> Imperialism always prefers to deal with theocracies rather than communists.
Communist regimes are also a form of theocracy (proof can be found in the writings of any communist leader). It's just that, unlike other theocratic regimes, other countries have to deal with millions of starving refugees (because the communist faith requires banning food production or something like that, I don't know much about their religion).
> your fellow citizens to get killed by a foreign Power so that your political views can prevail
What does the assassination of DICTATORS have to do with all of this? Dictatorship is less about citizenship and more about a form of slavery. Resisting the killing of a dictator in any way, regardless of who is trying to kill him or why, is treason to a nation.
Maybe the President should have taken that into account when lying publicly about the impacts that he admitted in private conversation, or mocking and undermining expert advice?
I'd rather we held Trump accountable for his many crimes.
I find it astounding that the U.S. population aren't storming Washington and demanding his removal. Other countries are removing people from positions who were involved with Epstein due to the massive corruption and yet the USA seems fine with allowing Trump to continue destroying everything he touches.
Probably in all of it. Iran wouldn't have a MAD arsenal, they'd have a small handful that they could pop on a ballistic. We know we can shoot down Iran's missiles. And we know they can't reach America. I'm entirely unconvinced that we wouldn't have launched an attack on Iran even if they had nuclear weapons, because we think we can intercept them, and if we can't, they aren't hitting the homeland.
The difference between shooting down a conventionally armed missile and shooting down a nuclear armed missile is that the former will explode in the air or not at all, whereas the latter is quite likely to still be able to detonate when it hits the ground.
And on the off chance this defense doesn’t work? No system is perfect. Put another way, would the risk calculation for an attack on Iran be as easy as it is right now?
The point of having nuclear capabilities is to make the risk calculation more difficult. It doesn’t mean you need to have state of the art capabilities.
> First, the difference isn’t that big in the economically stronger EU countries
It's exactly that big. It's not as big for people with low qualifications, but the more highly qualified the specialist, the greater the difference.
> Second, you need to factor in cost of living, which by most accounts is lower.
But here the difference really isn't that big.
> Third, meaningful labor laws and a shared appreciation for work-life balance.
This works more against EU rather than for them. Peak tech skills aren't usually acquired through laziness around and following meaningful labor laws, even in the EU.
> while we celebrate business acumen, we don’t fetishize wealth
An excuse for poor people (who still fetishize wealth)
It may seem that these are very similar processes, but this is only if you do not take into account the bribes from Intel to specific officials and their relatives who make decisions about subsidizing Intel.
SK Hynix, Samsung, or Micron don't treat good people well enough to give them taxpayer money.
> but this is only if you do not take into account the bribes from Intel to specific officials and their relatives who make decisions about subsidizing Intel.
Bribes? Sheesh, HN has gone insane.
Brandolini's Law is out of control here. You are making a bold fucking claim. From the tone of your post, it seems pointless to ask if you have any evidence. From and outsider's view, I would say the German political system is much less corrupted by lobbyists compared to the United States. Do you say the same about the CHIPS Act in the United States?
> I would say the German political system is much less corrupted by lobbyists compared to the United States.
I highly doubt it. I'm certainly no expert on Germany, but has Germany's bureaucratic machine spent decades destroying its own energy sector to buy energy from Russia, funding the war machine of Putin's totalitarian dictatorship?
And not just by buying these resources, but by OVERPAYING for them many times over. I just opened a chart of the prices at which Germany bought natural gas from Russia before the war with Ukraine, and it's wild, it is several times more expensive than Germany is now paying for gas delivered from the other side of the globe on tiny ships. It was a direct subsidizing of this war.
And then you look at these high-ranking (and not so high-ranking) bureaucrats who made all these decisions... And literally all of their families got richer during the time these decisions were made, by tens (and sometimes hundreds) of millions. There's zero accountability, zero media coverage, and it's all being hushed up to such an extent that I can't think of any other explanation other than EVERYONE was taking the money. We are literally talking about the level of existence of a centralized totalitarian machine for the forceful silencing of anyone who tries to talk about this topic.
So do I say the same about the CHIPS Act in the US? Probably. But the level of corruption seen in Germany – pervasive, bloody, destructive – is simply unimaginable in the US.
> 1) Solar is (far) cheaper than fossil fuel's now
No, that's simply not true.
It's cheaper for MOST of the year, but overall, it's more expensive. Because you can't just tell people, "Well, now, during this cold January, please don't waste electricity because our panels are producing almost nothing." You either need batteries that store energy for weeks of consumption, or backup with fossil fuels, and in any case, that makes solar panels more expensive than fossil fuels.
> Trump is somehow making it worse while also letting children starve thanks to cutting USAID.
It's very strange. In all cases of interaction with the USAID that I know about directly from those interacting with it, and not from media sources, in EVERY case it was liberal propaganda or direct anti-Trump propaganda. And none of the starving children that I know about directly from those who interacted with them, and not from the media, have ever received any food aid from.
