A country can commit to 300 years of wind energy, temporarily harming a bit of nature.
Once a better solution has been found, the land can be freed for the nature to take over again.
We have no issues with stealing a couple of square miles of nature in order to pave it for our cities or to use it for farming.
Once you remove the wind turbines, the harm you've done to the nature was minimal: production of the turbines, used area and generated noise, minimal pollution of the area, the troubles of recycling them. That's mostly it.
You don't have this with oil, nor with current-age nuclear.
Also, we've already accepted the noise of cars, trucks, motorcycles and planes.
So I really don't get what they are protesting about, specially in Germany.
mfld · 38m ago
I assume most protests are driven by a Not In My Backyard attitude.
woooooo · 3m ago
It's worse than that, its culture war driven in a lot of cases. Doesn't matter if it's anywhere close to their back yard.
mcv · 3m ago
Yeah, but those people still have roads, large buildings and factories in their backyard.
CalRobert · 1h ago
Germany is famously abhorrent of change. "We've always done it this way" isn't used ironically.
AlexandrB · 1h ago
Unless the change is shutting down perfectly good nuclear power plants[1]. The energy transition in Germany has been handled horribly for reasons I can't understand.
> The energy transition in Germany has been handled horribly for reasons I can't understand.
Former East German political agents still working for Russia.
CalRobert · 19m ago
They were scared after Fukushima, a nuclear disaster that if anything showed how resilient nukes can be compared to coal, which just gets away with killing thousands of people quietly. Perhaps they’re better at vibes than they are at maths.
pydry · 7m ago
It's wild how much shit Germany got for turning off gas, coal and nuclear power plants (which comprised about ~8% of their power) while Poland running on ~80-90% coal for decades without changing anything was nbd.
It's almost as if the outrage was astroturfed into existence by the nuclear lobby using similar tactics to the oil lobby.
oblio · 2m ago
Poland was much poorer and less significant economically.
ACCount37 · 42m ago
Germany and piss poor energy policy - name a more iconic duo.
The way I understand it, Germany had a horrid mix of anti-nuclear eco-activists, local coal lobbyists and Gazprom's natural gas lobbyists. The politicians not included in any of the above were too toothless, and couldn't fight through this bullshit and secure good outcomes regardless.
Qwertious · 9m ago
The problem was "compromise" - essentially as part of forming government the Greens and the CDU (Angela Merkel's party) agreed to an energy policy where they would phase out nuclear and replace it with a fuckton of renewables. But the actual govt did only the former without the latter (despite the previous agreement and the Greens' protest of Where Are The Fucking Renewables), thus leaving only coal and gas.
Leaving nuclear in place would be good, going heavily into renewables would also be good, but doing neither would be idiotic, and somehow that's what they did.
ZeroGravitas · 34m ago
And yet, despite multiple attempts by those on the political right to slow it down, they've powered ahead with reducing coal and gas usage.
Some of those critics focus on nuclear
(Like AfD: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/populist-afd-sand-gears...) and some of those pretend to be angry about the slowness of Germanys transition but it doesn't really add up to anyone who pays attention to the local facts. It's just a meme to get people angry at the left and/or environmentalists, while the right openly and continually sabotage progress.
CalRobert · 18m ago
Why all the asinine “atomkraft? Nein danke!” Signs? The policy seems designed by 70 year old hippies.
nicoburns · 56m ago
> Once you remove the wind turbines, the harm you've done to the nature was minimal
You probably don't even need to remove the turbines if you don't want to? I imagine nature would take over just fine with them left there.
tialaramex · 36m ago
Giant metal towers make a dead tall tree look harmless by comparison. If that topples - and eventually it will - it will kill everybody in its path. So, we're probably not going to just leave on-shore wind turbines to rot.
Off-shore definitely. The UK already had a bunch of decaying archaic man-made structures off shore because of World War II, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunsell_Forts which I went to look at a few weeks back. Pieces of the forts clearly break off and disappear into the sea without incident.
Moldoteck · 1h ago
Isn't the idea of npp decommissioning to leave the area as it was before npp?
Environmental impact of different techs was described in UNECE report I think
ACCount37 · 1h ago
Uneconomical. The best way to dispose of things like the weakly radioactive reactor hulls is often to simply leave them when they are.
They aren't particularly dangerous, and they don't leach contaminants. So you just bury them so no one can access them too easily. But it does require leaving the sealed reactor buildings in place - even if you can reuse the rest of the land and the exclusion area.
Moldoteck · 1h ago
I think it's still done as full dismantling (but maybe not all countries?). French superphenix will be basically erased. Something similar is happening to german plants like Isar 2
Some countries may have postponed decommissioning because it's cheaper to wait a bit
Some countries allow recycling of some stuff, even concrete, like Italy
throw0101c · 1h ago
Always reminded of the Tom Toro (2012) New Yorker cartoon:
> Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
I recommend you put that one on your list instead because Instagram is very hostile to people trying to see anything without an account. The one on The New Yorker website is open to all and on the Internet Archive.
Thank you for sharing the interview. I hadn’t come across it before. The cartoon is more popular than I realised, which makes me glad.
justin66 · 58m ago
The Instagram one is entirely a single image so people will find it easier to share via social media.
latexr · 39m ago
Not for anyone without an Instagram account, which is most people on social media. But sure, here are several alternatives as single images for you to share on social media. Took me no time at all to take a screenshot and upload to a bunch of websites. Take your pick.
This is a lie - I have never had an instagram account and I was able to hop on there and copy the image.
(it might be of interest to some that the image shared by the artist on Instagram has the text justified how the artist intended and the New Yorker's text caption can look different depending on the device, but I can't pretend that I care too much about that...)
> Take your pick.
Why did you bother? I'm fully capable of googling a famous image and I'm sure everyone else reading this stuff is.
latexr · 1m ago
> I have never had an instagram account and I was able to hop on there and copy the image.
This time you were. I get sent Instagram links semi-regularly and it’s a gamble when they’ll work. And there are two other people on this thread who replied directly to, before your comment, saying they wouldn’t have bothered to even try. Consider not invaliding others’ experiences.
> it might be of interest to some that the image shared by the artist on Instagram has the text justified how the artist intended
Is it, now? Then why the text is justified entirely differently on their own website, and their Etsy store, and their official link on Cartoon Collections?
And look at that, it’s the exact same crop I chose for my screenshot. Almost as if I tried to respect the author’s choice.
> Why did you bother?
Perhaps cut it a bit with the hostility? It’s not like my screenshot harmed you in any way.
SapporoChris · 16m ago
I found it quite truthful, but I also blacklist social media in my host file.
I recommend blacklisting social media, it makes the world a better place.
justin66 · 11m ago
It's not a bad idea.
jbstack · 50m ago
I (and I assume I'm not alone in this) rarely even bother clicking on Instagram or "X" posts because I can't be bothered with all the hassle when all I want to do is quickly view the content, and I'm not willing to gamble on whether or not it's going to work.
reactordev · 38m ago
Seconded. I don’t have an Instagram account and never will.
ACCount37 · 53m ago
"Creating value for shareholders" has done more for sustainability than eco-activists could ever hope to.
Industrial capitalists make mass produced LED lights and cheap solar panels. Eco-activists push for anti-nuclear laws and plastic straw bans.
It's pretty telling that oil lobbyists resort to non-market methods like bribing politicians to stall renewables. They know the time is running out - with all the new power generation and storage tech that's in the pipeline, fossil fuels just aren't going to be economically viable forever. Renewables are rising, and there is no moat - all the existing oil assets those companies hold are going to be increasingly useless as more and more of the world's power comes from non-fossil sources.
"Stall" is about the extent of it though. You can't fight economic forces off forever.
griffzhowl · 22m ago
> Eco-activists push for anti-nuclear laws and plastic straw bans.
Seems like a myopic strawman to me. The main eco-activism that I remember for the last couple of decades has been for reduced fossil-fuel use. This is now being translated into policy in Europe especially, which has massively increased the market for renewables that the "industrial capitalists" can take advantage of.
ACCount37 · 9m ago
The damage is done.
Today, the best alternative to fossil fuels is renewables - but 40 years ago, it was nuclear. If eco-activists made sensible decisions, fossil fuel power could have been curbed back then.
Instead, we got what we got. Eco-activists, being what they are, made vibe-based policy decisions, and the vibe of nuclear power was Very Bad and Glowing Acid Green and Way Too Industrial. So nuclear power was strangled with activism and overregulation in many countries, if not banned outright.
So we had to sit on fossil fuel power for those 40 years - until the economics of renewables finally became more favorable. Which, again, happened not because eco-activists willed it into existence - but because industrial capitalists developed the relevant technologies and pushed them into mass production.
What would have happened in an alternate world where renewables just weren't economical? Would the world sit on fossil fuels for another 40 years, until fusion power actually materialized?
Havoc · 1h ago
The sudden US pivot towards actively suppressing wind energy is absolutely wild.
There are farms that are nearing completion and now are just in limbo.
It isn't sudden, it was always there. 15 years ago I drove from iowa to minnesota. In iowa there were wind turbines eveywhere, in mn billboards saying wind is not the answer. Today iowa des moines is 100% wind powered (i can only find press releases stating that, official numbers for the whole state are around 50%)
tialaramex · 24m ago
Likely explanation for those numbers is that if it's windy 100% of the power needs are fulfilled by wind and statistically the local wind turbines make enough power that if somehow Des Moines could store that and sip from it, they could run all the time on pure wind power. But in practice what happens is when it's windy Des Moines exports power and gets money, and when it's calm Des Moines buys power that wasn't from a wind turbine.
One political idea in the UK is to give people locality based energy pricing, so, if there's a wind turbine right near your community, sure, that's a bit annoying (they're loud because that wind is moving huge spinning blades, and maybe you like horizons, which are horizontal, the wind farm breaks that up) but hey, your electricity is super cheap. The idea being that's a direct incentive to welcome on-shore turbines and it's an effective subsidy to move electrical load nearer to production.
Today with national pricing that Wind Farm wants to be on the Scottish coast where it's windy, and the Energy Intensive industry wants to be in England where there are loads of people already, and then you have to move all that power across half a country to make it work, which is further expense and delay. Why not just move the industrial users, and to nudge them offer lower prices ?
joakleaf · 30m ago
I listened to the press conference the other day with Trumps cabinet meeting.
It is bizar to listen to.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that windmills had killed 100+ whales. I tried to find out what he referred to, but couldn't find anything but articles debunking any claim that windmills affect whales (after construction).
He also claimed that the price per kWh of wind energy is above $0.30, which is quite a bit from the $0.03 ($0.12 offshore) price per kWh listed in Wikipedia [1] for United States.
