That says a lot about you right there. The science is overwhelming and the urgency can not be overstated, so if you think you are "looking at it objectively" you are deluding yourself in the worst way.
As far as brushing aside the past subsidies as "sunk costs" that is nothing but a bullshit excuse to avoid discussion of WHY we use subsidies at all. We Use Them To Help Establish Socially Desirable Technologies. Fossil fuels have received vast subsidies to enable them to serve our needs. Those aren't "sunk costs", they are the cost of doing business as a culture. We (our culture) benefited from that money so we helped those industries become established and self sufficient. Now it is time for our culture to buy a new system of energy - one that is carbon free. That means it is time to withdraw the help we've previously given to the FF companies. It doesn't matter that other companies are receiving write-offs that are similar, fossil fuels have large external costs that are not being captured in their pricing. This provides a valid rationale for a stringent approach to equalizing the playing field.
However, since you don't acknowledge the reality of the climate crisis we are facing, you don't see a transition to carbon free technologies as being "socially desirable". That, in turn, means you can't accept or acknowledge the values that bring coherence to my position.
That is the crux of your disagreement with others here; it has nothing to do with the definition of subsidies. Not to be disagreeable, but that is just something you are tying to play a weaselly word game with. You've shown you aren't interested in real discussion by ignoring the extremely comprehensive report I provided to you on nuclear. Apparently all you want to do is be contrarian.
That doesn't make your position valid.
February 27, 2013
Earth Policy Institute By Emily E. Adams
The energy game is rigged in favor of fossil fuels because we omit the environmental and health costs of burning coal, oil and natural gas from their prices. Subsidies manipulate the game even further. According to conservative estimates from the Global Subsidies Initiative and the International Energy Agency (IEA), governments around the world spent more than $620 billion to subsidize fossil fuel energy in 2011: some $100 billion for production and $523 billion for consumption. This was 20 percent higher than in 2010, largely because of higher world oil prices....
Of the $523 billion that supported consumption, $285 billion went to oil, $104 billion to natural gas and $3 billion to coal; an additional $131 billion was divided among the three energy sources specifically for electricity use. Through these subsidies, governments cut the prices people paid for fossil energy by nearly a quarter—encouraging waste and hindering efforts to stabilize climate. ...
http://ecowatch.com/2013/fossil-fuel-subsidies-620-billion/
http://priceofoil.org/2012/12/03/new-analysis-fossil-fuel-subsidies-five-times-greater-than-climate-finance/
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
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