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Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

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Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#81
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding 100x will still have wind turbines 100 times more innocuous than cats [0]. [0] http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/north-america-win...

1. It's a made up fact. http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02/03/170851048/do-we-... 2. Cat's killing birds doesn't make it acceptable for humans to kill birds by the tens of millions.

Both fair points, but your link states that cats' killing statistics are perhaps exaggerated, not completely false, and we don't know by how much.

My (seemingly incorrect) assumption would imply that even if we remove all wind turbines we would only make a dent of about 1/10k. It is still a reasonable observation unless we find out the cat kill stats are off by four orders of magnitude.

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#82
post #5

Does anyone know of interesting tours you can take of electricity production in Europe or energy infrastructure in general? I'm in The Netherlands, but would be willing to travel for it. A real tour of a nuclear plant would be awesome (i.e. getting to hear / see the reactor), but tours of wind farms / turbines / dams etc. would also be great. Preferably in English.

It would be next to impossible to get access to a commissioned nuclear powerplant and enter containment as a visitor. However, there is a nuclear power plant in vienna that was never used and can be visited: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan... Additionally, many universities have research reactors - they often have tours or a tour can be easily arranged.

[deleted]

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#83
It's a nice visualization, but cpu usage shoots through the roof ! Deleting the animated arrows between the countries helps a bit, but then it still uses around 50% cpu (and that's on a fast desktop computer. Can't imagine my laptop trying to display this page). Using Ubuntu + firefox (it's a little better with chromium).

Is it a problem with this page ? With my setup ? Or is it just impossible to do something of this quality on the web without monster cpus ?

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#84

Wow, what's wrong with Poland? I guess they use a lot of coal to produce electricity..?

Poland is huge coal producer. Coal is cheap, easily accessible so it is used widely by people. Poland is slowly moving towards wind, but for heating it is still using coal.

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did not die naturally; it went away because of international action to reduce emissions that harm ozone layer. Doing the same with CO2 is much harder.

you are obviously too young to remember the propaganda from the days back then :-( and, no, international communists had nothing to do to fix it. It was by imposing the first global tax -- it's all that it achieved. Proofed it's possible to have a global tax. There was no problem and as soon as the tax was implemented the problem in the media disappeared too.

Another victim of fake news.

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#86
post #83

It's a nice visualization, but cpu usage shoots through the roof ! Deleting the animated arrows between the countries helps a bit, but then it still uses around 50% cpu (and that's on a fast desktop computer. Can't imagine my laptop trying to display this page). Using Ubuntu + firefox (it's a little better with chromium). Is it a problem with this page ? With my setup ? Or is it just impossible to do something of thi…

Hi there,

I'm the author of the map. For sure it can be optimised. If you can help, feel free to do so on github - or reach out so we can chat. Thanks :)

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#87

Poland what the uck are you doing? Literally black spot on EU map. Stop burning that much coal. Fix it ASAP.

Problem is Poland isn't really burning that much coal.

If you look at the emmisions per capita: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?name_desc...

Germany, which has a considerably cleaner grid, has still higher CO2 emissions per capita and has a greater population (80mln vs 38mln in Poland).

That being said the polish grid is long due for a massive overhaul, but - especially now - there's no political will to do it even though over 77% of the population would welcome switching to cleaner sources of electricity.

I personally count on renewables becoming cost-efficient soon - which could be a major driver for change.

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#88

I've noticed that Switzerland, using a lot of hydropower, has a worse intensity than I expected. The CO2 numbers for the different types of power generation seem to come from Wikipedia [1], where Hydropower has a median gCO2eq/kWh of 24 and a maximum of 2200 – much worse than coal. This seems to be based on the fact that large areas may be flooded when filling the dam initially, and CO2 from rotting plants is release…

> I've noticed that Switzerland, using a lot of hydropower, has a worse intensity than I expected. The carbon intensity on the map seems to be for consumed kWh, not produced kWh. The map indicates Switzerland imports a lot of electricity from Austria and Germany which have a much higher carbon intensity.

And this is a good representation, because this way it doesn't allow you to outsource your carbon emissions to countries that no one looks at (not on map, or not considered responsible for anything by activists).

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#89

Poland what the uck are you doing? Literally black spot on EU map. Stop burning that much coal. Fix it ASAP.

We have coal, so we use it, like other countries did before. Wind/solar farms don't work well here because of the weather and are expensive. Nuclear plants would require foreign technology which is very costly, and so far nuclear plants here are just a dream, a way to drain the public funds into the pockets of "nuclear plant construction" committee, which doesn't do anything useful (it doesn't help that the public opinion is against nuclear energy because of the Chernobyl, even though all of our neighbours have nuclear plants anyway).

Re: Live display of CO2 emitted to produce electricity in European countries

#90
post #63

Germany... your anti-nuclear stance is detrimental to the environment...

At least Germany is not putting its neighbours at risk with rotten nuclear plants. Looking at you, Belgium [0]. Also, Germany does not export its nuclear waste, dear France [1]. The current situation with coal is bad and we have to solve it. And I know HN is pro nuclear and downvotes opposing opinions, but history has proven several times, that nuclear energy is not a very good option, either. [0] http://www.dw.com/e…

> Also, Germany does not export its nuclear waste, dear France.

I guess this is incorrect :

Gorleben Nuclear Waste Repository. The waste comes from Germany's nuclear power plants, was reprocessed in France at La Hague, and the unusable remains then sent back to Germany in spent nuclear fuel shipping casks for final storage, according to the contract with the reprocessing company, Cogema [0].

But even if it comes from France what's the matter? If nuclear wastes go to Gorleben it is obviously because the city allows it, because they have a deal with french firms and they have facilities to store it. If you want to blame someone for it blame the city.

In contrast I am sure France does not 'export' its air pollution as much as our dear Germany :p. And France does not have much of a say in that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorleben#Nuclear_Waste_Reposit...

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