ZeroGravitas

German TV had local experts who could tell the audience in real time that the authorities in Fukishsima were lying about the unfolding disaster.

A slightly racist belief in the Japanese as superior at following the rules meant a big shock when the Germans realised that even the Japanese could not be trusted with nuclear power.

Degrowthers just believed climate scientists that there is a problem and then believed climate deniers when they said none of the solutions work.

If you accept both of these then like Vaclav Smil, you'll conclude that you need to use less fossil fuels and nothing else will replace them. And if you care about fairness globally then 1st world nations need to really use less.

It all makes perfect sense if you believe all the lies told about renewables.

Most of the people mocking it helped spread those lies, which makes attacking the people who believe them a bit rude.

> I will also remind you that there is not a single industrialised economy anywhere on earth that has successfully supplied new electricity growth with only renewable energy. Not one.

Nuclear fans across the internet seems to have adopted this talking point recently and none of them have noticed it doesn't make any sense.

What are you even claiming here?

Vague non-binding promises of cheap power in 10 years is cheaper than building clean power today.

For existing nuclear, stealing it from the other grid users is cheaper than building clean power today.

I'd probably be fine with the average opinion of silicon valley workers. Even accounting for the overabundance of priveliged white men that leads to a libertarian/fascist undercurrent. It's the sociopaths that rise to the top by fucking everyone else over that are a problem.

Tesla Model 3s in the UK (and other Right hand drive countries) are made in china so you may want to revisit that bet.

Let's hope no one starts an ill informed and hypocritical conspiracy theory about the mail-in voting that has made it so much easier to vote.

Narrator: it was not an honest question.

The dam only runs about 33% of the time so 8 hours a day and the batteries run nearly every day so just 3 months of additions is nearing half a grand coulee dam of electricity output. Or two Coulee dams a year in grid battery production.

The existing batteries in Texas and California have already delivered a coulee-dam-year (21TWh) so far in 2026.

Grid batteries was one of the few areas that escaped Trump's gutting of the IRA and was included in other Infrastructure bills.

And a side effect of the EV market getting hobbled also redirected battery factory capacity from that market.

I'm not sure what's online yet but there is a pipeline.

edit an estimate from earlier this year:

> By the end of 2025, 20 gigawatt-hours of dedicated storage cell lines had opened, and the industry is on pace to hit 96 gigawatt-hours by the end of this year.

There's something about the trick of abusing a process set up to hire temporary staff quickly for overseas disasters and pandemics to take over and destroy a government department you don't like that feels LLM-like to me.

I wonder if Musk's team is using AI to find loopholes in laws he can abuse.

> The West ... continues to disadvantage itself through eco nonsense

I'm assuming the Chinese EVs that he raves about, and the 1,700 TWh of new renewables generation added since his last visit that helped clear the air are not "eco nonsense" by this definition?

A completely renewable grid is less important than electrifying the low hanging fruit of heating and transport.

Anything below 800g of CO2 (which means basically every current grid) means electrifying is a net win. Even the famously coal heavy South African grid is already past that barrier and even if it wasn't all grids are getting cleaner over time.

A grid that has maxed out wind and solar and then used only coal for 2 weeks would be one of the cleanest grids in the world right now, on par with France or Sweden.

Chasing 100% on a grid to satisfy the complaints of people who are concern trolling isn't smart nor necessary. What you need is bulk cheap electricity to allow you to reduce your heating and transport costs and clean your air at the same time.