311–320 of 430 posts
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No, the AfD is a right extremist party, one of their leading figures, Björn Höcke can now legally be called a Nazi.
And that's exactly proof of how immensely far left Germany's politics have shifted. In absolute terms, the AFD is a left leaning party. They still support "immigration" for example.
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public transport can be efficient if done correctly and funded accordingly (Japan, Switzerland)
I'd like to add Singapore because they buy their excellent MRT trains from Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Singapore_MRT_and_LRT_...
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I would like to see you cycling 5 km in the Alps against the wind in the rain. Cycling is fine. I do it 7 km to the work. But only because it is flat. And only when the weather is fine.
I've never really understood the point of comments like this. So, there are conditions where cycling isn't feasible. Sure. Does that mean people in general couldn't use bicycles more? No, of course not. Did GP suggest that everyone that lives within 5km of work must bike every day . No, not that either. For every solution it's easy to find a situation where that solution doesn't apply. So what? That doesn't mean the…
As a Dutchman who doesn't enjoy cycling, especially alone (for function rather than leisure), I do see their point. It's just not an alternative for me. I'll put up with it if it's 1km and/or carry more freight than fits in a backpack or on the rack (?bagagedrager) (could take the bike in hand and hang your bags from the handlebars, though).
I'm happy to pay a bit extra for Climeworks to take the CO2 out of the air again that was added while building the wind turbine for my electricity-powered method of transportation.
But to each their own. Cycling is also healthy, especially if we'd no longer be surrounded by combustion transportation. I'm all for bicycle infrastructure and promotion.
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Oh, but you are aware that we need to DOUBLE our installed capacity for gas by 2030 in order to be able to manage our electricity grid towards renewables, right? Page 25: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...
Nowhere on p 25 can I find this. Maybe you mean p 27, and I don't get what argument you are trying to make. Yes, there would be more gas capacity, but for green gas.
That isn’t really an option: https://www.capital.de/amp/wirtschaft-politik/kann-biogas-ru...
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Bit not in the way people would anticipate. According to the modeling of the Fraunhofer (base assumption), we will need to double our capacity from gas (yay), double renewables to eventually achieve twice the carbon footprint of France by 2030. The base load is so high in Germany and renewables are so unreliable, that we need >100% installed capacity from “conventional” sources. The storage and “smart grid” is not re…
Gas generation capacity is different from GHG and other pollutants caused by actually burning fossil gas. Don't be fooled by people implying they are the same. And Germany is actually a world leader in capturing biogas, which has negative GHG emissions even after being burnt. Having said that, Germany still burns black and brown coal so a switch to more gas instead would be a positive for them. They'd have plenty of…
https://www.capital.de/amp/wirtschaft-politik/kann-biogas-ru...
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Bit not in the way people would anticipate. According to the modeling of the Fraunhofer (base assumption), we will need to double our capacity from gas (yay), double renewables to eventually achieve twice the carbon footprint of France by 2030. The base load is so high in Germany and renewables are so unreliable, that we need >100% installed capacity from “conventional” sources. The storage and “smart grid” is not re…
>we will need to double our capacity from gas (yay) Notably, green gas, not fossil gas. You can call that conventional, but it's not adding CO2 emissions. According to their study, the CO2 factor would fall from 460g/kWh in 2020 to 150 in 2030 and between 3 and 9 in 2050. You can't just go "meh, twice as much as France" and ignore that the scenario starts at 15x France.
https://www.capital.de/amp/wirtschaft-politik/kann-biogas-ru...
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Heating is one thing we have tackle, but also transportation which uses up 27.1% of energy in German. Individual transportation should be a main target, we would all shift from cars to public transport or bicycles. About 40% of distances driven with cars are shorter than 5 kilometers, a distance that's perfect for a bicycle. On top of that, car owners tend to underestimate the cost of their cars[1] [0] https://www.um…
This is why so many are fed up with Germany and especially Germany's current government. You know, maybe people don't want to bike in a country where it's too hot in the summer, too icey/cold/snowy in the winter and where it rains constantly in the other two seasons? This whole attitude of "I tell you how to live your life because reasons" is preposterous.
Individual transportation will always remain an option, but it might be prohibitively expensive for most people to be their main mode of transport when one has to refund the environmental damage it adds.
As for cycling specifically, you and me both as I said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36601619 We agree there, but it's not going to be compulsory to cycle...
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Maybe this is my tech bubble, but try to find a country with higher Linux/PGP/OpenStreetMap use. I am still trying to put my finger on what the culture difference is precisely, but also outside of tech there's more thinking about what the right/correct/fair thing to do is, even if that brings greater net harm in the end. Example: closing down nuclear because it's not a perfect solution and has risks and waste (ignori…
With all due respect, renewables are not decades away, they are at a major inflection point right now. While I deplore the shuttering of Germany's NPPs, nuclear would not have been a solution to the decarbonization challenge, as the times to build NPPs and the costs are prohibitive. Renewables are the cheapest source of energy right here and now, we should invest way more into researching grid-scale storage solutions…
NL and their stikstofcrisis is a legal thing. Individuals (on average) don't care about climate the way people do in Germany (on average). An example involving more than just direct friends and family: I wanted to join friends in NL in a protest on a global strike day a few years ago because nobody in Germany wanted to go with me, only to find that in NL there weren't any protests going on that I could propose for us to go to. A small one in the Hague or Amsterdam I think, nothing close enough for us to reasonably join. There's groups for climate in NL as well, but they're so much smaller.
Electricity, maybe. Energy? I wish. This headline would be more true if we had transportation fully electrified and all buildings heated with heat pumps, but last I heard the proposed law to require the latter transition to be started in 2024 was dropped again, and they're also still debating about starting to require transitioning the combustion engine fleets to electric by, what was it, 2030? I also still see stick…
Sorry on the nitpicking - we will have to dig into our pockets even if government does something. Government does not have magic money it is also “our money”. One would say government would levy fees on big companies but then companies will charge customers more.
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Renewables are the cheapest source of energy PROVIDED the cost of providing energy when they are generating zero energy is paid for by someone else. This argument keeps coming up and is entirely wrong and very misleading. Renewable energy due it its intermittent nature creates a problem and does nothing to solve that problem. The cost of that solution must be factored into the cost of energy from renewable generation…
There was a perfectly reasonable transition strategy. Install as much solar and wind turbines as possible and rely on natural gas plants are other times. Natural gas plants are relatively cheap and can in the future be converted to hydrogen. The big advantage is that solar and wind can directly reduce CO2 emissions, instead of waiting for decades for new nuclear power to come online. Converting heating of buildings t…
Nuclear: pick ten locations -> allocate the money for each -> it goes five times over budget but in the end you have 80% of your energy need taken care of. By the time they're done, the remaining 20% is covered by renewables (we're already almost at that point. If only we had kept nuclear...).
Renewables means fighting with nearly every individual land owner in the country separately. Either they need solar panels on them or they need a wind turbine near them. Have fun and good luck arguing millions of individual cases.
The latter is cheaper per MW, people will argue. Faster to build each individual spot and no huge investments needed. All true. I just hope it's going to happen at the speed that people extrapolate from the low-hanging fruit we got so far...