Re:Solar and Wind Power So Cheap They’re Outgrowing Subsidies
by kerkeslager on Friday September 20, 2019 @09:24AM
(#21026390)
> It’s an unconventional way to use “subsidy,” but I think it fits.
I'm just gonna stop you right here.
If your goal is to communicate effectively and honestly, using unconventional usages of words is not the way to do it. Language is a convention for transferring ideas from one person's brain to another person's brain. If you have an idea in your head and you say something that puts a different (and in this case, incorrect) idea in someone else's head, you're miscommunicating. If you do that intentionally, that's lying.
When people read the phrase "The US government subsidizes fossil fuel companies", people think that the US government is giving money or other resources to fossil fuel companies. So if that's not what you mean, when you say it, you're not saying the truth.
The rest of your post is just trying to justify why the not-truth you're saying is kinda-sorta the same as the truth, but that's really not an argument I'm interested in entertaining. Let's just say the truth, please.
It is completely adequate to say, "Solar currently needs subsidies to compete with fossil fuels, but when you figure in the cost of damages caused by fossil fuels, solar is cheaper." We don't need to lie about this.
I'm just gonna stop you right here.
If your goal is to communicate effectively and honestly, using unconventional usages of words is not the way to do it. Language is a convention for transferring ideas from one person's brain to another person's brain. If you have an idea in your head and you say something that puts a different (and in this case, incorrect) idea in someone else's head, you're miscommunicating. If you do that intentionally, that's lying.
When people read the phrase "The US government subsidizes fossil fuel companies", people think that the US government is giving money or other resources to fossil fuel companies. So if that's not what you mean, when you say it, you're not saying the truth.
The rest of your post is just trying to justify why the not-truth you're saying is kinda-sorta the same as the truth, but that's really not an argument I'm interested in entertaining. Let's just say the truth, please.
It is completely adequate to say, "Solar currently needs subsidies to compete with fossil fuels, but when you figure in the cost of damages caused by fossil fuels, solar is cheaper." We don't need to lie about this.