At the same meeting Trump stated that the only viable solution is fossil fuel."... and maybe a little nuclear, but mostly fossil fuel.". And that wind is about 10x more expensive than natural gas (again contradicting the prices listed in the Wikipedia reference where the prices for onshore wind and natural gas are almost identical).
> given support to these fake public interest groups in attempts to sue wind projects out of existence.
Remember - that's the core issue. Development of housing or green energy projects or industries with low externalities should be by-right.
ACCount37 · 33m ago
"Weaponized activists" was an instrument of non-market competition for a long while now.
It's kind of a more modern, more legal take on "send some mobsters to mess them up". You find (or make) an activist group opposing a certain development - and then covertly funnel funding and support to them so that they can do as much damage as possible and stall your competition for as long as possible.
nicolailolansen · 3h ago
Anti-wind groups are oil-funded? Surprised Pikachu.
derbOac · 43m ago
I agree although I think the value of the piece is in literally mapping out the relationships, and in explaining the extent of the problems, such as in ties to defunding and entire university's research budget over it.
fabian2k · 2h ago
Only the ones not funded by Russia.
sligor · 2h ago
Well, Russia itself is oil founded (huge part of the budget)
mikeyouse · 1m ago
It’s not a coincidence that the weird red carpet summit in Alaska for Putin apparently focused on joint energy projects with this shambolic administration.
Why tho? Oil money should be funding renewables so they continue making money.
PaulKeeble · 1h ago
Shell at one point started doing that in the UK, they installed a number of offshore wind turbines. Then they sold them and doubled down on oil.
What I think is really weird in the world today is the power companies don't seem interested in selling more power. A parallel branch of Wind and Solar companies are doing all the installations and running the power but not to the extent of bringing new capacity online, its all purely for replacing the old coal and gas systems. Quite a lot of companies are having to buy their own installations and run them so they can have their new data centre.
aurareturn · 1h ago
What I think is really weird in the world today is the power companies don't seem interested in selling more power.
They do. It's just not as lucrative as oil so they sell the business and go back to oil. Say an oil company has $100 to spend on new energy. A new oil field nets them back $500 over 5 years. Wind nets them $200 over 5 years. Why would they invest in wind other than for PR?
China has to import 70% of its oil so it needs to focus on renewables. If the US doesn't produce enough oil for its own needs, it too would be building solar and wind at scale I presume. But the US is a net oil exporter.
m000 · 1h ago
For oil companies, smooth transition to renewables == lost profits.
They'd rather see world go through an energy crisis which will make their profits skyrocket, before we eventually de-fossilize.
metalman · 32m ago
oil is a huge mistake at this point, as any country that is investing in a solar/wind/renewables GRID, is watching there costs go into freefall, not just freefall, but costs that are disconected from energy markets built on consumable fuels and therefor stable and predictable.
many countrys are figuring out that
energy stability = societal/cultural stability and are slowly backing away from the chaos and ongoing disaster of oil/carbon
qcnguy · 47m ago
It's because renewables aren't what customers naturally want, that's why grids have to be forced to take their output using preference schemes and subsidies.
The financial modeling also relies heavily on the assumption of government preference (hard if there is a huge lobby who hates your guts) and wind speeds holding constant (wind speeds are falling and this is blowing holes in wind farm finances).
eldaisfish · 1m ago
electricity customers want one thing - cheap, reliable power. Where it comes from does not matter unless there is a price on carbon emissions.
The electricity grid is not "forced" to accept anything. Places like Texas show that economic incentives work for renewable energy. In fact, economic incentives are stronger than disinformation.
matthewdgreen · 1h ago
Fossil fuel companies and investors control massive oil assets that won't ever be exploited in a world that doesn't use oil at the rate we do. The value of these stranded assets make up a huge fraction of their valuation. To some extent that world is already inevitable, thanks to the huge renewable buildouts happening in China. But the revaluation hasn't come yet, and what the fossil companies are doing now is trying to push it out just a few more years (even a decade) so they can unload. The cost of this is terrible, and it's still doomed to failure, but there's a lot of money on the line.
newyankee · 36m ago
Also most of the value capture in solar and batteries like literally 70%+ is happening in China, while this could've been a win-win situation it has disturbed a lot of existing equations of the system.
As an example I feel even Gas electricity LCOE equivalent is calculated as Capex + Opex where Capex amortisation over lifetime depends on capacity factor of Gas turbine plant. With more renewable penetration even in a competitive market like ERCOT the LCOE equivalent costs for Gas increases although technically this should drive overall electricity lower and should work for everyone.
This completely creates a significant issue for Natural Gas future too which I think was unthinkable for US Gas producers as it was the safest bet decades into the future.
Not too talk about what even a 3-4% Oil demand destruction in Oil for transportation due to EVs can do to the oil markets.
All this seemed theoretical before but now the tides are finally changing led by China and most of the world has a vested interest in reducing Oil and Gas dependency as most of the world are net importers too.
So all these plays are essentially trying to maximise the cash producing life of the current assets whether it can be achieved by FUD or whatever other means necessary.
melvinroest · 2h ago
You can argue both sides right? It makes business sense for oil money to do that.
However, there's also a trend that giant corporations are kind of like giant oil tankers (no pun intended). It takes a humongous amount of energy to change a company's fundamental core business. Oil companies are in the business of oil. Even if they expand to becoming an energy company, it takes a long time for them to change their "oil DNA". Based on that, I can imagine that certain oil companies - though not all oil companies - elect to maintain the status quo.
I don't think this is unique to big oil. It's unique to big {pharma, tech, oil, *}. What I find harder to find out is what the "weights" are for both sides and how they are influenced.
chii · 2h ago
> Oil money should be funding renewables
not while there's still oil to be extracted. Rigs (esp. offshore ones) take a lot of initial investment, and takes several decades to fully pay out. It's not hard to imagine that those investments hadn't fully matured and so they'd want the demand for oil to continue.
kergonath · 56m ago
Even when going full renewable and nuclear, demand for existing infrastructure is unlikely to make these rigs unprofitable over the long term. Moving all the economy will take time.
dzhiurgis · 23m ago
And renewables are quick money. We need all sort of generation, it's not like renewables are going to replace all oil in near future. Every generation is being swollen up.
consp · 2h ago
The demand for oil as hydrogen base, plastic and other derivatives will keep those platforms profitable for a long time. Maybe not as massively profitable as now but more than a reasonable ROI. Oh wait, more profits above everything no matter what because the plebs are the only ones affected by it so they don't care.
matthewdgreen · 1h ago
My very limited understanding is that many of those assets require a certain timeline and rate of oil consumption for the investment to make sense financially. If global oil consumption goes down by say 50%, lots of assets just become worthless (even if someday we use them.)
boesboes · 40m ago
Because short-term profits outweigh everything probably.
tialaramex · 1h ago
The whole point for them is ownership and while you can in effect own oil fields and these companies do, you don't own the wind -- the oil companies weren't smart enough/ early enough to persuade major governments to say oh, actually the wind belongs to BP and Exon.
So Hill Farmer Bob can just put a turbine up on the big hill and get "free" electricity. If there was magically Oil everywhere, and Bob was legally allowed to just drill for it, that's what he would obviously do, but in most places there is no oil and oil companies ensured they control the rights so Bob couldn't drill.
This is what capitalism is about, you own stuff therefore you get free money forever. But you don't own the sun or wind.
actionfromafar · 1h ago
Which is weird, because there's precedent for companies owning water rights. The step to owning wind rigths doesn't feel that far.
I'm wondering if the current governmental backlash to wind is just a prelude to getting "wind rights" of vast geographical areas sold to some properly bribing oil corporation.
Then the company can totally control the transition from oil to wind in such a fashion as to extract maximum revenue without having to care about any external competition.
wraptile · 2h ago
You can actually do both. This way you have full control - invest where you control the market and sabotage where you don't.
narrator · 2h ago
Yup, and George Soros does actually funds pro-wind groups. Open Society Foundation gives $400 million over 8 years to green economic development. That said, I think that's a bullshit argument for not supporting wind, and I'd much rather have an argument with data about the long-term economics.
Fraterkes · 1h ago
You’ll notice these are not at all comparable because Soros does not have an obvious financial interest in wind supplanting oil
wiradikusuma · 2h ago
I read the article but it's still unclear what argument the anti-wind groups use to say _why_ "wind is bad for environment/our children/the economy/greater good"?
decimalenough · 2h ago
Ruins the view, kills birds, noisy is the usual trifecta. Or to quote one site I won't deign to link to, "Protecting the marine environment and ecosystems from the industrialisation of our oceans."
Of course, the same folks have no objections whatsoever to offshore drilling.
extraisland · 2h ago
Those are the weaker arguments. In the UK, I've heard many more convincing arguments against wind power.
e.g.
- Often wind typically need to be subsidised heavily by the government and are not cost effective over its lifetime.
- Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
I won't pretend to know enough to state whether they are valid arguments or not. But they are potentially much stronger arguments against wind power than the others frequently made.
DrScientist · 1h ago
> Often wind typically need to be subsidised heavily by the government and are not cost effective over its lifetime.
Have you looked at the government subsidies for nuclear in the UK and the massive lifetime cost? In terms of offshore wind - initially it was subsidized to get it up and running - but now it's established those have dropped and dropped.
> Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
Sure - but no-one is claiming 100% wind is the target - total strawman argument.
The UK goverments own net zero plan actually still includes gas generation!
One of the more bonkers arguments in the UK was when there was a massive fossil fuel price shock a couple of years ago due to wars and rising global demand - the fossil fuel lobby blamed rewnewables for the high prices!
data_marsupial · 1h ago
It is still subsidised and costs (as reflected in CFD bids) have stopped decreasing.
The need for backup is not an argument against wind in itself. But it is important to consider the full system costs of wind generation, which includes the backup costs as well as the additional transmission infrastructure.
exaltedsnail · 40m ago
The unfortunate reality is that possibly the biggest contributor to higher prices is the phasing out of coal. Without coal there is no cheap base load - unless you happen to be somewhere blessed with hydro - and the market ends up swinging between feast and famine based on the availability of renewables.
Obviously there are very good reasons to get rid of coal, but it leads to higher prices. Reducing fossil fuels in the grid will be expensive and I worry that the lack of candor from politicians on this will end up making the transition more difficult politically.
extraisland · 1h ago
> Have you looked at the government subsidies for nuclear in the UK and the massive lifetime cost? In terms of offshore wind - initially it was subsidized to get it up and running - but now it's established those have dropped and dropped.
I said I don't know. I said had heard the argument and these are examples of better arguments against wind IMO if they are true.
I don't know what to believe. I am dubious of any reporting on these issues.
> Sure - but no-one is claiming 100% wind is the target - total strawman argument. The UK goverments own net zero plan actually still includes gas generation!
