3 ms·

Maybe this is my tech bubble, but try to find a country with higher Linux/PGP/OpenStreetMap use. I am still trying to put my finger on what the culture differen

by Aachen 3y ago

Maybe this is my tech bubble, but try to find a country with higher Linux/PGP/OpenStreetMap use. I am still trying to put my finger on what the culture difference is precisely, but also outside of tech there's more thinking about what the right/correct/fair thing to do is, even if that brings greater net harm in the end. Example: closing down nuclear because it's not a perfect solution and has risks and waste (ignoring their proportions), in favor of renewables, not caring that renewables are decades away and it'll be replaced by maintaining coal for more years than it takes the world to trip a couple (predicted/expected) points of no return in climate change. By comparison, I found the Netherlands to be much more yolo. Live and let live, don't care as much if what they're doing is correct All generalisations, of course. You can find nazis and climate activists in the Netherlands as well as in Germany or anywhere else.

iSnow 3y ago
With all due respect, renewables are not decades away, they are at a major inflection point right now. While I deplore the shuttering of Germany's NPPs, nuclear would not have been a solution to the decarbonization challenge, as the times to build NPPs and the costs are prohibitive. Renewables are the cheapest source of energy right here and now, we should invest way more into researching grid-scale storage solutions. Also not so sure about NL being more relaxed, they have a cultural war at their hands over nitrogen emissions from agriculture, and it has shaken up their political system.
- myspy 3y ago
  We did choose to put solar on our roof with heat pump when we built our home only four years ago and at the time, there was no certainty if this investment will be any good. This year we also bought a battery and can run the house with this setup from spring to autumn with small input from the grid. Only winter sucks because the heat pump is less efficient when it's cold. Would be great to have better storage for the grid to get cheaper energy during that time.
- eldaisfish 3y ago
  Renewables are the cheapest source of energy PROVIDED the cost of providing energy when they are generating zero energy is paid for by someone else. This argument keeps coming up and is entirely wrong and very misleading. Renewable energy due it its intermittent nature creates a problem and does nothing to solve that problem. The cost of that solution must be factored into the cost of energy from renewable generation.
  - iSnow 3y ago
    And which power source doesn't create externalities that are not factored into the price?
  - phicoh 3y ago
    There was a perfectly reasonable transition strategy. Install as much solar and wind turbines as possible and rely on natural gas plants are other times. Natural gas plants are relatively cheap and can in the future be converted to hydrogen. The big advantage is that solar and wind can directly reduce CO2 emissions, instead of waiting for decades for new nuclear power to come online. Converting heating of buildings to heat pumps and cars to electrical also directly reduces CO2 emissions even if you generate electricity from natural gas. There was one part where it went terribly wrong, and that was the idea source the natural gas almost exclusively from Russia...
    - Aachen 3y ago
      You're mostly right of course, but keep in mind that "waiting for decades for nuclear to come online" is not a fair comparison. Nuclear: pick ten locations -> allocate the money for each -> it goes five times over budget but in the end you have 80% of your energy need taken care of. By the time they're done, the remaining 20% is covered by renewables (we're already almost at that point. If only we had kept nuclear...). Renewables means fighting with nearly every individual land owner in the country separately. Either they need solar panels on them or they need a wind turbine near them. Have fun and good luck arguing millions of individual cases. The latter is cheaper per MW, people will argue. Faster to build each individual spot and no huge investments needed. All true. I just hope it's going to happen at the speed that people extrapolate from the low-hanging fruit we got so far...
- Aachen 3y ago
  I really hope you're right about it not being decades away NL and their stikstofcrisis is a legal thing. Individuals (on average) don't care about climate the way people do in Germany (on average). An example involving more than just direct friends and family: I wanted to join friends in NL in a protest on a global strike day a few years ago because nobody in Germany wanted to go with me, only to find that in NL there weren't any protests going on that I could propose for us to go to. A small one in the Hague or Amsterdam I think, nothing close enough for us to reasonably join. There's groups for climate in NL as well, but they're so much smaller.
martin_a 3y ago
> not caring that renewables are decades away Pffft... If the government wuold decide to buy balcony solar systems for 1.000 Euro each for every household, that would come down to a mere 41 billion Euro for the whole state and that would solve lots of all of this. They found 100 billion for the Bundeswehr without any problem in the blink of an eye. If you really wanted, the whole energy topic would be set up and solved in a month, from there on it's steady execution.
