The article's conclusion may be distasteful to some, but is in line with historical precedent. The 1973 Yom Kippur war and following oil embargo led to fuel economy standards, CFL research was started, search for alternate fuel sources and extraction method such as fracking... Many parallels to today, except "green" sources barely existed at the time.
War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition
151–160 of 231 posts
Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vime's boots. I'm not sure about here in the EU, but the UK has a cost of living crisis such that millions[0][1][2] are regularly skipping meals. People in that situation don't have the spare money be able to install PV or upgrade their insulation. [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/one-four-britons-skip-meals... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/26/uk-student... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/soc…
It's unfathomable to me that people in the UK are skipping meals. If you buy rice & beans in bulk you can fill your belly for less than £1 I'm sure. Quick look on the Tesco website - bread: £0.39 £0.05/100g - chicken soup: £0.60 £0.15/100g - 1KG rice: £0.48 £0.48/kg - Baked beans: £0.50 £1.19/kg - Kidney beans: £0.59 £2.46/kg DR.WT - Tinned mackerel: £0.85 £0.97/100g DR.WT (sardines are half the price) - Eggs: £0.20…
Regarding supermarket prices, I've done the same calculations and even made a game of it when I was at university[0].
Per calorie you can do similar with value brand digestives.
However, so far as I can see in the reporting, many people in the UK really are that short of money — It's not just not being able to budget right (dyscalculia is a thing, but not common enough to explain current observations by itself).
I also think that, just as pubs are required to supply free water on request[1], they should also supply free unflavoured lentils-and-rice on request, given how cheap it is.
> If you can only send your kid to school with 1 slice of bread, you have other problems than money.
They do indeed have other problems than money — money is also a problem, just not the only one.
I was going to add that a significant number can't even manage as much as one slice of bread, however all the news I can find specifically about schoolkids skipping specifically breakfast (and not the generic mass hunger I previously gave examples of) turned out to be reporting the same two studies by two different foods companies so I don't trust that factoid.
[0] 20 years ago: breakfast was Quaker oats with skimmed UHT, sugar, and whichever dried sultanas or raisins was cheaper; skipped lunch; dinner was Chinese instant noodles from Lidl at 13p per pack; total daily was about 50p. I could sustain this without feeling bad for 12 days out of 14, with cheese on toast the other two. My dad commented that I seemed to have lost weight by the end of term, so I'm not convinced that was genuinely sustainable despite feeling like it at the time.
[1] I'm told the law is more complicated, but in practice this is observed
Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition
#153The article's conclusion may be distasteful to some, but is in line with historical precedent. The 1973 Yom Kippur war and following oil embargo led to fuel economy standards, CFL research was started, search for alternate fuel sources and extraction method such as fracking... Many parallels to today, except "green" sources barely existed at the time.
[deleted]
Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you wanna have your mind blown, start looking into who bought up a lot of that farmland (and agricultural enterprise) starting after the 2014 uh, government restructuring. Hint: it’s not the Ukrainians. And they were changing laws to allow more foreign takeover of Ukrainian agriculture by multinationals all the way up to the invasion.
You mean that? : https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/09/13/fact... Looks like the type of comment you'd find on a boomer conspiracy theorists facebook group
The intersection between non-absurd[0] conspiracy theories, culture wars and journalism never ceases to amaze me.
The article you linked thoroughly debunks the claim that "Zelenskyy sold 17 million hectares of farmland to U.S. corporations". Fine, except I imagine it's not really what anyone repeating it was interested in.
The "Zelensky", "sold", and "17 million" bits are minor details that don't change the thrust of the claim, which is that US interests control huge amounts of farmland in the Ukraine. This presumably happened just before the war and means that the US... something something, blah blah - I'm not interested in pursuing this further, as I doubt there's anything insightful to discover there. But my point is, the article focused on debunking the details and called the claim false, even though it actually proved the core of the claim true.