Neither are they claiming wind is 100% the target.
> One of the more bonkers arguments in the UK was when there was a massive fossil fuel price shock a couple of years ago due to wars and rising global demand - the fossil fuel lobby blamed rewnewables for the high prices!
I don't remember this. I am sure people will point the finger elsewhere rather than themselves.
I blame the high prices on fuel duty and taxes. Fuel Duty is 52.95 pence per litre and then you have to add VAT. The current diesel price is ~£1.40 per litre at the local Tesco filling station. So that is ~50% of the cost if I am understanding this correctly.
> I said I don't know. I said had heard the argument and these are better arguments against wind IMO if they are true.
> I don't know what to believe. I am dubious of any reporting on these issues.
The person didn’t ask if you know, they asked if you had looked at reports. You cannot for once believe there weren’t subsidies as these endeavors are very time consuming with hundreds of regulations that need to be met.
> Neither are they claiming wind is 100% the target.
What do you perceive when they say wind is not reliable and increase electricity costs? I mean, it is free electricity, with minimal impact.
The way you understand about gas prices, while dismissing some arguments in favor of renewables is a bit telling.
extraisland · 33m ago
> The person didn’t ask if you know, they asked if you had looked at reports.
Obviously not. I said as much. I've listened to good arguments for and against it and I don't know what to believe.
My comments were simply about the fact that you could make better arguments than the ones that were presented.
> What do you perceive when they say wind is not reliable and increase electricity costs? I mean, it is free electricity, with minimal impact.
It isn't free electricity. There is a cost to constructing them, maintaining them and decommissioning them when they become EOL.
If the wind doesn't blow, they don't generate electricity. This means that there is more demand on other sources. So price is driven by supply and demand. All of this the energy company will factor into your tariff. So obviously it is going to affect the price of electricity.
> The way you understand about gas prices, while dismissing some arguments in favor of renewables is a bit telling.
Understanding a basic tax calculation that is listed on a government website is relatively easy and took a few seconds for me to guestimate. It is much more difficult for layman (like myself) to understand the Total Cost of Ownership of a Wind Turbine, it ROI and understanding whether that maybe a good investment.
I wasn't arguing for or against wind. I was saying there are arguments against wind that might be better than the ones are often highlighted. You are mistaking me highlighting there are potentially better arguments, with agreeing with those arguments.
Moldoteck · 1h ago
Didn't AR6/AR7 actually increased in UK?
olau · 9m ago
The UK used to have very high subsidies for offshore wind for some reason. The last I've heard, subsidies for new plants are much lower today.
As for being cost effective, onshore wind is probably the cheapest option, and I think it's hoped that offshore will come close to that once more of the learning curve has been traversed. Perhaps fossil gas from the North sea is still cheaper for now, if you ignore the external cost.
I think solar power is even cheaper, but doesn't deliver much in the winter so far up north.
Backup: Batteries are cost effective for short term shortages. For long term shortages, you'd fire up thermal plants, either biomass or biogas (fossil gas for now).
It doesn't make sense to back up wind with nuclear. Nuclear has a high capital cost and relatively low running costs, so you don't save much from being standby but you still need to pay back the loans.
UncleMeat · 46m ago
> Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
I have never understood this complaint about solar and wind. If we could have our electricity 100% generated by green sources most of the time and then rely on other sources (even natural gas) to supplement when there isn't enough being generated by solar and wind I would weep with joy. That'd be an astonishingly huge victory in the fight against climate change. I wouldn't even care if we needed significant government subsidies to ensure that the gas plants stay profitable while their demand is unpredictable.
derbOac · 34m ago
The problem is the cost of oil is downstream. The reasons why citizens want an alternative is because of those costs. If you added on all the environmental and health costs — all of them — you'd find oil is being subsidized in a different way.
I'm not even antioil in general but I am pro diversification, and think it's absurd to bring up government in that way when a major point of government should be to represent value for the citizens, that might not be represented in the market otherwise.
ACCount37 · 22m ago
Oil is often subsidized directly too.
Same reason why agriculture is - too vital of an industry. Which might make sense from a national security standpoint - but it also gives the oil industry yet another reason to fight tooth and nail against anything that can diminish the importance of oil.
If oil ever became non-vital to the country's infrastructure and economy, those subsidies would stop, and the entire industry might go the way of British coal.
Moldoteck · 1h ago
Offshore wind is indeed expensive and requires high CFD's. For onshore it's still manageable (yet). The reason is solar eats part of their profits and payoff becomes too long
Firming argument is valid, but UK deploys nuclear/gas anyway. You can start feeling real challenges past ~70% ren generation - firming becomes more expensive due to opex but you still need it and gas opex is smaller vs nuclear in this low utilization area. So now you are in a moral dilema- ditch nuclear and build gas firming or reorganize capacity market so that nuclear has some CFD or is compensated for firming&grid stabilization (not all nuclear can operate in island mode so that's another factor)
Germany choose the path of gas expansion if you read Fraunhofer. UK is still in a mix. Nordics are lucky with hydro so they can expand basically all low carbon tech
zekrioca · 1h ago
Nordics (Sweden, Finland) are expanding nuclear as well. Their energy ministers are very pro-nuclear, for some funny reason.
Moldoteck · 58m ago
The reason is peak demand.
If your demand is say 5GW and hydro can provide max 3GW, unless you overbuild ren, it's 'easier' to have some more firm power while ren will act as water savers for hydro (especially considering droughts).
For now they have sufficient power, but considering nuclear timelines, you better start now
Enhanced geothermal could play a role here, but for now it's debatable.
zekrioca · 48m ago
They have lots potential for wind (~20%) and hydro. Peak demand is increasing, but lasts for very specific amounts of time during a day, it doesn’t justify the increases in base load. These peaks could be certainly fulfilled by smarter grid management, demand-response, and electrification before new building new power plants. Yet, many of these will be needed despite nuclear, but since nuclear is the elephant in the room, they are going with it first, while stalling everything else. They are even trying to convince Germany to do the same.
CalRobert · 1h ago
Of course, the UK subsidizes fossil fuels by way of the NHS (asthma and lung disease are no joke) but that is apparently fine.
HPsquared · 2h ago
Different arguments work on different people.
thaumasiotes · 2h ago
> Of course, the same folks have no objections whatsoever to offshore drilling.
Well, if they were entirely sincere in their concern for the view, the birds, and the noise, only one of those concerns would apply to offshore drilling.
Considering "preventing industrialization" to be an end in itself is something different, usually associated with being pro-wind-power.
adornKey · 43m ago
I don't know about those groups, but the arguments I saw so far are these:
- Unclear maintenance - there's no clear way what to do with dysfunctional mills on land.
Just letting them rot seems to be a thing. Offshore maintenance is surely no fun, too. How long do they last?
- Pollution - there's a lot of abrasion and this stuff is pretty unclear,
it's even going into places where clean water is collected. Does anybody care about this?
- Ecology - there are a lot of trees that get cut down for wind. Maybe keeping those trees would be better.
Kills birds and bats is also part of the argument
- Economy - a lot of energy is produced at the wrong time. So much that it's even expensive to dump.
How much energy goes into producing the mill, and how long will it last?
Does this break even if you subtract subsidies, maintenance and value the dumped excess-energy realistically?
Is there any good storage solution coming - or will this remain to be a myth?
In the end Economy is most likely the only thing that matters. But I guess this is not looking so good - if it would be looking good you'd see more logos of big energy companies on all these mills...
probably_wrong · 2h ago
From what I understand the point is precisely not having to straight up say out loud why, "attacking renewable energy solutions without necessarily questioning the science that the climate is changing due to human activity".
Two argument seem to be to "claim damages from the visual impact of offshore with projects located off their coasts" and "invoking the federal environment legislation such as the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act".
NIMBYism (destroying the beautiful views from my golf course) and "Think of the birds" also feature high on the list.
sligor · 2h ago
Who needs argument in 2025 ? Just say it is "woke".
testhest · 2h ago
Wind is only useful up to a point, once it gets above 20% of generation capacity ensuing grid stability becomes expensive either through huge price swings or grid level energy storage.
ceejayoz · 2h ago
This talking point is years out of date. We’re doing grid-level energy storage already. Expect more.
> For the first time ever, California's batteries took over gas as the primary source for supplying evening power demand in April, providing "akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors" one evening, according to the New York Times.
Moldoteck · 1h ago
It's not out of date. BESS has different utility in different weather areas. Germany would need the equivalent of 20-30y of global bess deployments to ditch fossils, not considering realistic power transfer or weather forecast. That's why even their pro ren Fraunhofer ISE recommended gas expansion
akvadrako · 1h ago
These batteries last a few minutes when they are fully charged. In the winter it's not unusual to have close to zero wind power for a few days and it could come after a few weeks of lower output, so they aren't fully charged.
You'll notice in your article they are almost always talking about power instead of energy because energy is the problem.
We still need about 100 - 1000x improvements to rely on batteries without reliable power plants, depending on how much the generation capacity is overbuilt.
plantain · 59m ago
If only we could model how frequently there was zero wind and whether that calculates with zero solar. Oh wait, we can, and we do. It's not even hard.
In reality we will still have a lot of fossil generation which will make it 'easier'.
qcnguy · 44m ago
The recent full blackout in Iberia was caused by renewables destabilizing the grid, and the fossil plants were cold so couldn't save the day. Having fossil plants is of no use if they were mandated by the government to turn themselves off.
defrost · 37m ago
The causes were complex interactions and the October report has not yet been released.
There are numerous camps with strong impassioned and conflicting arguments as to cause.
So seems it's possible. Swings in generation are dealt with via inter-country interconnects, pumped storage and gas turbine generation. Nuclear adds a steady base.
dvrj101 · 1h ago
Finland at 24% and increasing steadily.
Moldoteck · 1h ago
The argument was about the cost, UK having highest prices on the continent (depending how you count subsidies for others) but 20% seems too low anyway. Normal plants are still fine at 60% cf
plantain · 57m ago
The UK has insane prices because of their refusal to do regional pricing to accommodate grid constraints. They'd rather pay wind farms to park their turbines, than to segment their grid pricing (i.e. make energy prices cheaper where there is a surplus of wind generation).
The UK's prices are a political choice due to the mapping of voters over the energy generation distribution.
mnw21cam · 14m ago
We also have this rather unusual energy market where the price for energy is set by the supplier with the highest price necessary to meet demand at any particular time, and all the suppliers get paid that price. Most countries use a system where the suppliers get paid how much it costs for them to generate individually, and the users pay an average of that all.
Moldoteck · 2m ago
No, most countries use the same merit order mechanism like UK.
The difference is that in those countries gas peakers are competing with cheaper hydro (nordics), coal(Germany) or nuclear (france). UK nuclear is pretty small, so gas competes only with itself for setting the price.
