Greece Passes First Climate Law, Vows To Cut Dependence on Fossil Fuels (yahoo.com) 60
Greece has passed its first climate law, which sets out specific targets to fight climate change and wean itself off coal in power generation by 2028. From a report: The legislation sets interim targets for Greece to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 55% by 2030 and by 80% by 2040 before achieving zero-net emissions by 2050. It also engages the country to cut dependence on fossil fuels, including weaning off indigenous lignite or brown coal -- once the main source of energy -- in electricity production from 2028 onwards. This target might be brought forward to 2025, taking into account security of supplies. "It's an existential matter, a very important one, because it has to do with our lives, because it has to do with our children's lives," Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas told lawmakers before the vote. "Is this just going to help protect the environment? ÎÎ, it's not. It also helps the country's energy security."
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Just how "bold" can it be, in this (political) climate, to say burning fossil fuels are bad? It looks to me like this could be some politicians making political hay while the sun shines on fossil fuels. This could be politicians that found out that it is near certain that utilities will be closing their coal power plants by 2028, because these plants are getting too expense to keep running and coal is getting too expensive, then thought it might get them some votes in the next election to be supportive of
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People forget how hard it is to deal with coal ash when you have aggressive scrubbers. All that crap has to go somewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Warren Buffet's outfit is getting into solar (Score:2, Troll)
Still, maybe we'll get lucky and it'll be like leaded gas, where the scientists saved us. On the other hand, it turns out Gen X got the worst exposure t
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The american southwest is where we could be building square miles of solar collectors and battery, or solar heat collectors and molten salt storage. If only we had an administration with a plan instead of being energy hostile with no replacement energy in works, imagining we'll be saved by electric cars.
Democrats really blew it this time, controlling house and white house but just so busy being woke dingbats they aren't minding the store. The blowback from this will cause fossil fuel flowing like niagra fa
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The Democrats do not want cheap, plentiful energy of any kind
Why not? What do they want?
The Green New Deal is a ruse.
Okay. Can you elaborate on what the deception about it is.
Fling mud at the Republicans for their obedience to fossil fuel producers if you like
Obviously. They're well funded by fossil fuel interests. (As well as supporting other things that support Russia).
but at least recognize that they want cheap energy, even if they have to kill people to get it.
Fossil fuels are no longer cheap, even ignoring externalities. [wikimedia.org]
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Democrats want people being forced into planned urban environments and to become dependent on public transportation. Personal transportation has to end. Running up gas prices is the perfect way to make it happen.
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Democrats want people being forced into planned urban environments and to become dependent on public transportation. Personal transportation has to end.
Why's that?
Running up gas prices is the perfect way to make it happen.
Doesn't sound very perfect. What's to stop people using their electric vehicles?
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Democrats want people being forced into planned urban environments and to become dependent on public transportation. Personal transportation has to end.
Nope, you're just saying what the climate-change-denial movement has programmed you to say.
https://newrepublic.com/articl... [newrepublic.com]
Running up gas prices is the perfect way to make it happen.
Surely that would just make people look to electric cars.
(Or non-guzzling ICEs. Remember the 1070s? Those who refuse to learn history are doomed to repeat it...)
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Urban planners [reddit.com] have been salivating for decades over the chance to create such a reality, before the first climate deniers walked the face of the Earth. You sure you know what you're talking about?
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You're wrong, Democrats are trying to force change from fossil fuel, but there is no plan and no destination for alternative. It is fact, Biden has said it, we're in transition.
Except he and his handlers have no place for us to go, nothing for us to use in its place. Poor people and joe six-pack don't have the money to run out and buy an EV.
The only thing that Biden and the Democrats are going to get is a terrible backlash, the fossil fuel will flow soon because people have had enough of their "be woke
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Republicans want people being forced into rural areas and to become dependent on privately owned cars. Public transportation has to end. Shutting down streetcar systems is the perfect way to make it happen.
See how easy it's to make claims like the one you've made?
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And bitch about fossil fuel "not being cheap" all you want, but frackers in the US can pull petroleum at about $50/barrel profitably, even in 2022. All they would have to do is up production and start tapping ANWR and it would be on and popping. Of course when the petroleum market bottoms out again (which it will) then everyone who put money down on expanding production will look like a dumbass.
It's funny watching Republicans repeat the Drill Baby, Drill! mantra when even domestic producers seem reluctant
Re:Warren Buffet's outfit is getting into solar (Score:4, Informative)
And bitch about fossil fuel "not being cheap" all you want, but frackers in the US can pull petroleum at about $50/barrel profitably, even in 2022.
