Live data from Hacker News

Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

edition.cnn.com

61–70 of 147 posts

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#61
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For coal, maybe the focus on climate change and CO2 is the wrong way to fight this. Tell people to reduce coal to reduce CO2 for climate change and you will get a strong split along D and R lines. Tell people we need to reduce coal to reduce NOX, SO2, particulates, smog, things that people can see, breathe, and has universal agreement that it hurts lungs and health and suddenly D and R doesn't matter. Everyone can ge…

I think you overestimate the sanity of the current political climate on the right in the US. There is absolutely not going to be anything close to everyone getting behind cutting back on coal or any pollutant, regardless of how you sell it. There's morons out there specifically making their trucks spew black sludge into the air and bragging about it. The current president won with a large part of his message being br…

[deleted]

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#62

One thing I'm amused (not in a good way) by, is that there's so much FUD and marketing around the use of Coal etc. for energy and alternatives (Nuclear, wind, solar) ... I'm not necessarily knowledge enough to favor some over others. But I always felt, "because pollution," should be enough reason alone to look at alternatives, and considering the impact of building/supplying/disposing of the materials in the alternat…

For coal, maybe the focus on climate change and CO2 is the wrong way to fight this. Tell people to reduce coal to reduce CO2 for climate change and you will get a strong split along D and R lines. Tell people we need to reduce coal to reduce NOX, SO2, particulates, smog, things that people can see, breathe, and has universal agreement that it hurts lungs and health and suddenly D and R doesn't matter. Everyone can ge…

For coal, maybe the focus on climate change and CO2 is the wrong way to fight this.

If an ideology forces people to deny established facts, that ideology is pernicious and pathological. I don't think such problems can be sidestepped. If it's come to "don't mention CO2 pollution or you'll offend" when it's literally threatening the planet, well, offending becomes necessary.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#63
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrats are just as irrational. By giving tax breaks to renewable energy, letting Priuses use the diamond lane, the whole solyndra scandal. They talk a good game, but strangely their utopian plans never quite work out, but their big government and tax hikes always stay. Both parties are the same.

Why do you say that tax breaks to renewable energy or letting greener vehicles use the diamond lane is irrational? I'll note two things, by the way 1. O&G companies also get tax subsidies. 2. The Republican led government of Texas approved giving electric cars the right to use the HOV lane with one person in the car, so you must thus acknowledge that they are at least as irrational

I can get a tax rebate for purchasing an Oil-powered vehicle, or are you deliberately misreading what I posted?

Tax rebates for "going green" is irrational because it defies its own purpose! If EV's are great, they're great because they emit less NOx, and that should be the impetus to switch. If Democrats are the Superior party, and they know best, they won't need financial incentives (read: bribery) to promote the Superior Choice. But really by "incentivizing" various things, they are proving what they're actually about: pay-for-play.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#64
post #37

The majority of the US electorate is underinformed and/or misinformed. The most popular cable news network is Fox News, which pushes straight-up falsehoods as propaganda for the right. That's not to say the left-wing networks are innocent, just that the most popular one is also the most dishonest. It has a wide reach and many voters get all of their news from only this network. The right-wing party is completely boug…

> The majority of the US electorate is underinformed and/or misinformed. It starts long before that. Most of the US is poorly educated and lacks critical thinking capability. That is the fault of a broken education system focused on the lowest common denominator instead of helping the top or even just supporting the middle.

It is because of the love of modern mythology[1] in US culture. Starting from the religion, ending in the love of superheroes. You cannot change current generations, they are too ignorant for that. But you can start work with schoolchildren, promoting critical thinking instead, in the style of Less Wrong[2] or Rational Wiki[3] projects. THAT will change people, at least most of them.

P.S. Yes, I am aware there a lot of biases and illogical elements[4] in the Less Wrong community as well, but it is still a step forward from the current state of affairs.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-ame...

[2] https://www.lesswrong.com/

[3] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

[4] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#65
post #50
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most Americans receive a quality education that covers a lot of really valuable material. The US population isn't the most well educated, but it's unfair to our teachers to say that most Americans are poorly educated.

I disagree as a product of the southern education system. Worth noting that some schools can't even afford to stay open five days a week. Gems from my public schooling in South Carolina: 1. A teacher telling me to put my Harry Potter book away as it was written by Satan. Not that it was satanic or written by a Satanist. No, written literally by the hand of Lucifer himself. 2. The moon landing might not have happened.…

I had a very similar experience in middle school and high school in rural Florida, almost point-by-point. Yet I thought I had rather decent education.

So what if my 11th grade American History teacher gave a week-long seminar on the Civil War as "states rights", and explained to the class (nearly 1/3 of which was black) the lexicon of racial classifications--"now a _blue_ black was somebody who was really dark and because of the sun reflected on their skin...". I still learned 99% of the same American History as everybody else. Most of us were rolling our eyes in class, anyhow, and while these types of teachers are not uncommon, they're not exactly common, either. It's more like that they're tolerated because it's understood that they represent a persistent aspect of the local culture that isn't going anywhere. And for the most part for any particular subject you're learning from multiple different teachers at different times, so it's not like you don't learn the legitimate subject material. It's more like you're taught what today we call "alternative facts", and in practice they're really only taken in by the same segment of the population that's creating those facts. If a kid grows up steeped in this culture at home, the presence or absence of it at school is almost irrelevant. The important point is that they're at least exposed to the real facts--which they are, perhaps with the exception of sex education.

Combined with the fact that most people aren't particularly intellectually curious and don't retain much of the detail, it's sufficient that they're taught the proper material in broad strokes. And they are.

