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Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

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Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#201

Post by vkou »

sleepyguy wrote: post #191
softwaredoug wrote: post #107

The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat. A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2]. Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre. 1 - https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-im…

The next frontier should be preventing forest fires. This is just Canada, imagine if we could prevent them around the world. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/new-nasa-study-tallies-carbon-... >Stoked by Canada’s warmest and driest conditions in decades, extreme forest fires in 2023 released about 640 million metric tons of carbon

Forests burn and grow back. Healthy forests (not poorly-managed monoculture) are carbon-neutral on human timescales.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#202

Post by anticorporate »

quantumwannabe wrote: post #183
jmyeet wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I question the methodology of that 100kg (per kg) figure for beef, for several reasons: 1. It's not the true Carbon or CO2 figure. It's weighted for other greenhouse gases. That's kind of an issue because methane naturally breaks down (into CO2 and water) over time. The methane issue comes up all the time in such estimates (eg leaks in natural gas pipelines) where methane is a worse greenhouse gas but temporary (7-12…

It’s completely made up. All meat is carbon neutral because animals don’t produce carbon atoms from nothing. They get them from the plants they eat which in turn get their carbon from the atmosphere. The carbon cycle is basic scientific fact yet confidently ignored by people who hate things like logging and meat.

By that same logic, fossil fuels are carbon neutral because they come from living things.

The problem is we have too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not too much of various assorted carbon-based compounds on the planet.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#203

Post by 1239176 »

RandomLensman wrote: post #47
freehorse wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussion about nuclear reactors aside, energy in germany became expensive when they cut off russian gas and they had no good alternative. There was no other source of cheap fossil fuels for electricity production. If anything, renewables are promoted as a solution to that energy problem. The discussion about fossil fuels vs renewables is a bit different within countries which produce fossil fuels than within those…

Germany cut off Russian gas? Gazprom suspended supply indefinitely via NS1 before it was destroyed.

That is a half truth. A turbine was broken, repaired in Canada, which required a lot of bureaucracy. Then the turbine was shipped to Germany. Then the Russians started their own bureaucracy and came up with excuses why the turbine could not be installed.

During that time Nord Stream was blown up.

The point is moot, since Putin has offered multiple times to open the remaining intact pipe:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/putin-urges-germany-...

And the broken pipes can be repaired, as was determined in the LLoyds lawsuit recently.

I'm not saying that reopening would be reliable, but it would be one diversification away from US and Qatar dependencies. The US just cut the EU off from Qatar gas.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#204

Post by redmaple892 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #81

I'm confused by the US conservatives' full court press for fossil fuels and against wind/solar. I believe it's mostly about protecting existing money/power structures, but I don't really know. I mean, where does all Trump's energy on this topic come from? Is it owning the libs or courting donors or the Heritage Foundation/AEI? If it's really about protecting fossil fuel wealth, is there a long-term plan or are they j…

I knew as soon as I read your comment that multiple people would object to your use of 'conservative' instead of focus on the point (as if the opposing political views lack integrity, values, respect for law, etc).

In any case I think the reason comes down to money/power structures and short-term thinking. We have two corporate controlled parties with one that is wholly owned and the other which allows a tiny sliver of dissent. Fossil fuels will never completely go away but anything that questions the entire infrastructure (worldwide, including the need for bases in producing countries), is seen as a threat to the status quo. In this way I don't see it as any different than teams protecting their turf in a large company which stifles innovation.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#205

Post by SoftTalker »

grunder_advice wrote: post #146
softwaredoug wrote: post #107

The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat. A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2]. Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre. 1 - https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-im…

Beef is already too expensive for most people. Americans are probably the exception but I can assure you that most Europeans do not have beef heavy diets. Even culturally, pork (and now chicken) were the proteins of choice.

I'm in the USA and I eat a lot less beef than I used to. The price has really jumped in the past few years, maybe since the pandemic?