ZeroGravitas · 17m ago
Curtailing renewbles due to grid constraints is usually a perfectly rational decision. New generation, new storage, new demand and new grid connections don't always happen on the same schedule.
Now, banning onshore wind in England for a decade when it was the cheapest source of energy available. That's just plain stupid (or a corrupt gift to your mates in gas companies).
Moldoteck · 51m ago
Isn't regional pricing dangerous for industry if it's concentrated in wrong areas and moving it isn't easy?
AndrewDucker · 40m ago
It means that the industry has to actually follow economics, and build supply where the demand is.
Moldoteck · 3m ago
But it followed economics. What you are saying is that now you want to screw it, because moving industry/trained labor to other areas isn't a plug and play option- it's a huge investment which could lead to closures
jncfhnb · 2h ago
Oil is only useful up to a point, once your planetary ecosystem starts to collapse it gets a lot more expensive
Filligree · 1h ago
The oil stays cheap. It’s everything else that gets expensive.
olau · 28m ago
This is false. Take a look at Denmark. This argument was repeated there in the past for "above X", with X being 15%, 20%, 30%, 50%.
svantana · 14m ago
Not necessarily disagreeing, but Denmark's grid is integrated with europe. If the rest of europe catches up with Denmark in wind power, that will definitely be a challenge, since wind speeds are correlated across the continent. Not unsolvable, but it's an issue for sure.
sfn42 · 1h ago
It's fairly rare that there is no wind at all, especially at wind turbine height, and if you have 100 different wind farms spread out across different regions you'll usually have a decent amount of them producing at any given moment. We can also use batteries of various kinds to handle peaks and valleys, not to mention solar, hydro, nuclear and some gas to pick up slack when necessary.
I don't think anyone is expecting wind farms to supply anywhere near 100% of energy production. Probably not even 50%.
tovej · 3h ago
Astroturfing has been the favorite MO of harmful industries like tobacco, oil, and defense for a long time now.
It's sad that this has become so normal, and that they can pressure opponents into silence. I'm wondering if we'll ever get rid of this.
fp64 · 3m ago
Remove defense from that list, they are the good guys now. I see you already omitted pharmaceutical industry so you're at least almost up to date
tpoacher · 1h ago
Not saying this isn't a real issue, but the degree of bias in this reporting (and indeed in the original article) is not the most comfortable here either.
I mean, is it really surprising that a law company with expertise in the energy sector would handle energy clients? And is it really surprising that a publication with clear bias harming the reputation of its clients would elicit a legal response?
How did the publication even get through peer review in the first place without a reviewer requesting the equivalent links for other energy sources to ensure this wasn't effectively p-hacking?
Tade0 · 3h ago
A major reason I don't treat conspiracy theorists seriously is that with all their paranoia they have a huge blind spot for the Captain-Planet-cartoon-villainy the oil industry is engaging in.
Just the stuff the Heartland Institute does is enough to write a book about and still not a peep from the usual crowd.
extraisland · 1h ago
It is more likely they just don't care about the oil industry and focus their attention elsewhere. I would wager that most people assume that large corporations have dirty secrets.
e.g. I listen to a guy that goes exposes the conmen in the UFO community. The reason the guy focuses on UFOs is because he believes that when he was younger he saw a UFO. Over time he slowly realised over time that he had been lied to by these conmen. He isn't interested in the truth about the oil industry, he cares about the truth around UFO encounters because that is what he cares about.
MomsAVoxell · 2h ago
If you don't treat conspiracy theorists seriously, how would you know if the conspiracy theory scene has already addressed oil industry corruption?
The War-for-Oil conspiracy theories are proven correct.
The suppression of 'free energy' is discussed widely as being a result of oil-industry repression.
And on and on.
Dylan16807 · 2h ago
You can learn about a scene without thinking they're competent.
It doesn't really prove war for oil, war tends to mess up production and also we have a huge amount of domestic production. But that depends on what exactly the claims are.
"Free energy" doesn't exist so that just goes back to them barking up the wrong tree. It's taking a real villain and blaming them for nonsense instead of something they actually do.
Tade0 · 2h ago
> how would you know if the conspiracy theory scene has already addressed oil industry corruption?
Because it hasn't. The "free energy" stuff is way off the mark and pales in comparison to absolute kookery of weather machines being responsible for things climate change is actually doing.
They don't have a solid grasp of reality and it shows in how they're unaware about the specific things the oil industry is doing. Much of their rhetoric is big oil propaganda being repeated anyway.
War for oil isn't a conspiracy - it's such obvious public knowledge that there are memes about it. Yes, the country that is a major oil producer and in the currency of which most if not all oil transactions are done uses its military might to preserve the status quo - that's hardly a secret.
MomsAVoxell · 57m ago
War for oil is a conspiracy, but an unprosecuted one.
Your disdain for the conspiracy theorist scene is mirrored in that scenes disdain for justice.
In the case where there is actionable justice that can be achieved, the conspiracy theory is no longer a theory - the conspiracy is prosecuted in the courts of our proud nations' democratic institutions.
autoexec · 2h ago
Plenty of conspiracy theorists have conspiracies about the oil industry being evil, it's just harder to spot them when so many of them turn out to be true. Fracking, OPEC, exxon, BP, government deals with "suspicious" Saudis, and oil spills are common targets. The wild stuff is pretty much the usual though. Depopulation, psychic attacks, secret global government stuff, UFOs, etc.
yahoozoo · 3h ago
Next you’ll tell me anti-oil groups are wind-funded.
lstodd · 2h ago
Anti-oil groups are oil funded so that the oil can show they are "responsible" to their boards.
edit:
apart from that, no one is willing to pay for a realistic substitute for the fuel oil (marine) or diesel, so the question is actually moot.
e40 · 3h ago
The disgust this article invokes is overwhelming.
I n my ideal world these people would be prosecuted.
usrnm · 3h ago
But we live in their ideal world, not yours
myrmidon · 56m ago
This is a systematic problem, the exact same thing happened with leaded gas already (industry sponsored scientists spreading misinformation on toxicity, lawfare against scientists that uncover/publish inconvenient truths) but there were zero consequences.
Our current system makes it much too easy to hold on to profits even when direct negative externalitites cost millions of human life-years.
oulipo2 · 3h ago
So let's vote them out
easyThrowaway · 2h ago
Also write them a very stern letter, That'll show'em.
The only way to stop those people is boots-on-the-ground political, social, and cultural activism. No, writing mean tweets and just taking part to that fancy "guess your next leader" powerball variant you do once every four years is not remotely enough.
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t · 2h ago
Cute that you think there will be an election. Why do you think have all controlling and independent agencies that are part of the election process or cybersecurity been removed in the first week via executive orders?
xyzal · 3h ago
I would love to obtain a handbook on how to convince moronic far-right leaning neighbors to change or at least soften their stance. I usually just tell them to fuck off, which apparently is not that much effective.
JumpCrisscross · 3h ago
> love to obtain a handbook on how to convince moronic far-right leaning neighbors to change or at least soften their stance
Real answer? Pick a battle and commit to it. That means allying with folks who agree with you—or have an incentive to agree—on your one issue with whom you may strongly disagree on other policy or even moral positions. This doesn’t need to be a permanent alliance, after all, just a transactional one to achieve a goal.
Dont call them moronic. Don't tell them to fuck off.
If you HONESTLY want to try to convince people that these politicians and industries are a net negative you can not just sit there and call people fucking idiots. It makes a person retreat into their view that much more. You have to just calmly explain things. Sometimes you have to explain that thing a lot.
A lot of people who voted right wing are looking for reasons to re-evaluate their decisions. Dont give them a reason to double down by calling them fucking mornons. Soft language will win this fight.
jimkleiber · 2h ago
> Sometimes you have to explain that thing a lot.
This.
Sometimes I think I want people to change their minds extremely and instantaneously. When I look at the micro-changes they make, and have the endurance to see these changes over time, they can actually make extreme changes and in a short period of time. It's just rarely instantaneously extreme.
chii · 2h ago
> A lot of people who voted right wing are looking for reasons to re-evaluate their decisions
i dont believe this to be the case. If they have such a reason, then surely they would've already examined it much earlier and came to a conclusion under which they won't have been a right wing voter in the first place.
So there's something else at play, such as preconceived notions, or the inability to sort out facts from fiction (being presented as fact on TV), that makes them behave the way they did.
Dylan16807 · 3h ago
If your only advice is to not insult people then this really isn't helpful.
Upvoter33 · 2h ago
> A lot of people who voted right wing are looking for reasons to re-evaluate their decisions
If only
vincnetas · 3h ago
step one, stop calling them "moronic far-right leaning neighbors" ;)
danaris · 41m ago
The problem is, what you're talking about is essentially cult deprogramming. And (AFAIK) that's a) very, very hard, b) something one does one person or small family group at a time, and c) a process that requires some kind of personal bond with the people you're deprogramming (so if you don't have one going in, you have to be willing and able to form one).
The far, far easier (at that end of things) way to solve our problems would be to shift our economic policies to favor the poor at the expense of the very wealthy, because a huge share of the cause of their stubborn stances is economic insecurity. But unfortunately, that...probably requires getting them on board, at least to some extent. (Not to mention actually having a free and fair election again, which...looks pretty dodgy at the moment.)
shoobiedoo · 3h ago
> I usually just tell them to fuck off
and then everyone clapped
Dylan16807 · 2h ago
That implies you don't believe the story? There is zero reason to disbelieve something as mundane as telling someone to fuck off.
hopelite · 1h ago
How and why would “Scientists” be doing any kind of “exposing” in the first place (“scientists” are now some kind of detectives?) and why all the biased language; “anti-wind”, “oil-funded”?
Also why does this feel like cult-like conditioning of, “we the righteous ones against the evil anti-us false opposition”? It is “they hate you, but I love you, and they want to use the state to take your babies away from you so you better come live in my compound” vibes.
That’s propaganda and abuse, especially when “scientists” is used like some kind of omnipotent deity. “The great and wonderful scientists have revealed the truth to us!”
If they are supporting “anti-wind”, who wouldn’t expect oil companies to support opposition? Are people not allowed to oppose your thing? It’s being treated like some kind of heresy against the corrupt church, and only if you support the subsidized, corrupt wind turbine industry that has politicians on the payroll to push selling wind turbines at public expense, are you righteous believers.
The problem is that all industries and all of our governments are massively corrupted and rotten, and everyone wants to get the other-peoples-money the corrupt politicians have to hand out like the despotic kings or lords they effectively have become.
“Oh yes, lord, you are the most gracious lord of all lords for bestowing upon me the lands and peasants that work them”
In the case of America, where do you think much of that $32 Trillion dollars in national debt deficit spending went in the last 25 years?? If you spend any time in the circles of the 0.1% it will become apparent where that money went, even if you can’t understand that it also went into your 1% pockets.
