I’m saying it does matter. When you go to a business and say you can buy a widget for $1000, or for $500, and they both do the same thing, the business will choose the cheaper one. Sure, lobbying will get businesses some favors, loosen some regulation, get some subsidies, but at a certain point it’s not enough, the economics take over.
You’re right that people have been thinking about and working on renewable energy for a long time. However what’s only become true very recently is that it’s cheaper to generate energy using renewable sources than to use fossil fuels. That’s a massive milestone because when a new power source is built it will more likely than not be renewable.
People making sacrifices is important, but what if you weren’t only giving people the opportunity to help the environment, but also to improve their bottom line? Makes the pitch a lot easier and helps us to build momentum in the right direction.
I don’t agree with you, but also if I did, what then? If we don’t believe it’s possible for things to get better do we just lay down and die?
You’re right, we’ve got to get rid of fossil fuel. As one example, the article talks about how energy storage has reduced the need for gas peaker plants. In California in April the power required from those plants was half what it’s been in April the prior three years.
Still plenty of progress that needs to be made, but what’s notable is that it’s now cheaper for a business to turn to green energy and storage to solve a problem. There’s not an incentive to build new polluting tech. So while the impact of climate change is going to get worse (because those emissions and warming are already baked in) the business argument for fossil fuel is no longer viable.
Yes, we need more storage and generation. The author didn’t say we’re all good and nothing more needs to be done. What’s noteworthy is that renewable energy is cheaper than CO2 emitting, and battery storage is cheaper than peaker plants. (And grid battery can come from things like salt, sand, brick along with better known components like hydro storage, doesn’t have to be rare earth elements)
It’s ok to acknowledge when good things happen while also recognizing bad things.
With respect, I think you’re projecting a discussion with a different person onto this article.
You’re right, the climate is going to get worse before it gets better. You’re right, the impacts of climate change will disproportionately affect poor and underdeveloped areas. We can’t make that go away with positive thinking, and it’s not enough for humans as a species to survive, we need to focus on reducing suffering while we’re turning the ship.
What I took away from this article is that the market forces for cheap renewable power and the means to store it are now stronger than the forces for CO2 emitting power. And those forces are moving faster than predicted. That’s good, and it’s ok to talk about something good when it’s true!
People who have been paying attention and care about others have good reason to be wary about the narrative “oh, everything is going to be fine” because that’s what industry and politicians have been saying for a long time instead of taking needed action.
We’re at a point where most people recognize climate change is real, and they can see it’s effects. We’re also at a point where many people don’t have hope for the situation. It’s dangerous to tell people “shit’s fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it” because they might believe you and do nothing.
I’ve seen the compass, but in real life conversation when people say left or right they don’t exclusively mean economic views. For example, access to abortion or LGBT rights are generally seen as supported by the left and opposed by the right.
You’re right it’s reductive, and really there are many dimensions to political thought.
I don’t think that’s accurate, there’s a social axis from left to right too.
Lol yeah everyone shitting on stereo is shooting in the wrong direction - companies suck, stereo or surround sound doesn’t. Not saying it’s a super high priority for me, but another channel of audio isn’t going to use much bandwidth, we already listen to streaming music in stereo all the time.
Just like there’s no such thing as an unbiased person, there’s no unbiased instance. Better to know what you’re getting into than to assume what you’re reading isn’t coming from a particular point of view.
It sucks! I’d guess this was an attempt to get something on the books and maybe they go back for exemptions later. Article says an earlier bill only applied to wheelchairs and then later they expanded to include agricultural equipment.
You wouldn’t say this if you were following the industry at all. Please see my other comment in this thread. SpaceX is dominating, for good reason, and seemingly in spite of musk.
Please see my other comment in this same thread. It’s not like Tesla or Twitter where they’re clearing slipping and releasing bad product. Look at the actual accomplishments!
As much as we on lemmy might look down on consumers of conservative news, I’m really surprised by how similarly reflexive and uninformed a lot of the comments here are.
