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> Reconstituting all of society's energy consumption is a large project with a lot of technical uncertainties that will be discovered along the way. These sort

> Reconstituting all of society's energy consumption is a large project with a lot of technical uncertainties that will be discovered along the way. These sort of forecasts routinely turns out to be very wrong I frequently see this type of comment, and I like to imagine what if people with this attitude won the debate that was happening 300 yeara ago. 300 years ago, thousands of people in London were dying of cholera and the city was debating development of a sewage system. They would argue that its not proven that shit in the streets causes disease, and a system of this size was never tested, and how much would it cost? If they won the argument back then, we'd still be shitting in pots and throwing it out of the window. Todays debate is literally the same problem, it's about cleaning up and about not tossing a different kind of waste out into the environment irresponsibly. People with this attitude are never the ones i proving the human condition.

roenxi 4y ago
Do you have an example more current than 3 centuries past? Because Germany launched an impressive project to reconstitute their grid quite recently and are now at risk of freezing because it turns out their plan didn't work, they shut down a bunch of perfectly serviceable nuclear plants and went heavily in on Russian gas rather than developing local options. The 20th century was full of big ambitious projects that led to some of the greatest human catastrophe's in recorded history. The US has proven unable to build infrastructure for decades, being shown up by such people as literal communists. The problem here is nuclear works great and regulators legislated until it wasn't cost effective. Indeed, they've shut down all the options that might cause pollution, which includes ... all the ones that work. The issue here is not cholera.
- deleted 4y ago
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- lazide 4y ago
  Well, that giant impressive green energy project was also put in place by the voted in (democratically) folks in power, and widely popular at the time I believe? Despite a minority that was objecting it would cause these exact issues? What's that quote? "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H.L. Mencken
- epistasis 4y ago
  > Because Germany launched an impressive project to reconstitute their grid quite recently and are now at risk of freezing because it turns out their plan didn't work Germany did not follow the plan and did not deploy enough renewables to cover their energy needs. They barely did anything to shift their energy generation profile. However, it was still enough to have a big effect on the solar industry, even if it didn't affect Germany that much. They drove down solar costs for everybody else, which we can all now enjoy. And now there's 100s of GW of solar produced annually, and in nearly every area it's the cheapest power you can get.

roenxi 4y ago

Do you have an example more current than 3 centuries past? Because Germany launched an impressive project to reconstitute their grid quite recently and are now at risk of freezing because it turns out their plan didn't work, they shut down a bunch of perfectly serviceable nuclear plants and went heavily in on Russian gas rather than developing local options. The 20th century was full of big ambitious projects that led to some of the greatest human catastrophe's in recorded history. The US has proven unable to build infrastructure for decades, being shown up by such people as literal communists. The problem here is nuclear works great and regulators legislated until it wasn't cost effective. Indeed, they've shut down all the options that might cause pollution, which includes ... all the ones that work. The issue here is not cholera.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lazide 4y ago
Well, that giant impressive green energy project was also put in place by the voted in (democratically) folks in power, and widely popular at the time I believe? Despite a minority that was objecting it would cause these exact issues? What's that quote? "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H.L. Mencken
epistasis 4y ago
> Because Germany launched an impressive project to reconstitute their grid quite recently and are now at risk of freezing because it turns out their plan didn't work Germany did not follow the plan and did not deploy enough renewables to cover their energy needs. They barely did anything to shift their energy generation profile. However, it was still enough to have a big effect on the solar industry, even if it didn't affect Germany that much. They drove down solar costs for everybody else, which we can all now enjoy. And now there's 100s of GW of solar produced annually, and in nearly every area it's the cheapest power you can get.