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

bbc.com

801–810 of 934 posts

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

#801
post #514

Meanwhile China is becoming entirely energy independent and electrifying their economy. I don't understand how the US doesn't see that they won't be top dog forever especially in this multipolar age.

As a proportion of total energy use, the US is ahead of China in moving away from fossil fuels by about 5 full percentage points. Most of the "energy independence" that China has is just based on burning coal. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=stacked-di...

This is the second time this week I have seen this website misrepresenting data using this same trick.

Primary energy is not total energy generated its total energy in the fuel used.

On average coal / gas plants are only ~35% efficient so the graph does not correctly represent the useful energy generated as percentage.

The graph is basically putting actual energy generation of solar and wind next to actual energy generated by coal and gas multiplied by 3.

If they want to be even close to representative of reality they should multiply the solar power generated by 4. The same has to be done for the wind energy but I am not sure what the efficiency of that is.

From their page:

> Each source is measured by its physical energy content: fossil fuels and biomass by the heat released when they are burned; nuclear and geothermal by the heat they produce; and wind, solar, and hydropower by the electricity they generate.

This graph is far more representative of reality: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=stack...

China is still behind in percentage but by only 1-3%

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

#803
post #310

I read up recently on the history of the fall of the roman empire and it was fascinating how eerily similar it was to the current state of the US. Overwhelmed by corruption and wars they make stupider and stupider decisions on ever larger scales, ever more frequently. And the population grows ever more cynical, eventually opting for authoritarianism before eventually the center can't hold any more and it all collapse…

I'm reading two books right now: Stefan Zweig's World of Yesterday and Ulrich Gutmair's First Days of Berlin. The similarities to the current state of US are eerie as hell.

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

#804
post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a separate issue, and irrelevant to the issue of cancelling the lease early.

I'm confused then. Cancelling the lease early is unrelated to the decision to build the turbines or not?

No, it's merely a separate decision. Given that they have decided to cancel the lease, for good reasons or bad, the question then is what they do with the lease payments. I am pretty sure that you would not be happy if your landlord wanted to evict you and also wanted you to keep paying rent.

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

#806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we all die, whom will they charge 100 Euros per 1M tokens I wonder. True dilemma right here.

I think there is progress on allowing agents to pay?

A fully agentified economy. I'm sure some tech-overlord will love the idea. Let's hope they don't frequent HN.

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

#807
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a proportion of total energy use, the US is ahead of China in moving away from fossil fuels by about 5 full percentage points. Most of the "energy independence" that China has is just based on burning coal. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=stacked-di...

This is the second time this week I have seen this website misrepresenting data using this same trick. Primary energy is not total energy generated its total energy in the fuel used. On average coal / gas plants are only ~35% efficient so the graph does not correctly represent the useful energy generated as percentage. The graph is basically putting actual energy generation of solar and wind next to actual energy gen…

[deleted]

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

#808
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"common sense" is common sense because it is not "specialised sense" or "expert sense" So if politicians base their decisions on "common sense", they confess to not being able to use experts that refine their knowledge and position about a topic. A "common sense" strategy is therefore what is most popular and on the basis of the understanding of laymen without deeper understanding or knowledge.

In politics, "common sense" just means that they don't have a real justification. You can just apply it to anything and your base will accept it.

I see this all the time with "common sense" gun control.

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

#809
post #780
post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Holy Roman Empire inherited the name Eh, inheritance implies the predecessor willed it to you upon death. In the case of the "Holy Roman Empire" the predecessor died 334 years earlier with no successor. This isn't a case of inheritance, it's a case of just making shit up. The "byzantine" empire did inherit the name though. They continuously used and claimed the name "roman" from when the roman empire split (and…

The Byzantine Empire was Greek. Heraclius changed the official language to Greek already in the 7th century because that’s what everyone spoke. They kept calling themselves Romans, but they spoke, wrote, and governed in Greek.

This is like saying that all the countries in the world that speak English are England, that's not how it works. Countries are not defined by the language they speak, and the language they speak most definitely varies over time.

Moreover you're picking a date hundreds of years into the eastern empire's existence and declaring "because they switched official languages hundreds of years later, they were always Greek". Time doesn't flow like that.

Moreover the roman empire, pre-split, spoke quite a bit of this language (well, Koine Greek, the predecessor to Romaic). Including in official communications (particularly in the east), and at least one emperor's private diaries [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations

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

#810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Common sense" might also mean "do the simple thing" which, given how cheap it is to invest in renewable energy sources like solar farms, and how much room we have to build daytime capacity that way without large scale storage, might mean installing a lot more solar. Don't pretend the current US admin is anything but corrupt and stupid.

Day time . And what of the night? Freeze in the dark.

Wind or solar + batteries have similar cost to natural gas and hydro. They are much cheaper than coal or nuclear.
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