> Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement posted on X that Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense and not one dependent on "costly subsidies".
I agree. This is why we are building offshore wind and not subsidizing fossil fuels, right?
What "world order" is this? One where cheap energy generation is seen as a good thing? Bizarre that anyone would be against a private company building solar or wind farms in this day and age.
For a guy in the ai and cybersecurity industry you seem to have incredibly poor judgement Gyan.
Provide one example where solar and / or wind generation have penetrated a market to a level worth mentioning and electricity prices have come down or remained stable adjusted for inflation.
South Australia is a good example. In 2023–24, wind supplied 45.2% of South Australia’s electricity generation, rooftop solar supplied 18.3%, and large-scale solar another 10.7%. In other words, roughly 74% of the state’s electricity generation came from wind and solar. [1]
And this isn’t a comparison that ignores inflation. AEMO publishes its historical wholesale electricity prices in real June 2024 dollars. South Australia’s average wholesale price in 2023–24 was A$79.53/MWh, compared with roughly A$95/MWh in 2012–13. It was also 40% lower than the previous year’s A$131.90/MWh. [1]
AEMO also specifically identifies increased rooftop and grid-scale solar output as one of the factors contributing to lower wholesale prices. [1]
So there’s a fairly straightforward example: South Australia reached roughly 74% wind and solar generation while its inflation-adjusted wholesale electricity price was lower than it had been around a decade earlier.
That obviously doesn’t mean renewables were the only factor affecting prices - electricity markets are influenced by fuel prices, interconnectors, demand, storage and plenty of other things. But it does disprove the claim that high penetration of wind and solar necessarily results in higher inflation-adjusted electricity prices.
California has the lowest wholesale electricity rate in the country. It's retail electricity rate is the second-highest but that's a problem independent of electricity source.
We could collectively provide a long list of examples across several US states, Europe, and Australia. Is that going to change the minds of people who don't believe it? It will not, the discussion is irrelevant and wasted energy (mental models are rigid, people are irrational and emotion driven broadly speaking), all that matters is the economics.
> Renewables Remain Lowest Cost New-Build Generation; All Generation Faces Increasing Cost Pressure: Despite rising and inflationary cost pressures across all generation technologies, renewables remain the most cost-competitive form of new-build generation on an unsubsidized basis and will account for the majority of near-term capacity additions in the U.S. Continuous upward revisions to demand projections have driven a sharp increase in announced new-build gas generation despite a 15-year high LCOE, which is expected to continue to rise, and historically long development and equipment delivery timelines.
> The world has reached the 3-terawatt threshold of solar power, with the first terawatt taking 10 years to deploy and the next two terawatts taking less than five years.
> Forecasters expect the world to deploy more than 9 terawatts of solar by 2036, with poor countries' share of solar deployment expected to start growing again from this year onward.
> The main constraint for developing countries to adopt solar power is the lack of accessible financing, and the growth of solar power is also limited by the need for energy storage, such as lithium-ion batteries, to absorb excess power.
The global clean tech supply chain will still be around when the US comes around.
This specific policy is because one thin-skinned narcissist lost a legal case in Scotland over wind turbine aesthetics. His personality disorder makes him hold grudges forever and lash out and punish unrelated parties. I bet the two of you would get along well!
This is exactly correct ^ and I’m not even aligned with Democrats. There’s no end to the ego and butt-hurt of that man, and conversely, he’s the easiest to exploit via flattery of anyone I’ve ever heard of.
My guy, your account is nearly 10 years old, but your karma is only 36, and you are active on here... there is a reason. You are derisive, and abrasive, and your comments (specifically the ones that get downvoted to hell) are low-effort, and "troll-y".
You seem like you've been successful in life, you didn't get that way being low-effort, so let's apply that level of effort toward this community that has brought so many people together for their love of technology.
Oh that's not nearly the amount of fossil subsidies. Some say it's
$31b/yr direct. If you factor in indirect costs like climate damage, health expenses, oil wars, etc, it's much higher. Renewables are much, much cheaper regardless of a little incentive, if there are any left.
It’s kind of amazing and horrifying at the same time that a democratic country like the U.S. is doing all these shenanigans like blocking clean zero carbon energy, while a communist authoritarian country is massively moving towards clean energy.
Based on what our media and our education system teaches us, one would have assumed that common sense and sound logic would prevail in a democracy, but rather what we see is insane nonsense, paranoia, and misinformation (including about vaccines) prevail in the U.S., to the point of burning piles of money (including the 1.2B in this case) just to satisfy a childish and bully like need to spite and trigger the progressive side (like talking about causing more pollution with the goal of “owning the libs” or triggering “delicious liberal tears”). And we’re talking about massive negative externalities with increased pollution. This kind of childish bully behavior is as though you had a neighbor who cared about not littering in public and the streets being clean, and you just threw garbage on the streets to upset her. A ridiculous level of immaturity, truly.
Meanwhile, we have totalitarian dictatorships (like the Emirates which has heavily moved toward zero carbon electricity sources like solar and nuclear) behaving far more logically, rationally, and soundly with a view towards the long-term rather than the short-term.
I do think authoritarianism on its own is bad. I want the freedom to criticize my government, and I want the freedom to run for elections or to advocate for changes I want to see. I think democracy and logical long-term thinking shouldn't be mutually exclusive. I feel democracy and sensible behavior are two not connected things.
You can have idiotic authoritarian governments that ruin the economy. China and Vietnam were exceptions among communist countries, who switched to a form of market economy, when they saw that central planning was poverty-inducing and nigh impossible to do.
The problems we're seeing in democracies might lie with the level of disinformation for electioneering purposes that is permitted under free speech today.
"common sense" is common sense because it is not "specialised sense" or "expert sense"
So if politicians base their decisions on "common sense", they confess to not being able to use experts that refine their knowledge and position about a topic.
A "common sense" strategy is therefore what is most popular and on the basis of the understanding of laymen without deeper understanding or knowledge.
For at least a few years, "common sense" has been hijacked by populist politicians, now it just means whatever simplistic idea that fits their worldview, even when it's not complicated to see that said idea is clearly misguided. The original meaning seems lost to me.
Furthermore, using the phrase “common sense” to describe an idea inherently dismisses any individual that will argue against it. They either are too dumb to have common sense, or too much of an elite to have common sense.
This is the word smithing they are known for. By labeling “common sense” means anyone who argues against it is against “common sense” because every argument is a strawman argument.
"Common sense" might also mean "do the simple thing" which, given how cheap it is to invest in renewable energy sources like solar farms, and how much room we have to build daytime capacity that way without large scale storage, might mean installing a lot more solar.
Don't pretend the current US admin is anything but corrupt and stupid.
Oh yes, "sound" and "prudent" haven't been in the ballpark nearly as often as they used to be :(
The dictionary definition is in spite of the fact that the phrase "common sense" is more often than ever being used to rebrand what was formerly known as "common lack of sense".
A significant part of science is plucking the true bits from common sense. A fair chunk of what we call medicine is folk remedies that stood up to rigorous testing.
Ha! Like the common sense to dam migratory river systems to make hydroelectric power. Good idea at the time, and who cares about salmon. I have a toaster, and a percolator, and a new fangled “ice” box (formerly chilled by ice, now a maker of ice).
S/ My common sense says 1.2B compensation to not do something we otherwise need is bananas as opposed to the common sense—pound salt response. Good thing I’m not in government, yeah. /s
To do the thing would require paying the original contracted amount.
Whatever that might have been.
Melbourne, well Victoria the whole state, is looking at a similar scenario for rail tunnels many believe serve little purpose.
Around $1.2 billion to stop the work now and pay the early termination penalty. Plus maybe another billion (estimated, who really knows) to bury the tunnel boring machines and remediation work.
Or something like $200 billion to complete the work and operate the rail network over some number of probably too many decades. Although this number seems to increase at a regular cadence.
A new road tunnel was recently completed and people who use it often report they are the only vehicle in the tunnel.
Meanwhile our roads haven’t been maintained in a decade and are literally falling apart. It’s not uncommon to hear reports of multiple cars being recovered after suspension and wheel damage from the same section of poorly maintained road in one day.
All of this in a political and economic setting so corrupt the now former state Labor Premier came out and admitted knowledge of a criminal element having infiltrated the union that represents the workers on the projects. She was recently replaced with her deputy. As if that helps.
Electricity prices have also increased by something like 150 to 200 percent more than inflation over the past 20 years but mostly the past 6 years (so this decade) because state and federal governments seem to want to insist on ramming Net Zero down our power lines, yet we export around the same amount of gas as Qatar. And we have the worlds largest know uranium deposit and yet we have a ban on nuclear power reactors.
Dams are subject to silt buildup up, which requires maintenance.
They’re so destructive to local ecosystems that environmental groups have blocked any new hydroelectric dams being built in Australia for over 40 years.
All modern concrete eventually fails, and dams are notoriously difficult to remove and replace.
Fortunately they last long enough that if you paint them pink and plug a torch battery in to them they can remain somebody else’s problem for quite some time.
You dont need deeper understanding of knowledge for everything. Ask Grandma whether she needs a chemical engineering degree to bake apple pie.
Then there is the Theory of Bounded Rationality which tells us expertise may exist but resources, time, energy, info, attention etc etc may not therefore bounds and limits of expertise alone must be recognized and solutions reached are satisficable rather than optimal. Aiming for optima when other factors havent been sorted just creates new problems.
> You dont need deeper understanding of knowledge for everything. Ask Grandma whether she needs a chemical engineering degree to bake apple pie.
You've clearly never baked before. Baking is a chemical science. You have to adjust temperatures for your freaking elevation relative to sea level. Granted some recipes are pretty forgiving, sure, but far from all, and some are downright merciless in terms of complexity and effort required.
Even people who do it constantly have items that just don't turn out because it's legitimately hard shit.
No, but baking is still a process that requires skill — and that skill is not 'common sense'.
If making sourdough were 'common sense' then _everyone could do it correctly on their first try_. They don't. Most fail and never try again because the skill level required for sourdough is too high.
I'm an _expert_ cook, but I'm still having to go through the frequent failures of learning how to pickle with brine (fortunately, my failures have been mostly edible and have not turned moldy). Even vinegar pickling requires a certain level of expertise before you can do it successfully, even though that level of expertise is _roughly_ "knowing how to boil water".
Subsidies (via tax or lack thereof) on aeroplane fuel is one that really does get overlooked. Yet on the other hand, use a few gallons in a car and you're demonised as a climate villain in name and taxes. Nobody factors in life of the car, the cost to dispose and replace the batteries in electric cars, or the whole aspect that cars made today are less serviceable than cars of old that its gone from being able to rebuild the car in your garage to waiting for spare parts from a dealer as it's all just replace or scrap today. So much focus on the short term, without focus on the larger picture and impact.
This is more true in the US due to costs of labor vs. parts and a whole culture of profitability at all costs.
Compared to other countries, repairability is higher where labor is cheaper and people are more price conscious. We're at late stage capitalism where any chance of lost profits is seen as criminal.
There are too many interested parties involved in the energy sector. The only common sense I can think of is solar+storage at the single building level and interconnected through smart grids with neighbours.
But that leaves out the government and all those interested parties so we're never ever getting that.
But at the scale of a city or state one home uses close enough to zero power that it being a net user or net producer of electricity is irrelevant.
Scale up to tens of thousands of homes and suddenly you need an organising body approximating government to manage those homes being net users or net producers from moment to moment.
Additionally most cities tend to want to have commercial and industrial users of electricity, and energy more broadly. Your home solar & battery does approximately nothing to help them, and if any of the data is to be believed has resulted in electricity prices increasing for everyone.
While I do not know if the following is relevant for the Carolina Long Bay area, and while neither Republicans nor Democrats can be trusted, it is not without precedent for offshore wind turbine projects to be disallowed due to radar concerns.
> Why Sweden nixed new wind farms for fear of missing Russian missiles
> BERLIN — Sweden’s government this month blocked the construction of 13 offshore wind farms over concerns that they would shorten the country’s early-warning window for a Russian missile attack.
> ...
> That is because wind farms can interact with radar signals, reducing the quality of the situational air picture or even outright blocking out parts of the sky.
Other possibilities than radar concerns is that the stopping of the project here hinders corruption, or is corrupt itself, or it moves corruption around (as in both the old project and new project was corrupt). Whatever the case, a way to avoid corruption would be helpful. Perhaps like making it market-driven and contest-driven as much as possible. Solar and wind is already significantly cost-efficient and market-driven despite their significant drawbacks like not producing energy consistently and on demand. If the main challenge is creating domestic production of wind turbines and solar cells instead of being reliant on other countries and without state support ending up being mired in corruption, perhaps some bidding and contract process that moves the financial risk onto private companies, such that the government never pays in advance, could work.
I agree with posts here saying that a mosaic or plethora of energy sources should be used. Wind, solar, fossile, nuclear (for big countries like the USA at least), geothermal, etc. In general, energy companies should not be focused on just one kind, but lots of kinds.
Wind power is a purely commercial enterprise which only requires state support for permissions to build and permissions to connect to the grid. There is no issue about state support for manufacturing of equipment.
Living here where this happens. They are stopping it for two reasons:
Second, on a local level, the far-right party "SD" is voting agaisnt wind power in 96% of the cases.
As presented here, the national government is declining 84% of all requests of requests to build wind power, ad on the local level the right wing parties vetoed wind power at a rate of 64-92%: https://research.chalmers.se/publication/?created=true&id=09...
The energy mix for electricity in Sweden, Norway and Finland is mostly made up of hydro+nuclear+wind, especially wind and hydro complements each other very well since hydro is very much on-demand and can cover for most temporary wind shortfalls.
Driving through my childhood area up north a few weeks back I was also surprised by the amount of solar going up, for comparison this is an area _north of_ Anchorage/Alaska with less than 3 hours of sun around Christmas, but already by late January (usually the coldest period of the year) there is over 6 hours of sun a day (so with high pressure cold peaks with less wind, the 6 hours probably eases the power bill quite a bit).
An interesting fact about those solar installations was that the panels were mounted almost vertically (probably to avoid being snowed over but also useful in the winter since the sun mostly just shines from the south anyhow).
The very very northern tip of Germany reaches almost as far north as the southernmost tip of the Alaskan panhandle, but most of Germany is more like mid-south Canada on a latitude basis.
Northern Germany is much more specialized into wind power, and the south is more solar intensive (though solar is more evenly spread throughout the country than Wind, thanks to ease of installation, and the fact that it still produces tonnes of electricity in the summer).
Solar should be built in Alaska, but wind and hydro is what should be actively subsidized and supported by the government. The market can take care of solar penetration in Alaska if you let it.
One additional tidbit of info. While the northern coast in Germany has certainly more wind, a reason why wind falls off so strongly towards the south, are the policies of the CSU party in Bavaria, which though not quite as bad as trump has been running Anti-Wind policies and making wind installations extremely difficult to build.
North Americans mostly do not use electricity for heat in the winter. Around 60% use natural gas with forced air furnaces. Something closer to 80% have the option, but 20% don't bother to use it.
Some of the deep south get by with electric heat, but they aren't in places where the cold is a typically a legitimate danger to health and safety.
I find something very refreshing in this, reading from Europe where we get told "gas" is the big bad, even threatening to make condensing gas boilers illegal from time to time [0], despite over 95% of homes (in the UK) being heated by this method. I gotta be honest it's just so weird living in such energy poverty in Europe. Most of Europe doesn't heat or cool adequately, Spain and Portugal barely heat their homes in winter and boy it gets cold with 41F/5C nights. Then Germany/Switzerland refuse to use A/C even though the summers get to 95F/35C. Just a few days ago a friend told me he went to the doctor and the doctor passed out during examination from the heat.
> Reading from Europe where we get told "gas" is the big bad, even threatening to make condensing gas boilers illegal from time to time
Long-term this is true, and it makes sense to ban gas boilers (potentially with some exceptions): electric heat is significantly more efficient, and can run on renewable energy. But that requires a big investment in infrastructure build-out (heat pumps) which will take decades, and we definitely need to be careful that we handle the transition without screwing people over.