- llampx 3y ago
  Meanwhile in Berlin, the incoming government decided to half the amount earmarked for building and maintaining bike lanes. Climate change is the last thing on the German government's mind, no matter what they claim.
- Aachen 3y ago
  You're forgetting that not everyone wants such a thing on their balcony and that you'll need to find someone to manufacture all of that (other countries want their solar still, too; it doesn't help us to deny Australia years of solar panel production only to put many on cloudy north-facing German balconies). I don't know what the acceptance percentage as well as a realistic manufacturing rate is at such an order size (probably pretty fast), but it sounds like you're assuming the answers are "near 100%" and "a few years".
  - martin_a 3y ago
    That's what I mean with let's figure it out and stick to execution. Production will probably not meet demand at first, but we need to get going. And we need to get going big. - Let's make it mandatory to install fixed solar systems for new development areas and any newly build commercial buildings. The state will subsidize 90% of the cost for the initial setup for private households, for companies it's just a tax deductible expense. - You want to retrofit your existing house with a fixed solar system? That's 90% subsizidation for you, too! - You have a multi-party house (details needed) or a professional housing company? You'll have to retrofit your buildings in 5 years of time from now on. - Let's retrofit all public buildings with solar systems. No excuses, execution asap. - The state will encourage research and development of energy storage sytems by providing funds to universities etc. We'll also need to have lots of laws changed and have our energy companies put in to place, but if the cost is low for the individual person, people will just make this happen. Yeah, it will cost some money, but the money is there, it's just an allocation problem.
johannes1234321 3y ago
> but try to find a country with higher Linux/PGP/OpenStreetMap use. I am still trying to put my finger on what the culture difference is Those examples stem from Germany's strong care about privacy, which is rooted in the Nazi regime, showing how data can be used to discriminate people and then the surveillance in East Germany by the Stasi. While there are many aspects to critizise Germany did mostly well to educate the own population about the Nazi crimes (which also kept right wing parties out for a long period compared to other European countries, while that changes currently ...) In addition the West did propaganda against East and Stasi surveillance which told the West society about the dangers of surveillance (while at the same time CIA, NSA etc had quite some power in Germany ...) And then, after reunification, they didn't simply burn down Stasi and forget, but again did a huge program to study the surveillance programs and publishing about it and allowing everybody to request their Stasi file. Thus on the aspect of privacy the society is confronted with the risk. The other aspect about German culture is the pride about "German Engineering" thus thinking though and trying to avoid problems. This brought quite some industry, however in a highly dynamic field, like modern IT based systems it prevents coming up with solutions compared to the Silicon Valley "move fast and break things" attitude. Germany is. More like "move slow, but robust" Those in the early days, Germany was quite well with IT (think Use, Siemens, Nixdorf) but when the core engineering lost relevance and software took over lost ground, so that basically only SAP survived, which is a very German product, again. Also the Nuclear exit, I argue, is partially caused by the cold war: Chernobyl caused notable increase in radiation etc in Germany, where children were forbidden to play outside, hunting mushrooms was forbidden etc. and as being located directly on the iron curtain and as one could directly observe how differently the reporting in West and East Germany was (shared language across the fence ...) it was symbolized.
phicoh 3y ago
The funny thing is that the end result is not that different between Germany and The Netherlands. The Netherlands has only 500 MW of nuclear power, because for historical reasons, The Netherlands didn't bother much with nuclear power to begin with. Germany has a higher percentage for electricity from renewables, because for a long time The Netherlands didn't really bother with that either. (The Netherlands is now at around 40% renewable electricity production, unfortunately that is only 15% of total energy use)

by Aachen 3y ago

iSnow 3y ago

With all due respect, renewables are not decades away, they are at a major inflection point right now. While I deplore the shuttering of Germany's NPPs, nuclear would not have been a solution to the decarbonization challenge, as the times to build NPPs and the costs are prohibitive. Renewables are the cheapest source of energy right here and now, we should invest way more into researching grid-scale storage solutions. Also not so sure about NL being more relaxed, they have a cultural war at their hands over nitrogen emissions from agriculture, and it has shaken up their political system.