I know, of course, that this is an anecdotal case, but I prefer to trust people with whom I am at least superficially acquainted, rather than media companies that are apparently run by pedophiles.
> 5) Why in the hell would anyone WANT the manufacturing jobs? The only reasons humans have them is that humans (in some places) are cheaper than robots.
Because the era of US hegemony is ending, and at some point you simply won't be able to live off the rest of the world. At that point, you'll either have production or you'll simply starve to death. Because food (and robots) don't fall from the sky. And if you don't produce it (and don't take it from the rest of the world through your hegemony), you'll starve and die.
> Billionaire money just idles non-productively most of the time
American workers spend as much money EACH YEAR as billionaires accumulated over generations (mostly in the form of productive capacity, not idling in the piles)
> and I have to say that I'm better off now than 10 years ago. Maybe I just made better choices?
The best choice is to rob the rest of the world and live off them? Well, congratulations on making the better choice that allows you, unlike the REST OF THE WORLD, not work for less than $2 an hour (as 90% of the Earth's population does, thanks to American hegemony).
You need backup with hydrocarbon fuels synthesized from water and CO2, like all the living beings have done for billions of years.
Storing energy in hydrocarbons has a lower efficiency for short term storage, but it has a better efficiency for long term storage, in which case batteries would auto discharge.
So energy storage must use a combination of batteries for short term (for a few days at most) together with methods useful for long term (from a few months to many years), including hydrocarbon synthesis, pumped water, etc.
Synthesizing hydrocarbons from concentrated CO2 has already been done at large scale almost a century ago. Now there are much better methods, e.g. using the electrolysis of CO2.
The most difficult part remains capturing the CO2 from normal air and not from exhaust gases where it is concentrated.
This is a difficult engineering problem, but one solved by bacteria billions of years ago, and which probably would already have some good solution if any serious and well-funded research effort would have been done in this direction, instead of only talking about how it would be desirable but without any concrete action.
> You either need batteries that store energy for weeks of consumption, or backup with fossil fuels, and in any case, that makes solar panels more expensive than fossil fuels.
I love the wild mental gymnastics and cherry picking data these people put themselves through in order to delude themselves in to believing solar is cheaper than gas.
How can it be, when you need to build both. Or freeze in the dark.
As you said, in practice you either need batteries that don’t exist and would be prohibitively expensive because they would sit idle most the year where only hours to days of backup are required, but in winter you need weeks of storage and the output from the panels are significantly reduced so you need to massively overbuild…
OR you need to build gas peaker plants, which also sit idle most the year, but need to be run frequently and maintained to ensure they’re ready to run when needed.
The real world data is available for anyone who wants to run the numbers.
I was in Adelaide and participated in the discussions where Dr Barry Brook[1] and others ran the numbers over ten years ago. Exhaustively ran the numbers, both with real world data from recently built solar and wind, and optimistic projections of future improvements
The fundamentals haven’t changed. Even if the panels themselves were free, the amount or steel and concrete required to replace total global energy requirements with solar and wind is… it’s incomprehensible.
If I recall correctly, it worked out to requiring something absurd like more copper, steel, and concrete, than humans have produced to date (2013 figures) since the start of the Industrial Revolution, every year for the next fifty years just to replace existing energy production and distribution infrastructure, and in so doing we would double or triple atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. We’d then have to work out how to pull those emissions back out of the atmosphere, which wound require further resource use to produce the infrastructure to generate the energy required to extract and sequester the carbon dioxide.
Compare to what we’re doing now which has barely scratched the surface in replacing global energy requirements, with no reduction in carbon dioxide levels.
It all makes a pretty strong case for existing nuclear technology (Gen IV / Gen IV+) to give us time (hundreds of years with existing know uranium reserves) to perfect fast breeder technology so we can use Thorium as nuclear fuel for thousands of years.
A big part of it is the industry standard for using the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCoE) as the benchmark metric. By that metric, solar IS the lowest cost power source.
But that definition doesn't take into account availability. This wasn't a problem when all electricity sources were highly available by default. You can burn coal or run the hydro turbines any minute of the year. With the rise of often-unavailable renewable sources like solar and wind that definition is now insufficient and under counts the true like-for-like cost of solar.
By any metric which takes into account minor availability requirements (eg. supplies electricity at night) solar badly loses its cost advantage. It gets even worse if the metric is the still important "deepest winter night" scenario.
> By any metric which takes into account minor availability requirements (eg. supplies electricity at night) solar badly loses its cost advantage. It gets even worse if the metric is the still important "deepest winter night" scenario.
This is wildly incorrect. Batteries have gotten cheaper, solar has gotten cheaper, and even accounting for storage solar now wins by a wide margin even in "wintery" climates.[0]
Ten years ago you were right, but the cost has been falling by a huge percentage every year for about 15 years straight now. There will never be another time when it makes sense to dig up fossil fuels, ship them all over the world, process them, and then set them on fire when we can just slap up a solar panel and store the power for something approximating free on a 20+ year timeline.