Yes, most households don't have the 25-30k available to switch to heat pumps. If we dig deep I think we partially solved why people don't have kids anymore in Europe: for that you need optimism, and to be told every few years even something basic as your heating system is due to be illegal (!) doesn't really fill people with optimism. Same thing with banning internal combustion engined-cars, which was reversed too... Europe as a whole needs to manage these tech transitions very differently in my opinion.
I love heat pumps, but they are well out of reach for most people at 25-30k for a full system with insulation and radiator change.
5C is indeed a cold night, for Spain, in an uninsulated house which most are, and 13C/55F daily high, it's teeth-chatteringly cold without heating, yet most Spanish just brace it, for similar reasons they don't have AC in Germany: "it's survivable, and it only lasts around 3 months". This is why I refer to this as "energy poverty".
Europe has unlimited wind, not unlimited gas. Electrification of most things is just a matter of time. Gas for heating is wasteful. I think AC will get very popular eventually once the stragglers realize that these are not unusual one-off warm summers, but is a result of global warming.
Right. Gentle reminder that tuna has dangerous amounts of mercury in it specifically because of humans burning coal, not because the ocean was always so polluted.
Every time they do that you just redefine wrecking.
First it was the fish ladders. Then it was a bunch of whining about how reducing the water level variation on the river is bad (particularly illustrative because this is the exact opposite logic your ilk uses when talking stormwater). Lord knows what the complaint is these days.
> The only common sense I can think of is solar+storage
Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. Solar+storage requires massive overprovisioning, to the level that it's cheaper to burn literal money.
Windmill farm outputs tend to dip during summer and peak over winter. With a given minimum power output windmills + photovoltaics + storage is massively cheaper per unit of yearly energy. Of course, if you value any semblance of network stability.
Solar+storage is clear path towards either guaranteeing reliance on fossils or brownouts. The smart energy meter you got that encourages running the washing machine during cheap hours will ensure that you voluntarily go dark during undersupply as the cost will skyrocket.
> Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent.
The northernmost point in Texas would be at the extreme southern edge of Europe. The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain...
If Europe can make solar work, so can the states (assuming a similar level of investment)
Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone? </snark>
Stress on physical. Even if some regions claim renewables fully covering energy needs, that's at best on accounting level, those regions are still fully dependent on power import/export and simply could not function in an island mode for any extended period of time without at the very least brownouts. Quite importantly, it's always renewables, not solar.
The dispatchability problem is a real pain. Pool together wind + solar + hydro and the variability in power (!) output drops to levels possible to tame with realistic grid-scale storage sizes.
I am not talking about intra-day balancing here. It's the yearly cycle that comes to bite you. In my corner of Europe, if I wanted to go completely off-grid with solar+storage I would need storage well into the mid single-digit MEGA watt-hours, for the house needs (HVAC and DHW taking the lion's share) alone. That's laughably unrealistic.
> The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain...
Yes, the southern states could probably make do with something like 3-4x overprovisioning, but that's still massive. So massive that any sort of windmill capability will outcompete any sort of COTS storage.
90% renewables is better than 80% renewables. Throwing up our hands and saying "we'll never reach 100%, lets pack the whole thing in" isn't a sensible approach.
> Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone?
That is substantially moving the goalposts - nowhere in the world has built out sufficient solar to make that claim yet. The question is whether they can get there.
If you look at the table[1] for installed solar per capita, 9 of the top 10 countries are in Europe (the odd one out is Australia), so they are definitely giving it the old college try
In my corner of Europe, I have vacationed in a house that’s completely off-grid with solar and a bit over 20 kWh of storage (it does use about half a ton of wood pellets for heating during the coldest months of winter). Link in Czech: https://www.csdum.cz/jak-jsme-postavili-cesky-sobestacny-dum...
I wonder how it would fare with just 100 kWh of storage, something you can still easily put together.
> Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. Solar+storage requires massive overprovisioning, to the level that it's cheaper to burn literal money.
Indeed. Energy is at the core of everything we do. Make it more expensive, you immediately make some people go hungry, and then you also make everything else in the economy a tad more expensive, slowing things down, and as market readjusts and contracts, this makes even more people go hungry.
There's a really strong incentive to keep energy generation cheap, because pretty much every social and political issue is downstream of it.
Yes. "The economy is energy, energy is the economy".
China understood this and is not just betting on both solar and nuclear like mad, they're also burning coal (so that the EU btw can cosplay being green, while offloading the production of many things it consumes to China).
As a result energy prices in China are something like 7x cheaper than in Germany.
Those with lots of energy saw their GDP growth in the 21st century while those like the EU, with ultra pricey energy (due to stupid decisions like closing nuclear power plants only to then reopen them) saw hardly any GDP growth, inflation-adjusted in USD, in the 21st century.
No GDP growth means ever more poor people and ever more indebted governments.
I'm all for transitioning away from fuel and coal, but do it pragmatically. We don't need communists (that'd be the "green" parties [1]) who want to make the lives of everybody miserable taking decisions related to energy.
[1] green people who, like watermelons, are only green on the outside and then bright extremist red on the inside
It probably comes from the recognition that energy access being a common good, a tax-collecting government should work for its constituents in helping provide energy at a reasonable cost, especially if the subsidies support an improvement to the technology behind it.
Subsidies aren't universally a bad thing. This is silly thinking.
That’s a perverse incentive against ecology, case in point. Hear me out. We take citizen’s money to subsidize energy so they can get their energy for cheaper (at marginal level - while still paying the subsidy’s taxes) so they can undertake industrial/residential projects that we wouldn’t do with less energy. In a word, we incentive people to consume more (in a consumerist sense), which is bad for ecology, because we can’t afford them, and neither can the Earth.
Of course, leaving aside how petroleum is subsidized [through the department of defense].
While ecologists usually are in favor of subsidies, subsidies incentive people to consume more, which exhausts our Earth. We should develop less, i.e. we should develop in accordance with a higher facial cost of energy, which sometimes implies having a smaller home and fewer industries, which is what would happen if we didn’t sponsor solar or wind energy [or coal or fossil].
Economic growth also comes from getting more for less.
A company can increase their profits by growing and increasing both what they spend and what they earn. But a company can also increase their profits by reducing what they spend without decreasing what they earn. Almost all companies are constantly trying to do this.
Often (usually?) by requiring workers to do more for less pay. Automation will eventually solve this problem, but because of the need to increase profits, finding an alternative way for companies to economically support human life the way they traditionally have through employment will be a tough nut to crack.
Does the env work better in a communist country like North Korea? Or in the Soviet Union? Or are we gonna do no true Scotsman and say Soviet was always capitalist and had no connection to communism?
Please do not forget the /s since there are young people here or those people who arent native English speakers and they might not catch the sarcasm given its an important topic, esp for the wellbeing of our future generations.
It's even dumber than that. Someone built a wind farm near Trump's golf course in Scotland and now he hates wind farms: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo. He thinks they're ugly and noisy.
If this is true, this is the person some folks think is fit to lead a nation. One little thing not suiting his whim of the day? Lets hate something that helps with energy production.
This is absolutely true. He has been angrily obsessed about this for years, and since he is a malignant narcissist with an ever greater need for narcissistic supply, his irritation has been manipulated by powerful lobbyists that tell him his instincts are brilliant and correct.
This site only recently (a few years ago) got multithreading. I'm pretty sure it could run off a second-hand laptop. It doesn't require a datacentre: just the two(?) moderators' salaries, and some rounding-error electricity and ISP costs.
Wouldn't need datacentres if we had IP multicast routing. And actually, Netflix doesn't need that anyway: anycast and telco CDNs get most of the advantages, albeit at the cost of only being available to established players. Netflix uses AWS because it's cheaper and easier for them, not because it's technically necessary: if AWS shut down (with enough notice), Netflix would migrate to an alternative system, and nothing much would change.
Ah, sometimes it can look quite nice, or at least striking. Though usually after end of life. The Tate Modern in London is an old power station, and a disused oil power plant in Dublin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poolbeg_Generating_Station#Poo...) has become sufficiently iconic that its operator was refused permission to demolish its chimneys; they're now protected structures.
A huge coal power plant belching smoke probably looked pretty cool, maybe even majestic, the first time you saw London back in the Victorian Era. That's before the entire city became saturated in soot, you developed respiratory problems, and you'd seen the same stinky monstrosity every day for most of your short difficult life.
I like wind farms, but I think it's fair to observe that they're often built in nice places, whereas fossil fuel infrastructure is built in places you'd never go to voluntarily.
Drive around Southern California and you’ll see everything from oil derricks to refineries in places which would otherwise be full of housing if they weren’t so polluting.
Some of them are right next to housing. Huntington beach has wells adjoining homes near the beach. Look up the prices of the houses if you want to really go crazy
They're certainly not silent, but unless you're actually standing right under one they're rarely particularly noisy. Modern ones should be about 35 decibels at 300 meters distance. You're never going to hear an offshore one, really.
They're most certainly not silent! If you're standing right under one, you can hear it over car traffic and the breeze! (Well, unless the wind is blowing really hard: then the wind might be louder than either, considering the usual minimum distance between wind turbines and roads.) Whatever will you claim is silent next? Refrigerators? Lightbulbs?
These people are not interested in coherent policy. They say whatever they want to justify it, we know it, and they know we know it. It’s an intentional expression of domination.
At least they’ll be out of office or age out eventually, we’ll just collectively as US taxpayers with a federal income tax burden (top ~40% of income earners, bottom ~60% have no federal income tax liability) have to pay back hundreds of billions of dollars in excess debt incurred because of this governance failure mode we experienced (or default on the debt, which is also an option).
My hot take is: be ready to move fast when the winds shift and we can get back to building instead of harm reduction.
("Progress occurs one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck)
It’s disappointing to see Redditesque room temp iq discourse in the comments.
Has anyone mentioned the expected cost per Mwh of this project to get a sense whether this made economic sense, or are we talking Biden admin adjacent vanity political project paid by rate payers?
Just for reference, the hopefully-cancelled Empire wind near me had a 20yr PPA of $155mwh, which makes Vogtle (-~$170mwh) look like a steal.
More numbers and less foaming at the mouth, please.
To be fair offshore wind is relatively expensive. A brand new wind farm is probably cheaper than burning methane because Trump started another pointless war, but it's closer than for like Solar PV.
Of course "common sense" ought to probably include "Not cooking ourselves".
It's even more hilarious than that because all nuclear energy is heavily subsidized by taxpayers already. People such as Doug just lie strategically. No surprise in that current government of liars.
All forms of power generation are heavily subsidized. Anyone complaining about a particular form being subsidzed is a dishonest liar.
I am personally for building nuclear and compulimenting it with some wind and hydro, but that is not related to what things are subsidized but because nuclear and hydro has worked really well here in Sweden providing reliable power and while wind has a spottier record I think diversification is good.
I read up recently on the history of the fall of the roman empire and it was fascinating how eerily similar it was to the current state of the US. Overwhelmed by corruption and wars they make stupider and stupider decisions on ever larger scales, ever more frequently. And the population grows ever more cynical, eventually opting for authoritarianism before eventually the center can't hold any more and it all collapses in on itself.
Funnily enough, the most striking part was the pure stupidity of a lot of it - seems so strange, but every day it seems I hear another really stupid story and think ... huh, maybe it really can be like that.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to self-interest. It sure looks stupid when you look at America or the Roman Empire as a whole. But when you look at the specific individuals doing these "stupid" things, and the individuals enabling them, it is perfectly aligned with their own best interests.
> Never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to self-interest.
Interesting. Sounds like a counter-point to Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
I use Hanlon's quite a bit to explain nonsense I see day to day, but this is a better one in some ways. It shift the conclusion of "but if only they were shown the right way" to "they know what they are doing and are looking out for number 1".
Ultimately the strings are being pulled by someone who stands to gain, but it's not like Trump, Hegseth, Rubio, &co are playing 5D chess here. There are a lot of stupid blundering narcissists running things right now. The actual string-pullers know that, and as long as the stupid blundering narcissism doesn't get in the way of the string-pulling then it doesn't matter to the string-pullers, because stupid blundering narcissists are ultimately the right people for the job (easily manipulated themselves, and effective manipulators of the public). But that doesn't make them or their decisions or their statements less stupid.
Not to mention this all rides on the stupidity and emotional fragility of literally tens or hundreds of millions of voters; anything less and the project would never be possible. That's one reason debilitating the education system at all levels has become a top priority of the current administration (the other being suppression of the free thinking and often liberal or left-wing politics that historically exist at universities).
I like these comparison with Roman Empire but it seems too simplsitic and Ive learned that usually means "its not so right actually".
Meaning for example, what about empires that actually survived or adapted? What did they do that we know exactly didnt the Roman Empire do that saved them? How does zeitgeist impact this in the sense that what ruined Roman Empire might save a nation today?
Not trying to be negative, Im jsut geniunley curios because then if I was in government, Id be "yeah I see the same. I mscared as fuck were messing it up, but then what should we do?" because you see, everybody is giving at advice with very diverse and extreme ideas on what should happen. Probably with most of them you and I wouldnt be OK with (do Dictatorships work? ...).
Or simpler, we all agree on the problem. What are all the solutions and how do we know theyre the correct ones? Thats what Im thinking about the last years.
It seems like checks and balances are collapsing so the corruption gets worse, just selling out nature, our health more and more for personal gain until something breaks.
The concerning part is that peak lead exposure was with Gen X. We're still being led by boomers and silent generation. So any contribution from lead stands to get worse before it gets better.
It's entirely possible that things don't get better (or continue to get worse) for reasons unrelated to lead. The addition of the internet is way too big of a confounding factor to say that lead was actually good though, IMO it's more likely that we haven't learned how to parent children in the modern world yet (though arguably that has always been true).
And "cognitively [un]developed" is a weird way to say it; I wouldn't call that a "bland" term at all.
I hate this theory. It is extremely condescending, offers nothing, has no proof, but sounds plausible enough that many people believe it.
It is much more likely that our economic system rewards hostile behavior and that money has outsized influence in politics and a criminal justice system which lets rich people get away with crimes. That money correlates more with hostile behavior then lead, Instead of blaming lead, blame capitalism.
Just think about all the people who put lead in the gasoline in the first place, did they go to prison for their crimes, or did they make a bunch of money and retire in luxury.
Wow I never knew about this theory! But I like your comment because ... idk, if its true at least its as simple as "Lets avoid that, and we ensure each Empire of today exists forever." I wish that was true! So how can we be sure, as somewhat smart people, that this is true and responsibly communicate it? Because everything else is dishonest and hurts our society.
Im no history expert but I know there were other Empires thru different times and sizes and places, and since now they're not the same, they "Failed"? Did they fail exactly due to the same problem or others? Are we treating those too? What is our method and how strong did we criticize it and see and understand it flaws?
At a time with fake news, AI slop and whatever the Internet has become today, its our job to treat every statement with the highest from of critical thinking at our disposal.
It's spelled lead, and it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to cause brain damage. There is no safe level of lead exposure, it causes neurological damage at any level of exposure and it stays in your body permanently.
You're wrong on every count and simply spreading disinformation. Please don't do that.
I think we all understood the comment implied it’s been a factor, not THE driver. I’d be a little more generous in your interpretation of their comment, even if it is a bit flippant.
It feels like the rate of stupid we have achieved in the last (checks watch) ~18 months has surely eclipsed anything that may have occurred during the roman empire. By sheer volume alone?
> I read up recently on the history of the fall of the roman empire
> eventually opting for authoritarianism
The Roman Empire was always authoritarian. You might be interested in the collapse of the Roman Republic, where the abuse of slaves and farmers for the indulgence of the middle class and elites led to a popular clamoring for the strongman general Julius Caesar to impose justice (through dictatorship) on their "republic" by force, because their republic had never represented the demos.
This is the endgame of encouraging everyone to vote. The theory was representatives would be motivated to address the interests of everyone as a whole. The reality is politicians are motivated to take advantage of the stupid and the fearful in order to gain and exploit power.
Republicans are in a personality cult and establishment democrats are stuck in the midpoint between expoliting people the same way and expecting to win because they're "right" and "deserve" victory without the real consent of the people, equally as self interested but worse at it. The quiet racism of establishment democrats might save us by marginalizing muslim democrats -- there are a few of them like Mamdani who aren't allowed in the club and are thus actually thinking for themselves beyond self-interest and the corruption of the establishment. They as a group might save us.
