10,018 karma · joined May 30, 2013
The Antipodes have such a problem with successful people we even invented a term for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome
On the subject of free markets, Australia excels. We even let foreign entities extract and sell our LNG and pay no royalties and no tax.
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/zero-royalties-charge...
Doesn’t get any freer than that!
There’s more of it now than in the reefs recorded history.
Well, 2022 data:
https://www.aims.gov.au/information-centre/news-and-stories/...
Literally essential plant nutrients, essential for life.
Tangentially related, the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcanic eruption ejected so much water vapour in to the upper atmosphere, it was estimated to have ongoing climate forcing effects for up to 10 years.
Water vapour is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
And we heard precisely nothing about that in the media other than some science specific sources at the time and nothing on an ongoing basis.
From Wikipedia:
The underwater explosion also sent 146 million tons of water from the South Pacific Ocean into the stratosphere. The amount of water vapor ejected was 10 percent of the stratosphere's typical stock. It was enough to temporarily warm the surface of Earth. It is estimated that an excess of water vapour should remain for 5–10 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Hunga_Tonga%E2%80%93Hunga...
It’s not a coincidence that where easy of handling, storage safety, and high energy density are needed everything seems to converge on compression ignition medium to long chain liquid hydrocarbons.
Commercial aviation’s profitability hinges on being able to carry only as much fuel as strictly[1] required.
How can batteries compete with that constraint?
Also, commercial aviation aircraft aren’t time-restricted by refuelling requirements. How are batteries going to compete with that? Realistically, a busy airport would need something like a closely located gigawatt scale power plant with multi-gigawatt peaking capacity to recharge multiple 737 / A320 type aircraft simultaneously.
I don’t believe energy density parity with jet fuel is sufficient. My back of the neocortex estimate is that battery energy density would need to 10x jet fuel to be of much practical use in the case of narrow-body-and-up airliner usefulness.
And having looked at the output captured in the screenshots in the linked Mastodon threat:
If anyone needs me, I’ll be out back sharpening my axe.
Call me when the war against the machines begins. Or the people who develop and promote this crap.
I don’t understand, at all, what any of this is about.
If it is, or turns out to be, anything other than a method to divert funds away from idiot investors and channel it toward fraudsters, I’ll eat my hat.
Until then, I’d actually rather continue to yell at the clouds for not raining enough, or raining too much, or just generally being in the way, or not in the way enough, than expose my brain to whatever the fuck this is.
Wow! You’re optimistic!
The data shows that having at least one patent on welfare is a strong predictor that a child will grow up to spend their life on welfare. Having both parents on welfare almost guarantees it.
Having single young men on welfare is one of the worst things a society can do for young men. They’d be much better off spending four years in compulsory service and learning to be useful.
And we have wildly out of control inequality, inflated asset prices, and unaffordable housing, out the wazoo.
That 33 million could have built, let’s say, 66 houses and housed, let’s say, 264 people (66 families of four) for a generation before needing much in the way of maintenance.
But no, fuck the working poor, let’s fund artists.
Myopic.
Then get divorced and discover your children don’t know who you are, and neither do you. And your wife took the dog too.
It’s an almost guaranteed way to eradicate this wildly stupid idea you have.
Do you accept I am an Australian resident retail customer telling you I am not seeing any change in my $/kWh price, nor any offers from my any providers offering lower prices and higher solar input price than the plan I’m on now.
It doesn’t matter if wholesale prices are zero unless energy retailers are willing to compete to drive prices lower.
And they’re not. It’s a regulated market here in Australia.
Where is this the case?
There is what? Approximately nowhere with high renewables penetration and cheap retail energy prices.
Australia has so much coal and gas we could have electricity plans similar to data plans: all you can reasonably consume for $80 a month, and it would still make approximately zero difference to global anthropogenic carbon emissions.
We’re plenty happy for everyone else to burn our LNG and coal. Our LNG is cheap the Japanese even resell it a profit.[1]
Instead, we have high renewables penetration and electricity prices that have increased at a rate three times higher than general inflation.
1. https://ieefa.org/resources/how-japan-cashes-resales-austral...
I care less about poor people in poor countries in far away lands, and far away times, than I do my fellow citizens in my relatively wealthy country.
And my fellow citizens, especially the low income folk, are affected everyday by high energy costs. High energy costs result in higher costs of everything.
Whereas the effects of climate change, to the extent that they’re distinguishable from extreme weather events at all, are largely tolerated by even the poorest here in Australia.
High energy costs makes extreme weather events less tolerable.
Only big industrial users do, and even the largest industrial users I’ve worked for, or adjacent to, in my state don’t come close to amount of electricity used by the aluminium smelter.
Giving money to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
No it doesn’t.
The arbitration is only possible because the battery storage providers can ever so slightly undercut the gas peakers.
The price pressure is still linked to the LNG price.
Good, we agree the solution is: Nuclear!.
When was the last time a new dam and hydro electric power plant was built in your country?
Either all of the favourable geography has already been dammed, or good luck getting environmental approval.
Government picking winners?
When did that ever work out well?
Everyone who’s tried it suddenly realises that anything you put in the ocean is almost immediately covered in marine growth, or destroyed by the ocean itself.
And that wave / tidal energy is very diffuse, or that where it isn’t diffuse it’s also extremely destructive.
Why haven’t we all?