281–290 of 585 posts
I actually believe the radar surveillance excuse (on a technicalities only), if that's what this is going to come down to. The ocean is a big empty place and prime for picking up radar reflections as the background is pretty quiet. However... how on earth was this not identified like 10 years ago way before these projects were even started? Seems pretty obvious in hindsight.
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I hope you realize that China's coal and oil use for electricity is at an all-time high and increasing. They have installed more coal capacity since 2020 than the US has total. US coal usage peaked circa 2000 and has decreased for the last 2 decades. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
> They have installed more coal capacity since 2020 than the US has total 80% or more of new electricity generation in China is renewable. They build coal capacity but they don't use more of it. This year their absolute carbon emissions decreased. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292
First off we can now look at the full year instead of 6 months of data, its no longer US +4.2% and China -2.7%, its US +2.0% and China -2.3%
China's 2025 YoY emissions decline is almost all due to a decline in industry, not power (1.8% of their 2.3% decline, in other words, most of it). It's understandable to have a lower year if you have an economic slowdown. Russia also had a decline, not for green reasons.
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Here in Sweden a bunch of offshore wind farm project and even residential PV installations are blocked by the military for unspecified reasons that everyone assumes is that it blocks radar and other signal intelligence. Even though you can partially work around the issue with better onshore equipment or just placing the stuff on the other side of the interfering equipment it is still a step down from not having any i…
I'm surprised residential PV even interacts with radar -- or is that the other signal intelligence part?
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As usual, explain how you're going to power heat pumps in the Northern half of the country during a 3 week bomb cyclone. There are answers and they cost money. The only answer we're using is to build 1:1 natural gas capability for solar, which is roughly double the cost. That's a solution, but it needs to be accounted for when comparing options.
> a 3 week bomb cyclone Sounds pretty windy to me.
https://www.ehn.org/europe-faces-challenges-from-low-wind-an...
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Nuclear is insane levels of expensive likely due to overregulation. It is important for base load power and overnight power and should always be the backing of the grid frequency. Total loss of grid frequency is much more difficult to recover from with synthetic inertia. A healthy grid should have all of the following - Nuclear base load that keeps the grid stable and pick up from low solar - Gas plants for surge pow…
Nuclear is inherently expensive even with zero regulations you have the full costs of a coal power plant + more expensive lifetime costs for fuel + extra costs associated with nuclear such as more and more highly educated workers. Meanwhile coal is dead because it’s already more expensive than the market is willing to accept. The only hope for nuclear is massive subsidies, deregulation on its own isn’t going to work.
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> They have installed more coal capacity since 2020 than the US has total 80% or more of new electricity generation in China is renewable. They build coal capacity but they don't use more of it. This year their absolute carbon emissions decreased. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292
That article is about emissions, not admixture. If you look at the source of that article, which they link to: https://carbonmonitor.org/variation First off we can now look at the full year instead of 6 months of data, its no longer US +4.2% and China -2.7%, its US +2.0% and China -2.3% China's 2025 YoY emissions decline is almost all due to a decline in industry, not power (1.8% of their 2.3% decline, in other words…
"economic slowdown" is an exaggeration.
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Couldn't this also be solved with transmission from other parts of the country? or is that what you're saying?
Yes, but you have to pay for a line you don't plan to use much, so its capital costs should be attributed to the generation method requiring it. Which is fine, but not including it is dishonest about the true costs.
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As usual, explain how you're going to power heat pumps in the Northern half of the country during a 3 week bomb cyclone. There are answers and they cost money. The only answer we're using is to build 1:1 natural gas capability for solar, which is roughly double the cost. That's a solution, but it needs to be accounted for when comparing options.
Alternative to natural gas? Wind, geothermal, or nuclear. Wind is already in the northern half of the country and operates well when winterized, unlike the ones in Texas that broke since they were not winterized during that freeze a while back. Natural gas and fossil fuels are not our only options, they are the easiest options.
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The construction on some of these windmill farms started years ago. Before that permits & legal has been in the works for a long time. This surely included security clearances. The orange shrimp pulling the “national security” card now, on the same day as he also creates a new Greenland debacle, is very clearly simply an attempt to strong arm the danish govt into Greenland concessions (in turn simply to please his fr…
This reply doesn't address any core point. When these wind farms were permitted many years ago, shipborne drones were not part of the threat matrix. It was considered purely hypothetical even a decade ago because it was not an imminent capability for any country even though e.g. the US DoD had studied it. In the last few years shipborne drones have emerged very quickly as a substantial practical threat, largely due t…
First of all: occam's razor. Political theatrics seems simpler than the US defence/intelligence forces sudenly realizing that drones can be launched from ships. Esp. with the timing involved.
Second: Established/traditional radar systems cannot spot drones. Take it from someone living in a country that recently had its airspace violated by (assumingly) Russian drones, affecting national infrastructure. It was considered an attack at the time. I don’t think thats the word we use any more, for political reasons.
Third: Trump already shut down one of these windmill farms once this year. Until the danish company building the park sued and got the courts word that the shutdown was illegal, and resumed construction. The current shutdown has much larger impact for many multi-national companies. Usually there is a political process expected between allied countries before such a drastisc move. We havnt seen that ie no attempt to solve a concrete (security) issue before punching the red button ie probably because there was no motivation for a solution ie the security issue was probably not an actual issue)
Fourth: Earlier this week the danish intelligence services released a new security assesment of USA (that takes Trumps behaviour on the international scene into account). That probably hurt the little mans ego, and now we see a retaliation. This provides yet another motivation for Trumps action, besides factual, real security concerns.
Looking at this purely from the security aspect is naive, and fails to consider the context of the real world.