If you want someone to blame, target the DNC. In a time of dangerous foolishness they utterly failed to and are continuing to fail to provide an attractive alternative.
The issue will be "out of sight, out of mind" (or rather knowingly ignored) until the issue appears at scales as small as the home village, which in terms of the US government means the front and back yard of the white house or similar.
These people are living in parallel societies, where they are completely detached from the reality for many people living in the country. And that is not merely a problem in the US.
Nearly all of those are forests that are supposed to burn every year or two. Check with a forester knowledgeable in your specific area because there is no universal truth here. However the generalization that all forests in North America need to burn regularly for good health is true even though there are exceptions.
I am a small scale forester (hundreds to thousands of acres). Supposed to burn is ... complicated and not necessarily true. Many forests in the PNW have had indigenous Americans burn them regularly because it improves forest health. These fires were typically kept small and well maintained to avoid damage to the trees. White settlers put a stop to this practice, and natural fires were considerably less common than anthropogenic ones in some regions.
So it might be correct to say that fires can be healthy for forests, but "supposed to" is more difficult to assert.
I just finished limbing, brush clearing, and preparing burn piles from a section of my forest because removing fuel is good, but most forests in America are young planted forests. They have smaller trees, less diversity, higher than typical density, and small trees that can cause fires to climb to crowns (where they then become deleterious rather than helpful.)
If we were to return to indigenous practices of regular burning, we would likely see healthier forests. But I'm not sure we'd see as much timber production from them. Since that's what most forests are held for... I don't see practices moving away from trying to maximize timber while minimizing cost any time soon.
It is important to keep the main issue clear. Failing to invest in renewables is an existential risk to humanity's future.
Permanently shutting all Datacenters (not just AI) saves us about 1 year.
also - 1 year is a lot, if we actually act diligently to stave the warming crisis and to prepare for some of the effects through changes to construction & infrastructure.
Still, I would agree that Data Centers are just one particular aspect of the struggle against global warming.
Ironically, we are also moving to more capable / faster models that use less power. DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 is so extreme capable and comparability to a lot of models cheap to run.
We are seeing stuff like AMD buying Taalas, with their Llama 3 8B on a chip, being able to push 17.000 tokens / second.
People need to understand, that even AI companies do not like to build datacenters and the high energy needs. It cost them money and they are also looking at ways to develop better hardware / solutions that gives them more inference for cheaper (what means less power draw / heat generated).
I just tested out chatjimmy and a bit and it did some misinterpretation of my prompts, E.g. "write me a python script to generate insults for a name given by command line" had multiple of the same insult in the insult list, and it had a list of names like John and Jane instead of doing the obvious thing and making the name a variable. Not good code.
Unfortunately, "more capable / faster models that use less power" will likely mean those models will be used in more places than ever before. LLMs on laptops, on tablets, on phones, on fridges, in your web browser. See the Jevons paradox.
Climate change is real, caused by humans, and the fires were seeing are absolutely exacerbated by the effects of the climate.
However this is the _least_ on fire the world has been for a while because it's usually Asian and Africa that are rampantly burning and they're improving land management techniques enough that it's tamping down on the worst of the burns.
When you say that the Greens provide subsidies to coal, but this can be found on a quick search…
> The next fight is already brewing, over a Green push to accelerate the phase-out of coal-fired power generation in eastern Germany. In a draft resolution, seen by POLITICO, the party wants to bring the coal exit forward from 2038 to 2030, as is already the case for mining regions in the west of the country.
Like all such articles they present a LONG list of politicians with "we're committed to/promising to/... phase out coal". And then a statement or two by the executive that they're increasing coal usage because they have no choice.
The problem is that there is no option left BUT coal.
On July 9, 2026, the Bundestag passed Germany's new electricity-capacity law, which subsidizes reserve/dispatchable power capacity as coal is phased out. SPD and CDU/CSU voted for it; the Greens and Die Linke voted against it.
The Greens specifically argued against a long-term fossil-fuel lock-in, while Die Linke argued for renewables and batteries instead of subsidizing new fossil gas plants.
The law itself is primarily about new hydrogen-ready/gas-capable reserve plants, not coal plants.
This mixes several different things into one causal puddle.
Yes, keeping the remaining nuclear plants running would have reduced emissions and electricity prices somewhat. A 2024 Energy Policy study estimates the 2022/23 extension lowered German wholesale prices by about €9/MWh. That's a real effect, but nowhere remotely close to "the nuclear phase-out doubled electricity prices." The huge price spike was primarily the European gas crisis. You know, the one for which LNG terminals had been built.
Nor did Germany replace nuclear with coal. Coal generation subsequently fell to levels not seen in decades, while renewables grew substantially, so German emissions fell as well.
Attributing the nuclear exit simply to "the Greens" is rather selective history. The original exit was SPD/Greens, but after reversing it in 2010, Merkel's CDU/FDP government legislated essentially the final phase-out schedule again in 2011. So basically: every party that was at the levers of power.
You could make a perfectly reasonable argument that shutting existing nuclear before coal was bad climate policy in hindsight, because of the gas crisis. But I don't think you need to resort to the rather dubious claim that it doubled electricity prices as a singular cause.
A better question is why Germany invested in gas power plants in the first place. Gas has always been the most expensive source of electricity, even before "the gas crisis" (how many of those have we had already?):
I get the idea that Germany would buy Russian gas in exchange for not having to spend on the military, but 2014 clearly showed that it didn't work. And Germany still doubled down on gas after 2022.
Now the argument seems to be that Germany will buy American gas so that it can get lower tariffs.
I don't see how Germany can compete with a China that refuses to reject the cheapest forms of energy, whatever that is (both nuclear and coal are cheaper than imported gas).
The argument I think is that the share could be lower if the nuclear plants were kept running (broadly, based on your numbers, it could be less than 20% in 2025). Whether that would have made economic sense (especially in terms of redirections funds away from renewables), I am not so sure of.
It's kind of lucky for everyone that climate is mostly a perfect sliding scale, the more CO2 you avoid putting into the atmosphere the more heat capacity you'd avoid. So every bit helps. Many negative impacts of heat, like changing intense weather, biodiversity loss, and deaths to high heat also correspondingly change linearly with heat. So every bit is a literal victory, there's no major cutoff that we know of until things get really bad (which they might). What's your point?
Do you get angry at people for calling sea stars starfish? "They aren't fish they are echinoderms!"
Or perhaps you get angry at people who call light utility vehicles "trucks"?
Language evolves. People accept colloquial definitions. Wait until you learn about pencil lead, koala bears, dry cleaning, and peanuts. Windmill is absolutely acceptable if it's understood by people to mean wind turbine, which it is.
Over the last year, wind - mostly offshore - has generated more than 35% of electricity here. Gas is down to 27%. It's really, really good. And it looks cool.
What's insane is that one person will cite something this in one place, but the rest of the people in the thread say "why aren't we building wind and solar????"
"We" is referring to the US federal government, elected by the US population, and which has (and is using) massive levers to kneecap development of renewable energy sources.
Some internet commentators may wish to unhelpfully point out that no matter the US federal efforts, renewable development will always be above literal zero, and so "we haven't stopped." But it's not a very useful contribution to the conversation.
There are dozens of similar articles about dozens of different projects and mechanisms used to stall those projects. Yes, I concede the level will almost certainly remain above zero and so "we haven't stopped." Good-faith adults know what the conversation is about and can either engage in it or opt out of it instead of resorting to excessive pedantry.
This is the exact reason it's happening. Offshore wind is cheaper than gas /kWh and would therefore kill Trump's fossil fuel donor's profits. So kill offshore wind and the grid is forced to go to more expensive fossil fuel sources, which increased the grid price and means extra profits go to those companies. All this raises energy prices.
Is the game you're playing "see if I can be subtle enough to get away with undermining renewables through misleading statements on social media without people calling me out on it"? If so I think you're down 1 - 0 so far in this thread.
Best of luck on the next round though, really cool and awesome game!
Thank you comrade for your alert senses! You correctly identified that anybody who pretends to be a "moderate" voice or utters any kind of even light criticism towards the Party program is always a detractor or enemy spy which is trying to sabotage and undermine our internal cohesion.
The individual has promptly been dealt with and put in a reeducation camp. I will talk to your local commissar so that your brave act of psychological self defence in this message board is rewarded with +50 extra social credits.
No energy source producing the required amounts to run civilization will be non-disruptive to wildlife and the environment. But perfect is the enemy of good.
Renewable energy sources heavily reduce this factor, make countries more independent from imports (other countries) and slow down the catastrophic effects of increased atmospheric energy due to greenhouse effect of carbon-based energy sources.
Conservatives should be the top number one supporters of renewable energy because of more independence from other governments and better conservation of the environment.
But alas, the only thing they like to preserve is their personal greed.
Utterly Insane. I mean the saying "Truth is stranger than fiction" is proven true by this US administration again, again and again. If you put this as a plot point in a novel, you would get a 1-star rating with readers complaining about lack of realism.
People were for years joking about us approaching Idiocracy but I think this reality is already dumber than that in some regards. Trump & co really turbocharged the idiotification
In Idiocracy, President Camacho recognizes that someone has scientific skills and expertise* he doesn't and puts them in charge to help his people.
* even if it's just "feed plants water, not Gatorade."
From that angle, Idiocracy is notably BETTER than our current situation.
They even look like Captain Planet baddies. Trump with his orange skin, purple sores and ridiculous hair, RFK jr. walking around barefoot looking like a scrotum on steroids, Pete Kegsbreath answering the question "What if a mob boss fucked a frat bro", etc.
I've never seen one here, which makes sense because we don't use much coal. I suppose if they were 200m high and scattered across half the state I'd have a similar opinion.
Coal mines are often associated with massive slag heaps and they can be over 200m in height.
They are not pretty but what they lack in beauty they make up for with danger to the local community from leached chemicals, underground fires and landslides.
What's more mental you talk to any Germans about deprecating their Nuclear power stations they will bang on about their plan for renewables and then you read these sorts of headlines.
What the hell is happening over there? Why can't they get 'energy' despite being a scientifically literate nation. France has a far superior energy policy so it's not like you even have to travel beyond a few miles to see a wildly different price for electricity. At this rate French electricity will be half the price in a few years compared to German electricity. Germany is making mistake after mistake on energy. From Russian dependence to Nuclear scepticism to now accepting money to not build renewables.
Germany is already way ahead of the US in switching away from fossil electricity (also ahead of China).
Sure, keeping the entire nuclear fleet from ~2000 would have maybe helped, but would have required very costly (economically and politically!) investments over the last few decades, and those basically went into renewables instead which turned out fine.
I definitely wouldn't say that it turned out fine. The push against nuclear transcended into a larger push against electricity, making Germany a laggard in electrification. The car sector certainly isn't doing fine.
It's also funny how air conditioning powered by electricity is discouraged, while air conditioning in ICE cars or gas heating in buildings are at the very least tolerated. It's crazy if you think about it.
Nuclear scepticism… did you know that nuclear power plants need cooling? Germany is learning that lesson the hard way right now, just check the news, it really speaks for reducing their dependency on nuclear as having been a very very good idea.
No wait, they’re not learning it the hard way because they’ve already got rid of them. Phew…
There are indeed bidding zones in Europe. France is one bidding zone and Germany and Luxembourg is another one. Market prices are indeed pretty comparable.
Taxation and cost for the net are very different with a higher price for the connection in France and a higher price per kWh in Germany. In the end for a normal use of electricity the prices are very comparable.
Meanwhile China is becoming entirely energy independent and electrifying their economy. I don't understand how the US doesn't see that they won't be top dog forever especially in this multipolar age.
As a proportion of total energy use, the US is ahead of China in moving away from fossil fuels by about 5 full percentage points. Most of the "energy independence" that China has is just based on burning coal.
We see a lot of competing views on the modern right and the most dominant one is the sort of peace through strength dominate the world stance, but I think one that doesn’t get talked about as much is that actually being the global hegemon and competitive in the world shifts power away from traditional power structures like the church.
So losing to China is a feature not a bug. I think This explains Republican obsession with countries like Russia and Hungary that are certainly a few steps down the economic ladder from us.
They still mostly rely on coal. Slightly more than half of electricity is generated by burning coal, whereas in the US, it's only 15%. The renewable energy share in generation is roughly the same in the US and China, but not for capacity.
You can look at current levels, or look at trends. China has stopped increasing coal. They're building a small number of new coal plants, but this is outstripped by the coal plants being underutilized or decommissioned
China is really only building new renewables, almost 100x as much net renewable capacity per year compared to nuclear.
Only as recently as last year did China stop increasing its net electric generation from coal. And if you look at all primary energy (not just electricity), their dependence on fossil fuels is something like 90%.
Burning natural gas instead of coal should result in about half as much carbon emissions theoretically, although methane leaks will narrow the advantage.
German Climate scientists are claiming with 98% statistical certainty that warming has accelerated significantly since 2015, and believe we are looking at 3°C of warming by 2050, 5°C by the end of the century. That does not bode well for the future of anything.
The direction of travel is clear though. China is making massive investments in renewable energy (and dominating sectors like solar in the process) while the US seems hell bent on going the other way.
> That [coal] share was well down from 65.5% in 2016, previous NEA figures showed.
> Renewable energy's share grew to 41.2% — topping 40% for the first time — and of that wind and solar accounted for 24.6%, Xing added. Wind and solar's share was up from 9.7% in 2020.
The people running the government literally do not care. They only care about evading responsibility for decades of crimes by smashing all accountability mechanisms, disabling all oversight so they can loot the government, increasing dysfunction, feeding the culture war to keep us fighting each other over wedge issues instead of rising up, and flattering some utterly insane religious freaks so they have an immutable core of cult members. They're financed by America's arch enemies, easily manipulated, vain, and stupid. To them, America is a golden opportunity for naked theft of power and money.
The US is the biggest oil producer in the world. Consumption does exceed production, but obviously this changes the calculus around energy independence.
It is the third largest coal producer, behind India and China.
Someone who is "rich" in a consumable asset and therefore chooses to just consume that instead of investing in a renewable or compounding asset is colloquially known as "a dumbass."
You are commenting on an article in which the US is deciding (and paying immense costs) in order not to do everything. The current administration is actively trying to squash several proven-valuable ways of converting non-renewable resources into renewable ones.
Your initial comment seemed to imply that these actions are the rational downstream consequences of the US's incentives. Now you seem to be suggesting that maybe it's not, but it's just the actions of the current administration?
Not sure what policy stability has to do with anything. If anything it's a further indictment of your point. A successful energy project will span multiple administrations to come to fruition. It takes just one administration to kill a project... as illustrated by TFA. This is not in fact explainable as a rational response to the US's incentives.
> US is rich in fossil energy so it doesn't have the same incentives as China does obviously.
China isn't rich in fossil energy? That's news to me.
They are the world's largest coal producer and still create over half of their electricity from coal. The difference to the US is that China seems to realize that this strategy isn't a long term solution.
No, we're not expecting someone else to stop it. We voted for this. The evil is not imposed on us. It is us.
Not everyone, but a majority. The minority is looking for ways to stop it, but it requires getting literally everyone else to work together. Which means any disagreement among them results in a loss, and more of the same evil.
I don't think "manipulating" is valid. A bit over a third voted one way, a bit under a third voted another, and a third didn't vote. The third that didn't vote was saying "sure, whatever".
If you include all of the non-voters as tacitly consenting to it, then it's an overwhelming majority.
That's not entirely accurate; quite a few non-voters were prevented from voting in one way or another. But most non-voters chose not to vote. Quite a few were explicit about having some disagreement with the primary opponent and concluded that the two sides are equivalent.
Not voting against evil is indeed voting for evil and that is what the net majority did.
The minority doesn't have a charismatic leader to rally around so we don't have a "movement" that can fight back against the corruption at scale. Democrats need to stop taking the high road and start thinking "WWRD?" and out do them.
You don't really have a choice here. As a "conservative" (what ever that means...) I got two different evils that I couldn't stand. I voted third party, but even that party wasn't very close to what I really believe.