Plus, after having traveled the world some as an adult, most places around the world--even in places Americans look up to as more "civilized"--have similar issues where local biases and mythologies are taught as fact when they're glaringly, painfully wrong-headed to more objective observers. While most of the kids in my class were rolling their eyes, there are kids in similar classes in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and even Europe eagerly taking notes on some ridiculous and patently prejudiced narrative.

The weird thing about being American is that we've been having an intense, rancorous, open argument about ourselves and our prejudices for at least 50, if not 100, or even 200 years. Everybody else gets to watch it, too. You'd think Americans are the most racist, bigoted, backward people on the face of the earth. In reality, it's just that we were one of the first--and still one of the few--to recognize our bigotry and prejudices systematically. Not just by an intellectual, bourgeois elite. Even the most bigoted American won't take at face value a narrative that group A is intellectually, genetically, or morally inferior from group B. Every coal rolling white nationalist (not that these things always come together) have shockingly modern and sophisticated ideas about race and culture, even if cringe worthy. In most parts of the world people will treat claims that group A is worse than group B no more worthy of suspicion than claims that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Except for Americans--everybody knows how racist Americans are. Racism is an American problem. It's why they're talking about it so much.

To be clear, we are racist and we are biased. I don't want to say that we're any more or less these things than somewhere else; I'm not sure what value there is in that comparison.[1] But there's a level of self-reflection here that is absent or at least lesser in most of the rest of the world.

[1] I mean, we had slavery here. That's crucial. But so did most of the Americas. Slavery was at least as formative to Brazil as it was to the U.S., and any curious traveler to Venezuela, Columbia, and even Ecuador can see shadows of the same anti-black prejudices and ostracism we're familiar with in the U.S., entirely home grown and stemming from their native histories of slavery. It's just these shadows are often simply considered as the way things are supposed to be, though I think Brazil is more like the U.S. than other countries in how they've internalized a more sophisticated ability to reflect on these things.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#66
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimate the sanity of the current political climate on the right in the US. There is absolutely not going to be anything close to everyone getting behind cutting back on coal or any pollutant, regardless of how you sell it. There's morons out there specifically making their trucks spew black sludge into the air and bragging about it. The current president won with a large part of his message being br…

Democrats are just as irrational. By giving tax breaks to renewable energy, letting Priuses use the diamond lane, the whole solyndra scandal. They talk a good game, but strangely their utopian plans never quite work out, but their big government and tax hikes always stay. Both parties are the same.

[deleted]

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#67
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that tax breaks to renewable energy or letting greener vehicles use the diamond lane is irrational? I'll note two things, by the way 1. O&G companies also get tax subsidies. 2. The Republican led government of Texas approved giving electric cars the right to use the HOV lane with one person in the car, so you must thus acknowledge that they are at least as irrational

Are hybrids greener? They emit less NOx so I am in favour but is their total lifetime carbon lower than a pure ICE?

H ybrids "sort of" appear to be ahead in lower lifetime CO2. They key thing is that they higher GHG emmisions from the eletric grid, regionally, the less good hybrids look. But considering the trend of how fast wind, solar are lowering in cost, where coal isn't, I think the picture is getting better re: GHG emmisions for hybrids and electric, where gas IC engines are not, at least not as fast.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-m...

Original paper referenced above. https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/argonne_phev_evaluation_r...

In the conclusion: "The primary conclusion is that electrification of transportation significantly reduces petroleum energy use, but GHG emissions strongly depend on the electricity generation mix for battery recharging. "

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#68
post #10

How difficult is it to build transmission lines in the US? In Germany we have enormous problems building a transmission line from the offshore windparks in the north to the industrial centers in the south. NIMBYs are opposing it fiercly.

It can be difficult. NIMBYs are expected, but PACs running ads and lobbying against it and complex regulatory maneuvering happens too.

For intriguing stories, read about opposition to the Plains & Eastern Clean Line through Arkansas, the Grain Belt Express Clean Line through Missouri, and the story of the Wind Catcher in Arkansas. Compare and contrast this with otherwise generous laws concerning utility easements in Arkansas.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#69
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that tax breaks to renewable energy or letting greener vehicles use the diamond lane is irrational? I'll note two things, by the way 1. O&G companies also get tax subsidies. 2. The Republican led government of Texas approved giving electric cars the right to use the HOV lane with one person in the car, so you must thus acknowledge that they are at least as irrational

I can get a tax rebate for purchasing an Oil-powered vehicle, or are you deliberately misreading what I posted? Tax rebates for "going green" is irrational because it defies its own purpose! If EV's are great, they're great because they emit less NOx, and that should be the impetus to switch. If Democrats are the Superior party, and they know best, they won't need financial incentives (read: bribery) to promote the S…

People do not make choices based on all global facts. If everyone in the country bought a car that pollutes less, we're all better off. If only I buy a car that pollutes less, and everyone else does whatever, I am poorer but not healthier. Thus it makes sense to incentivize individual choices that benefit society.

Additionally, entrenched markets can be difficult to enter. If solar would win a fair race against petroleum, but it's starting centuries later, it may have no chance without initial subsidies.

Re: Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

#70

Not difficult to imagine. I drove from Illinois to Arizona just last week. In west Texas, steady winds were turning hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of energy converters. Below those turbines were enormous fields of corn rivaling anything seen in southern Illinois. Ethanol? When the wind farms ended the feed lots began. Thousands and thousands of head of cattle being fed from hay piles five hundred feet long and tw…

And the smell. Describe the smell for us.
Post reply on HN