Meaning no disrespect, it’s clear from your response you’re not familiar with space history. And that was my point - a lot of people are jumping in here and making negative comments just because of the Musk association without knowing or caring about the reality.
The space shuttle (the U.S.’ s previous manned “reusable” vehicle) was retired in 2011, and the Crew Dragon was ready in about 2020. NASA was not forced to use Soyuz because of a delay in the Crew Dragon, it was because the Space Shuttle had two previous fatal disasters, was way more expensive than planned, and would be even more expensive to keep running. I didn’t know this until looking at the wikipedia just now, but early safety estimates put the chance of catastrophic failure and death of the crew between 1 in 100 to as low as 1 in 100,000. After those two disasters they re-evaluated and put the risk as high as 1 in 9.
NASA was willing to take a chance on other contracts for commercial vehicles because it had no other options. It awarded contracts both to SpaceX and ULA. The first is doing dozens of uncrewed launches per year and has flown 12 crewed missions. The other is doing like 3 launches per year, has yet to fly Starliner with a crew, and costs more per launch.
The space shuttle vehicle itself was re-usable. The “external tank” was discarded and not re-used. The solid rocket boosters would fall into the ocean, and then would have to be recovered, examined and refurbished. Those tanks/boosters represented a huge portion of the cost. While the space shuttle was slightly more re-usable, other rocket launches would be single use. What SpaceX did that no one else had before was a controlled vertical landing of the booster. In other words, it landed under power and standing up. That’s very difficult, and a game changer since it skipped the recovery step, and they didn’t require the time and cost of examination / refurbishment the way the space shuttle components did.
What is it you want to say about Artemis?
You’re right, Elon Musk being associated with a company is negative. And what SpaceX has accomplished despite that association is truly impressive.
I think around here most people agree that billionaires don’t earn their billions, they reach that point having benefited from the efforts of thousands of workers. So why don’t we recognize those people’s work? Somehow, SpaceX has managed to avoid the meddling that we see from Musk in relation to Twitter and Tesla.
Before SpaceX the U.S. was reliant on Russia’s soyuz to get us to and from the space station. We didn’t have anything that could launch people into orbit.
Before SpaceX we were launching single use rockets built by companies like United Launch Alliance (ULA), which was founded as a joint venture between defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing. (They’re still around and still for the most part suck)
And before SpaceX the cost to do anything in space was extremely prohibitive. NASA didn’t and still doesn’t really build their own rockets, they contract out, and the contracts had been cost-plus, meaning ULA got an agreed on profit plus expenses. So if the schedule slipped on development or development cost more than expected, they actually make more money. There wasn’t much of a private market in space.
With SpaceX they created re-usable rocket components, re-established a U.S. sourced crew capsule, and using fixed price contracts they reduced the cost of launch by an order of magnitude. And by publishing fixed prices to get into space, they pretty much by themselves kicked off the private space economy. SpaceX launches more frequently than any other company, and more than any nation.
And they did all that with a better safety record than previous programs! I can’t speak to this particular explosion, but SpaceX has taken an approach where they create new designs quickly, and test them quickly with the potential for explosions, before they put humans at risk on a live launch.
Elon Musk didn’t do all that, the people at SpaceX did. And if anything I’m concerned about the point when he gets tired of fucking up twitter and tesla and turns his attention to SpaceX. I’m hoping the national security aspect of the company will mean responsible adults prevent him from interfering.
Good lord, everyone please learn a tiny bit about spacex and the state of the space industry instead of letting your (justified) hatred of Elon do the typing.
Shit’s embarrassing. Don’t know how people can represent the church with a straight face.
Also: when you get cancer who has the idea to pray to some rando? God’s busy, maybe this 15 year old ghost can get his attention for me.
Trouble is when everybody else uses it, just because you turn it off doesn’t mean you won’t have issues.
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The article I shared is about how solar is now the cheapest form of power. So that is what’s happening.