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Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

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Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#571

Post by tzs »

mlrtime wrote: post #529
zingar wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it changes your point, but the other day I met a republican who said he doesn’t think climate change is a thing but peak oil, now that’s something to worry about. The longevity of this plus the “no anthropogenic climate change” nonsense is astounding. Armchair climate sceptics are happy to seriously stick to talking points that are so out of date that even the oil industry doesn’t use them anymore.

So you met a person, they told you their Party Affiliation, then went to tell you how it isn't "real". Sorry I don't believe your paraphrasing of this person's real thoughts and ideas. I'm sure these people exist, but it doesn't mean anything. I could equally go find someone crazy saying the world is going to end this year.

> I'm sure these people exist, but it doesn't mean anything.

One of those people is the current President of the United States.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#572

Post by protocolture »

dalyons wrote: post #487
protocolture wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And thank god they have this incentive alignment! Chinas greentech buildout and export is the only thing with a chance of getting us out of this climate mess. Imagine how fucked we’d be if they had their own oil. IIRC that list of companies that polluted the most on the planet, 1 and 2 were Chinese state owned entities. China Coal and China Petroleum from memory. OFC they are dwarfed IIRC by the US Military.

sure. But today china is the #1 producer of solar panels (80% of global production capacity), #1 producer of wind turbines (40%), #1 producer of batteries (~80%), #1 producer of EVs (75%). Noone has done more for global clean energy, and its not even close. Sure they polluted a lot up until now, but honesty who cares about the past, times change fast.

Oh I dont care so much. Its more that:

A. Where would we be without China, well with a significantly reduced problem. But they are doing their part and doing it well.

B. That list gets used as a bludgeon against free enterprise and a great deal of the entities on the list dont represent free enterprise.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#573

Post by nandomrumber »

youngtaff wrote: post #516
nandomrumber wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t consider that oil & coal are doomed and destroying the world to be green-agenda talking points?

The fact that burning oil, coal and gas contribute to pollution and are one of the causes of climate change is a scientific reality Scientists at Chevron came to this conclusion in the 70s

Destroying the world doesn’t come across as even a little hyperbolic?

Contributing to climate change sounds reasonable.

DESTROYING THE WORLD!!! dun dun duunnnnn.

Hyperbole. Get a grip Greta.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#574

Post by triceratops »

Saline9515 wrote: post #361
thatsit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar panels etc. will last decades and can and will be recycled afterwards. Further, most materials needed for renewable energy infrastructure (iron, lithium) are highly abundant on earth. Most of the suppliers work to use cheaper (=more abundant) materials in their products, replacing lithium with sodium in batteries and silver with copper in solar panels. Wind turbine blades are produced now using re-solvable resi…

Wind turbines are not recyclable[1]. Besides, the foundations use a massive amount of concrete (nowadays often extracted from the seabed, with all the problematic ecological consequences involved), that stays forever in the ground. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23527...

Curious you're so worried about "ecological consequences" but only when it's window power.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#575

Post by mindslight »

raziel2p wrote: post #494
ninkendo wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president. I remember that day vividly. It was the middle of the Great Recession, it was the worst our economy was doing in a long time. Millions were out of work. People were looking to the government to see what the plan was to get the country back on track. A reporter asks McConnell what the senate’s number one priority wa…

have democrats not made similar statements about Trump, him being a danger to democracy and such?

Sit down.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#576

Post by mindslight »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #452
peyton wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t help that he showed up at his first couple Senate meetings gloating about winning the election. And tried to set working hours for his former colleagues. Among other things.

The audacity! I’m clutching my pearls. Obstructionism as a core tenet of the (former) Republican platform is reprehensible, and retrospectively probably led to quite a bit of discontent with the government’s inability to address problems that Americans face. That same discontent fomented the current reactionary swing, so in the end maybe they really got what they wanted. Shameful.

Right on. That's probably the worst part of the debilitating self-own we're currently going through. Even if conservatives (aka Democrats) gain back Congress, then gain back the Presidency, then overcome their controlled opposition dynamic where enough inevitably defect and undermine anything meaningful from getting done, so much has been broken that we will be lucky if they even manage to stop the hemorrhaging. Even if the Republicans that got "dragged into" the fascist fever start to have a bit of self-reflection to realize the damage they've done. We've got what, maybe 8 years until the malcontents' dog whistle refrains start to have credence again and then we're right back to staring down the destructionists - with a trail having already been blazed.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#577

Post by gregbot »

Rover222 wrote: post #567
gregbot wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. Here is the study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03062...

That's an 11 year old study that is no longer correct based on the modern electric grid. Also focusing on only carbon footprint is misleading. EVs pollute far less overall, even on the 2015 electric grid.

I await your updated study to back up your claims

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#578

Post by gregbot »

pfdietz wrote: post #560
gregbot wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. “Old” plants. This plant is “old” so we could never build more like it. What an argument. And no, they would not be “considerably more expensive” because we wouldnt build a fleet of them until uranium was expensive enough that they would be cheaper. Thats why most countries have put off breeder reactor development not because they were “failures” whatever that is supposed to mean.

"Old" as in "we built it and discovered it's not wanted". The French basically gave up on the idea of fast reactors (as did the Japanese, although their fast reactor program appears to have been an excuse to obtain a stockpile of separated plutonium in case they need to make bombs). There's no market for them. The Russians have continued to try, but they're selling LWRs. The big problem with fission is that it's too…

>There's no market for them

In an economic sense, when compared to burner reactors, this is correct. As the rise of wind and solar has shown however, political will and popularity matter more than pure economics. Burner reactors are more of a 22nd century technology, assuming the grid storage problem doesn’t get solved by then and we just go full renewable on economics. But nothing is set in stone

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#579

Post by youngtaff »

nandomrumber wrote: post #573
youngtaff wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that burning oil, coal and gas contribute to pollution and are one of the causes of climate change is a scientific reality Scientists at Chevron came to this conclusion in the 70s

Destroying the world doesn’t come across as even a little hyperbolic? Contributing to climate change sounds reasonable. DESTROYING THE WORLD!!! dun dun duunnnnn. Hyperbole. Get a grip Greta.

You forgot your meds again?
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