191–200 of 343 posts
the sad thing about this data is how politicized clean energy has become. the blue states have a lot of energy solar - while the red ones are sparse. the red ones get a lot of sun while the blue ones don't.
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Huh? I react that way because it introduces a lot of chaos to the situation. That won’t change even if I stop minding that chaos has been introduced to a dangerous situation.
It isn't chaos. It's your subjective assessment that you are now sharing the road with another, different vehicle and that this is a problem. That's your choice to make, and the one you're making now is not invalid or indefensible. It does, however, remain a choice.
Of course that's chaos. Cars approaching an intersection have a really small set of things they're more than 1-in-100,000 likely to do. It's fairly predictable. Bikes can do and in fact do all kinds of different things. It's way, way harder to read their intentions or likely next actions. The space of what they might do includes basically all the same things a car might do, plus a whole bunch of other things. All while they're extremely vulnerable.
I don't get your point in emphasizing that this is a choice. Some kind of Stoicism kick? Like sure OK yes all emotions are a choice, sorta, kinda, OK, I got there and actually did the reading literally decades ago, I get what you mean. I'm trying to express that bikes being on a road introduce a whole lot of extra stress for drivers that yet-another-car does not, as a reason that many drivers even if they are very careful around bicyclists and do not hate them at all are still bummed out when they see one on the road.
[EDIT: FWIW I'm about 50% as sad to see a motorcycle as I am a bicyclist, for similar reasons that they have a wider set of things they are likely enough to do that I need to worry about it (the small size is a lot of this, in both cases) and in fact do insane shit all the time (I've certainly seen a lot more wheelies-while-speeding-in-traffic from motorcycles than bicycles, LOL). Only 50% as sad because they can keep pace with flow-of-traffic, which makes for less passing with extreme speed differences, and they're far less likely to do something truly nuts at an intersection (though I still can hardly believe "lane splitting" is legal, it seems batshit crazy to me)]
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> It's the poorest county in the state and would bring in much needed money. What money? Power bills won't go down. The solar panel factories aren't in that county. The installers will be brought in from out of state contractors.
Power bills will go down. Solar electricity is by far the cheapest form.
Source: the butt tons of wind farms that sell their power to the state next door and the fact that our power bill has doubled in that time frame.
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This is not in line with current scientific beliefs at all, and most biologists will confirm that with you. Just like most things in biology and life in general, sex exists on a spectrum. We also distinguish between sex and gender. On the biological front alone, one person's sexual phenotype (what they appear to be) is determined by several factors, including but not limited to: how many chromosomes, how many are X o…
What specific criteria are you using to place individuals at different points on this spectrum, and how do you calculate if an individual is closer to one end or the other of this spectrum compared to another individual? Which evidence supports these decisions?
Given that most species reproduce sexually, how does this concept work for the vast diversity of non-human species - including ones with a hermaphroditic reproductive strategy?
If a biologist discovers a new sexually reproducing species where the two halves of the reproductive system are embodied separately, how does she work out which are the archetypal females and which are the archetypal males, and how does she determine where she should place any later sampling of the population across the sex spectrum?
I would hope that anyone who confidently proclaims that sex exists on a spectrum will have ready answers for all of these challenges.
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Texas is about as red as it gets and leads the nation in renewable energy including solar. Red or blue, if the gov can setup a situation where renewable energy is profitable then nature will take its course. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-tops-us-states...
There's a very specific reason (or quirk) as to why Texas leads the nation in renewable energy -- ERCOT. Basically, 90% of Texas' electric load is serviced by in-state assets, and they have very few interconnections to the rest of the grid. The electricity dispatch curve is priced on the margin, on the cost to operate the last-fired generator (natural gas), and ERCOT has moved to grow solar as a way to reduce prices.…
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Yeah, in Oconto county Wisconsin, residents are all up in arms about a solar farm going up. It's the poorest county in the state and would bring in much needed money. The arguments against it are "this destroys farmland", "who will clean the snow off of it in winter", "I don't like how it looks", "static electricity will kill the crops around it", "it will raise the temperature of the surrounding area", "you can't re…
> "who will clean the snow off of it in winter" This is something I don’t really get. There’s always concern around change of course. But tending to renewables sounds so much nicer than fossil fuel issues. Like clearing snow off the panels doesn’t sound fun exactly, but it is outdoors… realistically for these giant fields of panels it should be a fairly mechanized process, so somewhat low impact… compare to black lun…
Oconto County averages between 4 and 5 feet of snow every winter. You need pretty heavy duty equipment to move that much snow out of a large field.
Most of Wisconsin doesn't actually get that much snow, though.
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It isn't chaos. It's your subjective assessment that you are now sharing the road with another, different vehicle and that this is a problem. That's your choice to make, and the one you're making now is not invalid or indefensible. It does, however, remain a choice.
They greatly expand the plausible possibility-space of what might happen, and in-fact they use large parts of that space regularly. Cars might do things they shouldn't but the list of things-they-shouldn't is fairly small in practice, as far as what you actually see happening with enough regularity to worry about, and their size keeps them from doing things like passing the stopped vehicle in front of them, shifting…
On the other hand I think lane splitting motorcycles are still surprising to most motorists, and surprise leads to a lot of accidents.
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PV panels are typically angled to catch the sun better, and they're smooth and dark... snow slides off by itself if the sun is shining (and if the sun isn't shining, you aren't losing much by having the panels covered).
Snow only rolls off after a lite dusting. If there's a foot of snow on the panels they don't catch any sun, don't get warm, and it doesn't melt off. More than about 3 inches needs to be manually cleared.
the sad thing about this data is how politicized clean energy has become. the blue states have a lot of energy solar - while the red ones are sparse. the red ones get a lot of sun while the blue ones don't.
Of course, as others have pointed out Texas is helping with renewables. On the other hand, at the federal level Republican admins tend to cut renewable subsidies and that sort of thing. Red states have a lot of open space and ought to be ideologically in favor is loose regulations; it would be kind of nice if Republican national politicians would fully embrace cronyism and identify renewable subsidies as an easy way…
I think a lot of (honest) smart people would say that there are circumstances where even for those of us who love green energy (raises hand) subsidies aren't the most productive use of tax dollars. It can distort markets and can make the subsidized industry wasteful and uncompetitive, begetting reliance on the subsidy instead of pressuring them to compete.
Solar and wind in 2025 aren't some fragile, experimental things that would die without subsidies. At this point they ought to be able to compete normally, and they can. Given a high percentage of the government dollars spent today aren't even tax dollars, they're borrowed money, at now-increasing interest rates, for our grandchildren to deal with, I'd rather not subsidize businesses that can get by on their own now.
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Snow only rolls off after a lite dusting. If there's a foot of snow on the panels they don't catch any sun, don't get warm, and it doesn't melt off. More than about 3 inches needs to be manually cleared.
I wonder if you could just run them backwards for a while to clear them. Use the V*I loss.
Often exceeding the energy gained in the winter.