Posted by ck2 4 days ago
Government lawyers: "Uh, well, we could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you."
Now, I would point out how the US is making itself into a joke, but I'm afraid the joke's on us, because carbon output is not decreasing dramatically like it must, and the effects of global warming will, slowly but surely, become worse with every passing year. I live in a region where warming is predicted to be near twice the global average, so I'm particularly worried about what it's going to be like when I'm old, or in the generation following mine.
1. Freedom — free markets, minimal regulation Early USA had both political and economic freedom. Modern China has only economic freedom (plus heavy protectionism).
2. Dictatorship of a certain group Modern USA and the Western world have a dictatorship of lawyers, regulators, and ideological enforcement. Communist China has straightforward political dictatorship. As you can see, it's not black and white. China struggled when they had both economic and political dictatorship, but thrived once they introduced economic freedom.
3. It's always a race, freedom of the past is not enough. What the West should do is focus on better planning, less politics, more economic freedom, and a dictatorship of data-driven decisions instead.
Wind also works better in some areas that don't have solar. UK has a lot of offshore wind, but less solar. The US Northeast has a lot of wind but lags behind on solar.
Wind has dropped significantly in price over the decades and is competitive in price with solar. I saw article about early Scottish wind farm being upgraded so that one new turbine equals the whole old farm.
The rich/old paticularly hate wind because they do not like looking at it. (The link to golf courses is not by accident. Wind farms and golf course tend to appear together due to them both gravitating towards areas with shallow waters.) We still here stories about blinking shadows interupting sleep cycles, even causing cancer. So perhaps we let them alone for another decade and allow solar+storage to take up the slack. Then, when the nimby people are no longer in power, we bring back wind.
(Shallow sea means no commercial traffic/ports. That means cheap land for non-industrial things like yacht clubs and big houses, which give rise to golf courses. So the rich/old dont like seeing the wind farms that, inevitably, want to live just offshore of their yacht/golf clubs. See Nantuket.)
In what way?
> Solar can be placed much closer to consumption, literally on the roof of the consumer. Wind exists in large farms away from cities.
You still need the grid to exist, so 100 miles one way or the other doesn't affect cost very much.
> Then, when the nimby people are no longer in power, we bring back wind.
NIMBY never goes away. There are some situations where you don't want to burn up your political capital fighting them, but in general if you can get a project through then do it.
With solar you get to overbuild it and charge you batteries once a day. Wind has way more peaks and bottoms, so you can sell your battery capacity several times most days.
But the GPs point is exactly that you need fewer batteries if you have both. Fewer batteries tends to be cheaper than more, and this pair is a very common case.
You are proposing something that sounds like killing the US wind industry and then simply bringing it back later. That probably would work well, especially when projects have development lead times of several to many years.
It's neat how right-wing sabotage feeds ino the next cycle of propaganda to support more sabotage.
See? Anyone can make kill-shot arguments when there's no data.
Analysis: Wind power has saved UK consumers over £100 billion since 2010 – new study
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oct/analysis-wind-power-has-...
The interesting part is that 130 Billion of the savings were in reduced gas prices as it reduced demand, particularly in winter, and freed up gas storage.
And this is depsite an effective ban on constructing onshore wind in England from June 2015, more than half the 2010 to 2023 time period studied.
> Let them cancel the wind farms if that means a free hand to develop solar.
That's not actually a bargain anyone has the power to agree to in a binding way. The people protesting the appearance of wind farms are on the coasts, the people protesting solar are in the country's interior. There's no "deal" you can make to get the latter instead of the former. Just build all the power generation and then we'll have cheaper electricity and a more resilient grid.
multiple energy sources are what is important to make up for where solar falls short. sure solar is amazing, but it will never replace everything on its own
Solar + battery is just so good at staying stable and productive for decades with no moving parts, minimal maintenance, and unbeatable scalability
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
And that's in Texas where there is tons of sun and wind. I would imagine markets where wind, and in particular off shore wind, could make a lot more sense compared to attempting 100% solar generation. If I had to wager, maybe where they are building offshore wind generation..
Solar PVC output directly and immediately correlates to sun landing on the panels.
Solar thermal runs well into the evening, and its output is not impacted by the occasional cloud.
Then there’s the cost, which has not been good for CSP’s market share.
Also, wind and solar have different production patterns, such as how they perform seasonally, how weather affects them, and how they perform at different times of day. You are much better off including a good mix of them in your system.