If you’re having a hard time or will never get access to the top 0.1%, reference the graph of the wealth of the richest people.
In the case of Europe and Germany especially now, they’ve been trying to get at the national “savings” of the German people for decades now, and it seems that BlackRock Merz has finally cracked the vault and he’s going to let the thieves plunder Germany and Europe, as he commits $9 billion annually to the Ukraine for absolutely no rational reason and funding the whole EU project to plunder the German savings, while he tells German pensioners that they can’t get what they worked for all their lives because foreigners that have invaded their country need to be prioritized.
I know regular, grounded people who are in “anti wind” groups they themselves founded, who are clearly not “oil funded” and simply oppose “wind” in their local community because they have heard from others about the impacts. They just don’t like deforesting tracts of woodland and natural habitat, putting in massive concrete foundations, digging up orchards, killing thousands of birds, the noise pollution of the turbines son at all, and the massive corruption due to kickbacks, subsidies, and political aspirations; to build wind turbines where there is basically no wind at all and the turbines won’t pay for themselves even with massive price distorting subsidies. They’re not opposed to “wind” in general, just not the corrupted kind that makes no ecological or business sense, to enrich individuals at the public expense.
I personally think the best solution to these things is that supporters not only get signed up to pay for what they support, but they also get bonded to the projects doing what they promised they would do. You support “wind”; ok, great, you get taxed another 10% to pay for the cost and compensation to anyone affected, and if the turbines don’t produce what you said they would, then you pay for full removal, ecologically sound disposal, and ecological restoration.
But it’s always so allowing to be con artists to trick others out of their money instead.
qcnguy · 2h ago
Ridiculous six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon propaganda. Leftist claims that groups are oil funded are always like this: someone working for an oil company donated to some think tank, which in turn was represented by a lawyer, who in turn represented plaintiffs in a wind project. That is meaningless. How would the original employee even know?
There's no actual funding happening here! It's all just random links between random orgs and people. Anyone can draw such multi-hop links between any two groups of people. It's schizo but you can do it and "prove" anything in this way.
But it gets worse! The level of funding climate change lobbying groups get is astronomically larger and more evil than anything their opponents do. Climate extremists literally corrupt entire news organizations, filling them with paid lobbyists who pretend to be journalists:
Just imagine the extent to which the left would lose their shit if the AP, Reuters or the NYT hired entire newsrooms that do nothing but systematically promote right wing ideas without revealing that fact, funded entirely by wealthy right wingers. They'd claim it was the end of democracy. But when the left do it, that's alright then.
Step one to improving public debate about climate: ban news companies from taking money from "philanthropists" (lobbyists). Writing funded not by their subscribers needs to be correctly described as advertising.
Step two: oil companies don't actually fund attacks on climate activists, but they should! Climate activism is institutionally dishonest. Their claims are constantly being disproven, and their predictions keep not coming true. There's nothing wrong with oil company employees sticking up for their own by fairly attacking their opponents arguments. Debate like that is how civilizations work out what's true. The current environment where left wing extremists shut down debate is unhealthy and leads to terrible decision making, just like it did during COVID.
IX-103 · 55m ago
"entire newsrooms that do nothing but systematically promote right wing ideas without revealing that fact"
Have you heard of Fox News, Newsmax, or OAN?
qcnguy · 42m ago
Fox News and friends pay their staff's own salaries. They aren't hosting entire cohorts of journalists who are paid for entirely by someone else and then presenting their output as neutral and unbiased.
And you'll notice that even despite keeping that basic tenet of journalistic integrity alive, they get attacked for bias constantly. We're told that the AP is a credible news source and Fox isn't, even as AP launders stories written by teams of full time lobbyists.
Read the AP story where they admit to this practice. The journalist writing it clearly feels uncomfortable, knows what they're doing is wrong and knows he's trying to defend the indefensible. Show me where Fox puts itself in the same situation.
tonyedgecombe · 2h ago
Who funds you?
qcnguy · 1h ago
Nobody, of course.
It would be nice if oil, gas, electricity and auto companies did in fact fund people like me to point out all the things climate activists say that aren't true. Pointing out misinformation is valuable on its own, and getting paid to do it would be a double benefit - getting paid to make the world better! I would thus accept that money happily.
Unfortunately they don't. Only the left do that. So people who investigate and reveal climate lobbying misinformation tend to be retirees. They can afford the time to do it as a form of charity work.
brazzy · 1h ago
So you are spreading all this misinformation and lies, and are not even getting paid for it? Kinda pathetic...
qcnguy · 50m ago
What misinformation and lies? I made one factual claim above and linked to the AP themselves apologising for what they're doing as proof.
I don't spread misinformation nor lies. Just truths that the climate lobby don't want people to know about.
dvrj101 · 1h ago
> someone working for an oil company donated to some think tank, which in turn was represented by a lawyer, who in turn represented plaintiffs in a wind project.
that's literally how lobbying works and same is being applied to spread misinformation against renewable energy projects.
qcnguy · 1h ago
No it's not. Lobbying works like this: someone pays someone else to advocate for some issue rather than doing it directly.
Lobbying doesn't work like this: someone donates to someone else for reason A, who hires a lawyer for some unrelated reason B, and that lawyer has totally different customers who have hired them for reason C.
whatever1 · 2h ago
I don’t think big oil feels particularly threatened by renewables. They are definitely scared of nuclear and car batteries.
michaelbuckbee · 2h ago
Anthropomorphizing big industries is always fraught, but looking at their actions, I'd concede it means something that the American Gas Association is doing things like hiring influencers to promote gas cooking over induction ranges.
With induction, heating faster is just a matter of getting a high enough wattage stovetop. So maybe don't compare a low-end induction stove to a gas one? Low-end gas stoves have different problems (reliability, ease of cleaning, etc).
With gas you also have to worry about proper ventilation, and most homes don't actually have that. Not to mention that gas leaks are a risk as well.
flanked-evergl · 1h ago
Wind is a scam. We have a good answer to our energy problem, nuclear. We are not taking that option because our politicians and activists would rather have the "climate crisis" than a solution to our CO² emission problems. A "crisis" gives them excuses, solutions take it away.
vehemenz · 1h ago
None of that means wind is a scam though. Connect your premises to your conclusion.
Moldoteck · 1h ago
Deploy both. Wind has advantage of being built faster because nuclear industry was f-ed up. Check out nr of Westinghouse employees now vs it's glory times.
flanked-evergl · 1h ago
The nuclear industry was not f-ed up, western governments are f-ed up. We regulate things to the point where everything has to be manufactured in China where it is much more environmentally harmful and they treat workers way worse, but we then still import the things. It's the same with Energy, EU regulated their way into an Energy crisis and the only solution was to become completely dependent on Russian energy to the point where even in 2024 EU paid more to Russia for energy than they gave in aid to Ukraine.
And wind, even if it was not a pipe dream, does not escape this. Norway cannot make wind power feasible at all, it will never be able to do that, because even if it could in theory be feasible, which I doubt, our regulation makes it impossible even after the government has thrown billions of dollars of our tax money after it.
We do not need wind, wind is not faster, it's not better, it's not going to fix Europe's energy crisis. Nuclear can and will, but the impediment there is not the nuclear industry, its the crony European politicians that run our economy in China's favour.
Moldoteck · 53m ago
Wind for nordics is great because it helps reducing water use and avoid drought problems for hydro
Nuclear is still needed since expanding hydro isn't an option. And it's great for district heating in the north
You are right about regulations but even if you fix em now, framatome and whouse are just some shadows of what they've been in the past compared to current rosatom/chinese nuclear. Ramping up to the past lvl will be hard.
Fyi, I'm not sure but I think the statement about funding Ukraine is a bit misleading because EU as a whole and each EU country have different funding and budget mechanisms. Maybe I'm wrong but I remember I've read something about this in the past
> Europe estimated to have bought €22bn of fossil fuels from Russia in 2024 but gave €19bn to support Kyiv
Norway was never anywhere near having drought problems and what the Labour Party did has not reduced water usage by Hydro at all, they made it worse.
Moldoteck · 6m ago
Yeah, your link is straightforward - It takes all fossils imports from Russia but for Ukraine help it takes only EU fund value, ignoring additional individual state contributions. If you add those I think the sum is larger. Not justifying gas imports in any way, just observing
We don't need both. We actually just need nuclear, and no amount of throwing away my tax money on wind boondoggles will change that. The Norwegian Labour Party royally screwed the Norwegians with wind, they had to make all other energy much more expensive to make wind feasible, and wind is still not feasible, everything else is just ungodly expensive with 5% monthly inflation on food.
svantana · 26m ago
Norway has all the power it needs from hydro. But exporting electricity is good, since it will help europeans get off fossil fuels. And the north sea is pretty windy, so it's a good place for windmills [1]. Nuclear would also be good, but unfortunately it's extremely expensive, a lot more expensive than the windmills you seem to hate.
Your arguments are not coming from evidence, but from emotions. You clearly want politics as usual, with investments in a very expensive theoretical “one size fits all”, or all eggs in one nest types of solutions. You don’t even list the pros and cons of your statements. This is really bad advising.
brazzy · 1h ago
Nuclear is an outdated, unsafe, inefficient technology of the past. Let it go.
flanked-evergl · 1h ago
False on every count. While our government piss away our money on wind, industry is building modular reactors, which will make energy so cheap and accessible that our corrupt cronies that call themselves politicians will have no choice but to adopt it.
defrost · 1h ago
What's the actual hard time line and price on when, say, Australia can order 20 modular reactors and have them delivered and online?
In the meantime how many GWh of wind, solar, and battery storage can they install without waiting?
A recent detailed CSIRO report on exactly this considered nuclear modular reactors to be a dud option that kicked the can down the road while continuing a reliance on fossil fuel for power generation.
Renewables were judged the pragmatic best bang for the buck in a multi decade near timeframe.
Moldoteck · 1h ago
It's the youngest invention, pretty safe per twh and pretty nice at generating tons of power with small footprint
purerandomness · 20m ago
It's the most expensive form of energy generation that needs to be subsidized by governments forever and ever, due to waste management.
Moldoteck · 11m ago
Waste management is similar to handling forever toxic chemicals waste- bury deep underground. Check out what herfa-neurode facility is.
It's not the most expensive form. Some current builds are expensive, but it generally can provide for very cheap. Check out Goesgen open data for Switzerland
focusgroup0 · 2h ago
The total amount of energy involved in producing, transporting, maintaining, installing, and decommissioning the turbine is net negative:
Really, you take posts from x and YouTube for correct information? The x posts is just referencing other x posts and YouTube. Your YouTube link has 3 references in the description, the last two are 404 which means they probably got retracted.
