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Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

arstechnica.com

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Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#121

Post by threethirtytwo »

elektronika wrote: post #112
threethirtytwo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a relationship here. It is not a perfect one, but it is real, and pretending otherwise just avoids the tradeoff. Take California’s high speed rail. Every individual has the right to object. No one wants an eyesore in their backyard. Everyone gets a hearing. Everyone gets a lawsuit. Everyone gets a veto in practice, if not in theory. The result is predictable. I will never see a functioning high speed rail sy…

>Now look at China. They decide to build it, and it gets built. Look up "Nail Houses". The USA used eminent domain heavily in the same situation back when they were still building new infrastructure. >Take California’s high speed rail. Every individual has the right to object. It's not the result of many individuals objecting. It's the largely the result of a few wealthy individuals objecting. Elon Musk has admitted…

>Look up "Nail Houses". The USA used eminent domain heavily in the same situation back when they were still building new infrastructure.

Yeah. China is not THAT strict. But still building the rode around the nail house is something that wouldn't happen in the US. Eminent domain for other people is something I believe in for a better society.

>It's not the result of many individuals objecting. It's the largely the result of a few wealthy individuals objecting. Elon Musk has admitted to publicizing hyperloop largely to take the wind out of the sails of the proposed high speed rail. American democracy is for the rich.

Still it is freedoms + capitalism that enables this. Rich people objecting can get silenced. Jack Ma for example.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#122

Post by WatchDog »

> ...the Department of the Interior settled on a single justification for blocking turbine installation: a classified national security risk.

To speculate on what this risk is, the two obvious risk I can think of would be:

- Susceptibility to seabed warfare[0]. A rival nation can sabotage the infrastructure and maintain deniability, like we have seen with the Nord Stream sabotage[1].

- Potential interference with passive sonar systems, the turbines are likely to generate a fair bit of noise, which could potentially make it harder for SOSUS[2] to detect rival submarines.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabed_warfare

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

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#123

Post by threethirtytwo »

bmitc wrote: post #111
threethirtytwo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any freedom. For example you don't have the freedom to own guns in China.

Who cares?

Exactly. I don't care about owning guns. I don't care about the overwhelming majority of the freedoms the US provides to me for which China does not provide.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#124

Post by threethirtytwo »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #120
threethirtytwo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a relationship here. It is not a perfect one, but it is real, and pretending otherwise just avoids the tradeoff. Take California’s high speed rail. Every individual has the right to object. No one wants an eyesore in their backyard. Everyone gets a hearing. Everyone gets a lawsuit. Everyone gets a veto in practice, if not in theory. The result is predictable. I will never see a functioning high speed rail sy…

> Take California’s high speed rail. Every individual has the right to object. No one wants an eyesore in their backyard. Everyone gets a hearing. Everyone gets a lawsuit. Everyone gets a veto in practice, if not in theory. That has absolutely nothing to do with civil liberties and everything to do with the adversarial legalism of the Common Law code and with property rights, which are quite a different matter. There…

Every additional "right" you have is a "freedom" you can choose to execute or not execute on. A right is an additional freedom. If you have no rights, you have no freedom, if you have unlimited rights, you have unlimited freedom.

I agree there's things like eminent domain. I'm just saying China leans more in the direction of less rights overall which in turn leads to a more productive society.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#125

Post by bmitc »

wbronitsky wrote: post #72
threethirtytwo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think parsing out what kind of freedom would help here. The US has a lot of “freedom of” but not a lot of “freedom from.”

The U.S. doesn't have that much real freedom. It is nearly completely controlled by a concentrated oligarchy of people and corporations. Sure, there are rights, but these are almost entirely enforced via a massively beauractic and expensive judicial system. So if your rights are violated, it can take months and perhaps thousands or millions of dollars to prove and correct such violations. A cop murders someone? That takes like two years or more of trials and appeals if it even escapes internal affairs and the district attorney's office.

As an example, Texas is a state that prides itself on freedom but is incredibly privatized. There's hardly any public land. The entire electricity grid is privately owned. Toll roads abound in every major city. Over 20% of homes have an HOA, so those Texans have people (basically a small corporation) telling them how to cut their lawn. Women can't get medically suggested abortions. Universities are told what to teach by donors and politicans. For a while, the Texas DMV was collecting fingerprints just to get a license. Is that really freedom?

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#126

Post by threethirtytwo »

tclancy wrote: post #116
threethirtytwo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any freedom. For example you don't have the freedom to own guns in China.

Is that a freedom? You're defining everything as though the US were the optimal model of society. Couldn't I just as easily define the freedom to be safe from guns?

What? I'm defining China, a country with less freedoms, AS more optimal then the US.

I think that comment about guns threw everyone off. People are very liberal on HN and at the same time very patriotic. They support gun control and ironically more freedoms at the same time so I think you and the other guy didn't realize that you both support China's lack of freedom in the aspect of owning guns.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#127

Post by threethirtytwo »

bmitc wrote: post #125
wbronitsky wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think parsing out what kind of freedom would help here. The US has a lot of “freedom of” but not a lot of “freedom from.”

The U.S. doesn't have that much real freedom. It is nearly completely controlled by a concentrated oligarchy of people and corporations. Sure, there are rights, but these are almost entirely enforced via a massively beauractic and expensive judicial system. So if your rights are violated, it can take months and perhaps thousands or millions of dollars to prove and correct such violations. A cop murders someone? That…

You're right. Maybe freedom is not the most fitting word here. Less centralized control is what I'm going for.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#128

Post by Dylan16807 »

prawn wrote: post #95
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States run the elections.

The US president just today said that Republicans should "nationalize the voting" in future elections.

That sounds like a call to get rid of the electoral college...

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#129

Post by PaulHoule »

bmitc wrote: post #106
verdverm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spite of one man child

The sad truth is that it's millions of people. These people just want to see the world burn due to nothing but narcissism and hate of the imaginary "other side".

There are a lot of people on "both sides" who choose their positions on the issues to fit their political party as opposed to choose the party that fits their positions. Particularly for an issue like offshore wind or Keystone XL that is basically "out of sight and out of mind" there are millions of people who would change their position if the right people told them to.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#130

Post by Dylan16807 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #55
ianburrell wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind are good complements. Solar works during the day and best on clear, windless days. Wind blows best during the night and on cloudy, stormy days. Solar is best in summer and wind in winter. Wind also works better in some areas that don't have solar. UK has a lot of offshore wind, but less solar. The US Northeast has a lot of wind but lags behind on solar. Wind has dropped significantly in price over the…

I theory yes, but grid storage favors solar. Solar can be placed much closer to consumption, literally on the roof of the consumer. Wind exists in large farms away from cities. They are not perfect partners. The rich/old paticularly hate wind because they do not like looking at it. (The link to golf courses is not by accident. Wind farms and golf course tend to appear together due to them both gravitating towards are…

> grid storage favors sola

In what way?

> Solar can be placed much closer to consumption, literally on the roof of the consumer. Wind exists in large farms away from cities.

You still need the grid to exist, so 100 miles one way or the other doesn't affect cost very much.

> Then, when the nimby people are no longer in power, we bring back wind.

NIMBY never goes away. There are some situations where you don't want to burn up your political capital fighting them, but in general if you can get a project through then do it.

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