling approximately $70 billion to fossil fuel industries and approximately $30 billion to renewable energy industries (eli.org/Program_Areas/innovation_governance_energy.cfm)

- According to another estimate, from 1973 to 2003, the US federal government provided ~$74B in R&D subsidies to the nuclear and fossil fuel industries, and ~$26B to renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies (Pernick and Wilder, 2007, The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity).

Well, davenport, you've shot down your own argument. According to your second two cites at least, subsidies to conventional (nuclear included) energy run about double to those given to "renewable" energy.

Build a nuclear power plant, and what do you get? Forty years' worth of reliable electricity. The lights come on when you throw the switch.

Build a solar array, or a landscape-blighting wind farm, and what do you get? Expensive, sporadically-available energy, that has to be backed up by spinning reserves at (shudder) conventional power plants.

If you accept the notion that governments are subsidizing conventional energy (and also ignore the fact that they also tax the Hell out of it), you still have to admit that we, the taxpayers, are getting bang for our buck. As taxpayers, and energy consumers, all we get from renewables is higher power bills, and eventually, brownouts, or rolling blackouts.

Davenport, China does not care about its citizens. It never has. If you expect things to improve there, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.

Errr...the radical difference between my link and yours indicates that one of the sources is BS. The over-reliance on "estimates" from yours gives it away. Considering the amount of money enviros have access to and their dedication to the cause, their "estimates" looks like Bernie Madoff style creative accounting.

First, you would need to define what is considered a subsidy because, knowing environmentalists M.O., I am betting those totals have a lot of misleading padding included. Then convert the subsides into a standardized $subsidy/MWH. That metric will show the inefficiency of taxpayer dollars spent on "green" energy. It is not the total dollars but the amount of useful energy yield from dollars spent. Personally, I would support zero subsidies and let the market decide.

Secondly, everyone knows that developing economies, India and China for example, are heavily subsidizing conventional electricity projects. They realize that the path to prosperity comes from conventional electricity. The only green energy they build is financed by scams like the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. To state global subsidies is therefor muddying the true picture.

Besides, countries that have attempted renewable energy, Germany, Denmark and Spain (and soon Ontario), have now realized that it's Go Green, Go Broke. Green Energy has failed on all fronts - the ability to produce affordable energy, the ability to produce reliable energy and it is not even green (CO2 for manufacturing and construction is higher than any CO2 it offsets). So, what exactly are its successes?

BTW, any comment on the last two paragraphs of the previous post? To illustrate my point that the politicians current energy policies are making life worse for citizens, unlike political predecessors who succeeded in making people's lives better, I bring you the UK:

"Electricity consumers in the UK will need to get used to flicking the switch and finding the power unavailable, according to Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, the country’s grid operator. Because of a six-fold increase in wind generation, which won’t be available when the wind doesn’t blow, “The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030,” he told BBC’s Radio 4. “We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it...

Holliday has for several years been predicting that blackouts could become a feature of power systems that replace reliable coal plants with wind turbines in order to meet greenhouse gas targets."

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/03/05/lawrence-solomon-don%E2%80%99t-count-on-constant-electricity-under-renewable-energy-says-uk-electricity-ceo/

NICE.

Lets just call it what it is. A World wide collapse.

LC Bennett: "Errr...the radical difference between my link and yours indicates that one of the sources is BS. The over-reliance on "estimates" from yours gives it away."

Actually, in my mind, given the immense methodological complexities involved in calculating a nation's total subsidies per MWH by energy source, presenting "evidence" (in an unsourced Powerpoint slide, no less) as though they were hard facts rather than the assumption-laden estimates that they so clearly must be is what suggests BS.

Not to (re-)mention the fact that comparing single-year "subsidy per MWH" estimates for emerging and established energy technologies is so blatantly uninformative and misleading.

"To state global subsidies is therefor muddying the true picture."

Why? This is an issue that plays out on global scale, and therefore can be discussed either on a global or national scale.

