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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

#311
post #267
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just the cost to collect, it is also the cost to store. Heat is easy and safe to store at just above room temperature in rocks - but you need a lot of rocks. Just to heat my house for a few days would need tons of rock at temperatures I'd allow in my house (I have kids and so I worry they will open the rock container and get burnt). Rocks are not free. You can also use water for storage, but again you have t…

> Just to heat my house for a few days would need tons of rock at temperatures I'd allow in my house (I have kids and so I worry they will open the rock container and get burnt). Rocks are not free Sand/rock heat storage is for industrial and utility scale application, not your house. > You can also use water for storage, but again you have the issue needing a tank (and water is a drowning hazard, plus the worry abou…

> Sand/rock heat storage is for industrial and utility scale application, not your house.

I've seen them for a house as well. (when the utility offers a large discount for power used overnight - 40 years ago my local coop was trying to sell my parents on this, but since we had natural gas heat it wasn't worth it) To hold more than a days worth of heat you need a lot of rocks.

Heap pump water heaters work, but you need a large one to hold a days worth of hot water (40 years ago my family had 200 gallons of hot water storage - the utility gave my parents a discount on water heating because we only heated water at night, we ran out of hot water once that I remember). If you want to store more water than a days worth of use then you need more storage. This can become a drowning hazard if we are talking about a couple weeks worth.

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

#312
post #308

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…

The supply of herd animals very obviously isn't fixed. Humans breed them for resources, and since the world population has more than doubled over the last 50 years, the supply of herd animals has also increased a lot. If humans stopped breeding cattle for resources, there'd be far less cattle. The amount of atmospheric methane also very obviously isn't fixed. Increases in production result in a higher concentration o…

You don’t seem to understand the carbon cycle.

It is basic scientific fact and denying it is the same level of ignorance as denying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

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

#313
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply of herd animals very obviously isn't fixed. Humans breed them for resources, and since the world population has more than doubled over the last 50 years, the supply of herd animals has also increased a lot. If humans stopped breeding cattle for resources, there'd be far less cattle. The amount of atmospheric methane also very obviously isn't fixed. Increases in production result in a higher concentration o…

You don’t seem to understand the carbon cycle. It is basic scientific fact and denying it is the same level of ignorance as denying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

You don't seem to understand that carbon have different effects depending on the molecule and location.

You don't even seem to understand that the amount of cattle changes when humans breed more cattle.

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

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many miles does the burger drive my car? Not to question your numbers but they lack context. Also, it would be good for nature if there were fewer or no humans on this planet. But then there would be no human here to enjoy nature.

Burgers don't drive cars. People drive cars, and people eat burgers. Is that the context you were looking for? We've identified two ways to reduce carbon production. 1) reduce production per human. 2) reduce humans. Only the first one is being argued for here. Conflating it with the second is just a confusion.

The real crank you need to look at is where we dig the resources out of the ground. All of that will eventually end up in the atmosphere. Plug that hole. Stop digging and drilling.

The invisible hand of the free market will take care of the rest. If red beef consumes too many resources then it will be too expensive to consume. Simple as that.

Unfortunately fossil fuels make a lot of money and people are hungry for more, so we can't do anything about it really. We can only shift blame and distract to pretend we care.

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

#316

Breaking news: "Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in for the first time" for the 10th time this year. Also on other unrelated news German economy is rocketing to the bottom, their industry is dying with thousands of layoffs, closing factories, and complains on energy prices and they can't even maintain their rail and road networks for the first time since forever. The signs of decline are not even signs anymore th…

The continent is literally on fire due to global warming. Europe does not produce any fossil fuels and needs energy independence. It's because politicians dragged their feet for so long on net zero that we are even in this mess in the first place. Better now than never.

The only thing that I'll agree with you is that European politicians are worse than having a literal random number generator making decisions. And no, we all appreciate the fact that Europe has the highest living standards to ever exist in the planet. We don't have them thanks to political parties though. We have them thanks to our ingenuity and quality of character.

I don't want to become china obviously, I love the environment especially in my village. But the 'green' craze is not it. It's just a scam to extract even more money that will go to friends and family of the various parasites we have as leaders. We were and still are the best in nuclear energy, we have infinite amounts of fossil fuels, and Europe contributes almost nothing to global warming, even if we removed the entire continent then the amount of air/sea pollution would drop by no more than 2%. And crippling our feat because the sheep fell for one more 'global warming' scam is not something I'm OK with.

For 40 years now we have increasingly richer wolves screaming global warming will kill us all in a year (while they fly on private jets to buy a coffee and have 9 seaside villas each) and increasingly more stupid sheep that enable them (and are poorer and more sad every single year). The temperatures are normal, that's how it has always been. And if they are not, me destroying the economy and civilization of my country is not going to stop that. You can try and gather cow farts though. I'm sure that will 'save' the environment.

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

#317
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!

Perhaps the "uncompetitiveness" (is it with us in the room right now?) is self-inflicted due to lack of ambition and innovations.

Ok, then how about we hit you in the knee right before a 100m sprint, and once you lose we can talk about your 'lack of ambition'. No, regular people have plenty of ambition, and the fake chinese papers and patents that get deleted as garbage every 5 years that ieee cleans them up are not 'innovation'--there's a reason their main survival strategy is copy Western technology and resell it at a cheaper price thanks to slave labour. There is no one truly more innovative that us and has never been.

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

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain your thought process please.

You're not doing any better. The right reaction to a comment like that is to downvote and flag it, instead of adding to the spam.

You can flag it. But you are still stupid. A mentally deranged leftist (the adjective was not needed, you all are) thinking that the 'new frontier' is making meat illegal should be made fun off. How about the next frontier... not allowing poor people to travel or move more than 15 minutes away from their registered address!

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

#319

Part of this is about a new way to store energy. In the Netherlands, they have started storing heat energy with sand, in Germany, they are using bricks. This has some advantages. It allows the direct use of heat for industrial processes and heating industrial and commercial facilities. They can either convert energy into electricity or use the heat directly. This technology can be used with a wide variety of energy s…

Correction, the sand battery is in Finland: https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/the-sand-battery-that-could-stop-...

You are correct Polar Night is in Finland. Denmark is working on molten salt batteries. https://www.warpnews.org/energy/denmarks-first-molten-salt-b...

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

#320
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More often that not I think this is a cheap excuse. When you look at struggling companies (take the car industry for example), I think the issue is more about missing innovation and building things that people don't want or can't afford anymore in Germany.

Given how European car companies, German in particular, are sticking their heads in the sand and lobbying the commission to delay the EV transition, I suspect the end game will be that the manufacturers will be bought by the Chinese car companies. The future VW, BMW, Mercedes etc will be Chinese cars with the traditional marque on the hood. Maybe Porsche can survive by going independent, downsizing drastically, and s…

If you look at Volvo or smart, we are probably already on that route.

Had great hopes for the ID.Polo but from what I've seen it's just another vehicle that gets really expensive for not that much of a car...

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