Those mediums let arbitrary people post arbitrary non sense. Show me scientific studies, peer reviewed and published. And yes, even those can be bad, but at least I can read about their methodology how they conducted their study, the way they analyzed it, and then I can judge if it’s a good study.
Those links are borderline flat earth material.
raphman · 2h ago
Am I getting that right that your source for this claim is some random person on Twitter who claims to have read an unnamed engineering paper ten years ago?
I am no expert on this topic but the first reasonably sciency and recent paper I found claims that all energy costs of a wind turbine are compensated after 6-16 months.
It would be interesting to compare the net energy requirements of different electricity production means, in such a way that, for every kWh provided to the grid by each source, we could somehow quantify:
- How many kWh the grid has to provide in exchange.
- How many kWh are obtained from other sources in order for this kWh to have been produced.
- How much CO₂ will be released for that kWh, considering the entire lifecycle of the source.
So that we can identify which other electricity production means would have been preferable (both in terms of total energy expenditure, and total CO₂ released).
At the moment, "net negative energy involved" seems like a proxy metric to me, and I don't know a proxy for what precisely.
What about the energy that we spent to read this stupid, one-sided argument? Will we ever get it back? I mean, you said yourself you are not oil-funded, so perhaps you are being scammed, because you are doing their job for free.
Moldoteck · 1h ago
Wind isn't that bad, check UNECE report instead of YT/Twitter. Or ourworldindata website as a starting point. Or NREL.
All have data about lifecycle carbon impact or even more
This as opposed to a tweet about someone who 'read a life cycle analysis article in some engineering journal like 10 years ago'.
Please don't spread misinformation.
dvrj101 · 1h ago
it's a bot account, the comment will get deleted after a while. Just look at it's history there are many on hn, reddit and other moderated forums.
raphman · 1h ago
Huh? This user does not look like a bot account at all to me. The account was created in 2016, and the user regularly comments on technical posts - sometimes encouraging developers and providing useful linls.
On the other hand, they seem to have rather 'anti-woke' views.
They already posted the same stupid (sorry) Twitter link in another thread and got similar responses, by the way.
So, they are certainly no bot by any sensible definition but rather someone whos is hindered by their strongly-held views and limited will or ability to critically evaluate sources. I wish them the best.
Once a better solution has been found, the land can be freed for the nature to take over again.
We have no issues with stealing a couple of square miles of nature in order to pave it for our cities or to use it for farming.
Once you remove the wind turbines, the harm you've done to the nature was minimal: production of the turbines, used area and generated noise, minimal pollution of the area, the troubles of recycling them. That's mostly it.
You don't have this with oil, nor with current-age nuclear.
Also, we've already accepted the noise of cars, trucks, motorcycles and planes.
So I really don't get what they are protesting about, specially in Germany.
[1] https://www.base.bund.de/en/nuclear-safety/nuclear-phase-out...
Former East German political agents still working for Russia.
It's almost as if the outrage was astroturfed into existence by the nuclear lobby using similar tactics to the oil lobby.
The way I understand it, Germany had a horrid mix of anti-nuclear eco-activists, local coal lobbyists and Gazprom's natural gas lobbyists. The politicians not included in any of the above were too toothless, and couldn't fight through this bullshit and secure good outcomes regardless.
Leaving nuclear in place would be good, going heavily into renewables would also be good, but doing neither would be idiotic, and somehow that's what they did.
Some of those critics focus on nuclear (Like AfD: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/populist-afd-sand-gears...) and some of those pretend to be angry about the slowness of Germanys transition but it doesn't really add up to anyone who pays attention to the local facts. It's just a meme to get people angry at the left and/or environmentalists, while the right openly and continually sabotage progress.
You probably don't even need to remove the turbines if you don't want to? I imagine nature would take over just fine with them left there.
Off-shore definitely. The UK already had a bunch of decaying archaic man-made structures off shore because of World War II, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunsell_Forts which I went to look at a few weeks back. Pieces of the forts clearly break off and disappear into the sea without incident.
They aren't particularly dangerous, and they don't leach contaminants. So you just bury them so no one can access them too easily. But it does require leaving the sealed reactor buildings in place - even if you can reuse the rest of the land and the exclusion area.
Some countries may have postponed decommissioning because it's cheaper to wait a bit Some countries allow recycling of some stuff, even concrete, like Italy
> Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
* https://www.instagram.com/tbtoro/p/B_SdEVThgCr/
* https://www.insidehook.com/culture/story-tom-toro-new-yorker...
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
I recommend you put that one on your list instead because Instagram is very hostile to people trying to see anything without an account. The one on The New Yorker website is open to all and on the Internet Archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250808141700/https://www.newyo...
Thank you for sharing the interview. I hadn’t come across it before. The cartoon is more popular than I realised, which makes me glad.
https://ibb.co/gMCPwzg5
https://postimg.cc/RNsT6bJJ
https://freeimage.host/i/tomtoroplanet.K2WBfYN
https://imgur.com/a/D4nEijI
This is a lie - I have never had an instagram account and I was able to hop on there and copy the image.
(it might be of interest to some that the image shared by the artist on Instagram has the text justified how the artist intended and the New Yorker's text caption can look different depending on the device, but I can't pretend that I care too much about that...)
> Take your pick.
Why did you bother? I'm fully capable of googling a famous image and I'm sure everyone else reading this stuff is.
This time you were. I get sent Instagram links semi-regularly and it’s a gamble when they’ll work. And there are two other people on this thread who replied directly to, before your comment, saying they wouldn’t have bothered to even try. Consider not invaliding others’ experiences.
> it might be of interest to some that the image shared by the artist on Instagram has the text justified how the artist intended
Is it, now? Then why the text is justified entirely differently on their own website, and their Etsy store, and their official link on Cartoon Collections?
https://tomtoro.com/cartoons/
https://www.etsy.com/listing/510225080/signed-print-of-my-ne...
https://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoon?searchID=CC137952
And look at that, it’s the exact same crop I chose for my screenshot. Almost as if I tried to respect the author’s choice.
> Why did you bother?
Perhaps cut it a bit with the hostility? It’s not like my screenshot harmed you in any way.
Industrial capitalists make mass produced LED lights and cheap solar panels. Eco-activists push for anti-nuclear laws and plastic straw bans.
It's pretty telling that oil lobbyists resort to non-market methods like bribing politicians to stall renewables. They know the time is running out - with all the new power generation and storage tech that's in the pipeline, fossil fuels just aren't going to be economically viable forever. Renewables are rising, and there is no moat - all the existing oil assets those companies hold are going to be increasingly useless as more and more of the world's power comes from non-fossil sources.
"Stall" is about the extent of it though. You can't fight economic forces off forever.
Seems like a myopic strawman to me. The main eco-activism that I remember for the last couple of decades has been for reduced fossil-fuel use. This is now being translated into policy in Europe especially, which has massively increased the market for renewables that the "industrial capitalists" can take advantage of.
Today, the best alternative to fossil fuels is renewables - but 40 years ago, it was nuclear. If eco-activists made sensible decisions, fossil fuel power could have been curbed back then.
Instead, we got what we got. Eco-activists, being what they are, made vibe-based policy decisions, and the vibe of nuclear power was Very Bad and Glowing Acid Green and Way Too Industrial. So nuclear power was strangled with activism and overregulation in many countries, if not banned outright.
So we had to sit on fossil fuel power for those 40 years - until the economics of renewables finally became more favorable. Which, again, happened not because eco-activists willed it into existence - but because industrial capitalists developed the relevant technologies and pushed them into mass production.
What would have happened in an alternate world where renewables just weren't economical? Would the world sit on fossil fuels for another 40 years, until fusion power actually materialized?
There are farms that are nearing completion and now are just in limbo.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/26/business/wind-project-can...
One political idea in the UK is to give people locality based energy pricing, so, if there's a wind turbine right near your community, sure, that's a bit annoying (they're loud because that wind is moving huge spinning blades, and maybe you like horizons, which are horizontal, the wind farm breaks that up) but hey, your electricity is super cheap. The idea being that's a direct incentive to welcome on-shore turbines and it's an effective subsidy to move electrical load nearer to production.
Today with national pricing that Wind Farm wants to be on the Scottish coast where it's windy, and the Energy Intensive industry wants to be in England where there are loads of people already, and then you have to move all that power across half a country to make it work, which is further expense and delay. Why not just move the industrial users, and to nudge them offer lower prices ?
It is bizar to listen to.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that windmills had killed 100+ whales. I tried to find out what he referred to, but couldn't find anything but articles debunking any claim that windmills affect whales (after construction).
He also claimed that the price per kWh of wind energy is above $0.30, which is quite a bit from the $0.03 ($0.12 offshore) price per kWh listed in Wikipedia [1] for United States.
At the same meeting Trump stated that the only viable solution is fossil fuel."... and maybe a little nuclear, but mostly fossil fuel.". And that wind is about 10x more expensive than natural gas (again contradicting the prices listed in the Wikipedia reference where the prices for onshore wind and natural gas are almost identical).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
Remember - that's the core issue. Development of housing or green energy projects or industries with low externalities should be by-right.
It's kind of a more modern, more legal take on "send some mobsters to mess them up". You find (or make) an activist group opposing a certain development - and then covertly funnel funding and support to them so that they can do as much damage as possible and stall your competition for as long as possible.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-russian-officials...
What I think is really weird in the world today is the power companies don't seem interested in selling more power. A parallel branch of Wind and Solar companies are doing all the installations and running the power but not to the extent of bringing new capacity online, its all purely for replacing the old coal and gas systems. Quite a lot of companies are having to buy their own installations and run them so they can have their new data centre.
China has to import 70% of its oil so it needs to focus on renewables. If the US doesn't produce enough oil for its own needs, it too would be building solar and wind at scale I presume. But the US is a net oil exporter.
They'd rather see world go through an energy crisis which will make their profits skyrocket, before we eventually de-fossilize.
The financial modeling also relies heavily on the assumption of government preference (hard if there is a huge lobby who hates your guts) and wind speeds holding constant (wind speeds are falling and this is blowing holes in wind farm finances).
The electricity grid is not "forced" to accept anything. Places like Texas show that economic incentives work for renewable energy. In fact, economic incentives are stronger than disinformation.
As an example I feel even Gas electricity LCOE equivalent is calculated as Capex + Opex where Capex amortisation over lifetime depends on capacity factor of Gas turbine plant. With more renewable penetration even in a competitive market like ERCOT the LCOE equivalent costs for Gas increases although technically this should drive overall electricity lower and should work for everyone.
This completely creates a significant issue for Natural Gas future too which I think was unthinkable for US Gas producers as it was the safest bet decades into the future.
