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US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

bbc.com

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Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#831

Post by [deleted] »

whack wrote: post #370
zmmmmm wrote: post #310

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 collapse…

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.

[deleted]

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#832

Post by pibaker »

pavlov wrote: post #780
gpm wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Holy Roman Empire inherited the name Eh, inheritance implies the predecessor willed it to you upon death. In the case of the "Holy Roman Empire" the predecessor died 334 years earlier with no successor. This isn't a case of inheritance, it's a case of just making shit up. The "byzantine" empire did inherit the name though. They continuously used and claimed the name "roman" from when the roman empire split (and…

The Byzantine Empire was Greek. Heraclius changed the official language to Greek already in the 7th century because that’s what everyone spoke. They kept calling themselves Romans, but they spoke, wrote, and governed in Greek.

As if the Romans didn't worship rebranded Greek gods, pray in bootleg Greek temples and had educated Greek slaves be their teachers…

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#835

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #601
pkulak wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re arguing against someone who said “there should never be forrest fires”, but that person doesn’t exist.

There are a lot of such people. The whole Smokey the bear thing was trying to teach people that for decades.

[deleted]

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#836

Post by estearum »

Jumpstylish wrote: post #789
estearum wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is not to "gain better control" over the earth's temperature, it's to stop actively throwing the temperature out of control. 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.

“midwit-pilled”? Is this a “How do you do, fellow kids” rhetorical ploy? You’ve got it backwards. The average American and European thinks the Earth will be destroyed in current year + 5 years, and modern sumptuary laws or ersatz-religious rituals around recycling or performative bicycling have a material impact on climatic fluctuations that take thousands of years. If XKCD is your source, you’re not on the right sid…

> The average American and European thinks the Earth will be destroyed in current year + 5 years

Midwit take, not evidenced whatsoever. Please cite a single source showing any substantial number of people who believe "the earth will be destroyed" within 5 years. Less than 20% of Americans even believe climate change will seriously negatively affect them personally within 50 years.

Or is this just lazy and dishonest shorthand for something like "believe we will encounter a higher rate of catastrophes?"

If so, you should be sure to lump in all those stupid emotional insurers who are also apparently under some eschatological spell that you're just too brilliant to be taken in by.

You could make an absolute fuck ton of money by insuring the areas that the stupid midwit cultist insurers think are uninsurable due to climate risk, you know. Literally just mountains of cash waiting to reward your brilliant contrarianism.

> If XKCD is your source

One little trick to claw your way up the curve of midwittery: when you encounter new information, look for the string "Source: " and then look up the text immediately following that. I provided the nearest thing to a picture-book that I could find, because exactly 0 people I've ever met with this attitude actually have the attention span to read even a single scientific paper, never mind a couple dozen or couple hundred. You are invited to defy the odds, find the backing sources, and dispute them directly.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#837

Post by pkulak »

bluGill wrote: post #748
triceratops wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we agree that natural forest fires are good, Smokey the bear is entirely reasonable. Nobody needs to go starting more fires due to negligence.

I'm saying it doesn't matter. If the forest is getting the regular burning it needs anyway someone lighting an additional fire at a different time isn't going to make any difference. Not that you shouldn't be careful, you can get yourself hurt in a natural fire (but it shouldn't be such a large fire that it kills you). Leave no trace should be your goal. Even if fire itself is something that doesn't matter, there are…

It's pretty reasonable to think that a person-caused fire will be way worse than a natural fire, since the people ones will be distributed far closer to other people-things, like houses and other people.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#838

Post by pkulak »

hamdingers wrote: post #736
pkulak wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re arguing against someone who said “there should never be forrest fires”, but that person doesn’t exist.

Not only do those people exist, they have successfully passed policy in California and elsewhere hamstringing their ability to do prescribed burns.

Well, at the very least, they don't exist in this thread.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#839

Post by DangitBobby »

CivBase wrote: post #756
DangitBobby wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Biden was soooo bad... Give me a fucking break. Americans are just as dumb as everyone says we are, that's how we got Trump 2.

Sentiments like this are why things will not improve. Neither side needs to practice any introspection because they're the good side and when the bad side wins it's just unavoidable because voters are dumb. Keep doubling down. Surely that will make things better.

Pretending we have issues we don't have also sure to make things better, right? No one who sincerely frames Biden as a problem worth mentioning in a discussion of leadership decline is worth listening to, especially given that he was sandwiched between Trump 1 and 2. A lifetime of patience has been exhausted in one decade.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#840

Post by belorn »

Y-bar wrote: post #281
windyoil wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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…

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: First on a national level they want to concentrate on their renewed push towards building new nuclear power reactors, means wind has to…

That is not correct (https://finansnytt.se/vattenfall-pausar-havsbaserad-vindkraf...). They don't just need permission to connect. Wattenfall (the main producer of energy in Sweden) demanded to get subsidizes to construct the connection to the grid and transmitting the energy back from the wind farm to the main land and the grid. They canceled the project when the government denied those subsidies. They have all the required permissions, and still it was not economical to build.

In optimal weather, wind power already produce more or less all current demand in the grid if we include wind energy produced in nearby countries. The nordpool price (electricity market in the northern Europe) already goes below zero several times over the year. Shortages in production do not occur during periods of windy weather, which is especially true for the south part of Sweden where the energy price is highest and which is connected to the wind farms of Denmark and Germany. The reason that south of Sweden, Denmark and northern Germany has so expensive energy prices is that when the wind is not blowing there is nothing else to really support it beyond solar, and solar is neither reliable nor effective enough during the winter months where output of solar on average reaches around 10% of capacity in Sweden. The only other producer of energy in that region is thermal power plants that mostly burns fossil fuels, like natural gas (https://www.uniper.energy/sv/sverige/kraftverk-i-sverige/ore...) and oil (https://www.uniper.energy/sv/sverige/kraftverk-i-sverige/kar...). Those two are naturally the single largest sources of carbon emissions in those regions.

They may be talking about building nuclear power, but what local government in south of Sweden is actually building right now is more thermal power plants (https://hallbartbyggande.com/bygget-av-kraftringens-nya-kraf...). That one is supposed to be burning wood but time will tell what happens if they can't find wood to burn.

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