Subbed pork, poultry, and eggs for the most part, some fish but that's not particularly cheap either.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#206

Post by alpineman »

csomar wrote: post #200
alpineman wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, plus the ethical angle. It's a bit ridiculous that we have people researching the 'theoretical ethical treatment of LLMs' when we are doing such awful things to animals on a massive scale. We have dogs and cats as pets and we eat cows and pigs (in Western countries). As if cows and pigs didn't also have personalities, memories, parental bonds, the ability to feel pain. It's a mass wilful ignorance. What's the d…

Where do you draw the line though? Because plants themselves (DNA-beings) are also alive . Unless you decide to go on a full mineral diet.

It's not about being alive, it's about having emotions and the ability to feel pain.

Plants don't cry out for days when their children are taken away from them. Plants don't remember your face, come up to you and want attention. Plants don't scream when they are killed (no matter what some edgy research shows).

Or to put it more simply, would you feel bad pulling a plant out the ground? I would imagine probably not. Would you feel bad pulling the lever and watching as a pig is lowered into a gas chamber? Or while slitting a cow's throat? I would imagine probably yes (hence why slaughterhouse employees have so many mental health issues and there is such high turnover).

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#207

Post by themaninthedark »

marcosdumay wrote: post #78
plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany? Every First World country seems to be following the path from industrialisation, through deindustrialisation (which, when I was at school,…

People don't like factory work. Given options, they will choose to do some less physically wearing work that pays more, and pay somebody else to do it. Robots are the answer to reindustrialize the developed world, but that necessarily keeps industry smaller than services.

I don't think you have set foot in a factory recently.

Factory work isn't generally physically demanding, more tedious & repetitive than anything.

It's air conditioned, generally pays a lot more than minimum wage and has benefits.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#208

Post by jltsiren »

WarmWash wrote: post #148
Helmut10001 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like there is a causality here. I would be careful. German GDP is declining for other reasons, not for their commitment to renwables. Also, by all measures, living in Germany still means you get one of the most comfortable, secure and free lives on earth. I wouldn't give up on Germany so fast. They still know how to work and often work, even if there is no reason to work (i.e looking at their curren…

>They still know how to work and often work, even if there is no reason to work (i.e looking at their current regulations, which rather motivate you to _not_ work). Ummm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a... At least according to the list, Americans work ten weeks more a year than their German counterpart. I would bet everything that life, at least right now, is comfy. But I don't see it as…

Ten weeks more, if you average over workers. You get a smaller difference if you average over working-age people. Germans are more likely to choose a part-time job voluntarily, while Americans are more likely to be completely outside the workforce.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#209

Post by emsign »

GuB-42 wrote: post #63

I have heard this news many times, technically not wrong, but each time with a different metric. This time it is production over a year. It reminds me of the Voyager probes that left the solar system half a dozen times, each time taking a different definition of what marks the edge of the solar system. Anyways, we are now getting to sensible metrics, which is good.

That's totally fine with me. Each time it's an opportunity to be happy and proud.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#210

Post by bhelkey »

softwaredoug wrote: post #178
puchatek wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going vegetarian would only cut it if you stayed clear of dairy. Gram for gram it's better to eat chicken than cheese for the climate.

My research seems to indicate its about on-par with chicken. IE a chicken filet is about the carbon impact of 8oz of milk. And it seems here its about 1/4 carbon per kg of food as beef: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

>> Gram for gram it's better to eat chicken than cheese for the climate. reply

>IE a chicken filet is about the carbon impact of 8oz of milk.

They said cheese not milk. Note that it takes more than 1 unit of milk to produce 1 unit of cheese. From this source I found, they estimate ~10 input units of milk per output unit of cheese [1].

Assuming both of these are true, and assuming that the cheese making process produces no carbon, then a chicken filet would have the same carbon impact as .8oz of cheese or roughly a single slice of cheese.

The cheese making process does produce carbon (e.g. heating the milk) but it also produces whey as a valuable byproduct.

[1] https://pubs.nmsu.edu/_e/E216/

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