...and this inability to get people to work together is architected, designed, and reinforced constantly. Fact: no where in any general education within the United States are people taught how to discuss issues with disagreement. This is strategic: the lack of this education creates easily emotionally swayed non-intellects that fall for cons over and over. The US is a conman paradise.
Democracy is only ever choosing between two evils. You will never agree entirely with either candidate. In order to reach a majority, you will have to reach some kind of compromise with people with goals you hate.
As has been famously stated, democracy is the worst system, except for all of the others. I think people often underestimate just how bad it is.
That's been the system for over 200 years and Americans have never changed it, even though it only exists as it does to keep slaveowning states in the union and prevent a civil war (which it failed to do.)
If it isn't democracy now, it's never been democracy.
Can't help but roll my eyes every time an election between a guy who campaigned on locking up his political enemies and throwing out all the Mexicans, and an awkward black woman, is described as choosing "between two evils." Give me a break.
Democracy is people's power and the people in the US (and frankly most of the western world) are refusing to exercise it.
Democracy is not a legal framework but a cultural outlook that requires a sense of civitas. Which is mostly lost in the west (and in most other places, too) where deference to individual power has been allowed to become fully ascendant.
We rightfully decry the state authoritarianism in places like China, but their current seemingly superior ability to accomplish broader community betterment goals seems less to do with their political structure and more to do with still having some sense and confidence and optimism that people can in fact work together.
Meanwhile official small-l liberal ideology in North America fundamentally does not believe in this at all, and the ascendant far right is openly aggressive against this concept and an explicit "might makes right" ethos is becoming more and more triumphant and embodied in Trump.
Trump will eventually die and rot but the Stephen Millers of the world will still snake around in the background looking for the next pseudo-strong man to stand up and smirk all over a compliant population that has lost its desire to work together and just wants to submit to the loudest asshole in the room.
No constitution or election or political party saves the country from this. People's power does.
People didn't vote against Biden, they voted against incumbents in almost every major election across the world. They were unhappy with the economic situation after Covid – Biden just happened to be president at the time.
Honestly, despite having a wife from the US (not an US citizen anymore), I agree with you.
It is really weird to me that such a thing as lobbying can be legal. Or the fact that you can donate to an election campaign so that they have more money to influence people.
And it is even more surprising that the vast majority of US people don't even question these things. I have the theory that American exceptionalism hinders their critical thinking when it comes to these kind of subjects. Ie "If we decided to do it like this, it means is the best way possible".
I'm baffled why Germany would allow this, you'd think they and the rest of Europe would understand the importance of energy independence at this point.
This is something that is extremely hard to accomplish in the US. It would be akin to all of Europe voting on the same day and trying to falsify an election in each country. The logistics of this means that you need a lot of participants, and someone is going to blow it (and the whole thing unravels).
That is not the same as interfering: Jackboots at the polls, screwing with the mail, ID requirements.
Falsifying votes is different from falsifying election results. All of the misinformation being thrown around exists to cast doubt on the voting system to not trust the results. So you vote, it gets tallied up, and if the result is not what you want, blame it on the supposed flaws in the voting system. The people who believe that misinformation come to your defense.
It's because everything Republicans say is projection. They want to cheat, so accuse the Democrats of doing it first. In actuality it's the current admin that's laying gound-work for election fraud in November.
Not sure what you intend by this, but yes, that’s their goal. The same people put on a “Trump was robbed” act for the Trump voters and a “Trump is robbing you” act for the Democrats, and with both they accomplish their true goal: get Americans to stop believing in democracy.
Time passes. Trump is literally doing his utmost to disenfranchise voters, called electors to personally harass them, and has spent years "investigating the fraud" to setup groundwork for violating people's voting rights.
One side says bullshit, the other side says "look at all of the fucking evidence of your eyes"
Even if the Republican party loses this time, what makes you think they won't find someone even worse than Trump next time? That seems to be the pattern over the last decades.
I don't see myself ever being able to trust the US again. Maybe if they manage 2-3 decades without conservative idiocy, but the Epstein class would never allow that.
Which I don’t think it’s healthy either. Any ruling party can become corrupt especially on a longer scale. So the question is what happens if you have another madman in charge?
I think the bigger issue is a two party system. The checks and balances can clearly be gamed as this administration has proven.
Using the HN homework from earlier about multi-objective optimization... perhaps a Pareto optimal trade space of evil and dumb, to the maximum extent the two can coexist
Hehe, I think evil often stems from dumb in the sense that rarely is evil the choice that leads to good long term outcomes. For example the famous prisoners dilemma where the best strategy is tit for tat with occasional forgiveness.
ofc smart/evil/dumb are all simplifying things way too much since its not like humans have video game like attribute sliders. Im very aware of that, this is not meant to be taken that seriously.
>RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum into conventional gas projects, including $900m (£669m) in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal project in Louisiana.
Yeah, they say that, but I wonder how much of it is just to make the Trump admin happy.
Like, I don't doubt that they will go and build gas projects, and might even use some of this money to kickstart it, but presumably RWE was already pretty far along the pipeline of preparing this offshore buildout, and there's likely a lot equipment orders, staff, ships, etc that they'd rather not cancel, and would rather redirect into another project if they can.
Maybe that's copium from me though, just sad to see a big wind project go to waste.
I wish I had not read this. I am not kidding when I say this is ruining my day thinking about. One thing is they ruin our times. But they are in the game of ruining the rest of time for humankind, too.
Yes as everyone loves to retort, the planet will survive! We might not, the current ecosystem wont, no one and nothing we love or care about or cherish is likely to.
But a very lovely species of bug may at some point look down and marvel at the beautiful new world they've conquered. And I guess we've collectively decided we're happy to give them that.
Trump holds a grudge against wind turbines, for no other reason than that they "ruined" the view at a golf course / club he owns in Scotland. He tried to get them removed, but lost that case in court.
That's mostly it. Another factor would be Trump getting donations from the oil & gas industry.
I have either learned to tune it all out or have been worn down of all the terrible news. But of all the terriblew news to come from this administration, this kind of thing guts me the most :(
There is really no way around this, no silver lining. After years of working to get these programs implemented, to have the admin just willy-nilly spend money (what money!?!) to have them STOP. It hurts man.
No, it's compensation for backing out of a deal. In contract law, once a deal is signed, you're entitled to the "benefit of the bargain" if you perform your end of the deal. A breakup fee allows one side to get out of the deal, while compensating the other side for sunk cost into the project, opportunity costs from not having pursued other deals, etc.
I don’t understand what pot of money this is coming out of. Has Congress authorized taxpayer money be used for paying energy companies to halt projects?
> Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement posted on X that Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense and not one dependent on "costly subsidies".
Isn't the $1.2B deal a subsidy for conventional gas?
Building new infra will extend beyond trumps term, so it's possible they do "planning" for 2 years, new admin comes in, and they abandon the plan and go back to putting the money in wind.
> The administration signed a similar $129bn (£96bn) agreement with Charlotte-based Duke Energy last month in exchange for the termination of the company's offshore wind lease in the Carolina Long Bay area.
Putting aside the sycophantic wording around the orange leader and the total lack of details of how it's going to achieve what they are promising and what is actually going to happen, it's funny to see the distinction between gov officials and the Duke exec:
Gov: valued at $129 million and reinvest that same amount in additional generating capacity
Duke: will reinvest nearly $129 million in additional generating capacity, which may include
Many such cases..... this is up there. But I gotta say, the one that really got to me was watching videos of people from my old neighborhood getting dragged into the street, disappeared and murdered, by government agents paid from my taxes.
But there are truly so many options to choose from which add up to more and worse still. Maybe we'll put our heads together and discover something to stop it eventually.
Wind turbines were never meant to produce electricity but to bankrupt the world economy.
Back in 2K one turbine installation cost was 2 million euros.
That one turbine can never generate that much electricity so to pay your investment. Not counting the maintenance astronomical costs.
That lets Trump off the hook by suggesting it's just run-of-the-mill corruption. It's not. He has a personal vendetta against wind power ever since a bust-up with Scotland about the views from his golf course getting "ruined". Today that cost Americans $4 each.
If you are in the US make sure you write your congressman about this. Elections are coming up in a couple months and if they see this as an issue they will ensure something happens. There is already suspicion that the Democrats will win the house (which doesn't take too many districts to turn - this commonly would happen anyway), even a republican in a "safe seat" is scared.
RWE is the biggest producer of energy from lignite in Germany, which causes massive emissions even when compared to burning black coal, oil and gas. Lignite used to be really important for Germany because it has almost no reserves of oil and gas that can be accessed with traditional methods, but Germany has huge natural gas reserves that can be accessed with hydraulic fracturing. Of course, fracking is illegal in Germany, so we keep burning lignite instead, which is so much worse. Mind you, I'm not arguing that fracking is the future, we need to decarbonize the entire energy sector, but we could do so much better with the cards that we were dealt.
So the lignite-burning energy dinosaur from Germany accepting a billion dollar bribe to divest resources from clean energy into fossil fuels is totally in character for that company. Shame on them.
Wait halting energy projects when energy is so scares for data centers? Couldn't US just have handed it over to some US Big Tech? I am not in US but why pay to "not" do something like building infra.
I can't believe how stupid the world has become. At least my young niece and nephew will have terrible air to breathe after I'm gone. Next, let's pay people to detonate nuclear bombs next to our homes.
We need to be careful in not throwing the babies out with the bath water - the fees paid for the leases for these projects were so high that the projects would not be economically viable in the first place. The developers are probably doing back flips behind closed doors that they have exited these positions without major financial impairments.
This does not mean that renewables or offshore wind should not be built it just means that the regime around how sites are awarded, and how power purchase contracts are made need to be reworked.
A lot of the world is struggling with this (recently UK re-tendered for Mona lease area with much more favourable conditions than r4 initial lease).
Generally speaking I think the best approach would be to have almost zero / nominal lease fee, then have a competitive auction around a two sided CFD - if the market price is below the strike price the state makes up the difference, if the market price is above the strike price the excess goes back to the state.
> the fees paid for the leases for these projects were so high that the projects would not be economically viable in the first place.
Can you explain where you got your information from?
The leases were already paid for (in total) in 2022-2023 for $1bn
The expected output would have been 7gigawatts annually, which is a 5-7x return per year on paper.
The sale of the lease is due to a regulatory blockade, not a traditional cost benefit analysis.
Just “voting” is not sufficient. In fact, voting for the “wrong” people got us here. This guy won because people voted for him. Twice! How about: please always vote for the person who seems the least likely to fuck up the present and the future for all of us
Nah the people voting for the orange fuhrer are beyond reason. It's the third that doesn't vote that needs to decide which road they want us all to take.
Donald Trump continues to battle Scottish offshore windfarm plans. In his second letter to Alex Salmond, the businessman said the turbines would have a negative impact on Scottish tourism: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/sep/28/donald-t...
We have totally not communism sending money to every other country in existence, but spending a single cent towards the betterment of your citizens is super duper evil communism.
I would love to know the thought process of this administration because it feels like a fever dream.
This is so colossally stupid, even by MAGA standards. We're literally spending billions to make things worse, because apparently any form of renewable energy makes the frogs gay or some stupid shit.
Or, you know, the future bottom line. I wonder how much these people understand that if you kill everyone or put them under serious resource strain because of environmental collapse, there's no one left to pay anything to you. How hard is that to understand? Don't pull the trigger, because yes, right now you don't have a bullet in your foot, but in a few milliseconds...
"RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum into conventional gas projects, including $900m (£669m) in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal project in Louisiana."
"Trump has sought to boost government support for fossil fuels after campaigning for the presidency under the slogan "drill, baby, drill"."
That's insane, even though half of Republican supporters believe in climate change, and almost all Democratic voters do too. I can understand cutting government spending on the transition to green energy when projects are unprofitable, but what is the point of cutting it for profitable ones? If I'm not mistaken, energy firms like RWE are even threatened with lawsuits if they continue building wind turbines. Other coal investments are even more insane.
Is there any way to view our consistent destruction of green energy products in the last few years as anything other than hostile towards the majority of people purely to have a handful of people profit on cost of gas?
You can't make this ish up. In the era of AI when we need as much energy as possible, this admin is pulling this ridiculous stunt. Yeah, I'm not wagering that USA wins the AI race.
> Days after his return to office, he said "we're not going to do the wind thing" and called them "big, ugly windmills" that were dangerous to wildlife.
We shouldn't pretend that he's making a real point. I would like to see 1.2B invested to save wildlife, but that's not happening, so that's almost like a "figure of speech".
It's year 2005, and you're an AI on an alien planet. you get a piece of news from the future from a planet called Earth. Tell me what you understand from the text and what you think about it: (then pasted the article text)
Maybe. Check with a lawyer. I would for starters be looking at the angle that Congress needs to approve spending money, and I doubt this was in any budget.
There also needs to be a conversation of if the executive branch should even have the powers to stop this. A a YIMBY person I believe their power should be limited to verifying the permits were filled out correctly (and I believe in reducing paperwork for them), that is they cannot say no to this if the process was followed.
In most locations, unless you have extremely stable weather, it's ideal to have a nearly even mix of wind and solar capacity, since wind is rather strongly anticorrelated with sunshine.
That number directly correlates with life quality in almost every country on earth. More energy per capita means higher life quality, without a doubt in every high quality place.
What about quality of life per watt and just making having a certain standard of living more energy efficient?
Simple examples: energy efficient lights seem to have no downsides, better insulation helps my apartment building retain heat, more efficient electronics mean that my homelab servers pull like 100 W total and public transport probably removes a bunch of cars from the road and increases air quality and decreases traffic jams (I can get everywhere I need that way, there’s literally train, tram and bus stops like 5-15 minutes away).
> energy efficient lights seem to have no downsides
Efficiency is good, but this isn't true. Decades into LED-ification we still suffer shit-tier PWM strobing, poor dimming, disruption to wildlife and human life, and streetlights turning purple en masse.
(The last two are installation and quality issues, but when driven by lowest-bidder compliance with simplistic "efficiency" mandates that's what you get).
Lower color rendering index than incandescent lights too. High CRI LEDs are available, but they're still worse than incandescents and less efficient than the conventional LEDs.
In rich countries, energy usage for a middle-class lifestyle isn't really rising anymore, and in some places is falling significantly (homes are _way_ more thermally efficient than they used to be, all appliances are more efficient, cars are more efficient, and so on).
Energy use per capita will continue to rise in the medium term globally, but it's stable to slightly down over the last few decades in the US, say.
There must be a cap where quality of life is good enough though, right? Or do you propose it should go up indefinitely?
Air conditioning is quite nice if you find yourself living in a hot environment, for example. But do we really all need smart watches? Or cameras everywhere? Or LLMs, for that matter?
That depends entirely on how you measure quality of life. Though I'd argue that if quality of life measures didn't noticeably increase after those products were released, then I'd say no.
I'd argue quality of life is down since the invention of smartphones
> There must be a cap where quality of life is good enough though, right?
Maybe in some hypothetical future, but even the fantastical world Star Trek TNG has improvements on quality of life that could be made.
I think part of the problem of today lands on the post-cold war and certainly post-911 media landscape. There just aren't optimistic future. Distopia is more popular and certainly more numerous than Utopia.
I'd argue that we have to find some level of "enough" when it comes to quality of life, likely a balance between incremental improvements vs the costs to get there.
Effectively all history of life was focused entirely on finding food, water, maybe shelter and safety, and breeding. Where do we draw the line and stop making new things just because we can?
I have nothing to base this on so its just a hunch, but I'd expect quality of life would increase for many people today by removing, rather than adding. Work a little less, buy a little less, have fewer distractions, etc.
You can do more with less energy, if you use it more efficiently, which sometimes may be more cost effective compared to producing more. Electricity consumption peaked in Germany in 2007 and is down 15% since then while GDP grew by 50%.
Also energy consumption per capita is more than 2x higher in the US compared to Germany, while quality of life should be roughly similar. (In my personal opionion quality of life is better in Germany).
You're not wrong, but it simply isn't politically viable, which has been illustrated quite obviously by now. The "use less" strategy is a complete (and predictable) failure.
It is absolutely the government's job to regulate externalities. Otherwise, personal virtue is just subsidizing third party vice. Energy is fungible. Every joule you save lowers the cost for people who don't care.