The discussion we're having is whether public subsidies for emerging renewable energy technologies are justified -- doesn't matter whether we're talking at the national level or the international one. I say it is, given that all energy industries have enjoyed subsidies, particularly during their emergent phases when their respective technologies still raw, immature, and/or not yet market-viable. You say it isn't, apparently based solely on the fact that the per MWH subsidy level of these emerging "green" technologies in the US are presently significantly higher than those of mature technologies that have had the benefit of literally decades' worth of subsidies and of a head start in refining their efficiency. Again, apples vs. oranges.

Indeed, the fact that developing economies are heavily subsidizing conventional electricity projects further supports my point that all energy industries require gov't subsidies when and where they are emerging (like conventional energy industries in developing nations, and "green" energy industries in developed ones).

"The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030,” he told BBC’s Radio 4. “We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it..."

I suggest listening to the BBC Radio 4 transcript and other original sources rather than relying on third-party sources like opinion columns (or blogs).

The remainder of your above quote is "[The electrical grid] is going to be much smarter than that."

Now, why do you think Holliday said that? Solomon would like you to think that Big Gov't will shut off your electricity supply when some bureaucrat arbitrarily decides that the energy is needed elsewhere. Not so. What Holliday's talking about when he mentioned a smarter system is stuff like appliances being able to communicate with the grid, so that, for example, if you wanted to, you could load your dishwasher or washer/dryer before leaving for work, and the appliance would kick in when real-time electricity demand is lower (and hence cheaper). Again, only if you wanted to. You could also turn it on right then and there; it'll just cost you more (and rightly so, given the basic rules of supply and demand). Ditto for factories and businesses, where automated processes that can be done in, say, fits and starts and/or overnight could be set up by the employees to kick in only when electricity demand was low (and hence cheap). Again, only if they wanted to. Merging technology with real-time energy supply and demand monitoring is actually kind of brilliant, if and when these various systems are perfected.

Also, when Holliday warned of future blackouts in the UK back in Dec 2008, it was because of acute shortages in capacity due to the imminent planned retirement of several ageing nuclear and coal-fired plants and the slow pace in building planned new nuclear facilities. Solomon's attempt to connect the blackout issue with the wind energy issue is a red herring (one that was, alas, effective on you).

Davs, just because certain things which did wind up working were initially subsidized, it doesn't follow that anything that is subsidized is going to wind up working.

"(and rightly so, given the basic rules of supply and demand)." Rich. The supply is here already, because of the demand. You want to half-kill that supply by bureaucratic fiat whilst ripping people off to make that happen, and then rip them off again by charging "market value" for what was once plentiful. Hell, there was a lot of demand for - well - pretty much everything in the Soviet Union, but somebody had been monkying around with the supply.

Al Gore's green minions hate the Chinese people. If they could have a "Green Revolution" and cart them away to working death camps and get rich of their labours they would.

Oops I guess it's already happening, silly me.

Beyond that I suppose there's more important things for the left to worry about, like disarming Canadian & US citizens while dancing naked in the streets in pink thongs, green hair and liberally pierced body parts.

Fred at 8:21AM

"Maybe for Earth Day, the morons can be convinced to give up rare earth elements instead of turning off lights for 1 useless hour."

Great idea, and why dont we chance it to 'Rare Earth Day'?

A lollapalooza of making fun of leftard hypocrisy

Wind energy was first developed by the Persians millenia ago and developed to it's limits.
Then around 1900 or so was wind was abandoned when cheaper more reliable technologies were developed.....like hydro-electric.
We didn't abandon the stone age because we ran out of rocks.
Building wind turbines is the same as abandoning chainsaws and using 2 man crosscuts....or stone axes....with the same results.

as far as the Soviet Union is was not just basis supply but also distribution. For example.....flat cars were dispatched to haul grain and box cars to haul girders.

sasquatch "flat cars were dispatched to haul grain and box cars to haul girders." That pretty much nails it. Kind of like building a factory and then thinking about how to provide power to operate it and then abandoning it because there was no viable source of power within 40 kilometers. Typical statist thought process.

The two wind power electricity generating 40' towers on the yard we live on were dismantled in the 1950s when power was brought to the farm.