Not too talk about what even a 3-4% Oil demand destruction in Oil for transportation due to EVs can do to the oil markets.
All this seemed theoretical before but now the tides are finally changing led by China and most of the world has a vested interest in reducing Oil and Gas dependency as most of the world are net importers too.
So all these plays are essentially trying to maximise the cash producing life of the current assets whether it can be achieved by FUD or whatever other means necessary.
However, there's also a trend that giant corporations are kind of like giant oil tankers (no pun intended). It takes a humongous amount of energy to change a company's fundamental core business. Oil companies are in the business of oil. Even if they expand to becoming an energy company, it takes a long time for them to change their "oil DNA". Based on that, I can imagine that certain oil companies - though not all oil companies - elect to maintain the status quo.
I don't think this is unique to big oil. It's unique to big {pharma, tech, oil, *}. What I find harder to find out is what the "weights" are for both sides and how they are influenced.
not while there's still oil to be extracted. Rigs (esp. offshore ones) take a lot of initial investment, and takes several decades to fully pay out. It's not hard to imagine that those investments hadn't fully matured and so they'd want the demand for oil to continue.
So Hill Farmer Bob can just put a turbine up on the big hill and get "free" electricity. If there was magically Oil everywhere, and Bob was legally allowed to just drill for it, that's what he would obviously do, but in most places there is no oil and oil companies ensured they control the rights so Bob couldn't drill.
This is what capitalism is about, you own stuff therefore you get free money forever. But you don't own the sun or wind.
I'm wondering if the current governmental backlash to wind is just a prelude to getting "wind rights" of vast geographical areas sold to some properly bribing oil corporation.
Then the company can totally control the transition from oil to wind in such a fashion as to extract maximum revenue without having to care about any external competition.
Of course, the same folks have no objections whatsoever to offshore drilling.
e.g.
- Often wind typically need to be subsidised heavily by the government and are not cost effective over its lifetime.
- Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
I won't pretend to know enough to state whether they are valid arguments or not. But they are potentially much stronger arguments against wind power than the others frequently made.
Have you looked at the government subsidies for nuclear in the UK and the massive lifetime cost? In terms of offshore wind - initially it was subsidized to get it up and running - but now it's established those have dropped and dropped.
> Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
Sure - but no-one is claiming 100% wind is the target - total strawman argument. The UK goverments own net zero plan actually still includes gas generation!
One of the more bonkers arguments in the UK was when there was a massive fossil fuel price shock a couple of years ago due to wars and rising global demand - the fossil fuel lobby blamed rewnewables for the high prices!
The need for backup is not an argument against wind in itself. But it is important to consider the full system costs of wind generation, which includes the backup costs as well as the additional transmission infrastructure.
Obviously there are very good reasons to get rid of coal, but it leads to higher prices. Reducing fossil fuels in the grid will be expensive and I worry that the lack of candor from politicians on this will end up making the transition more difficult politically.
I said I don't know. I said had heard the argument and these are examples of better arguments against wind IMO if they are true.
I don't know what to believe. I am dubious of any reporting on these issues.
> Sure - but no-one is claiming 100% wind is the target - total strawman argument. The UK goverments own net zero plan actually still includes gas generation!
Neither are they claiming wind is 100% the target.
> One of the more bonkers arguments in the UK was when there was a massive fossil fuel price shock a couple of years ago due to wars and rising global demand - the fossil fuel lobby blamed rewnewables for the high prices!
I don't remember this. I am sure people will point the finger elsewhere rather than themselves.
I blame the high prices on fuel duty and taxes. Fuel Duty is 52.95 pence per litre and then you have to add VAT. The current diesel price is ~£1.40 per litre at the local Tesco filling station. So that is ~50% of the cost if I am understanding this correctly.
https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/fuel-duty
The person didn’t ask if you know, they asked if you had looked at reports. You cannot for once believe there weren’t subsidies as these endeavors are very time consuming with hundreds of regulations that need to be met.
> Neither are they claiming wind is 100% the target.
What do you perceive when they say wind is not reliable and increase electricity costs? I mean, it is free electricity, with minimal impact.
The way you understand about gas prices, while dismissing some arguments in favor of renewables is a bit telling.
Obviously not. I said as much. I've listened to good arguments for and against it and I don't know what to believe.
My comments were simply about the fact that you could make better arguments than the ones that were presented.
> What do you perceive when they say wind is not reliable and increase electricity costs? I mean, it is free electricity, with minimal impact.
It isn't free electricity. There is a cost to constructing them, maintaining them and decommissioning them when they become EOL.
If the wind doesn't blow, they don't generate electricity. This means that there is more demand on other sources. So price is driven by supply and demand. All of this the energy company will factor into your tariff. So obviously it is going to affect the price of electricity.
> The way you understand about gas prices, while dismissing some arguments in favor of renewables is a bit telling.
Understanding a basic tax calculation that is listed on a government website is relatively easy and took a few seconds for me to guestimate. It is much more difficult for layman (like myself) to understand the Total Cost of Ownership of a Wind Turbine, it ROI and understanding whether that maybe a good investment.
I wasn't arguing for or against wind. I was saying there are arguments against wind that might be better than the ones are often highlighted. You are mistaking me highlighting there are potentially better arguments, with agreeing with those arguments.
As for being cost effective, onshore wind is probably the cheapest option, and I think it's hoped that offshore will come close to that once more of the learning curve has been traversed. Perhaps fossil gas from the North sea is still cheaper for now, if you ignore the external cost.
I think solar power is even cheaper, but doesn't deliver much in the winter so far up north.
Backup: Batteries are cost effective for short term shortages. For long term shortages, you'd fire up thermal plants, either biomass or biogas (fossil gas for now).
It doesn't make sense to back up wind with nuclear. Nuclear has a high capital cost and relatively low running costs, so you don't save much from being standby but you still need to pay back the loans.
I have never understood this complaint about solar and wind. If we could have our electricity 100% generated by green sources most of the time and then rely on other sources (even natural gas) to supplement when there isn't enough being generated by solar and wind I would weep with joy. That'd be an astonishingly huge victory in the fight against climate change. I wouldn't even care if we needed significant government subsidies to ensure that the gas plants stay profitable while their demand is unpredictable.
I'm not even antioil in general but I am pro diversification, and think it's absurd to bring up government in that way when a major point of government should be to represent value for the citizens, that might not be represented in the market otherwise.
Same reason why agriculture is - too vital of an industry. Which might make sense from a national security standpoint - but it also gives the oil industry yet another reason to fight tooth and nail against anything that can diminish the importance of oil.
If oil ever became non-vital to the country's infrastructure and economy, those subsidies would stop, and the entire industry might go the way of British coal.
Firming argument is valid, but UK deploys nuclear/gas anyway. You can start feeling real challenges past ~70% ren generation - firming becomes more expensive due to opex but you still need it and gas opex is smaller vs nuclear in this low utilization area. So now you are in a moral dilema- ditch nuclear and build gas firming or reorganize capacity market so that nuclear has some CFD or is compensated for firming&grid stabilization (not all nuclear can operate in island mode so that's another factor)
Germany choose the path of gas expansion if you read Fraunhofer. UK is still in a mix. Nordics are lucky with hydro so they can expand basically all low carbon tech
For now they have sufficient power, but considering nuclear timelines, you better start now
Enhanced geothermal could play a role here, but for now it's debatable.
Well, if they were entirely sincere in their concern for the view, the birds, and the noise, only one of those concerns would apply to offshore drilling.
Considering "preventing industrialization" to be an end in itself is something different, usually associated with being pro-wind-power.
Two argument seem to be to "claim damages from the visual impact of offshore with projects located off their coasts" and "invoking the federal environment legislation such as the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act".
There is, of course, a debunking video response (14 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKVNFqqzvP4
NIMBYism (destroying the beautiful views from my golf course) and "Think of the birds" also feature high on the list.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-06/what-australia-can-le...
> For the first time ever, California's batteries took over gas as the primary source for supplying evening power demand in April, providing "akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors" one evening, according to the New York Times.
You'll notice in your article they are almost always talking about power instead of energy because energy is the problem.
We still need about 100 - 1000x improvements to rely on batteries without reliable power plants, depending on how much the generation capacity is overbuilt.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...
In reality we will still have a lot of fossil generation which will make it 'easier'.
There are numerous camps with strong impassioned and conflicting arguments as to cause.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou...
For the past year in the UK the average is ~30% generation from wind. https://grid.iamkate.com/
So seems it's possible. Swings in generation are dealt with via inter-country interconnects, pumped storage and gas turbine generation. Nuclear adds a steady base.
The UK's prices are a political choice due to the mapping of voters over the energy generation distribution.
Now, banning onshore wind in England for a decade when it was the cheapest source of energy available. That's just plain stupid (or a corrupt gift to your mates in gas companies).
I don't think anyone is expecting wind farms to supply anywhere near 100% of energy production. Probably not even 50%.
It's sad that this has become so normal, and that they can pressure opponents into silence. I'm wondering if we'll ever get rid of this.
I mean, is it really surprising that a law company with expertise in the energy sector would handle energy clients? And is it really surprising that a publication with clear bias harming the reputation of its clients would elicit a legal response?
How did the publication even get through peer review in the first place without a reviewer requesting the equivalent links for other energy sources to ensure this wasn't effectively p-hacking?
Just the stuff the Heartland Institute does is enough to write a book about and still not a peep from the usual crowd.
e.g. I listen to a guy that goes exposes the conmen in the UFO community. The reason the guy focuses on UFOs is because he believes that when he was younger he saw a UFO. Over time he slowly realised over time that he had been lied to by these conmen. He isn't interested in the truth about the oil industry, he cares about the truth around UFO encounters because that is what he cares about.
The War-for-Oil conspiracy theories are proven correct.
The suppression of 'free energy' is discussed widely as being a result of oil-industry repression.
And on and on.
It doesn't really prove war for oil, war tends to mess up production and also we have a huge amount of domestic production. But that depends on what exactly the claims are.
"Free energy" doesn't exist so that just goes back to them barking up the wrong tree. It's taking a real villain and blaming them for nonsense instead of something they actually do.
Because it hasn't. The "free energy" stuff is way off the mark and pales in comparison to absolute kookery of weather machines being responsible for things climate change is actually doing.
They don't have a solid grasp of reality and it shows in how they're unaware about the specific things the oil industry is doing. Much of their rhetoric is big oil propaganda being repeated anyway.
War for oil isn't a conspiracy - it's such obvious public knowledge that there are memes about it. Yes, the country that is a major oil producer and in the currency of which most if not all oil transactions are done uses its military might to preserve the status quo - that's hardly a secret.
Your disdain for the conspiracy theorist scene is mirrored in that scenes disdain for justice.