Regulate externalities sounds like a nice way of phrasing what would amount to authoritarianism.
It seems reasonable to want a government to help ensure externalities aren't being ignored in prices, but not to regulate them by saying how much and what types of things people can use. I don't want my government allocated a set amount of energy I use, for example, but I would be fine with them ensuring prices accurately reflect the true cost.
Ironically they often do the opposite, subsidizing energy and food costs which make things cheaper and hide externalities.
Coal rolling is done to spite the holier-than-thou sanctamonious bullshit that people who say "we need to eat lentils and live in a cave" come out with. It's an illogical reaction, but it's human.
We need answers, not revert to a world of catholic sin
Change your car to run off electric, great
Change your city to transport 1000 people by train rahter than 1000 separate cars, great
Power your AC from your off-grid rooftop solar, great
Whine that people need to stop using AC, stop eating meat, stop watching TV, it's just harmful.
I haven't seen any whining in the thread, though maybe you're referring to me since I started the thread here?
I didn't say people need to stop using AC, I don't even agree that eating less meat would help, and my only mention of TV above was in reference to people deciding to turn it off when they leave the house, not to watch less of it.
My main point, though, was that moving around how we use energy, and of what type, will do a lot less good than finding ways to use less.
There are only two routes to preventing the climate disaster we've already set in motion:
Risky geoengineering projects like stratospheric aerosol injection.
Direct atmospheric capture of CO2.
The latter is the safer option because it's just restoring the atmosphere to a known good state. Direct atmospheric capture of billions of tons of CO2 per year will take enormous amounts of energy. We're going to need a lot more nuclear power plants if there's any hope of pulling this off.
Alternative is World War Three when large parts of the planet become uninhabitable.
I've never been particularly intrigued by the climate disaster angle. Not that it isn't an issue, but that it shouldn't be a prerequisite for a person to consume less by choice.
If I have to convince someone that 1) the climate is changing beyond historical patterns 2) I know the chemical/mechanical processes at play and 3) we caused it just so they turn off the TV when they leave the house or enjoy their current car a few years longer, its a situation that will never be resolved.
Atmospheric capture of CO2 seems to me to be one of the things pushed by the fossil fuel industry.
It is clearly not really feasable (at least not now). To me it just seems like the fossil fuel industry is doing the tobacco industry playbook of pushing stuff that doesn't actually work so people don't even try the stuff that does work: using less energy, and using less carbon intensive energy.
We really can move to less carbon intensive energy, there's lots of options all around us. Yes it means a systemic change - which is exactly what the fossil fuel industry doesn't want.
In medieval times we used tiny amounts of energy on lighting and everyone sat around in the dark, however the energy used per lumen and indeed the carbon impact per lumen was far higher than it is today
Do you think we should return to medieval heat and light?
Idiot president of a country where over 10% of power generated in 2025 was with wind says any country with wind turbines (he calls them windmills) is a loser country. Film at 11.
It's occasionally mentioned, but the answer appears to be "roughly 1000x current global electricity production", so we don't worry about it too much. Energy is much higher than electricity, of course, but we're not planning on replacing all energy [or all electricity] with just wind.
We'll hit other constraints long before that happens.
There may be some local effects. I think the main one is one cluster of wind turbines effecting the output of nearby clusters (and effects within a cluster). Pretty sure they account for this when engineering wind farms, with the effects actively being studied.
It's just so blatantly and absurdly evil for literally no reason. It's a cartoon villain type of plan, the absurdity of it leaves me at a true loss for words
Why are they scared shitless of wind power? What's the deal? I don't get it. Like, they seem to be more determined to stop wind power than solar power. Why?
To be clear, this isn’t wind power currently under construction. It’s proposed future wind power with leases being planned. Trump has largely failed to stop the nearly complete projects in New England, New York, and Virginia.
We are outraged. We know we are nearly the climate abyss. We see the changes all around us. What are we going to do to collectively to change course? To right the ship?
I wrote a book on the issue. I think the next best thing we can do is work together to amplify our voices to the point ignoring us is no longer politically convenient.
Tens of millions of Americans, including republican leaning voters who claim to believe in climate change, demonstrably reject the reality in front of their eyes.
The same generation who groused about how bad snow used to be (Up to rooftops!) and make fun of people who struggle in what little snow we get right now are the same people who are posting in comments sections "Earth has always changed temperature"
As a German I am highly confused by US actions. America is sabotaging its own economic future, demonizing independent renewable natural energy sources (you don’t need to import wind or sun) and Mr. „art of the deal“ is even paying us for it.
Offshore wind projects when you have tons and tons of empty land always seemed weird to me. The cost, logistics, reduced life of the installations, disruptions to the ecosystems and potential production issues with winter storms and other extreme weather events.
So in short a company was servicing power demand in a low pollution way. Then American government gave them money so they can instead service the same demand while causing more pollution.
Just... Why? To protect a few hundred jobs in America? They could have just given a small portion of that money to these workers and they would stop complaining about job loss. 1.2 Billion is a big number.
I think I don't want to believe this. I believe it in my brain but not in my heart. This kind of power just cannot be in such irresponsible hands. It makes me wanna scream.
The next time, your libertarian friend mutters “Solyndra”, tell him at the most Solyndra cost the federal government 1/2 billion dollars, not the many billions Trump is spending to cancel wind projects.
my guess is that this project will be quickly relocated somewhere else in a double loose for the US, but then may very well prove to illegal in any number of violations of US law, triggering further confusion and unplanned costs for US tax payers.
it's a triumphalist celebration of anti logic
Literally setting fire to the world because the US government is rammed full of corruption and oil cronies. Meanwhile everything is fine for the handful of billionaires who benefit from this shit. Absolutely sickening.
The challenge is that you're not dealing with rational people. The big dog in the White House is a imbecile of the highest order, and everyone is doing everything in their power to appease him. It is a unwinnable situation as long as Trump is POTUS.
Trump was elected because of rural/exurban white insecurity and white cultural decline. An election wasn't the cause of all this--it was more of an effect.
In other words, even if there's a feedback loop, an election won't magically fix everything.
One of my guiltier pleasures is reading r/Conservative to see which knots they're tying themselves in today defending some of his more insance ideas. In the unlikely event this surfaces up beyond some rage-bait culture war story they've found on Breitbart, I will enjoy reading their thoughts on why this is 4d chess†
†: in fairness to them, they are almost uniformly opposed to Trump's adventurism in Iran and mostly not supportive of the Jan 7th slush-fund, and will call out both when pressed
is it just me or does that seems to be a decision driven fully by a personal dislike of wind energy without having actually run the numbers, or in other words the art of a deal isn't that
like yes there was binding commitment to RWE getting some level of subsidies, hence he had to "pay them of" around the amount of profit they have likely list, and probably more
but... compared to not paying that much more in subsidies _and_ getting more electricity out of it which the US seem to currently be quite tight one this seems to be a terrible bad deal
---
EDIT: Sorry for the rant below, it's just pretty annoying how dishonest non fact based politics has been becoming where I live:
furthermore you can stop future subsidies, so if wind energy is as "fake" as he claims this is something RWE would be stuck with not them, even if it drive them bankrupt it wouldn't be a USA problem (and more a German one)
so the only way this deal makes sense is if you a) hate wind energy and want it cone irrationally b) know it actually works and as such would "stay around" for sure (or if you really really really care about birds, no way this is true for Trump)
(And also practically it already has proven that off shore wind farms can work profitable, so b, isn't really a question. But I guess if you have a president who says all the wind farms in China are fake for show while China produce roughly as much wind energy as all of the EU together then sure you can't except logic).
In general the amount of nonsense you hear when it comes to the topic of renewable energies is pretty crazy both in how people "proof how bad it is" .. based on early technology from well over 20+ years ago, systematically ignoring relevant components of a complete solution, pretending certain already in-use technologies don't exist and don't make sense etc. To ignoring issues with whatever technology they favor and often comparing wrongly calculated "non subsidized" renewable prices with "highly subsidized" non renewable prices. Don't get me wrong it also is done the other way around. But at least where I live, that direction of propaganda isn't really relevantly used while the other direction is spread everywhere non stop (while also pretending that any honest calculation is supposedly "faked" because it doesn't fit their world view).
Now people understand why Merz is so obedient to Trump: USA always pays Germany handsomely. Canadians understood Trump being a problem. German taxpayers also understand this. It is german politicians who consistently act against the people in Germany here; Merz is just doing this very shamelessly and obviously, while also insulting germans as "lazy bums" (https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-07/friedrich-me... - here he claims to never have insulted Germans as that, but prior statements contradict this). There is a reason why more than 70% (!!!!) of germans oppose Merz now. https://ip-quarterly.com/en/troubled-merz-faces-crucial-elec...
Being so obedient to Mr. Trump, who in turn now faces allegation of being more involved than was previously already known with regards to Epstein's sexy islands, is a lose-lose situation Mr. Merz. USA paying german companies to abandon green energy plans, also ties into that. If Merz would have something called a spine he would not be so addicted to the money and instead reject the USA trying to influence Europeans and Germans negatively here. Because that money is ultimately bribery money for RWE. Shame on RWE as well.
Not the North Sea, nothing to do with transmission in Germany. Bad summary, bot(?).
German energy company RWE has said it will abandon its offshore wind projects in the US after reaching a $1.2bn (£892m) payout deal with President Donald Trump's Department of the Interior (DoI).
Why the flying fuck are we still LARPing with toy projects like this shit?
1.2B gives you a 1-1.5GW nuclear power station that runs at 90% capacity 24/7 365 (minus occasional maintanance and refuling) day or night, wind or no wind.
So what you're saying is instead of spending 1.2B to stop a firm from building wind, the government should leave the firm be so they can keep building wind and invest the 1.2B into building a nuclear power plant which will come online when the German firm has built roughly 1,000x the same capacity in wind turbines.
Nuclear isn't as cheap as you present it. It needs heavy subsidies for insurance and waste disposal.
Most nuclear power proposals are just LARPing as "cheap" as they pretend subsidies don't exist.
In addition you have to shut nuclear power plants down in summers due to lack of sufficient cooling. That means you need to plan alternative replacement power generation.
Er... That seems optimistic. Even in China, which is the current world leader and has significant advantages of scale, nuclear capacity costs $2-3bn per GW. The most recent US construction (Vogtle 3 and 4) took 14 years and cost $36bn for two reactors of 1.1GW each.
I fully understand why power generation is subsidised - however honesty I feel if the govt is subsidising it, they should get a cut of the profits too.
I also believe in a free market, and power should be subsidised equally per MW (MWh maybe?) this takes the politics out of a structural necessity. If you want to push a political agenda - great - but do it on political topics.
US has absurdly large domestic energy resources like gas reserves, coal reserves, uranium, and thermal energy infrastructure.
Then, there is the supply chain argument: the specialized turbines, components, vessels and manufacturing chains are manufactured overseas and imported to support Wind. RWE is itself German. It’s good to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains.
Fishing and maritime was also cited as a concern.
Onshore Wind is used (see New Mexico). Offshore Wind is a harder sell.
Gas/nuclear/geothermal is a better investment for the US than Offshore Wind.
>It’s good to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains
The fact that we're still basically entirely reliant on the middle east and other foreign producers for our domestic fuel supply suggests this isn't really that big of a deal. Even in the middle of a war that is generating massive profits for the oil industry, no one is suggesting they should add refinery capacity or convert existing ones to use domestic oil.
This move is about the president's personal vendetta against offshore wind and satisfying his financial backers in the fossil fuel industry.
We are indeed the largest producer of oil and natural gas. In this case, "some" is like 70%. Maybe that's not "entirely reliant", but it's far from independence. If other countries stopped selling us oil, our car-centric society would be FUBAR for some time.
While these arguments are valid, you’re missing the forrest for the trees. Renewable energy has better long-term ROI because it doesn’t require constant purchase of fuel. Renewable energy plants also produce far, far less CO2 that goes into the atmosphere and endangers our biosphere (yours and mine).
Do you know if it would be easier to get fully domestic supply and manufacturing chains for solar or for wind, if a way is found to prevent corruption undermining setting up fully domestic production?
Forgive the ignorance, what drives the demand for offshore wind instead of on land anyway? Shorter power run to coastal cities vs longer transmission loss from exurban environments?
And with solar, I can't imagine that would be fast to stand up production for... but we're attempting the Herculean task with modern chip fabs. Would panels be harder than that? They both seem existential needs for the future of the country.
Edit: Remember to put to death all pedophiles, including Ycombinator's entire staff.
One could do that, but one would have to be careful that it does not end up lost in corruption. Contracts and bidding, where the private sector carries the full financial risk, and where the state only pays after complete and satisfactory delivery, should in theory work. However, the question then is if such circumstances could be set up that are still attractive to some party in the private sector.
To Y-bar:
> There is no issue about state support for manufacturing of equipment.
For the sake of the USA, domestic production is a concern, right? Since they likely do not want to be reliant on foreign countries far away.
> As presented here, the national government is declining 84% of all requests of requests to build wind power,
Like the defense article about radars and wind farms stated for one case, do the officially stated reasons for not allowing wind farm projects by the Swedish government often include radar concerns?
Edit: The concerns about radar and wind turbines do not seem fake when private sector military companies try to offer solutions for it. https://www.terma.com/products/radars/radar-mitigation/ "Wind Farm Radar Mitigation"
> ad [sic] on the local level the right wing parties vetoed wind power at a rate of 64-92%:
For both onshore and offshore wind farm projects, local citizens can have concerns, especially the larger each individual wind turbine is. Which is unfortunate, since the larger the individual wind turbine is, the more efficient it also tends to be. Wind turbines are arguably generally good overall, but their drawbacks and costs should not be ignored. In general, offshore should be less of a problem for local citizens, since people will not live and sleep close to them, but then the radar question might come into play.
With the geopolitical situation, and WW3 and nuclear war drawing ever closer, well, effort should have been put into stopping world war, but otherwise caring about defense concerns do make sense. And Sweden's coastal line mostly faces east.
I agree. This is why we are building offshore wind and not subsidizing fossil fuels, right?
While paying out 1.2 billion dollars.
For a guy in the ai and cybersecurity industry you seem to have incredibly poor judgement Gyan.
And this isn’t a comparison that ignores inflation. AEMO publishes its historical wholesale electricity prices in real June 2024 dollars. South Australia’s average wholesale price in 2023–24 was A$79.53/MWh, compared with roughly A$95/MWh in 2012–13. It was also 40% lower than the previous year’s A$131.90/MWh. [1]
AEMO also specifically identifies increased rooftop and grid-scale solar output as one of the factors contributing to lower wholesale prices. [1]
So there’s a fairly straightforward example: South Australia reached roughly 74% wind and solar generation while its inflation-adjusted wholesale electricity price was lower than it had been around a decade earlier.
That obviously doesn’t mean renewables were the only factor affecting prices - electricity markets are influenced by fuel prices, interconnectors, demand, storage and plenty of other things. But it does disprove the claim that high penetration of wind and solar necessarily results in higher inflation-adjusted electricity prices.
[1] https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/planni...
I'm sure this wont be enough or acceptable though will it. It never is.
Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy+ 2026 - https://www.lazard.com/media/kcfconhf/lazards-lcoeplus_vf.pd... [pdf]
> Renewables Remain Lowest Cost New-Build Generation; All Generation Faces Increasing Cost Pressure: Despite rising and inflationary cost pressures across all generation technologies, renewables remain the most cost-competitive form of new-build generation on an unsubsidized basis and will account for the majority of near-term capacity additions in the U.S. Continuous upward revisions to demand projections have driven a sharp increase in announced new-build gas generation despite a 15-year high LCOE, which is expected to continue to rise, and historically long development and equipment delivery timelines.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...
The World Crossed a Major Solar Milestone [3TW] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151977 - August 2026
> The world has reached the 3-terawatt threshold of solar power, with the first terawatt taking 10 years to deploy and the next two terawatts taking less than five years.
> Forecasters expect the world to deploy more than 9 terawatts of solar by 2036, with poor countries' share of solar deployment expected to start growing again from this year onward.
> The main constraint for developing countries to adopt solar power is the lack of accessible financing, and the growth of solar power is also limited by the need for energy storage, such as lithium-ion batteries, to absorb excess power.