Which is ballpark of twice the price of rooftop solar if you're going to use it for driving a car.
(1700 KWh per barrel of oil [investopedia.com], ICE car is 15-30% efficient, Electric car is 75% efficient [energycouncil.com.au], rooftop solar is something like 5c per KWh [solaray.com.au])
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Tom, Dick and Harry don't really care how much energy there is in a barrel of oil. All they care of is how much it costs per mile driven.
Not quite. Most of us care how much it costs to fill up the gas tank. We don't calculate per mile costs. We think in terms of a rough cost of transport for the month. The details only matter when it comes time to buy a different car.
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Rooftop solar has up-front costs. People, today, can just keep buying gas, and would be happy to do so at ~$2/gallon.
Or you can lay out cash for panels, install a type 2 charger, and then ditch all your ICE vehicles for electrics. Which do you think your average American is going to do? Return to the recent past to see exactly what Americans did.
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Rooftop solar has up-front costs. People, today, can just keep buying gas, and would be happy to do so at ~$2/gallon.
That bird has flown in the USA. They're never going to let prices come down that far again. And frankly, they should not, though not because oil companies should continue to make murderous profits. Instead, it should be because we institute a carbon tax and spend the proceeds on carbon fixing and reduction (I know taxes don't literally work that way, but you get the idea.)
Or you can lay out cash for panels, install a type 2 charger, and then ditch all your ICE vehicles for electrics. Which do you think your average American is going to do?
I think the average American is either financing a new car purchase, in which case TCO is totally relevant and they may well install a ch
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True, even producers don't want to expose themselves to risk. But I can guarantee you that a different [gop.gov] administration [foxbusiness.com] would not have worked out this way.
As for the average American . . . you can buy an ICE car for ~$20-25k today that can get around 35-40 mpg or an electric for ~$50k that will cost maybe half as much to drive in fuel costs. Middle-to-upper middle class buyers can opt for the up-front expense of solar+charger+EV, but for anyone making $20/hr or less . . . you serious?
Plus finding cars at MS
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actually, lots of average american is buying used car with warranty from CarMax or similar for $15K that gets the 35 to 45. Tesla can't compete with that for working Joe.
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...And ensuring, or trying to ensure, continued dependency on their product, which has that sweet, sweet ongoing revenue stream.
To the best of my knowledge, democrats want to terminate our dependency on foreign energy and concentrated power.
While climate change is almost certainly a threat and is by itself plenty of reason to manage energy supply, my real hope is to break the backs of those who manipulate our economy and politics to preserve their power.
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As to your first question, ask a true believer like b0s0z0ku. I've given enough lessons for now. Come back later when you're more jaded and can answer questions instead of asking them.
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The science denier is you, along with your constant reality denial of the inescapable truth, nobody wants nukes.
You have polling data to show this? Data that is recent?
Here's a recent poll that shows a majority of people want nuclear power: https://www.newsmax.com/scottr... [newsmax.com]
Too slow to build,
How slow is too slow? Define your terms.
too expensive to run
If they were too expensive to run then we'd have closed all of our nuclear power plants already. It would seem that high energy prices keep them open. What do you propose to lower energy prices to force them to close?
and decommision,
How much is too much? Do you even know?
and unsolved waste issues.
That's just bullshit. We know how to dispose of
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Nuclear could be reliable, and maybe price competitive, perhaps. But not with today's lazy, incompetent, corrupt "leadership". I live in Ohio where we pay for the nuc plant that could not be started due to shitty planning, plumbing, and implementation.
My message to them and anyone else unwilling to face the facts of human nature: Get honest or get gone.
I'm sure this has nothing to do... (Score:2)
I'm sure this has nothing to do with a certain war going on right now and the possibility that the country might eventually be permanently cut-off from a major source of fossil fuel from a country that shall not be named.
At this point, the best arguments against fossil f (Score:2)
Re:At this point, the best arguments against fossi (Score:4, Insightful)
Reducing the yearly literal millions of deaths by air pollution would be quite a good start.
So far it's a much bigger ongoing disaster than the climate change.
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Implicit financial support for despotic killers to keep fossil fuel prices low has been an American achilles' heel in international relations for decades. All those assholes point to our realpolitik and argue that we talk out of both sides of our mouths. That provides rhetorical opportunity for other assholes to argue for their "solutions" which are also totally fucked up.
Dishonest authoritarian thieves controlling resources and nations' abilities to run their economies leads directly to lower economic effi
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Theoretically, the United States could already go tell OPEC to suck a fat one, if people were content to permanently pay $50+ per barrel for petroleum, since our domestic frackers will struggle to produce profitably below that price. ANWR could change that, maybe, but petroleum producers seem skittish. Despite high oil prices, nobody really seems to want to lay out the cash to expand production using existing leases, much less the leases that they could get from a friendlier Presidential administration.