Even if we discount the tax breaks (which we should since Trump is a doofus) both the LCOE and LCOS (levelized cost of storage) of PV + battery are lower than for natural gas, coal, nuclear, etc. Wind beats it by a small amount but less of our land is suitable for wind.
That presentation doesn't support your claim. The closest it gets is that solar attached to 4 hours of batteries is, ignoring tax credits, about (it's hard to read accurately from the graph) ~8% more expensive than combined-cycle plants.
But 4 hours isn't near a full night. At least 12 hours of battery storage would be necessary for that, possibly more depending on light angles and the relative supply-versus-demand loading at different times of day.
Roughly from the graph on page 8, that 4 hours of battery costs $22/MWh over solar alone. Presuming no further solar panels were needed, extending that 4 hours to 12 to cover the night would cost around $44/MWh more, bringing the total cost of 24h-reliable solar+battery to around $97/MWh -- WITH tax credits. Without tax credits it would be $20-$30 higher, but the graph is too low resolution to be precise. That compares poorly to the $65/MWh for combined-cycle for one single night -- which gets no tax credits accounted for in that graph.
You are literally wrong about almost everything you've just said and have been for many years.[0]
There's a great video on Youtube from Technology Connections on youtube if that's more your speed. He talks a bit about how you're being lied to about it regularly and explains the technology a bit.[1] You really should watch it as he explicitly addresses each of your issues here including "what about the batteries."
Solar is literally, and provabley, cheaper than gas. Including the cost of batteries, which are recyclable. That's why something like 96% of investment in new energy is in solar or wind now. It's not activists, it's literally the cheapest way to do it now.
> over ten years ago.
There's your problem. The cost has been coming down by over 90% per year for the last decade. It WAS more expensive, a decade ago. The fundamentals HAVE changed. The panels ARE almost free, and the amount of steel and concrete are negligible.
> great video on Youtube from Technology Connections
I don't understand why you're trying to cite conspiracy theories propaganda that's aimed at people with double-digit IQs. His videos are filled with distortions and manipulations, and do not address the real challenges facing the energy sector.
And no, there's no mention of batteries there; it's literally a straw man fight, showing their applicability to daily solar power generation cycles while almost completely ignoring their applicability to annual cycles.
> Solar is literally, and provabley, cheaper than gas. Including the cost of batteries
This is simply not true, considering that people actually need more electricity during the few weeks of the year when solar panels produce the least. It's precisely these few weeks that make solar energy more expensive than fossil fuels.
Just take a weekly chart of the actual energy output of the panels for the year, and calculate the price relative to the worst week
I don't understand why we need to engage in conspiracy theories and pretend that humanity hasn't abandoned fossil fuels because the Jews who rule the world love oil or something (and not because it's simply cheaper).
> That's why something like 96% of investment in new energy is in solar or wind now.
That's because the pedophiles who run the world can charge me 30 cents for electricity instead of the 3 cents it would cost if it were generated by fossil fuels.
> And no, there's no mention of batteries there; it's literally a straw man fight, showing their applicability to daily solar power generation cycles while almost completely ignoring their applicability to annual cycles.
Why is it every single time someone in this thread speaks up they are just plain wrong?
Here is a direct link to the part about batteries. He talks about them for about 15 minutes which is something like a quarter of the video. There is even a chapter mark to take you to that part. He also mentions them half a dozen more times throughout the video and warns in the beginning that people like you will chime in with misinformation without watching the video. You proved him right.
He talks about that too. I'm not going to bother linking. Actually watch the video or move on.
> Just take a weekly chart of the actual energy output of the panels for the year, and calculate the price relative to the worst week
I don't have to. The United States government did and even considering the cost of storage, it's still cheaper than all the alternatives. Has been for years now. See my earlier comments for links.
Private investors have done the same math, and that's why almost all new electricity generation being built is solar. It's the basically free money. Nobody with a brain can legitimately think that digging goop out of the desert, doing expensive processing to it, shipping it to the other side of the earth, and literally lighting it on fire (repeatedly forever) is more efficient than "slap up a solar cell and a battery then enjoy free energy for 20-40 years".
> hat's because the pedophiles who run the world can charge me 30 cents for electricity instead of the 3 cents it would cost if it were generated by fossil fuels.
Why would Donald Trump do that? He promised the oil execs anything they wanted for a billion dollars. Again, see my other replies for the receipts on that one. And see Trump inviting Epstein to his wedding for the other part.
*EDIT* To save you the clicks:
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/pdf/... <-- Note that this specifically includes LCOS as well as LCOE. That's the cost of storage, and even with it solar + battery still beats everything but wind by WIDE margins.
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