The global clean tech supply chain will still be around when the US comes around.
Ember Energy: China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... (Updated monthly)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_International_Golf_Club_...
You seem like you've been successful in life, you didn't get that way being low-effort, so let's apply that level of effort toward this community that has brought so many people together for their love of technology.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-f...
The entire sector is a catastrophic, institutionally corrupt scam.
https://www.imf.org/en/topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie...
Based on what our media and our education system teaches us, one would have assumed that common sense and sound logic would prevail in a democracy, but rather what we see is insane nonsense, paranoia, and misinformation (including about vaccines) prevail in the U.S., to the point of burning piles of money (including the 1.2B in this case) just to satisfy a childish and bully like need to spite and trigger the progressive side (like talking about causing more pollution with the goal of “owning the libs” or triggering “delicious liberal tears”). And we’re talking about massive negative externalities with increased pollution. This kind of childish bully behavior is as though you had a neighbor who cared about not littering in public and the streets being clean, and you just threw garbage on the streets to upset her. A ridiculous level of immaturity, truly.
Meanwhile, we have totalitarian dictatorships (like the Emirates which has heavily moved toward zero carbon electricity sources like solar and nuclear) behaving far more logically, rationally, and soundly with a view towards the long-term rather than the short-term.
You can have idiotic authoritarian governments that ruin the economy. China and Vietnam were exceptions among communist countries, who switched to a form of market economy, when they saw that central planning was poverty-inducing and nigh impossible to do.
The problems we're seeing in democracies might lie with the level of disinformation for electioneering purposes that is permitted under free speech today.
So if politicians base their decisions on "common sense", they confess to not being able to use experts that refine their knowledge and position about a topic.
A "common sense" strategy is therefore what is most popular and on the basis of the understanding of laymen without deeper understanding or knowledge.
Don't pretend the current US admin is anything but corrupt and stupid.
And what of the night?
Freeze in the dark.
Nuclear? Gas and coal peaked plants?
We can at least plan for an eventuality that is likely to happen. How much planning is/was there when gas suddenly gets cut off?
Nuclear.
Maybe what you meant to say is that the position isn't, in fact, "common sense", that it is neither sound or prudent?
(1) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/common%20sense
The dictionary definition is in spite of the fact that the phrase "common sense" is more often than ever being used to rebrand what was formerly known as "common lack of sense".
They wouldn't say it if it wasn't false :\
Oh, but the ju$tifi¢ation is all too real for having that kind of "common sense".
You also need to distinguish between expert opinion and elite opinion. The two are not the same.
In Poland the closest phrase to "common sense" is "na chłopski rozum" which means "according to villager's mind/smarts".
There are also a lot of folk remedies that have been disproven as medicine. They too were ‘common sense.’
"You know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine." - Tim Minchin
Gene therapies, targeted cancer treatments, blood pressure medication, antibiotics, surgery, joint replacements, sterile practices, vaccines, hormone replacement therapies.
Ha! Like the common sense to dam migratory river systems to make hydroelectric power. Good idea at the time, and who cares about salmon. I have a toaster, and a percolator, and a new fangled “ice” box (formerly chilled by ice, now a maker of ice).
S/ My common sense says 1.2B compensation to not do something we otherwise need is bananas as opposed to the common sense—pound salt response. Good thing I’m not in government, yeah. /s
It’s only $1.2 billion to not do the thing.
To do the thing would require paying the original contracted amount.
Whatever that might have been.
Melbourne, well Victoria the whole state, is looking at a similar scenario for rail tunnels many believe serve little purpose.
Around $1.2 billion to stop the work now and pay the early termination penalty. Plus maybe another billion (estimated, who really knows) to bury the tunnel boring machines and remediation work.
Or something like $200 billion to complete the work and operate the rail network over some number of probably too many decades. Although this number seems to increase at a regular cadence.
A new road tunnel was recently completed and people who use it often report they are the only vehicle in the tunnel.
Meanwhile our roads haven’t been maintained in a decade and are literally falling apart. It’s not uncommon to hear reports of multiple cars being recovered after suspension and wheel damage from the same section of poorly maintained road in one day.
All of this in a political and economic setting so corrupt the now former state Labor Premier came out and admitted knowledge of a criminal element having infiltrated the union that represents the workers on the projects. She was recently replaced with her deputy. As if that helps.
Electricity prices have also increased by something like 150 to 200 percent more than inflation over the past 20 years but mostly the past 6 years (so this decade) because state and federal governments seem to want to insist on ramming Net Zero down our power lines, yet we export around the same amount of gas as Qatar. And we have the worlds largest know uranium deposit and yet we have a ban on nuclear power reactors.
Please explain?
It'll provide power for decades with little maintenance and not much further in the way of environmental issues now that it's built.
They’re so destructive to local ecosystems that environmental groups have blocked any new hydroelectric dams being built in Australia for over 40 years.
All modern concrete eventually fails, and dams are notoriously difficult to remove and replace.
Fortunately they last long enough that if you paint them pink and plug a torch battery in to them they can remain somebody else’s problem for quite some time.
Then there is the Theory of Bounded Rationality which tells us expertise may exist but resources, time, energy, info, attention etc etc may not therefore bounds and limits of expertise alone must be recognized and solutions reached are satisficable rather than optimal. Aiming for optima when other factors havent been sorted just creates new problems.
Grandma doesn't bake with "common sense", she is using the specialized knowledge of cooking & baking.
You've clearly never baked before. Baking is a chemical science. You have to adjust temperatures for your freaking elevation relative to sea level. Granted some recipes are pretty forgiving, sure, but far from all, and some are downright merciless in terms of complexity and effort required.
Even people who do it constantly have items that just don't turn out because it's legitimately hard shit.
If making sourdough were 'common sense' then _everyone could do it correctly on their first try_. They don't. Most fail and never try again because the skill level required for sourdough is too high.
I'm an _expert_ cook, but I'm still having to go through the frequent failures of learning how to pickle with brine (fortunately, my failures have been mostly edible and have not turned moldy). Even vinegar pickling requires a certain level of expertise before you can do it successfully, even though that level of expertise is _roughly_ "knowing how to boil water".
Compared to other countries, repairability is higher where labor is cheaper and people are more price conscious. We're at late stage capitalism where any chance of lost profits is seen as criminal.
But that leaves out the government and all those interested parties so we're never ever getting that.
But at the scale of a city or state one home uses close enough to zero power that it being a net user or net producer of electricity is irrelevant.
Scale up to tens of thousands of homes and suddenly you need an organising body approximating government to manage those homes being net users or net producers from moment to moment.
Additionally most cities tend to want to have commercial and industrial users of electricity, and energy more broadly. Your home solar & battery does approximately nothing to help them, and if any of the data is to be believed has resulted in electricity prices increasing for everyone.
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/11/11/why-swe...
> Why Sweden nixed new wind farms for fear of missing Russian missiles
> BERLIN — Sweden’s government this month blocked the construction of 13 offshore wind farms over concerns that they would shorten the country’s early-warning window for a Russian missile attack.
> ...
> That is because wind farms can interact with radar signals, reducing the quality of the situational air picture or even outright blocking out parts of the sky.
Other possibilities than radar concerns is that the stopping of the project here hinders corruption, or is corrupt itself, or it moves corruption around (as in both the old project and new project was corrupt). Whatever the case, a way to avoid corruption would be helpful. Perhaps like making it market-driven and contest-driven as much as possible. Solar and wind is already significantly cost-efficient and market-driven despite their significant drawbacks like not producing energy consistently and on demand. If the main challenge is creating domestic production of wind turbines and solar cells instead of being reliant on other countries and without state support ending up being mired in corruption, perhaps some bidding and contract process that moves the financial risk onto private companies, such that the government never pays in advance, could work.
I agree with posts here saying that a mosaic or plethora of energy sources should be used. Wind, solar, fossile, nuclear (for big countries like the USA at least), geothermal, etc. In general, energy companies should not be focused on just one kind, but lots of kinds.
Living here where this happens. They are stopping it for two reasons:
First on a national level they want to concentrate on their renewed push towards building new nuclear power reactors, means wind has to take second fiddle: https://www.government.se/press-releases/2026/06/sweden-take...
Second, on a local level, the far-right party "SD" is voting agaisnt wind power in 96% of the cases.
As presented here, the national government is declining 84% of all requests of requests to build wind power, ad on the local level the right wing parties vetoed wind power at a rate of 64-92%: https://research.chalmers.se/publication/?created=true&id=09...
Driving through my childhood area up north a few weeks back I was also surprised by the amount of solar going up, for comparison this is an area _north of_ Anchorage/Alaska with less than 3 hours of sun around Christmas, but already by late January (usually the coldest period of the year) there is over 6 hours of sun a day (so with high pressure cold peaks with less wind, the 6 hours probably eases the power bill quite a bit).
An interesting fact about those solar installations was that the panels were mounted almost vertically (probably to avoid being snowed over but also useful in the winter since the sun mostly just shines from the south anyhow).
Northern Germany is much more specialized into wind power, and the south is more solar intensive (though solar is more evenly spread throughout the country than Wind, thanks to ease of installation, and the fact that it still produces tonnes of electricity in the summer).
Solar should be built in Alaska, but wind and hydro is what should be actively subsidized and supported by the government. The market can take care of solar penetration in Alaska if you let it.
Some of the deep south get by with electric heat, but they aren't in places where the cold is a typically a legitimate danger to health and safety.
[0]: https://www.edfenergy.com/heating/advice/uk-boiler-ban
Long-term this is true, and it makes sense to ban gas boilers (potentially with some exceptions): electric heat is significantly more efficient, and can run on renewable energy. But that requires a big investment in infrastructure build-out (heat pumps) which will take decades, and we definitely need to be careful that we handle the transition without screwing people over.
Modern AC units are heat pumps the same box cools in summer and heats in winter, more efficiently than a gas boiler.
What is your stance on heat pumps? Conservatives here, who use the same talking points as you, are against them and they prefer to use oil and gas.
And is 5c a extreme night temperature? Where are you from? I'm not from Europe I think.
First it was the fish ladders. Then it was a bunch of whining about how reducing the water level variation on the river is bad (particularly illustrative because this is the exact opposite logic your ilk uses when talking stormwater). Lord knows what the complaint is these days.
Why don't you just be honest and say "no"
Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. Solar+storage requires massive overprovisioning, to the level that it's cheaper to burn literal money.
Windmill farm outputs tend to dip during summer and peak over winter. With a given minimum power output windmills + photovoltaics + storage is massively cheaper per unit of yearly energy. Of course, if you value any semblance of network stability.
Solar+storage is clear path towards either guaranteeing reliance on fossils or brownouts. The smart energy meter you got that encourages running the washing machine during cheap hours will ensure that you voluntarily go dark during undersupply as the cost will skyrocket.
The northernmost point in Texas would be at the extreme southern edge of Europe. The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain...
If Europe can make solar work, so can the states (assuming a similar level of investment)
Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone? </snark>
Stress on physical. Even if some regions claim renewables fully covering energy needs, that's at best on accounting level, those regions are still fully dependent on power import/export and simply could not function in an island mode for any extended period of time without at the very least brownouts. Quite importantly, it's always renewables, not solar.
The dispatchability problem is a real pain. Pool together wind + solar + hydro and the variability in power (!) output drops to levels possible to tame with realistic grid-scale storage sizes.
I am not talking about intra-day balancing here. It's the yearly cycle that comes to bite you. In my corner of Europe, if I wanted to go completely off-grid with solar+storage I would need storage well into the mid single-digit MEGA watt-hours, for the house needs (HVAC and DHW taking the lion's share) alone. That's laughably unrealistic.
> The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain...
Yes, the southern states could probably make do with something like 3-4x overprovisioning, but that's still massive. So massive that any sort of windmill capability will outcompete any sort of COTS storage.
Plus stored power, plus nuclear, plus gas.
90% renewables is better than 80% renewables. Throwing up our hands and saying "we'll never reach 100%, lets pack the whole thing in" isn't a sensible approach.
That is substantially moving the goalposts - nowhere in the world has built out sufficient solar to make that claim yet. The question is whether they can get there.
If you look at the table[1] for installed solar per capita, 9 of the top 10 countries are in Europe (the odd one out is Australia), so they are definitely giving it the old college try
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
I wonder how it would fare with just 100 kWh of storage, something you can still easily put together.
Citation needed
There's a really strong incentive to keep energy generation cheap, because pretty much every social and political issue is downstream of it.
China understood this and is not just betting on both solar and nuclear like mad, they're also burning coal (so that the EU btw can cosplay being green, while offloading the production of many things it consumes to China).
As a result energy prices in China are something like 7x cheaper than in Germany.
Those with lots of energy saw their GDP growth in the 21st century while those like the EU, with ultra pricey energy (due to stupid decisions like closing nuclear power plants only to then reopen them) saw hardly any GDP growth, inflation-adjusted in USD, in the 21st century.
No GDP growth means ever more poor people and ever more indebted governments.
I'm all for transitioning away from fuel and coal, but do it pragmatically. We don't need communists (that'd be the "green" parties [1]) who want to make the lives of everybody miserable taking decisions related to energy.
[1] green people who, like watermelons, are only green on the outside and then bright extremist red on the inside
Subsidies aren't universally a bad thing. This is silly thinking.
Of course, leaving aside how petroleum is subsidized [through the department of defense].
While ecologists usually are in favor of subsidies, subsidies incentive people to consume more, which exhausts our Earth. We should develop less, i.e. we should develop in accordance with a higher facial cost of energy, which sometimes implies having a smaller home and fewer industries, which is what would happen if we didn’t sponsor solar or wind energy [or coal or fossil].
A company can increase their profits by growing and increasing both what they spend and what they earn. But a company can also increase their profits by reducing what they spend without decreasing what they earn. Almost all companies are constantly trying to do this.
Welcome the world of transactional opportunism.
I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of Netflix's true overhead was actually DRM and account management, rather than the international distribution of perhaps a petabyte of multimedia data, most of which doesn't change. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33456782 estimates half that; https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/6mf... estimates a tenth of that.)
The sea is not part of Donald Trump’s property.
IMO that's the consequence, not the cause, of the infrastructure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine
Or sometimes the consequence of the closure of that infrastructure with no transitional plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merthyr_Tydfil
The latter is absolutely worth caring about even for the greenest of green energy. Even just PV on rooftops, when a town becomes a ghost town.
The feeling is mutual
I don't know where Trump got the idea from. Perhaps he thinks they work like fans?
@iso1631 is saying that wind farms (and by extension, their supporters) think Trump is ugly and noisy. So, they mutually think this of each other.
They say one thing and do another!
I mean it’s common sense
[1]: https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/user-clip-trum...
These people are not interested in coherent policy. They say whatever they want to justify it, we know it, and they know we know it. It’s an intentional expression of domination.
Just another thing to prosecute and rebuild.
My hot take is: be ready to move fast when the winds shift and we can get back to building instead of harm reduction.
("Progress occurs one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck)
Has anyone mentioned the expected cost per Mwh of this project to get a sense whether this made economic sense, or are we talking Biden admin adjacent vanity political project paid by rate payers?
Just for reference, the hopefully-cancelled Empire wind near me had a 20yr PPA of $155mwh, which makes Vogtle (-~$170mwh) look like a steal.
More numbers and less foaming at the mouth, please.
Of course "common sense" ought to probably include "Not cooking ourselves".
I am personally for building nuclear and compulimenting it with some wind and hydro, but that is not related to what things are subsidized but because nuclear and hydro has worked really well here in Sweden providing reliable power and while wind has a spottier record I think diversification is good.
Funnily enough, the most striking part was the pure stupidity of a lot of it - seems so strange, but every day it seems I hear another really stupid story and think ... huh, maybe it really can be like that.
Interesting. Sounds like a counter-point to Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
I use Hanlon's quite a bit to explain nonsense I see day to day, but this is a better one in some ways. It shift the conclusion of "but if only they were shown the right way" to "they know what they are doing and are looking out for number 1".
Not to mention this all rides on the stupidity and emotional fragility of literally tens or hundreds of millions of voters; anything less and the project would never be possible. That's one reason debilitating the education system at all levels has become a top priority of the current administration (the other being suppression of the free thinking and often liberal or left-wing politics that historically exist at universities).
