EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake • Hacker News Board

Re: EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake

#71

Post by m4rtink » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

hnbad wrote: post #25

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #19

This is the collision between imperfect (but working) versus perfect (but not working). It's more important to get emissions down now than to aim for a perfect standard that no one has yet reached, and doesn't appear reachable any time soon. The emissions matter, not the goals of activist NGOs. This cuts emissions, that's why it qualified. Results > ideology.

Sure, and if you ask German conservatives lignite is practically green energy too. From an environmental point of view the biggest mistake was to cut down on the development and production of nuclear plants because now it's too late to just bet on pivoting to nuclear if we still want to reach literally any of the climate goals. But more fossil fuels are not the answer. The most effective way to cut emissions at this…

How do you remove all the extra CO2 no to mention cleanup all the various toxoc waste sites while reducing energy consumption?

Re: EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake

#72

Post by lrae » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #58

thriftwy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can never understand why attacks by "activists" do not result in dozens of arrests and convictions for multiple years of prison every time they happen. Isn't it basically what any sovereign law says?

It should be considered terrorism automatically and carry such penalties.

https://youtu.be/kZRg0_B0XX4 - Yeah this absolutely looks like an act of terrorism!

(Actually, on a serious note, the person going there with the sole goal of stirring up the protest is more likely the one to be the terrorist, no? I'd say taking away that sign and even potentially removing the person is actually de-escalating. But you should obviously let the police do that.)

Re: EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake

#73

Post by lwkl » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

axiosgunnar wrote: post #23

panick21 wrote: post #22

Its sadder everyday that somehow humanity has failed to become a nuclear society. All our problems could have been solved decades ago but we are still nowhere near a solution.

Yesterday in Berlin pro-nuclear climate activists got attacked by the no-nuclear climate mob…

What mob? It's one guy that violently took a sign from a woman (at least that's what can be seen in the video) and broke the sign. Nobody was hurt and the victim didn't even press charges. Most people seem to be minding their own business and getting out of the way.

So not much to see there. Except a way for people that disagree with the protestors to reinforce their stereotypes or the daily fix of anger over nothing for tabloid readers?

Re: EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake

#74

Post by xondono » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #19

This is the collision between imperfect (but working) versus perfect (but not working). It's more important to get emissions down now than to aim for a perfect standard that no one has yet reached, and doesn't appear reachable any time soon. The emissions matter, not the goals of activist NGOs. This cuts emissions, that's why it qualified. Results > ideology.

EU has a massive problem of dysfunctional regulations, this just adds more to the mix.

As the obvious example, the EU leader in solar is Germany, while solar is almost non existent in Spain. Spain by contrast has a lot of wind turbines in spots with poor/mediocre generation availability.

Re: EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake

#75

Post by Zababa » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #26

panick21 wrote: post #22

Its sadder everyday that somehow humanity has failed to become a nuclear society. All our problems could have been solved decades ago but we are still nowhere near a solution.

Green Parties the world over are anti-nuclear and have been since the 80s. Considering how much harm to the environment has come by the hand of green parties, I'm beginning to wonder if they aren't lobbied by fossil fuel companies.

My theory is that it was mostly out of a fear of nuclear weapons. You see the same thing these days with animal right activists trying to push vegetarians/vegans diet with environmentals claims. And some of them are true, of course. But some of them are not totally true, or false, and are pushed because of their moral values.

Re: EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake

#76

Post by epistasis » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

panick21 wrote: post #22

Its sadder everyday that somehow humanity has failed to become a nuclear society. All our problems could have been solved decades ago but we are still nowhere near a solution.

We are really really close to a solution, and for the one thing that nuclear is hyped to provide--clean electricity--we have cheaper and easier and more scalable solutions than nuclear.

The challenges we have now with decarbonization are not solved by cheap electricity. The challenges I'm talking about are industrial and chemical processes, transitioning transport quickly enough, freight, aviation, agriculture, etc. these all require specific new technologies beyond cheap electricity.

It would have been great if nuclear had worked out, but it was always overhyped and it always underdelivered. We were told it would be cheap, but it often had ridiculously expensive construction delays, leading to financial disasters. This happened in the 1970s and even today.

It's time to stop mythologizing the technology, stop blaming the false boogeymen, and realize that at its heart the technology requires an excessive amount of piping, concrete, and machinery all to generate heat to make steam to move a turbine. It's a theoretically cheap heat source, but when you add in the engineering to capture the heat to boil water, it's not so cheap in reality, and there's been no innovation on making the engineering more elegant or cheaper in decades. In fact, if anything, it's gotten less elegant, more expensive, and even harder to build.

Re: EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake

#77

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #26

panick21 wrote: post #22

Its sadder everyday that somehow humanity has failed to become a nuclear society. All our problems could have been solved decades ago but we are still nowhere near a solution.

Green Parties the world over are anti-nuclear and have been since the 80s. Considering how much harm to the environment has come by the hand of green parties, I'm beginning to wonder if they aren't lobbied by fossil fuel companies.

[deleted]

Re: EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake

#78

Post by xondono » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

0x000000001 wrote: post #4

Proven wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> artificially expensive How is it artificially expensive? Is natural gas an infinite free resource now? Do we ignore the oil/gas subsidies?

In Spain prices have been artificially expensive for years, after some very questionable dealings between politicians and energy companies.

Being the only country in the world that taxes solar self generation does not help.

Re: EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake

#79

Post by juahan » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

pyrale wrote: post #49

danhor wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the issues of nuclear remain the high costs, hairy security situation in many countries and very limited ability to adapt to demand. This is both in the night-and-day cycle meaning but also in the "we need more power in 10-years" meaning, since nuclear power plants take forever to build. Saying that all our problems could have been solved by nuclear is not close to the truth, especially regarding climate chan…

> nuclear power plants take forever to build. In France, the first nuclear plants of the current production group were contracted in 1970, and connected to the network in 1977, so that's 7 years for a pilot industrial project. Later plants were built in 5-6 years. The kicker is that this work is highly scalable: France built over 6 reactors per year over its program. The current issue with new generation reactors see…

Well, currently the French are buildin a new nuclear power plant in Finland. Construction started 2005 and it was supposed to be ready in 2009… they are still building it and _maybe_ next year it finally will be connected to the grid. So 17 years give or take.

Re: EU Is Warned Green Label for Gas Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Mistake

#80

Post by makomk » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

ATsch wrote: post #14

eclipsetheworld wrote: post #5

Gas is a bridging technology which will facilitate industrialized economies' transitions to carbon-neutral electricity generation. It should be treated as such in its own right.

The gas infrastructure currently deployed is already far sufficient to serve that purpose. It is a good argument for not tearing it down, but not for building more. Conflating these two has been a great success by the fossil fuel industry.

In some European countries, the gas infrastructure currently deployed is probably sufficient to support the transition to green energy. In others - generally poorer Eastern European ones that are currently dependent on coal - it really isn't. The controversy is over whether the EU and those countries' governments should help change that.