Which states is it you are referring to? And which countries? And what is it that you think qualifies as being “further left” in this case?

Oh, you are aussie:) i should have guessed by your username.

Ok, for starters, where I live that big yellow thing stops shining. Practically (for electricity production anyways) for almost 6 months of the year and almost totally for 3. And even with heat pumps we still use several MWh of electricity every year to heat our homes. A battery park can keep a city running for 1h. Even those planned in NSW (BESS is it?) would struggle to keep things running for mire than a day. To be clear:

We need more energy storage than can be provided by electric batteries, than can be bought at battery prices and in scales larger than can be produced with any technology current or in the overseeable future. And we needed it yesterday. Any form of low cost, stable, easy to store solution we can use is a huge step forward. Solar is great! But we need the electricity when the sun doesn’t shine. Heat pumps are awesome! But their awesomness is needed when the sun doesn’t shine so much. That is why we need more energy storage solutions.

Summertime there are almost limitless electricity available, but that energy needs to be stored somehow. And with limitless (in practice) efficiency isn’t an issue. Even storing 1% is better than 0%. Regardless of efficiency.

You said it yourself. Still undiscovered. The technology we have today can’t be used to save more than a day or so of electricity. We need to handle months. Finding more energy dense ways of doing it is crucial.

And even if we burn it and put it back in the air, it is still positive, because we won’t have added more from oil. And if we get enough of the stuff we can let the trees grow, which would be a carbon sink.

Step 1: stop using oil. If we use the methane as is, we’ve accomplished this step.

Step 2: scrub carbon from atmosphere. Upping the game and replacing wood for heating would let the trees scrub the atmosphere, creating carbon sinks

Step 3: accelerate. Can processed methsne be stored in energy dense compounds? Like oil was?

Batteries may be more efficient, but we can’t use them to store all the energy we need. And heat pumps still need electricity when there is less renewable electricity available.

Looking at nature, long carbon chains are the way to store lots of energy and being able to use just electricity to get carbon out of the air is a great first step. Capturing the methane will allow us to process it further.

This is the best news regarding energy storage I’ve seen in a long time.

So “it was only a joke” is also back on the menu? Wow, times are rolling back fast!

Even the term itself is a generalising stereotype. But it we are to have a somewhat serious discussion about it, I’d say It’s a human condition, not a gendered condition. For example, given what is (not) known about our respective genders, you felt the need to explain this.

So stereotyping gender is back on the menu? Are hair color jokes still taboo?

You dropped your /S ;)

I know where you are comming from, however. But the thing is, not doing that isn’t helping any either. And one thing that needs to be said, which isn’t reported on nearly as much as it should, the EU green deal, fit for 55, while it still isn’t enough, is legislation which has passed, which has teeth and which will keep EU working to reduce carbon emissions. And will keep us running as fast as we can to be able to make the cut offs and deadlines.

I did not in any way mean to suggest sensitivity is not a factor, only to suggest that light sensitivity may be more of a spectrum and that there are persons living in a darker world than others. So, it may not be a person on the top of the bell curve that need more light, but someone on the other end of the spectrum entirely.

Since the top comment in this thread was about needing more light in an already bright room i meamt to say that there might be reasons why people around us prefer 1 or 100000 lumen…

Apparently all eyes are not created equal in ability to transfer light to the retina. Some has narrower or wider fields of vision as well. So, where your eyes may be well adapted to low light levels, others may not be. In a world with no artificial shadows and the sun high on the sky for most of the year, being able to filter out sun light might have been a pro, while now needing lots of artificial lights to see straight.

As predicted. The EU policies on solar will drive the same excess in every country. Germany is also going for hydrogen with a large hydrogen network already built and excess electricity would be a great source of power for green hydrogen production (which is vehemently inefficient, but if it’s free…)

Totally unlike the other fielded armies globally at the moment.

/S

I know what you mean. The oldest building i pass every day is from dates from 1250, but compared to the parts of Europe rich in architecture that’s not really very old…

No, we need to be able to keep two thoughts in our heads at the same time or we are bound to repeat the mistakes. Terror and oppression is terrible regardless of what the purpetrator and the victim are called.

Just renove the ball and it becomes obvious

A warning and belittlement. “Talk to your client”. The godfather wasn’t addressed.

Five years ago I was astonished that the U.S. navy was looking for renewable fuels thinking it would never pan out. Today I see alternatives which has nothing to do with fossils in the private sector. I see heavy transportation companies trying to find ways to electrify their fleet. I think those “grownups” will find themselves in a new reality despite them not wanting to.

And unfeasible? Three years ago maybe. Today we need to revise the time plans. I’m already working at implementing the goals set for 2030 and have started shifting focus towards the big elephant and the 2045 goals.

That’s another nail in the coffin.

Oh well, at least it works to my advantage when I don’t remember to bring work with me home to ponder.

“Allows them freedom”? From my viewpoint, that is straight up newspeak. Which is also a point to be made, our respective frames of reference is so diverse I’m hard pressed to think we would ever use the same language to describe any form of housing. Only in America is walkability a problem in low density areas. Presuming your definition of “low density” isnt rural, of course. And if we are rural, I have a hard time seeing how that can be defined as a sedentary lifestyle. Going for a walk is not usually a problem in those settings, either.

From an ecological viewpoint such zoning reforms have merits, but in the way we have done it so far, I question the social merits of such policies. The society must be about more than stacking people on top of eachother.

From time to time we’ve seen very one-sided policies pushed (often with economical focus) and several years down the line we realise the issues of such policies. We can’t afford that at this point, we need to find policies that adress the full trifecta of areas to find our way forward sustainably.