Meaning for example, what about empires that actually survived or adapted? What did they do that we know exactly didnt the Roman Empire do that saved them? How does zeitgeist impact this in the sense that what ruined Roman Empire might save a nation today?
Not trying to be negative, Im jsut geniunley curios because then if I was in government, Id be "yeah I see the same. I mscared as fuck were messing it up, but then what should we do?" because you see, everybody is giving at advice with very diverse and extreme ideas on what should happen. Probably with most of them you and I wouldnt be OK with (do Dictatorships work? ...).
Or simpler, we all agree on the problem. What are all the solutions and how do we know theyre the correct ones? Thats what Im thinking about the last years.
Empires are pathological developments of nations. They don't tend to survive all that long.
Funny you should say that
And "cognitively [un]developed" is a weird way to say it; I wouldn't call that a "bland" term at all.
It is much more likely that our economic system rewards hostile behavior and that money has outsized influence in politics and a criminal justice system which lets rich people get away with crimes. That money correlates more with hostile behavior then lead, Instead of blaming lead, blame capitalism.
Just think about all the people who put lead in the gasoline in the first place, did they go to prison for their crimes, or did they make a bunch of money and retire in luxury.
Im no history expert but I know there were other Empires thru different times and sizes and places, and since now they're not the same, they "Failed"? Did they fail exactly due to the same problem or others? Are we treating those too? What is our method and how strong did we criticize it and see and understand it flaws?
At a time with fake news, AI slop and whatever the Internet has become today, its our job to treat every statement with the highest from of critical thinking at our disposal.
You're wrong on every count and simply spreading disinformation. Please don't do that.
>Never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to self-interest.
¿Por Qué No Los Dos? Really seems to speed up the process more so than I've seen since the Nixon malfeasance.
> eventually opting for authoritarianism
The Roman Empire was always authoritarian. You might be interested in the collapse of the Roman Republic, where the abuse of slaves and farmers for the indulgence of the middle class and elites led to a popular clamoring for the strongman general Julius Caesar to impose justice (through dictatorship) on their "republic" by force, because their republic had never represented the demos.
Republicans are in a personality cult and establishment democrats are stuck in the midpoint between expoliting people the same way and expecting to win because they're "right" and "deserve" victory without the real consent of the people, equally as self interested but worse at it. The quiet racism of establishment democrats might save us by marginalizing muslim democrats -- there are a few of them like Mamdani who aren't allowed in the club and are thus actually thinking for themselves beyond self-interest and the corruption of the establishment. They as a group might save us.
If you want someone to blame, target the DNC. In a time of dangerous foolishness they utterly failed to and are continuing to fail to provide an attractive alternative.
If you want to help, give money to David Hogg.
The demand for energy is higher than ever due to AI data centers, but I guess the next model is more important than a habitable environment.
Parts of the US are literally on fire.
* https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:24hrs;@-100...
* https://wfca.com/fire-map
* https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/maps
These people are living in parallel societies, where they are completely detached from the reality for many people living in the country. And that is not merely a problem in the US.
... while an offshore wind farm was once in DT's sight in Scotland.
So it might be correct to say that fires can be healthy for forests, but "supposed to" is more difficult to assert.
I just finished limbing, brush clearing, and preparing burn piles from a section of my forest because removing fuel is good, but most forests in America are young planted forests. They have smaller trees, less diversity, higher than typical density, and small trees that can cause fires to climb to crowns (where they then become deleterious rather than helpful.)
If we were to return to indigenous practices of regular burning, we would likely see healthier forests. But I'm not sure we'd see as much timber production from them. Since that's what most forests are held for... I don't see practices moving away from trying to maximize timber while minimizing cost any time soon.
The coordination between them is amazing - being able to pull this off in multiple European countries, the US and Canada at the same time.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/doe-data-centers-...
also - 1 year is a lot, if we actually act diligently to stave the warming crisis and to prepare for some of the effects through changes to construction & infrastructure.
Still, I would agree that Data Centers are just one particular aspect of the struggle against global warming.
We are seeing stuff like AMD buying Taalas, with their Llama 3 8B on a chip, being able to push 17.000 tokens / second.
https://chatjimmy.ai/
Generated in 0,033s • 14.212 tok/s ...
People need to understand, that even AI companies do not like to build datacenters and the high energy needs. It cost them money and they are also looking at ways to develop better hardware / solutions that gives them more inference for cheaper (what means less power draw / heat generated).
Climate change is real, caused by humans, and the fires were seeing are absolutely exacerbated by the effects of the climate.
However this is the _least_ on fire the world has been for a while because it's usually Asian and Africa that are rampantly burning and they're improving land management techniques enough that it's tamping down on the worst of the burns.
Progress isn't evenly distributed
> The next fight is already brewing, over a Green push to accelerate the phase-out of coal-fired power generation in eastern Germany. In a draft resolution, seen by POLITICO, the party wants to bring the coal exit forward from 2038 to 2030, as is already the case for mining regions in the west of the country.
https://www.politico.eu/article/german-government-coalition-...
… Are you sure you are talking about the Greens and not CDU or CSU which they occasionality form government coalitions with?
Like all such articles they present a LONG list of politicians with "we're committed to/promising to/... phase out coal". And then a statement or two by the executive that they're increasing coal usage because they have no choice.
The problem is that there is no option left BUT coal.
On July 9, 2026, the Bundestag passed Germany's new electricity-capacity law, which subsidizes reserve/dispatchable power capacity as coal is phased out. SPD and CDU/CSU voted for it; the Greens and Die Linke voted against it.
The Greens specifically argued against a long-term fossil-fuel lock-in, while Die Linke argued for renewables and batteries instead of subsidizing new fossil gas plants.
The law itself is primarily about new hydrogen-ready/gas-capable reserve plants, not coal plants.
Source: https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-07/kraftwerksge...
Did you read something into spwas comment he didn't actually say?
Yes, keeping the remaining nuclear plants running would have reduced emissions and electricity prices somewhat. A 2024 Energy Policy study estimates the 2022/23 extension lowered German wholesale prices by about €9/MWh. That's a real effect, but nowhere remotely close to "the nuclear phase-out doubled electricity prices." The huge price spike was primarily the European gas crisis. You know, the one for which LNG terminals had been built.
Nor did Germany replace nuclear with coal. Coal generation subsequently fell to levels not seen in decades, while renewables grew substantially, so German emissions fell as well.
Attributing the nuclear exit simply to "the Greens" is rather selective history. The original exit was SPD/Greens, but after reversing it in 2010, Merkel's CDU/FDP government legislated essentially the final phase-out schedule again in 2011. So basically: every party that was at the levers of power.
You could make a perfectly reasonable argument that shutting existing nuclear before coal was bad climate policy in hindsight, because of the gas crisis. But I don't think you need to resort to the rather dubious claim that it doubled electricity prices as a singular cause.
https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...
China is laughing at the prices Europe agreed to buy Russian gas for:
https://asiatimes.com/2026/07/power-of-siberia-2-deadlock-cr...
I get the idea that Germany would buy Russian gas in exchange for not having to spend on the military, but 2014 clearly showed that it didn't work. And Germany still doubled down on gas after 2022.
Now the argument seems to be that Germany will buy American gas so that it can get lower tariffs.
I don't see how Germany can compete with a China that refuses to reject the cheapest forms of energy, whatever that is (both nuclear and coal are cheaper than imported gas).
2021 30.2%
2022 33.3% (the year that nuclear was shut off)
2023 26.0%
2024 21.2%
2025 22.4%
Complete phase out is scheduled for the 2030s.
If we emit more than 0, then we're in trouble.
Needless to say, we're in a lot of trouble.
Worth scrolling through this if you have been midwit-pilled into thinking humans have no levers of control on this question: https://xkcd.com/1732/
Please explain your alternative hypothesis.
They don't grind corn.
Is it supposed to be a some kind of cheesy insult? It just makes you sound stupid if you call them windmills.
Or perhaps you get angry at people who call light utility vehicles "trucks"?
Language evolves. People accept colloquial definitions. Wait until you learn about pencil lead, koala bears, dry cleaning, and peanuts. Windmill is absolutely acceptable if it's understood by people to mean wind turbine, which it is.
Over the last year, wind - mostly offshore - has generated more than 35% of electricity here. Gas is down to 27%. It's really, really good. And it looks cool.
We are building lots. Of everything.
This is about one company bending the knee, not an entire industry or population.
Some internet commentators may wish to unhelpfully point out that no matter the US federal efforts, renewable development will always be above literal zero, and so "we haven't stopped." But it's not a very useful contribution to the conversation.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/stalled-us-permits-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-26/us-renewa...
There are dozens of similar articles about dozens of different projects and mechanisms used to stall those projects. Yes, I concede the level will almost certainly remain above zero and so "we haven't stopped." Good-faith adults know what the conversation is about and can either engage in it or opt out of it instead of resorting to excessive pedantry.
Best of luck on the next round though, really cool and awesome game!
Can you stop playing the game of owning people with teenager level zingers based on you yourself being too thick?
The individual has promptly been dealt with and put in a reeducation camp. I will talk to your local commissar so that your brave act of psychological self defence in this message board is rewarded with +50 extra social credits.
Renewable energy sources heavily reduce this factor, make countries more independent from imports (other countries) and slow down the catastrophic effects of increased atmospheric energy due to greenhouse effect of carbon-based energy sources.
Conservatives should be the top number one supporters of renewable energy because of more independence from other governments and better conservation of the environment.
But alas, the only thing they like to preserve is their personal greed.
From that angle, Idiocracy is notably BETTER than our current situation.
We're now onto Captain Planet baddies. Ridiculously childish cartoon carictatures of greed and evil are now in charge
Is "Texas" the plural of "Texa"?
Compared to coal plants, which are _extremely_ cool-looking. /s
They are not pretty but what they lack in beauty they make up for with danger to the local community from leached chemicals, underground fires and landslides.
I prefer to live near wind turbines myself.
What the hell is happening over there? Why can't they get 'energy' despite being a scientifically literate nation. France has a far superior energy policy so it's not like you even have to travel beyond a few miles to see a wildly different price for electricity. At this rate French electricity will be half the price in a few years compared to German electricity. Germany is making mistake after mistake on energy. From Russian dependence to Nuclear scepticism to now accepting money to not build renewables.
Sure, keeping the entire nuclear fleet from ~2000 would have maybe helped, but would have required very costly (economically and politically!) investments over the last few decades, and those basically went into renewables instead which turned out fine.
See: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...
It's also funny how air conditioning powered by electricity is discouraged, while air conditioning in ICE cars or gas heating in buildings are at the very least tolerated. It's crazy if you think about it.
Germany itself has a huge offshore wind industry, which is probably how they have companies that planned to do the same in the US.
No wait, they’re not learning it the hard way because they’ve already got rid of them. Phew…
Taxation and cost for the net are very different with a higher price for the connection in France and a higher price per kWh in Germany. In the end for a normal use of electricity the prices are very comparable.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=stacked-di...
So losing to China is a feature not a bug. I think This explains Republican obsession with countries like Russia and Hungary that are certainly a few steps down the economic ladder from us.
China is really only building new renewables, almost 100x as much net renewable capacity per year compared to nuclear.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?stackMode=rela...
Coal+gas electricity is basically the same fraction in China than in the US.
But countries like Germany or Spain are significantly ahead in this regard, with much higher fraction of electrical energy coming from solar/wind.
See: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...
But my point is that it fills (in China) a very similar role for the electric grid and countries don't get to choose what fossils are in their soil.
The US using relatively more gas than coal is not any kind of laudable achievement, it's simply whats cheaply available.
Norway does not get any credit in my book for being full renewable either (because they have "free" hydro power literally everywhere).
The scale is so crazy that these numbers rarely make sense on their own.
https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/...
China is concerned with not having to import energy. They don't care much about climate change.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-generates-less...
> That [coal] share was well down from 65.5% in 2016, previous NEA figures showed.
> Renewable energy's share grew to 41.2% — topping 40% for the first time — and of that wind and solar accounted for 24.6%, Xing added. Wind and solar's share was up from 9.7% in 2020.
That said, renewable sources are so cheap and consequently economically appealing that not even the incredibly dumb Trump admin can stop them.
So this means, slightly less than half is other sources (hydro, solar, etc)
And who is to blame them (or to hold them accountable)? Some won't live long-term... I mean, being 80 and fat, what are the chances...
It is the third largest coal producer, behind India and China.
We did it with gas. Now look at Norway. We could've been like Norway.
But of course it doesn't have the same incentives of China.
In any case, you can't expect stable policies in a country with a winner-takes-all democracy.
Your initial comment seemed to imply that these actions are the rational downstream consequences of the US's incentives. Now you seem to be suggesting that maybe it's not, but it's just the actions of the current administration?
Not sure what policy stability has to do with anything. If anything it's a further indictment of your point. A successful energy project will span multiple administrations to come to fruition. It takes just one administration to kill a project... as illustrated by TFA. This is not in fact explainable as a rational response to the US's incentives.
China isn't rich in fossil energy? That's news to me.
They are the world's largest coal producer and still create over half of their electricity from coal. The difference to the US is that China seems to realize that this strategy isn't a long term solution.
Not everyone, but a majority. The minority is looking for ways to stop it, but it requires getting literally everyone else to work together. Which means any disagreement among them results in a loss, and more of the same evil.
If you include all of the non-voters as tacitly consenting to it, then it's an overwhelming majority.
That's not entirely accurate; quite a few non-voters were prevented from voting in one way or another. But most non-voters chose not to vote. Quite a few were explicit about having some disagreement with the primary opponent and concluded that the two sides are equivalent.
A majority did not choose this.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...
The minority doesn't have a charismatic leader to rally around so we don't have a "movement" that can fight back against the corruption at scale. Democrats need to stop taking the high road and start thinking "WWRD?" and out do them.
Being allowed to chose between two evils every few years isn't democracy.
As has been famously stated, democracy is the worst system, except for all of the others. I think people often underestimate just how bad it is.
If it isn't democracy now, it's never been democracy.
Democracy is not a legal framework but a cultural outlook that requires a sense of civitas. Which is mostly lost in the west (and in most other places, too) where deference to individual power has been allowed to become fully ascendant.
We rightfully decry the state authoritarianism in places like China, but their current seemingly superior ability to accomplish broader community betterment goals seems less to do with their political structure and more to do with still having some sense and confidence and optimism that people can in fact work together.
Meanwhile official small-l liberal ideology in North America fundamentally does not believe in this at all, and the ascendant far right is openly aggressive against this concept and an explicit "might makes right" ethos is becoming more and more triumphant and embodied in Trump.
Trump will eventually die and rot but the Stephen Millers of the world will still snake around in the background looking for the next pseudo-strong man to stand up and smirk all over a compliant population that has lost its desire to work together and just wants to submit to the loudest asshole in the room.
No constitution or election or political party saves the country from this. People's power does.
Biden was so bad, people showed up in droves to vote for anything else. That's how we ended up in a war with Iran.
Trump 2 is so bad, people will show up in droves to vote for anything else. The downward spiral continues.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-hate-inflation-more-...
It is really weird to me that such a thing as lobbying can be legal. Or the fact that you can donate to an election campaign so that they have more money to influence people.
And it is even more surprising that the vast majority of US people don't even question these things. I have the theory that American exceptionalism hinders their critical thinking when it comes to these kind of subjects. Ie "If we decided to do it like this, it means is the best way possible".
Some of this has the same roots in social media and dodgy money (esp. wirecard), but not all of it.
It's not like the Trump administration is stopping off shore wind projects here... yet.
The ethical US has rolled over already.
This is something that is extremely hard to accomplish in the US. It would be akin to all of Europe voting on the same day and trying to falsify an election in each country. The logistics of this means that you need a lot of participants, and someone is going to blow it (and the whole thing unravels).
That is not the same as interfering: Jackboots at the polls, screwing with the mail, ID requirements.
These two things are NOT the same.
> This is something that is extremely hard to accomplish in the US.
Yet I seem to remember Al Gore winning an election, still Bush became president. Right? EDIT: link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...