In the case where there is actionable justice that can be achieved, the conspiracy theory is no longer a theory - the conspiracy is prosecuted in the courts of our proud nations' democratic institutions.
edit: apart from that, no one is willing to pay for a realistic substitute for the fuel oil (marine) or diesel, so the question is actually moot.
I n my ideal world these people would be prosecuted.
Our current system makes it much too easy to hold on to profits even when direct negative externalitites cost millions of human life-years.
The only way to stop those people is boots-on-the-ground political, social, and cultural activism. No, writing mean tweets and just taking part to that fancy "guess your next leader" powerball variant you do once every four years is not remotely enough.
Real answer? Pick a battle and commit to it. That means allying with folks who agree with you—or have an incentive to agree—on your one issue with whom you may strongly disagree on other policy or even moral positions. This doesn’t need to be a permanent alliance, after all, just a transactional one to achieve a goal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National...
If you HONESTLY want to try to convince people that these politicians and industries are a net negative you can not just sit there and call people fucking idiots. It makes a person retreat into their view that much more. You have to just calmly explain things. Sometimes you have to explain that thing a lot.
A lot of people who voted right wing are looking for reasons to re-evaluate their decisions. Dont give them a reason to double down by calling them fucking mornons. Soft language will win this fight.
This.
Sometimes I think I want people to change their minds extremely and instantaneously. When I look at the micro-changes they make, and have the endurance to see these changes over time, they can actually make extreme changes and in a short period of time. It's just rarely instantaneously extreme.
i dont believe this to be the case. If they have such a reason, then surely they would've already examined it much earlier and came to a conclusion under which they won't have been a right wing voter in the first place.
So there's something else at play, such as preconceived notions, or the inability to sort out facts from fiction (being presented as fact on TV), that makes them behave the way they did.
If only
The far, far easier (at that end of things) way to solve our problems would be to shift our economic policies to favor the poor at the expense of the very wealthy, because a huge share of the cause of their stubborn stances is economic insecurity. But unfortunately, that...probably requires getting them on board, at least to some extent. (Not to mention actually having a free and fair election again, which...looks pretty dodgy at the moment.)
and then everyone clapped
Also why does this feel like cult-like conditioning of, “we the righteous ones against the evil anti-us false opposition”? It is “they hate you, but I love you, and they want to use the state to take your babies away from you so you better come live in my compound” vibes.
That’s propaganda and abuse, especially when “scientists” is used like some kind of omnipotent deity. “The great and wonderful scientists have revealed the truth to us!”
If they are supporting “anti-wind”, who wouldn’t expect oil companies to support opposition? Are people not allowed to oppose your thing? It’s being treated like some kind of heresy against the corrupt church, and only if you support the subsidized, corrupt wind turbine industry that has politicians on the payroll to push selling wind turbines at public expense, are you righteous believers.
The problem is that all industries and all of our governments are massively corrupted and rotten, and everyone wants to get the other-peoples-money the corrupt politicians have to hand out like the despotic kings or lords they effectively have become.
“Oh yes, lord, you are the most gracious lord of all lords for bestowing upon me the lands and peasants that work them”
In the case of America, where do you think much of that $32 Trillion dollars in national debt deficit spending went in the last 25 years?? If you spend any time in the circles of the 0.1% it will become apparent where that money went, even if you can’t understand that it also went into your 1% pockets.
If you’re having a hard time or will never get access to the top 0.1%, reference the graph of the wealth of the richest people.
In the case of Europe and Germany especially now, they’ve been trying to get at the national “savings” of the German people for decades now, and it seems that BlackRock Merz has finally cracked the vault and he’s going to let the thieves plunder Germany and Europe, as he commits $9 billion annually to the Ukraine for absolutely no rational reason and funding the whole EU project to plunder the German savings, while he tells German pensioners that they can’t get what they worked for all their lives because foreigners that have invaded their country need to be prioritized.
I know regular, grounded people who are in “anti wind” groups they themselves founded, who are clearly not “oil funded” and simply oppose “wind” in their local community because they have heard from others about the impacts. They just don’t like deforesting tracts of woodland and natural habitat, putting in massive concrete foundations, digging up orchards, killing thousands of birds, the noise pollution of the turbines son at all, and the massive corruption due to kickbacks, subsidies, and political aspirations; to build wind turbines where there is basically no wind at all and the turbines won’t pay for themselves even with massive price distorting subsidies. They’re not opposed to “wind” in general, just not the corrupted kind that makes no ecological or business sense, to enrich individuals at the public expense.
I personally think the best solution to these things is that supporters not only get signed up to pay for what they support, but they also get bonded to the projects doing what they promised they would do. You support “wind”; ok, great, you get taxed another 10% to pay for the cost and compensation to anyone affected, and if the turbines don’t produce what you said they would, then you pay for full removal, ecologically sound disposal, and ecological restoration.
But it’s always so allowing to be con artists to trick others out of their money instead.
There's no actual funding happening here! It's all just random links between random orgs and people. Anyone can draw such multi-hop links between any two groups of people. It's schizo but you can do it and "prove" anything in this way.
But it gets worse! The level of funding climate change lobbying groups get is astronomically larger and more evil than anything their opponents do. Climate extremists literally corrupt entire news organizations, filling them with paid lobbyists who pretend to be journalists:
https://apnews.com/article/science-business-arts-and-enterta...
Just imagine the extent to which the left would lose their shit if the AP, Reuters or the NYT hired entire newsrooms that do nothing but systematically promote right wing ideas without revealing that fact, funded entirely by wealthy right wingers. They'd claim it was the end of democracy. But when the left do it, that's alright then.
Step one to improving public debate about climate: ban news companies from taking money from "philanthropists" (lobbyists). Writing funded not by their subscribers needs to be correctly described as advertising.
Step two: oil companies don't actually fund attacks on climate activists, but they should! Climate activism is institutionally dishonest. Their claims are constantly being disproven, and their predictions keep not coming true. There's nothing wrong with oil company employees sticking up for their own by fairly attacking their opponents arguments. Debate like that is how civilizations work out what's true. The current environment where left wing extremists shut down debate is unhealthy and leads to terrible decision making, just like it did during COVID.
Have you heard of Fox News, Newsmax, or OAN?
And you'll notice that even despite keeping that basic tenet of journalistic integrity alive, they get attacked for bias constantly. We're told that the AP is a credible news source and Fox isn't, even as AP launders stories written by teams of full time lobbyists.
Read the AP story where they admit to this practice. The journalist writing it clearly feels uncomfortable, knows what they're doing is wrong and knows he's trying to defend the indefensible. Show me where Fox puts itself in the same situation.
It would be nice if oil, gas, electricity and auto companies did in fact fund people like me to point out all the things climate activists say that aren't true. Pointing out misinformation is valuable on its own, and getting paid to do it would be a double benefit - getting paid to make the world better! I would thus accept that money happily.
Unfortunately they don't. Only the left do that. So people who investigate and reveal climate lobbying misinformation tend to be retirees. They can afford the time to do it as a form of charity work.
I don't spread misinformation nor lies. Just truths that the climate lobby don't want people to know about.
that's literally how lobbying works and same is being applied to spread misinformation against renewable energy projects.
Lobbying doesn't work like this: someone donates to someone else for reason A, who hires a lawyer for some unrelated reason B, and that lawyer has totally different customers who have hired them for reason C.
https://www.treehugger.com/the-marketing-of-gas-stoves-never...
Heats faster, doesn’t crack etc.
With gas you also have to worry about proper ventilation, and most homes don't actually have that. Not to mention that gas leaks are a risk as well.
And wind, even if it was not a pipe dream, does not escape this. Norway cannot make wind power feasible at all, it will never be able to do that, because even if it could in theory be feasible, which I doubt, our regulation makes it impossible even after the government has thrown billions of dollars of our tax money after it.
We do not need wind, wind is not faster, it's not better, it's not going to fix Europe's energy crisis. Nuclear can and will, but the impediment there is not the nuclear industry, its the crony European politicians that run our economy in China's favour.
Nuclear is still needed since expanding hydro isn't an option. And it's great for district heating in the north
You are right about regulations but even if you fix em now, framatome and whouse are just some shadows of what they've been in the past compared to current rosatom/chinese nuclear. Ramping up to the past lvl will be hard.
Fyi, I'm not sure but I think the statement about funding Ukraine is a bit misleading because EU as a whole and each EU country have different funding and budget mechanisms. Maybe I'm wrong but I remember I've read something about this in the past
> Europe estimated to have bought €22bn of fossil fuels from Russia in 2024 but gave €19bn to support Kyiv
Norway was never anywhere near having drought problems and what the Labour Party did has not reduced water usage by Hydro at all, they made it worse.
Norway does definitely have problems to takle
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/08/20/n... https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/southern-norway-...
1. https://globalwindatlas.info/en/
In the meantime how many GWh of wind, solar, and battery storage can they install without waiting?
A recent detailed CSIRO report on exactly this considered nuclear modular reactors to be a dud option that kicked the can down the road while continuing a reliance on fossil fuel for power generation.
Renewables were judged the pragmatic best bang for the buck in a multi decade near timeframe.
It's not the most expensive form. Some current builds are expensive, but it generally can provide for very cheap. Check out Goesgen open data for Switzerland
https://x.com/RizomaSchool/status/1805813119664484836
See Also:
The False Promises of Green Energy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWuKqFUsDH0
No, I am not oil-funded.
Those mediums let arbitrary people post arbitrary non sense. Show me scientific studies, peer reviewed and published. And yes, even those can be bad, but at least I can read about their methodology how they conducted their study, the way they analyzed it, and then I can judge if it’s a good study.
Those links are borderline flat earth material.
I am no expert on this topic but the first reasonably sciency and recent paper I found claims that all energy costs of a wind turbine are compensated after 6-16 months.
https://www.hb.fh-muenster.de/opus4/frontdoor/deliver/index/...
- How many kWh the grid has to provide in exchange.
- How many kWh are obtained from other sources in order for this kWh to have been produced.
- How much CO₂ will be released for that kWh, considering the entire lifecycle of the source.
So that we can identify which other electricity production means would have been preferable (both in terms of total energy expenditure, and total CO₂ released).
At the moment, "net negative energy involved" seems like a proxy metric to me, and I don't know a proxy for what precisely.
This as opposed to a tweet about someone who 'read a life cycle analysis article in some engineering journal like 10 years ago'.
Please don't spread misinformation.
On the other hand, they seem to have rather 'anti-woke' views. They already posted the same stupid (sorry) Twitter link in another thread and got similar responses, by the way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43167067
So, they are certainly no bot by any sensible definition but rather someone whos is hindered by their strongly-held views and limited will or ability to critically evaluate sources. I wish them the best.