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every time someone tries to use that term they start claiming things like military spending, business expenses, etc.

Precisely. Don't simply accept their disingenuous talking points. The "subsidies" for fossil fuels are a lie. These people include things like "the cost of road congestion" when they are fabricating their claims.

They refuse to honestly report the direct subsidies to fossil fuels, because their imaginary number is close to $2 trillion per annum, whereas the actual amount is many orders of magnitude less.

Read the IMF's "fossil fuel subsidies" definition and decide for yourself.

Cost of nuclear station subsidy £96-£97 per megawatt hour
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

Cost of wind
£100 per megawatt hour
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear...

Cost wise they are about the same.

  Currently in countries such as South Korea and China, typical construction times range from 4 to 6 years
https://www.oecd-nea.org/press...

Construction time is usually very short – a 10 MW wind farm can easily be built in two months. A larger 50 MW wind farm can be built in six months.
http://www.ewea.org/wind-energ...

Add in the time for planing etc and wind is faster.

First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas..

The fossil fuel "subsidies" they speak of are nothing but specious reasoning. Seriously: all but an irrelevant fraction of the "subsidies" amount to "we don't believe fossil fuels are being taxed punitively enough, therefore the absence of those punitive taxes means they are receiving a subsidy".

It's a basic begging the question fallacy.

Look at this link: Global fossil fuel subsidies amount to $1.9 trillion – IMF

Today, in advanced economies, fossil fuels do not get much the way of direct subsidies – although they do still exist, for example Germany spends 0.07% of its GDP supporting coal and the US spends 0.05% of its GDP on petroleum. But fossil fuels do continue to benefit from subsidies in those economies in the form of mispriced taxation levels.

In advanced economies, “subsidies often take the form of taxes that are too low to capture the true costs to society of energy use, including pollution and road congestion,” the IMF said. “Taxes imposed on energy are not high enough to account for all the adverse effects of excessive energy consumption, including on the environment,” says the David Lipton, First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF."

Even the Iraq war is literally a fossil fuel tax subsidy in their mind. Don't debate these people: either their logic is broken so there's no point in trying to use reason, or they are being deliberately disingenuous so there is no way to engage in an honest debate.

Either way, it's a good idea to know where their talking points are coming from.

http://www.ewea.org/blog/2012/12/study-on-turbine-lifespan-just-more-anti-wind-propaganda/

The report (link to report proper is in the page linked above) was put together by "The Global Warming Policy Foundation" - a known organization of AGW denialists. It speaks volumes that the only sites that reference the report as an authoritative source are other AGW-denying blogs and websites. Combined with the fact that the report you cite flies contrary to dozens of other reports and technical analyses, you should be really quite suspicious about an ulterior agenda.
=Smidge=

We're putting 90 percent of the subsidies in deployment — this is true in Europe and the United States — not in R&D.

And as a result the manufacturers get income which they can invest in R&D. Sounds better to me than blindly throwing money at them and hoping that one day they may produce something useful. It seems to work fine with both wind turbines and solar panels, both of whose costs have come down significantly over the last 10 years and whose performance also has increased drastically. Trickle-up economics at its finest. And moreover a large market with quite a lot of small players, rather than a few multinationals raking in all of the cash.

Of course, with nuclear power there's the problem that you have to invest billions in research, wait for 10 years for the technology to mature, then another 10 years for the pilot projects to get built (not because people are inept or companies corrupt, but because the technology is so complex and the safety requirements are so high), and once it gets accepted then you need 40 years or more before you get a new significant market for the next technology node because it takes a long time for the initial investments to get recouped. And all the time you need all kinds of governmental support to keep the financial side of the picture bearable (insurance, research subsidies, administration of waste processing/disposal, security, ...).

And once the costs have been recouped, companies obviously want to keep the existing plants running for as long as possible since that's free cash, while dismantling gobbles up a lot of money.

cost ?
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Cents_Per_Kilowatt-Hour

http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/ewea_documents/documents/publications/factsheets/factsheet_economy2.pdf

The con-
stancy of wind power costs justifies a relatively
higher cost per kWh compared to the more risky
future costs of conventional power due to volatile
oil, coal and gas prices.

Whatever the truth is : MASSIVE investments in windpower is being done by big energy companies, so it can't THAT expensive methinks.

Wind doesn't need subsidies but until fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies dry up, there isn't enough market incentive to get it going on a scale that's more than a science project.

Then the EU must be running a hell of a big science project, as last year they added more wind than any other generating source, and it provided 4% of their total electricity (source).

The USA must be keen on pumping money into science projects, too, as wind trailed only gas in terms of capacity added last year (and wind's 31% capacity factor is higher than natural gas's 25% - compare EIA capacity and generation figures).

It's too late to say wind power can't scale; it's already done so.

3.6MW is not even the top right now. Other produce 4.5MW Pretty sure you will see even >6MW (offshore) in the near future.......... BTW look at EU