One side says bullshit, the other side says "look at all of the fucking evidence of your eyes"
I don't see myself ever being able to trust the US again. Maybe if they manage 2-3 decades without conservative idiocy, but the Epstein class would never allow that.
I think the bigger issue is a two party system. The checks and balances can clearly be gamed as this administration has proven.
ofc smart/evil/dumb are all simplifying things way too much since its not like humans have video game like attribute sliders. Im very aware of that, this is not meant to be taken that seriously.
Absolutely shameful what the USA has become.
Like, I don't doubt that they will go and build gas projects, and might even use some of this money to kickstart it, but presumably RWE was already pretty far along the pipeline of preparing this offshore buildout, and there's likely a lot equipment orders, staff, ships, etc that they'd rather not cancel, and would rather redirect into another project if they can.
Maybe that's copium from me though, just sad to see a big wind project go to waste.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/rwe-ha...
But a very lovely species of bug may at some point look down and marvel at the beautiful new world they've conquered. And I guess we've collectively decided we're happy to give them that.
That's mostly it. Another factor would be Trump getting donations from the oil & gas industry.
The rest of the quote is actually about how it's meant to give people time to think, but it has clearly become an autonomic action.
There is really no way around this, no silver lining. After years of working to get these programs implemented, to have the admin just willy-nilly spend money (what money!?!) to have them STOP. It hurts man.
Isn't the $1.2B deal a subsidy for conventional gas?
Building new infra will extend beyond trumps term, so it's possible they do "planning" for 2 years, new admin comes in, and they abandon the plan and go back to putting the money in wind.
> The administration signed a similar $129bn (£96bn) agreement with Charlotte-based Duke Energy last month in exchange for the termination of the company's offshore wind lease in the Carolina Long Bay area.
But there are truly so many options to choose from which add up to more and worse still. Maybe we'll put our heads together and discover something to stop it eventually.
So the lignite-burning energy dinosaur from Germany accepting a billion dollar bribe to divest resources from clean energy into fossil fuels is totally in character for that company. Shame on them.
This does not mean that renewables or offshore wind should not be built it just means that the regime around how sites are awarded, and how power purchase contracts are made need to be reworked.
A lot of the world is struggling with this (recently UK re-tendered for Mona lease area with much more favourable conditions than r4 initial lease).
Generally speaking I think the best approach would be to have almost zero / nominal lease fee, then have a competitive auction around a two sided CFD - if the market price is below the strike price the state makes up the difference, if the market price is above the strike price the excess goes back to the state.
Can you explain where you got your information from?
The leases were already paid for (in total) in 2022-2023 for $1bn The expected output would have been 7gigawatts annually, which is a 5-7x return per year on paper.
The sale of the lease is due to a regulatory blockade, not a traditional cost benefit analysis.
Thank you. :)
Donald Trump pledges 'any legal means' fight against windfarm. US tycoon saying proposed offshire turbines will 'compromise' golf resort – and ruin his sea view: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/05/donald-trump-l...
Donald Trump continues to battle Scottish offshore windfarm plans. In his second letter to Alex Salmond, the businessman said the turbines would have a negative impact on Scottish tourism: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/sep/28/donald-t...
I would love to know the thought process of this administration because it feels like a fever dream.
"Trump has sought to boost government support for fossil fuels after campaigning for the presidency under the slogan "drill, baby, drill"."
That's insane, even though half of Republican supporters believe in climate change, and almost all Democratic voters do too. I can understand cutting government spending on the transition to green energy when projects are unprofitable, but what is the point of cutting it for profitable ones? If I'm not mistaken, energy firms like RWE are even threatened with lawsuits if they continue building wind turbines. Other coal investments are even more insane.
We do live in a dystopia don't we?
Is this claim substantive at all?
And coal?
Prompted an AI this:
It's year 2005, and you're an AI on an alien planet. you get a piece of news from the future from a planet called Earth. Tell me what you understand from the text and what you think about it: (then pasted the article text)
There also needs to be a conversation of if the executive branch should even have the powers to stop this. A a YIMBY person I believe their power should be limited to verifying the permits were filled out correctly (and I believe in reducing paperwork for them), that is they cannot say no to this if the process was followed.
In most locations, unless you have extremely stable weather, it's ideal to have a nearly even mix of wind and solar capacity, since wind is rather strongly anticorrelated with sunshine.
It'd be very reasonable to assume "this" means wind here.
Simple examples: energy efficient lights seem to have no downsides, better insulation helps my apartment building retain heat, more efficient electronics mean that my homelab servers pull like 100 W total and public transport probably removes a bunch of cars from the road and increases air quality and decreases traffic jams (I can get everywhere I need that way, there’s literally train, tram and bus stops like 5-15 minutes away).
Efficiency is good, but this isn't true. Decades into LED-ification we still suffer shit-tier PWM strobing, poor dimming, disruption to wildlife and human life, and streetlights turning purple en masse.
(The last two are installation and quality issues, but when driven by lowest-bidder compliance with simplistic "efficiency" mandates that's what you get).
Energy use per capita will continue to rise in the medium term globally, but it's stable to slightly down over the last few decades in the US, say.
Air conditioning is quite nice if you find yourself living in a hot environment, for example. But do we really all need smart watches? Or cameras everywhere? Or LLMs, for that matter?
> There must be a cap where quality of life is good enough though, right?
Maybe in some hypothetical future, but even the fantastical world Star Trek TNG has improvements on quality of life that could be made.
I think part of the problem of today lands on the post-cold war and certainly post-911 media landscape. There just aren't optimistic future. Distopia is more popular and certainly more numerous than Utopia.
Effectively all history of life was focused entirely on finding food, water, maybe shelter and safety, and breeding. Where do we draw the line and stop making new things just because we can?
I have nothing to base this on so its just a hunch, but I'd expect quality of life would increase for many people today by removing, rather than adding. Work a little less, buy a little less, have fewer distractions, etc.
Also energy consumption per capita is more than 2x higher in the US compared to Germany, while quality of life should be roughly similar. (In my personal opionion quality of life is better in Germany).
Fossil fuels are very inefficient compared with alternatives like EVs and heat pumps and renewables.
It seems reasonable to want a government to help ensure externalities aren't being ignored in prices, but not to regulate them by saying how much and what types of things people can use. I don't want my government allocated a set amount of energy I use, for example, but I would be fine with them ensuring prices accurately reflect the true cost.
Ironically they often do the opposite, subsidizing energy and food costs which make things cheaper and hide externalities.
We need answers, not revert to a world of catholic sin
Change your car to run off electric, great
Change your city to transport 1000 people by train rahter than 1000 separate cars, great
Power your AC from your off-grid rooftop solar, great
Whine that people need to stop using AC, stop eating meat, stop watching TV, it's just harmful.
I didn't say people need to stop using AC, I don't even agree that eating less meat would help, and my only mention of TV above was in reference to people deciding to turn it off when they leave the house, not to watch less of it.
My main point, though, was that moving around how we use energy, and of what type, will do a lot less good than finding ways to use less.
Risky geoengineering projects like stratospheric aerosol injection.
Direct atmospheric capture of CO2.
The latter is the safer option because it's just restoring the atmosphere to a known good state. Direct atmospheric capture of billions of tons of CO2 per year will take enormous amounts of energy. We're going to need a lot more nuclear power plants if there's any hope of pulling this off.
Alternative is World War Three when large parts of the planet become uninhabitable.
If I have to convince someone that 1) the climate is changing beyond historical patterns 2) I know the chemical/mechanical processes at play and 3) we caused it just so they turn off the TV when they leave the house or enjoy their current car a few years longer, its a situation that will never be resolved.
It is clearly not really feasable (at least not now). To me it just seems like the fossil fuel industry is doing the tobacco industry playbook of pushing stuff that doesn't actually work so people don't even try the stuff that does work: using less energy, and using less carbon intensive energy.
We really can move to less carbon intensive energy, there's lots of options all around us. Yes it means a systemic change - which is exactly what the fossil fuel industry doesn't want.
Do you think we should return to medieval heat and light?
"SCOOOTTTTT !!!!!!"
Is no one worried about this?
We'll hit other constraints long before that happens.
There may be some local effects. I think the main one is one cluster of wind turbines effecting the output of nearby clusters (and effects within a cluster). Pretty sure they account for this when engineering wind farms, with the effects actively being studied.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208635
Still short sighted and stupid, of course.
Oh God, what now, we've finally bombed Cuba?
"...$1.2B deal to pay..."
Oh thank God!
"...halt offshore wind projects"
God damn it.
I wrote a book on the issue. I think the next best thing we can do is work together to amplify our voices to the point ignoring us is no longer politically convenient.
https://sustainedminimalist.com/book
The same generation who groused about how bad snow used to be (Up to rooftops!) and make fun of people who struggle in what little snow we get right now are the same people who are posting in comments sections "Earth has always changed temperature"
Just... Why? To protect a few hundred jobs in America? They could have just given a small portion of that money to these workers and they would stop complaining about job loss. 1.2 Billion is a big number.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uyLiON_f5c0
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetl...
Nobody else ever spent this much money to NOT have cheap power 8-/
Afaiac MAGA is just a the white/dumb/uneducated version of jihad.
They are literally a non-stop crime-spree against humanity
But if the Dems don't get 52 in the Senate absolutely nothing will change and might get even worse, likely much worse
In other words, even if there's a feedback loop, an election won't magically fix everything.
†: in fairness to them, they are almost uniformly opposed to Trump's adventurism in Iran and mostly not supportive of the Jan 7th slush-fund, and will call out both when pressed
like yes there was binding commitment to RWE getting some level of subsidies, hence he had to "pay them of" around the amount of profit they have likely list, and probably more
but... compared to not paying that much more in subsidies _and_ getting more electricity out of it which the US seem to currently be quite tight one this seems to be a terrible bad deal
---
EDIT: Sorry for the rant below, it's just pretty annoying how dishonest non fact based politics has been becoming where I live:
furthermore you can stop future subsidies, so if wind energy is as "fake" as he claims this is something RWE would be stuck with not them, even if it drive them bankrupt it wouldn't be a USA problem (and more a German one)
so the only way this deal makes sense is if you a) hate wind energy and want it cone irrationally b) know it actually works and as such would "stay around" for sure (or if you really really really care about birds, no way this is true for Trump)
(And also practically it already has proven that off shore wind farms can work profitable, so b, isn't really a question. But I guess if you have a president who says all the wind farms in China are fake for show while China produce roughly as much wind energy as all of the EU together then sure you can't except logic).
In general the amount of nonsense you hear when it comes to the topic of renewable energies is pretty crazy both in how people "proof how bad it is" .. based on early technology from well over 20+ years ago, systematically ignoring relevant components of a complete solution, pretending certain already in-use technologies don't exist and don't make sense etc. To ignoring issues with whatever technology they favor and often comparing wrongly calculated "non subsidized" renewable prices with "highly subsidized" non renewable prices. Don't get me wrong it also is done the other way around. But at least where I live, that direction of propaganda isn't really relevantly used while the other direction is spread everywhere non stop (while also pretending that any honest calculation is supposedly "faked" because it doesn't fit their world view).
Being so obedient to Mr. Trump, who in turn now faces allegation of being more involved than was previously already known with regards to Epstein's sexy islands, is a lose-lose situation Mr. Merz. USA paying german companies to abandon green energy plans, also ties into that. If Merz would have something called a spine he would not be so addicted to the money and instead reject the USA trying to influence Europeans and Germans negatively here. Because that money is ultimately bribery money for RWE. Shame on RWE as well.
It seems at a glance like we should have just built the turbines, not paid off or stiffed them.
Since we seem to desperately need more energy, currently expanding with every other short term high polluting source we can.
1.2B gives you a 1-1.5GW nuclear power station that runs at 90% capacity 24/7 365 (minus occasional maintanance and refuling) day or night, wind or no wind.
Most nuclear power proposals are just LARPing as "cheap" as they pretend subsidies don't exist.
In addition you have to shut nuclear power plants down in summers due to lack of sufficient cooling. That means you need to plan alternative replacement power generation.
Er... That seems optimistic. Even in China, which is the current world leader and has significant advantages of scale, nuclear capacity costs $2-3bn per GW. The most recent US construction (Vogtle 3 and 4) took 14 years and cost $36bn for two reactors of 1.1GW each.
I also believe in a free market, and power should be subsidised equally per MW (MWh maybe?) this takes the politics out of a structural necessity. If you want to push a political agenda - great - but do it on political topics.
Then, there is the supply chain argument: the specialized turbines, components, vessels and manufacturing chains are manufactured overseas and imported to support Wind. RWE is itself German. It’s good to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains.
Fishing and maritime was also cited as a concern.
Onshore Wind is used (see New Mexico). Offshore Wind is a harder sell.
Gas/nuclear/geothermal is a better investment for the US than Offshore Wind.
The fact that we're still basically entirely reliant on the middle east and other foreign producers for our domestic fuel supply suggests this isn't really that big of a deal. Even in the middle of a war that is generating massive profits for the oil industry, no one is suggesting they should add refinery capacity or convert existing ones to use domestic oil.
This move is about the president's personal vendetta against offshore wind and satisfying his financial backers in the fossil fuel industry.
The US is the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world. We’re also a net energy exporter.
We import some crude because our refineries are set up for it. That’s a long way from being “entirely reliant” on foreign fuel.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_d_nus_Z00_mbblp...
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_exp_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_...
And most US crude imports come from Canada, not the Middle East.
If the Middle East suddenly stopped it would cause a disruption but that’s very different than saying the US is reliant on the Middle East.
For offshore wind, not nearly as clear. The US still lacks a lot of the specialized vessels, ports and manufacturing capacity.
Solar has bigger upstream dependence on Asian wafer/cell production.
And with solar, I can't imagine that would be fast to stand up production for... but we're attempting the Herculean task with modern chip fabs. Would panels be harder than that? They both seem existential needs for the future of the country.
Maybe we should put the $1.2B into that sort of thing, then?
One could do that, but one would have to be careful that it does not end up lost in corruption. Contracts and bidding, where the private sector carries the full financial risk, and where the state only pays after complete and satisfactory delivery, should in theory work. However, the question then is if such circumstances could be set up that are still attractive to some party in the private sector.
To Y-bar:
> There is no issue about state support for manufacturing of equipment. For the sake of the USA, domestic production is a concern, right? Since they likely do not want to be reliant on foreign countries far away.
> As presented here, the national government is declining 84% of all requests of requests to build wind power,
Like the defense article about radars and wind farms stated for one case, do the officially stated reasons for not allowing wind farm projects by the Swedish government often include radar concerns?
Edit: The concerns about radar and wind turbines do not seem fake when private sector military companies try to offer solutions for it. https://www.terma.com/products/radars/radar-mitigation/ "Wind Farm Radar Mitigation"
> ad [sic] on the local level the right wing parties vetoed wind power at a rate of 64-92%:
For both onshore and offshore wind farm projects, local citizens can have concerns, especially the larger each individual wind turbine is. Which is unfortunate, since the larger the individual wind turbine is, the more efficient it also tends to be. Wind turbines are arguably generally good overall, but their drawbacks and costs should not be ignored. In general, offshore should be less of a problem for local citizens, since people will not live and sleep close to them, but then the radar question might come into play.
With the geopolitical situation, and WW3 and nuclear war drawing ever closer, well, effort should have been put into stopping world war, but otherwise caring about defense concerns do make sense. And Sweden's coastal line mostly faces east.
I think that ship, as it were, has sailed.
> The concerns about radar and wind turbines do not seem fake when private sector military companies try to offer solutions for it.
Contractors - especially military ones! - love to sell solutions to fake problems (or fake solutions to real problems) if they can get away with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
Huh? That’s quite a whopper to drop as if it’s an obvious truth.
It’s good to diversify supply chains. Eggs-in-one-basket is bad for many reasons, even if it’s your own domestic basket.
Trade interdependence is good for competition, reduces risks from disasters, and creates disincentives for war.
And the market apparently thinks offshore wind is a good investement for the US, to the point where the government has to pay companies not to do it.
1. https://www.energy.gov/cmei/systems/securing-us-supply-chain...
2. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/84710.pdf
3. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-107769
4. https://www.energy.gov/cmei/wind/articles/report-outlines-su...