"Zelensky sold 17 million hectares" may not be precisely equivalent to "western corporations took control of at least 3 million hectares", but it still barks up the same tree. But instead of exploring the more accurate version of the claim to see if it leads anywhere interesting, we just have one group sharing the spiced up pop version, the other debunking the irrelevant details of it, and both being smug about how superior they are to the idiots on the other side.
Smh.
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[0] - I.e. ones not involving aliens, the Illuminati, reptilians, etc.
Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you wanna have your mind blown, start looking into who bought up a lot of that farmland (and agricultural enterprise) starting after the 2014 uh, government restructuring. Hint: it’s not the Ukrainians. And they were changing laws to allow more foreign takeover of Ukrainian agriculture by multinationals all the way up to the invasion.
Ukraine has strict agricultural laws prohibiting foreign companies from owning land.
Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Natural gas compliments renewables until battery storage and renewables overproduction pushes out natural gas. It also produces smaller amounts of CO2 per unit of electricity produced versus coal. Recently, there was an HN thread about large amounts of UK wind curtailment. The largest battery storage system in Europe just went live to provide grid services that’ll negate the need for natural gas to provide those serv…
In Germany, the main function of LNG long term will be to smooth the transition of households from burning gas for heating to using heat pumps. As LNG is expensive, people who can will switch sooner than later. Also, rolling out heat pumps is going to take a long time and some people will be dependent on gas for as long as that is going to take. A secondary role for LNG is to power gas peaker plants when renewables f…
Germany's steel and chemistry sector require large amounts of natural gas.
In general, natural gas (currently LNG) was also to smooth a transition towards green hydrogen, the plan being to build infrastructure that can burn/store/use both, as explicitly stated by Federal ministries/agencies.
> that plan is out of the window
There hasn't been officially confirmed, soon there will be a report called "Power plant strategy 2026" that will give a better outlook as to what is gonna happen this decade.
Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition
#157Stupid question: But were does a normal citizen buy redox flow batteries? I googled far and wide, and those are just not sold in my area to end consumers (germany). Has somebody else a website were you can order those? I can order normal battery packs just fine, but the chemical storage ones ( https://redflow.com/ ) are vannishing into silence here in germany, for unknown reasons.
Is this legitimate?
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/VRFB-battery-energy-s...
Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition
#158Stupid question: But were does a normal citizen buy redox flow batteries? I googled far and wide, and those are just not sold in my area to end consumers (germany). Has somebody else a website were you can order those? I can order normal battery packs just fine, but the chemical storage ones ( https://redflow.com/ ) are vannishing into silence here in germany, for unknown reasons.
This page says they start at about $8000
https://www.powerinfotoday.com/hydroelectric/redflow-reduces...
Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sure you’re familiar with supply and demand. The investment in green tech is driven by price of renewables compared to price of fossil fuels. A big decline in supply of fossil fuels (which is what has happened in Europe due to the war) shifts the trade-off significantly in favor of green energy. This shift can be so dramatic that it drives up the short term cost of green energy. That’s a good problem to have beca…
>I’m sure you’re familiar with supply and demand. Yes, that's precisely why I said that the cost of capital going up due to war (higher interest rates) would have a dampening effect on green energy which is very capital intensive. That's called "supply and demand in action". The pro war argument (the Economist's) would *ignore* this facet, arguing only "fossil fuels are more expensive -> green energy will definitely…
The cost of capital didn’t go up due to war.
Re: War and subsidies have turbocharged the green transition
#160Incentives shape human action, but can't force us to break the laws of physics. When a certain type of person rejects emergence in economics as cruel right-wing ideology, but embrace it for promoting scientific progress, the tribal blinders become laughably clear. "The Black Plague was good because it lead to the Renaissance!" See? Anyone can retroactively find a way to justify or defend the merits of an event. It's not clever and (speaking personally) I find it to be an antihuman elitist view that can only be taken by those who see themselves as outside of or above history.