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Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

reuters.com

321–330 of 474 posts

Re: Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

#321
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not mostly true: Israel's anti air defense works surprisingly well against Iran's attack, the issue has always been 2 things: Who has more missiles to throw? And the Patriot is still top class in it's designed goal: shooting down ballistic and cruise missiles. The second big thing is that no one has designed air defense to take into account effectively slow moving artillery pieces that have the same maneuvera…

The aging Patriot in particular was exposed in Ukraine. You can watch video after video of them failing even against older ballistics - they have basically no chance against hypersonic and other fast ballistics, especially ones with active measures (flares, maneuvering - there was a really wild one from a few weeks back). And there's a number out of this conflict as well. The are still great at shooting down jets, ho…

It has around 42-77% success rate according to Ukraine themselves against specifically Iskander 9M723 and KN-23.

And your comment makes 0 sense considering S-400 was more designed against aircrafts and cruise missiles than ballistic missiles.

Re: Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

#322

Our company made a 'bet' that energy management, sustainability, clean energy and whatnot would become a big thing. This was around the time of COP26 (2021) where there seemed to be a societal drive for reducing carbon emissions and a general acceptance that climate change was a thing. We employed young and enthusiastic sustainability consultants, we run a successful project to reduce energy consumption in polymer ma…

There have been plenty of inflection points like that throughout history. Famously, Jimmy Carter installed solar heating on the roof of the white house. Reagan took them down shortly after.

It seems like we never quite learn our lesson about energy security...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House...

Re: Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

#323
post #91

Easier said than done, during this week many German regions are on general strike, thus everyone just switched back to their cars, complaining about unions, their power in infrastructure and so on. Naturally most of those cars are combustion based, because it is still very expensive to buy a new EV, and even used ones are more expensive than new combustion cars, and there is the whole question of how damaged the batt…

That's not true, you can get a cheap new EV, pricing for electric Dacia without subsidy starts from €16k. And used Zoe or i3 are really cheap.

Re: Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

#324
post #185
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been arguing with Europeans on twitter (including an environmental scientist) who believe this war shows we need to resume drilling in the North Sea and Groningen. It feels like this collective insanity will never end

> It feels like this collective insanity will never end They simply do not believe that the consequences will be as bad as the models predict. And a lot of trust and good will has been expended on social issues, for example the fight to allow transgender people to use whatever bathroom they choose, or to promote childhood reassignment surgery, etc. As a strategic decision, we have taken our eye off the ball, climate…

Kamala Harris started out with a surge of popularity. Talking about corporate price gouging and selecting Tim Walz as her running mate who had clear populist messaging.

Then the strategists who think like you got in her ear. Told her to stop attacking corporations to protect donations. Had her campaign with Cheney and talk about shooting home invaders. Then of course she refused to take a strong stand on the genocide in Gaza.

Her momentum faded and she lost. In the aftermath some braindead analysts tried to blame words like Latinx and transgender rights.

She didn't campaign on that shit. She campaigned as Republican lite and it fucked her.

The fascists aren't going to rewards you with good environmental policy just because you throw trans people under the bus. They'll just demand another sacrifice. Meanwhile gender affirming surgery on minors is so fleetingly rare that it basically only exists in right wing propaganda and here you are repeating it like it's a valid concern.

Re: Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

#325
post #91

Easier said than done, during this week many German regions are on general strike, thus everyone just switched back to their cars, complaining about unions, their power in infrastructure and so on. Naturally most of those cars are combustion based, because it is still very expensive to buy a new EV, and even used ones are more expensive than new combustion cars, and there is the whole question of how damaged the batt…

That's not true, you can get a cheap new EV, pricing for electric Dacia without subsidy starts from €16k. And used Zoe or i3 are really cheap.

That is still expensive versus traditional cars.

Re: Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

#326
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It feels like this collective insanity will never end They simply do not believe that the consequences will be as bad as the models predict. And a lot of trust and good will has been expended on social issues, for example the fight to allow transgender people to use whatever bathroom they choose, or to promote childhood reassignment surgery, etc. As a strategic decision, we have taken our eye off the ball, climate…

> for example the fight to allow transgender people to use whatever bathroom they choose Ugh, I'm going to regret commenting here, but it really seems like this obsession is almost entirely on the right wing. In the US, the centrist Dems have been banging the appeasement drum for my entire political life, and it's gotten us nowhere. Like... the right isn't going to wake up and start caring about climate change if eve…

> In my state, we removed protections for housing and employment discrimination against trans people because... one trans athlete existed?

I think you're sort of proving the parent's point - when you're in an existential fight, is it really that important that you use the limited attention of the public to fight for the rights of a single person?

Trans rights ain't even that popular; most people are okay with "you think you're someone else? Well, fine, no skin off my nose". OTOH, the majority of people globally aren't okay with "It must be a crime if you don't treat me as a member of the opposite sex".

The identity politics, of all forms, sucked out much of the air from the room leaving precious little left for discussing things like climate change.

Whether we like it or not, human attention is a limited resource. If you're going to allow a few vocal nutters to direct the course of your discussion, then you can't very well complain, now can you?

I mean, that's what leaders are supposed to do - direct the discussion. When the opposition says "They want to let men into women's changing rooms", then you say "No, we don't support that at all".

I mean, voters find some things distasteful - you have to choose which of those things you are going to argue for, and which you are going to back down from.

Diluting your message so that you mention a little bit of everything is just dumb politics, because human attention is a limited resource!

Re: Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

#328
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither could French nuclear plants when they were turned off for weeks at a time for emergency maintenance. So, France fired up the gas. 5x cheaper electricity, on the other hand, makes power-to-gas economic, which can smooth out seasonal variations in a carbon neutral way.

Isn't power to gas still ridiculously inneficient? Last I checked it seemed like something pushed by gas companies since it upholds gas infrastructure and most of the intermittence is currently supported by gas.

It's very costly compared to normal gas but it's still marginally cheaper to use solar and roundtrip p2g to use on a cold, windless night than it is to use nuclear power produced on any day of the year.

There's just zero economic incentive while polluting gas is dirt cheap and maxxed out solar and wind rarely even covers 100% of current electricity demand.

Re: Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you are missing the critical bit. Food is a constant need, and you can't exist for long without it. Sure we need to increase battery sotrage, but in ~5 years time, it'll be maintainance, assuming the correct adoption rate. So yes we will still _need_ batteries, but we don't need a constant supply of new batteries to keep the lights on.

A 5 year full adoption rate is not even close to possible. Once you reach maintenance phase you still have to replace stuff, so just like food you will need a constant supply.

Right, but you realise that even if we manage to buy everything all at once, we are looking at at least a 15 year operating lifespan.

Yes, there will need replacement, but not all at once and not the same volume

Re: Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

#330
post #17

Yeah, I live in Spain and probably once again we'll have restrictions on AC in the summer just like at the start of the Ukraine war. Hopefully, we can avoid actual blackouts. The bizarre thing is that our government still wants to close down the remaining nuclear power plants. One of the issues with our proportional electoral system is that smaller, more extreme parties can become kingmakers and in our current situat…

Levelized Cost of Energy for solar is 30-60$ and 100-200$ for nuclear. In the case of Spain, it is cheaper to build more energy lines with Morocco and battery storage than to use nuclear. Spain already has some of the cheapest energy in Europe thanks to renewables. In the case of Germany, nuclear makes sense, but it is not clear where you would buy fuel for it, It might still be a supply chain risk since Russia and K…

The Americans can give Germany all the fuel they’d ever need. If you go solar, you are trading one supply chain dependency for another. France’s strategy is, once again, completely and totally vindicated.
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