Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

intellinews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 341 posts

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

#251

Post by Klayy »

quantumwannabe wrote: post #215
anticorporate wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the supply of herd animals is essentially fixed. There isn’t infinite growth. Eating meat therefore does not increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, no matter what vegans who want to ban meat for personal moral reasons assert. If humans stopped eating meat, the only way to reduce the amount of carbon that animals “emit” would be to kill all of them and bury their carcasses underground where they can’t decom…

That's a fairly simplistic argument though. Deforestation converts forest into a cattle feed monoculture. That plant material locks in less co2 than a forest. There's the extra CO2 emitted from growing cattle feed as opposed to growing food for humans directly (via fossil fuels used in production). And then there's methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas.

It's a topic that's way more complex than you seem to think. Climate scientists did not miss the simple fact that all carbon in a cow originates from the atmosphere. That's understood. But there's all the other stuff.

For the record I'm not vegan or even vegetarian. Attacking vegans for their beliefs is poor formimo

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

#252

Post by leonidasrup »

emsign wrote: post #232
nxm wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While achieving renewable "success", the domestic manufacturing industry has been decimated/made uncompetitive. Great news for China on the green success!

Which is in part the fault of the industry itself! There's a high degree of arrogance in German management. Especially when it comes to China. The German car industry's refusal to go all in on BEV is a prime example how this arrogance lead to losing to the Chinese who now make better cars than Germany. And this wasn't the first time German industry lost to China due to their own arrogance and being stuck in the past.…

Long time ago German car industry's decided that they need not to manufacture the most important component of EVs - batteries in Europe, that they can always buy the cheaply in Asia.

"The world's largest automotive supplier has decided against producing its own battery cells despite calls from EU politicians to do exactly that. Bosch said the investment would probably never pay off."

https://www.dw.com/en/bosch-says-battery-cells-are-too-expen...

The importance of BEV for China goes well beyond long-term concerns for climate change. For China the most important are the immediate geopolitical aspects of BEV. Every Chinese BEV in China is driving using domestic electricity and is not dependent on imported oil.

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

"The Malacca dilemma is a strategic vulnerability for the People's Republic of China due to its heavy reliance on the strait of Malacca, a critical maritime choke point connecting the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea."

"The United States is viewed within Chinese strategic analysis as a potential threat to maritime energy flows through the Strait of Malacca. In the event of a conflict, particularly over Taiwan, the United States could interdict oil shipments to China by disrupting maritime routes. China has expressed concern that U.S. naval forces operating near the Strait of Malacca could obstruct critical petroleum shipments, effectively cutting off vital imports. U.S. maritime strategy has included options for restricting China's access to key sea lanes through the use of attack submarines and surface ships."

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

#253

Post by Krasnol »

realusername wrote: post #77
Krasnol wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found). Maybe you should take a closer look how those prices come to be. Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades. Last time they wanted to play the free market game, they h…

> Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades. You won't find any grid which isn't subsidized, remember Germany already spent ~2x the French grid and that didn't spend by itself.

Germany isn't setting a fixed end consumer price and hides all that happens behind the tax-cushioned curtains.

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

#254

Post by inigyou »

netsharc wrote: post #197
igl wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A strong possibility? Where do you get your news from?

I think what grandparent is very very fucking poorly trying to say is, Germany/EU could've accepted the "annexation" of Ukraine like it did Crimea in 2014. "Bad Putin! But what can we do."

They could've even sold weapons to Russia. There wouldn't have ever been German soldiers in Ukraine though.