In
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"Theoretically, the United States could already go tell OPEC to suck a fat one...."
And if the US were content to nationalize their oil industry, or at least prohibit import and export. I think it would probably be pretty rough getting that through the senate filibuster.
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They wouldn't need to nationalize anything. All that would need to happen is for US producers to increase production. Problem solved. If you had paid attention to the rest of my post, you would see that the smart money is on NOT increasing production, which is why OPEC won't do it and why American producers aren't in any hurry to do so, either.
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OPEC cuts production, which reduces supply. The international price increases due to the law of supply and demand.
US producers do what?
If they're not required to sell oil domestically for a controlled price, they're going to sell it at the world market price, and OPEC can make that as high as they like. I guess I was assuming your "$50+" was "at a price that makes US oil economic," which I think is pretty reasonable from the context.
I read your post all the way through. I guess I thought it through for more
Sounds like empty promises to me. (Score:1)
Unlike many laws on addressing increasing CO2 emissions, and the damage from global warming that is feared to come with it, they did set short term goals that the people passing this law could possibly be held to in a future election or debate. Must such laws set a goal so far out in the future that the probability that anyone voting on it will be in any public office, or even still alive, is quite low. Good job on them for setting goals in six to eight years as that is the kind of time frame that elected
Speaking of empty promises... (Score:2)
In my naive youth, I thought nuclear was a great technology, would be reliable and with some practice could even limit the problems with fuel reprocessing and nuclear waste. Decades later, I find that failure has proven to be less work and more profitable for the "nuclear power industry" than delivery of power.
Fix that and the rest of your endlessly repeated arguments begin to hold water.
Nuclear (Score:2)
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That's definitely not true.
Switching from coal to natural gas by itself is a huge improvement in air quality (because of the higher mercury content of coal, among other things). Even if they don't reach perfection, that doesn't mean they are wasting their time.
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You don't have wind or solar without natural gas as a backup.
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It's good. Your point is that because it's not perfect, it's not good. But that is not correct. An improvement is good.
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Pretty meaningless in reality (Score:4, Informative)
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https://ourworldindata.org/co2... [ourworldindata.org]
The reality is that in 2020 China installed more wind energy than the rest of the world combined:
https://gwec.net/global-wind-r... [gwec.net]
The reality is that in 2021 China installed 1/3 of the world's new solar power
https://www.visualcapitalist.c... [visualcapitalist.com]
The reality is that China is building more new nuclear power than any other country.
In summary, seems like China is doing as much or more than other countries AND they make a lo
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Translation: China desperately needs more power, and is practicing the standard Chinese investment model of "shove a funnel into the economy's throat and pour money down it, regardless of it making sense or not".
It's the same pretty much everywhere else in China, which is why the moment the funnel of money being shoved into the system is even disturbed, you get Evergrandes. Everyone is addicted to more debt being used to repay debt. So you get absurd investments into everything, regardless of their function
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China is building more than half of the worlds new coal power plants [newscientist.com]
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"But China" has already been widely debunked. One more time then, just for you...
China's per-capital emissions are much lower than the US. It's true that they are increasing, but China is a developing nation. Telling developing nations that they can't follow the West, that they have to stay agrarian and poor, isn't going to work. They want, and indeed have a right to, a good quality of life similar to ours.
So two things need to happen.
1. China needs to peak a lot lower and a lot earlier than we did, and the
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even if this were true, it's a dumb argument to make. someone else being a bad person doesn't preclude you from being a good person.
even if 99 percent of all bad deeds were done by one percent of people, it still helps the world if the other 99 percent of people don't join them.
plus the advantages to renewable are quite clear. electricity becomes cheaper the more of it there is.
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I can only fix me.
I cannot control China... Can you?
Yes. Simply declare "IT WILL BE DONE" (Score:2)
Then pass the buck onto others for when it fails miserably.
Tale as old as time...
Now since this is in greece (Score:3)
how do I bribe my way around it?
Passing a law doesn't mean they actually do it (Score:2)
It is as simple as that.
Just solar water heaters alone... (Score:2)
The there's photovoltaics for air-conditioning & charging electric vehicles. Again, massive savings. There's even more savings from investing in public transport infrastructure too which also stimulates economic activity (multiplier effects).
The sun all year long (Score:2)
It's a bit stupid to run tanker ships with fuel for generators on 227 islands if you can avoid it.