US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects • Hacker News Board

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Post by pavlov » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:02 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #604

pavlov wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"what about empires that actually survived or adapted" — which ones exactly? Empires are pathological developments of nations. They don't tend to survive all that long.

Didn't the Roman Empire last nearly 1,500 years in one form or another?

Well, the Holy Roman Empire inherited the name but, as Voltaire said, "was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire"...

And the Byzantine Empire shrunk greatly after the first few hundred years. Most of its life it was more like a Greek nation that sometimes managed to expand to control parts of the old empire.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Post by globular-toast » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

juntoalaluna wrote: post #12

Insane. Over the last year, wind - mostly offshore - has generated more than 35% of electricity here. Gas is down to 27%. It's really, really good. And it looks cool.

It doesn't look cool. We should use less energy. But the turbines make the cost of the energy too obvious, we'd rather keep pretending there is no cost.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Post by bryanlarsen » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

glaslong wrote: post #534

firesteelrain wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For onshore wind, probably wind. For offshore wind, not nearly as clear. The US still lacks a lot of the specialized vessels, ports and manufacturing capacity. Solar has bigger upstream dependence on Asian wafer/cell production.

Forgive the ignorance, what drives the demand for offshore wind instead of on land anyway? Shorter power run to coastal cities vs longer transmission loss from exurban environments? And with solar, I can't imagine that would be fast to stand up production for... but we're attempting the Herculean task with modern chip fabs. Would panels be harder than that? They both seem existential needs for the future of the count…

Offshore wind is far more reliable than onshore wind. Geography ensures that some ocean locations pretty much always have wind blowing. North Sea wind turbines have a capacity factor of about 60%, approximately double that of onshore wind turbines.

The other advantage of offshore is that it can support the truly massive wind turbines. Onshore wind turbines are a lot smaller.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Post by specialist » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

whazor wrote: post #119

rayiner wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even dumber than that. Someone built a wind farm near Trump's golf course in Scotland and now he hates wind farms: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo . He thinks they're ugly and noisy.

I think wind farms on sea look really cool, especially if the turbines are huge. It gives some majestic feelings

It's mesmerizing. Akin to dance. I love it.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Post by senordevnyc » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #464

RobotToaster wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less than half of people who voted voted for Trump, and turnout was 64%. Being allowed to chose between two evils every few years isn't democracy.

Democracy is only ever choosing between two evils. You will never agree entirely with either candidate. In order to reach a majority, you will have to reach some kind of compromise with people with goals you hate. As has been famously stated, democracy is the worst system, except for all of the others. I think people often underestimate just how bad it is.

Democracy is only ever choosing between two evils.

American democracy. Other democracies have multiple viable parties and candidates.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Post by Tadpole9181 » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

r0b05 wrote: post #74

This is beyond my understanding. They are actually paying to stop society from advancing.

And because I love the game of explaining direct costs: every single taxpayer just paid $10 for this.

Of course, since our government is flat broke, it's going to be more from interest on the debt.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Post by cyanregiment » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #142

bsenftner wrote: post #63

The USA is governed by evil people, and the people of the nation are too stupid and expecting someone else to stop them. Plain as day light.

No, we're not expecting someone else to stop it. We voted for this. The evil is not imposed on us. It is us. Not everyone, but a majority. The minority is looking for ways to stop it, but it requires getting literally everyone else to work together. Which means any disagreement among them results in a loss, and more of the same evil.

[dead]

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Post by perpetuallunch » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:04 PM UTC

PowerElectronix wrote: post #191

jtbayly wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the winter in the North people are just supposed to freeze?

Solar would produce enough power in winter. Germany is europe's top solar energy producer and is at a latitude similar to Alaska.

At what cost?

Doesn’t Germany now have some of the most costly electricity in the OECD?

For a while there we kept hearing about plug in balcony solar in Germany.

Electricity generation used to be a solved problem, now it’s so bad people want to connect solar on their apartment balcony.

And we’re supposed to believe this is progress?

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Post by triceratops » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:04 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #601

pkulak wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re arguing against someone who said “there should never be forrest fires”, but that person doesn’t exist.

There are a lot of such people. The whole Smokey the bear thing was trying to teach people that for decades.

Even if we agree that natural forest fires are good, Smokey the bear is entirely reasonable. Nobody needs to go starting more fires due to negligence.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Post by OroPla » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:04 PM UTC

sdellis wrote: post #435

NuclearPM wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a good idea. Millions would be left without electricity.

It's a great idea if we subsidize it the way that fossil fuels are subsidized.

Renewables are great, but they cannot sustain current power needs alone. Both solar and wind also have the problem that they cannot generate power 24/7. So at times where they are able they generate a lot of excess power that cannot be stored at that scale and at times where they cannot generate power there are shortages.

Even if they could operate 24/7 it would still not be enough power to satisfy current demand. Then there's the waste they create once parts need to be replaced, which is much more frequent than non renewables.

It's all very messy and there is no silver bullet.