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

#255

Post by quantumwannabe »

Klayy wrote: post #251
quantumwannabe wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the supply of herd animals is essentially fixed. There isn’t infinite growth. Eating meat therefore does not increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, no matter what vegans who want to ban meat for personal moral reasons assert. If humans stopped eating meat, the only way to reduce the amount of carbon that animals “emit” would be to kill all of them and bury their carcasses underground where they can’t decom…

That's a fairly simplistic argument though. Deforestation converts forest into a cattle feed monoculture. That plant material locks in less co2 than a forest. There's the extra CO2 emitted from growing cattle feed as opposed to growing food for humans directly (via fossil fuels used in production). And then there's methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas. It's a topic that's way more complex than you seem to t…

Cows eat wild grass for most of their lives. There is zero deforestation to feed cattle in the US. The amount of methane is also fixed as it gets broken down into CO2 which is later absorbed by plants.

Scientists didn't miss this; there's just a lot of grifters trying to use people's desire to fight climate change to get them to support unrelated issues.

Doing an appeal to authority is poor form.

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

#256

Post by sajithdilshan »

alpineman wrote: post #248
csomar wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's about having emotions and the ability to feel pain That's just a random line you have drawn. > Plants don't cry out for days when their children are taken away from them. Plants do feel pain and react to their surrounding. They are more primitive creatures though. > would you feel bad pulling a plant out the ground? Yes, I wouldn't do it and I am from a country where pulling an olive tree is illegal (with a ja…

Plants don't feel pain as pain is generally understood. They don't have neural circuits, nociceptors, or brains. We have all those things. Cats, cows, and pigs have all those things. That said, plants do have defense mechanisms, of course. But that's not the same thing as pain or emotions. In any case, generally strawberry pickers aren't traumatised in the same way as slaughterhouse workers. Even if one were to view…

> Plants don't feel pain as pain is generally understood.

we don't know that for sure. just to be safe don't eat plants or plant based products too. Eat dirt, that's 100% safe and also feed your children dirt too. The evolution would do the rest and rid your genes from the gene pool

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

#257

Post by throw-qqqqq »

bjourne wrote: post #112
novaRom wrote: post #18

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?

Do you know of any major German industry for which energy costs amounts to even 10% of the labor costs? It's a rhetorical question intended to engage the common sense pathways of your cognitive system.

What is your point?

There are thousands of such companies in Germany, called Energy-Intensive Industries.

Think chemicals, mining, materials, paper pulp, glass, ceramics etc.

Stats available here: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Indus... (unfortunately only available in German)

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

#258

Post by quantumwannabe »

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #243
quantumwannabe wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not an expert here, but I see what you're saying. Is the carbon calculation from the meat _processing_??? Every year I hunt a buck and carry it off the mountain. So the carbon footprint for getting that meat for my family is really the drive up to and from wherever I'm hunting from, plus a few other small things that probably amount to almost nothing. I live close to a large meat processing facility, and it appea…

All of that would go away with renewable energy and therefore reducing meat consumption would not be "the next frontier" in the battle against climate change as the original poster said.

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

#259

Post by realusername »

Krasnol wrote: post #253
realusername wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades. You won't find any grid which isn't subsidized, remember Germany already spent ~2x the French grid and that didn't spend by itself.

Germany isn't setting a fixed end consumer price and hides all that happens behind the tax-cushioned curtains.

They absolutely do, they are debating to remove it or not at the moment.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/government-agrees-phase...

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

#260

Post by igl »

inigyou wrote: post #254
netsharc wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what grandparent is very very fucking poorly trying to say is, Germany/EU could've accepted the "annexation" of Ukraine like it did Crimea in 2014. "Bad Putin! But what can we do."

They could've even sold weapons to Russia. There wouldn't have ever been German soldiers in Ukraine though.

Germany is in no position to go against the USA's geopolitical interests. Sure, they do trade shenanigans sometimes, like with Russian gas, but the relationship with Russia was pretty good before Putin decided to hold power endlessly - he even gave a speech (in German) in the parliament. But in the end of the day, those times are over; only extremist parties are pro-Russian, and Germany still has the 2nd largest US Army presence, including 15-20 US nuclear bombs parked here. It's unthinkable that any government here would go against "Western" interests and support Russia.
Post reply on HN