Good man. I agree 100% - the more warming we get, the bigger of a difference each .1 degree makes. So we should only get more aggressive about climate change the worse it gets instead of giving up.

Indeed, what the hell is this article?

I’d like to relay this comment from hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36834046

It seems there’s news of a battery breakthrough every week. I’ve learned to temper expectations, because so many “breakthroughs” turn out to be dead ends. Because it’s not enough for a battery to be incredibly light, or made of abundant materials, or last for ten thousand cycles. It needs to be good at many things and at least okay at most things.

E.g.—

• How much capacity per dollar?

• How much capacity per kilogram?

• How much capacity per litre?

• How quickly can it be charged?

• How quickly can it be discharged?

• How much energy is lost between charging and discharging?

• How predisposed is it to catching fire?

• How available are the materials needed to manufacture it?

• How available are the tools/skills required to manufacture it?

• How resilient is it to mechanical stress, e.g. vibration?

• How much does performance degrade per cycle?

• How much does performance degrade when stored at a high state of charge?

• How much does performance degrade when stored at a low state of charge?

• How much does performance drop at high temperatures?

• How much does performance drop at low temperatures?

• How well can it be recycled at end-of-life?

A sufficiently bad answer for any one of these could utterly exclude it from contention as an EV battery. A battery which scores well on everything except mechanical resilience is a non-starter, for example. Though it might be great for stationary storage. I’m only a layperson and this list is what I came up with just a few minutes of layperson thought. I’m sure someone with more familiarity with battery technology could double the length of this list. But the point is, when you daydream about some hypothetical future battery tech, you need to appreciate just how well today’s lithium chemistries score in so many areas

While I appreciate the sentiment, I think it’s unrealistic to expect the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere to decrease. For that, we already would need net 0 emissions AND some sort of carbon capture system in place.

For now, what must decrease is greenhouse gas emissions, and the article admits that that is what happened (but the decrease was so low it could be attributed to natural fluctuations).

I did not realize this is a month old. I certainly did not know about this, but I figure this piece of information probably can’t be overstated for now :-)

Im not sure what you are talking about, carbon taxes are one of the best ways to mitigate co2 emissions.

If two producers produce the same good, but one of them emits less co2, that one will have higher profit margins.

This is just one of the levers to nudge industries (who, let’s be real, are the main polluters) towards cleaner operations, and as far as I am informed, it’s one of the most effective ways.

So this is good news. It’s good. We have to celebrate that, too, lest we all suffer from doomerism. Can more be done? Yes, there is always more to be done.

But is this a good, important step?

Definitely.

This is the correct answer, this shit is „your carbon footprint“ all over again

Same, I actually refunded it after 2 hours because I was already bored.

And I like space games.

You are right, but a corporation is not run by robots. There are individuals making these decisions, and they must - and will be - held accountable.

Of course it is complex. A few points:

If you ban a party in Germany, it’s automatically bans all „clones“ of that party, and all of its members in high functions can’t participate in these clones. Failure to comply would lead to an immediate ban of the clone. While I agree that eventually, a new far right with other people will probably form, it would take years for them to reorganize and they would have to be extremely careful. I believe that a ban would probably yield at least 10 years of far-right free politics.

Appeasement of the far right has failed every time in history, they will cannibalize every attempt to include them in any sort of „rational“ discourse. Banning parties is a lever that exists precisely because of Germany‘s history. IMHO it sends a strong message to all the non-far-right people (of which there are approx. 60-70%) that bullshit will not be tolerated.

In contrast, doing nothing signals that what the AfD is doing is fine and will move the discourse farther and farther right.

Stopping funding and preventing them from entering the Parliament is precisely what a ban would do, so I am not sure why the difference is between that and what you are suggesting.

AfD politics violate the constitution in numerous ways, and the German institute for human rights says the party could be banned:

https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/14/should-germany-ban-afd-what-impact-could-this-have

Politically, it’s of course a risky maneuver, but the correct one if you ask me.

This is not a trial of trump.

This is a trial of the American justice system.

Good Post overall, no need to attack my sanity though :-)

I agree with most of this in principle. Having 100% base load with renewables is an aspirational goal - for now - but nevertheless achievable, I believe. You will find that the sun does, in fact, always shine (somewhere on the planet), and that wind almost always blows (somewhere on the planet). Admittedly, wind is more prevalent throughout the day than sun, but still.

There have been recent discoveries of superconductors that might help transport the electricity where it is needed. But again, this is all in the medium to long term future.

But of course, short to medium term, and long term too, energy storage will play a huge role. I expect massive development in this area, as this is being iterated on anyway, eg. for EVs.

Any sources on any of that? That’s a lot of „you just know that“ information, and I do consider myself well informed. I am not from France though.

Anyway:

1. neither of those points addresses the costs of energy production I quoted above. Those are, to the best of my knowledge, approximately correct. It may very well have been that nuclear was competitive in the past, it isn’t anymore.

2. getting scammed by some middle man seems to be a fate that all modern democracies share, though who the middle man is varies country by country :-)

3. I consider the marginal cost thing to be one of the best acts from the EU. Maybe not in France, but overall it rewards the most efficient energy producer massively, which currently is solar. Those companies can use the excess money to reinvest.

Nuclear plants are cooled with river water, and that water is getting too hot:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/warming-rivers-threaten-frances-already-tight-power-supply-2022-07-15/

As far as I can tell, there is no time with no sun AND no wind: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Energy_statistics_-_latest_trends_from_monthly_data

In fact, there are multiple studies claiming that you can very well supply base load with renewables, for instance this one:

https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf

One other problem with nuclear is that it has to run at a fixed output level, and can’t be scaled down if there is eg. lots of solar power being generated. In this case, you have to scale down renewables to make sure you can use the nuclear power, which makes it clash with the eventual goal to power everything with renewables.

Im quoting 2022 because this was last year. As in, the most recent year.

I don’t disagree that we should have phased out coal instead of nuclear first. But what has happened has happened. I do disagree that we need a „nuclear renessaince“ now, because neither the economics nor the timelines work out at this point in time. Solar and wind is cheaper, faster to build, and more flexible as you can iterate on their designs MUCH more quickly than nuclear plants. That’s the main reason why solar panel efficiency is going through the roof.

Why cannibalize the investments in what obviously works?

What do you mean by cheapest energy? Nuclear is more expensive than renewables, if you factor in construction and maintenance cost. It only works because it has been massively subdisidized.

Or do you have some source that this energy is „cheaper“? Please be aware that France caps their electricity prices internally and subsidizes them with taxes (which is fine, but makes the prices incomparable to other countries).

„The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.“

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J

EG here: https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/electricity-exporter-for-42-years-france-became-a-net-importer-in-2022/

France has been importing more electricity than exporting in 2022 because their nuclear reactors can’t perform in the heat resulting from climate change. And this is more likely to happen again as each year becomes hotter.

I’m not sure where this fetishism for France‘s nuclear energy is coming from.