myspy 3y ago
We did choose to put solar on our roof with heat pump when we built our home only four years ago and at the time, there was no certainty if this investment will be any good. This year we also bought a battery and can run the house with this setup from spring to autumn with small input from the grid. Only winter sucks because the heat pump is less efficient when it's cold. Would be great to have better storage for the grid to get cheaper energy during that time.
eldaisfish 3y ago
Renewables are the cheapest source of energy PROVIDED the cost of providing energy when they are generating zero energy is paid for by someone else. This argument keeps coming up and is entirely wrong and very misleading. Renewable energy due it its intermittent nature creates a problem and does nothing to solve that problem. The cost of that solution must be factored into the cost of energy from renewable generation.
- iSnow 3y ago
  And which power source doesn't create externalities that are not factored into the price?
- phicoh 3y ago
  There was a perfectly reasonable transition strategy. Install as much solar and wind turbines as possible and rely on natural gas plants are other times. Natural gas plants are relatively cheap and can in the future be converted to hydrogen. The big advantage is that solar and wind can directly reduce CO2 emissions, instead of waiting for decades for new nuclear power to come online. Converting heating of buildings to heat pumps and cars to electrical also directly reduces CO2 emissions even if you generate electricity from natural gas. There was one part where it went terribly wrong, and that was the idea source the natural gas almost exclusively from Russia...
  - Aachen 3y ago
    You're mostly right of course, but keep in mind that "waiting for decades for nuclear to come online" is not a fair comparison. Nuclear: pick ten locations -> allocate the money for each -> it goes five times over budget but in the end you have 80% of your energy need taken care of. By the time they're done, the remaining 20% is covered by renewables (we're already almost at that point. If only we had kept nuclear...). Renewables means fighting with nearly every individual land owner in the country separately. Either they need solar panels on them or they need a wind turbine near them. Have fun and good luck arguing millions of individual cases. The latter is cheaper per MW, people will argue. Faster to build each individual spot and no huge investments needed. All true. I just hope it's going to happen at the speed that people extrapolate from the low-hanging fruit we got so far...
Aachen 3y ago
I really hope you're right about it not being decades away NL and their stikstofcrisis is a legal thing. Individuals (on average) don't care about climate the way people do in Germany (on average). An example involving more than just direct friends and family: I wanted to join friends in NL in a protest on a global strike day a few years ago because nobody in Germany wanted to go with me, only to find that in NL there weren't any protests going on that I could propose for us to go to. A small one in the Hague or Amsterdam I think, nothing close enough for us to reasonably join. There's groups for climate in NL as well, but they're so much smaller.

martin_a 3y ago

> not caring that renewables are decades away Pffft... If the government wuold decide to buy balcony solar systems for 1.000 Euro each for every household, that would come down to a mere 41 billion Euro for the whole state and that would solve lots of all of this. They found 100 billion for the Bundeswehr without any problem in the blink of an eye. If you really wanted, the whole energy topic would be set up and solved in a month, from there on it's steady execution.

llampx 3y ago
Meanwhile in Berlin, the incoming government decided to half the amount earmarked for building and maintaining bike lanes. Climate change is the last thing on the German government's mind, no matter what they claim.
Aachen 3y ago
You're forgetting that not everyone wants such a thing on their balcony and that you'll need to find someone to manufacture all of that (other countries want their solar still, too; it doesn't help us to deny Australia years of solar panel production only to put many on cloudy north-facing German balconies). I don't know what the acceptance percentage as well as a realistic manufacturing rate is at such an order size (probably pretty fast), but it sounds like you're assuming the answers are "near 100%" and "a few years".
- martin_a 3y ago
  That's what I mean with let's figure it out and stick to execution. Production will probably not meet demand at first, but we need to get going. And we need to get going big. - Let's make it mandatory to install fixed solar systems for new development areas and any newly build commercial buildings. The state will subsidize 90% of the cost for the initial setup for private households, for companies it's just a tax deductible expense. - You want to retrofit your existing house with a fixed solar system? That's 90% subsizidation for you, too! - You have a multi-party house (details needed) or a professional housing company? You'll have to retrofit your buildings in 5 years of time from now on. - Let's retrofit all public buildings with solar systems. No excuses, execution asap. - The state will encourage research and development of energy storage sytems by providing funds to universities etc. We'll also need to have lots of laws changed and have our energy companies put in to place, but if the cost is low for the individual person, people will just make this happen. Yeah, it will cost some money, but the money is there, it's just an allocation problem.

johannes1234321 3y ago

> but try to find a country with higher Linux/PGP/OpenStreetMap use. I am still trying to put my finger on what the culture difference is Those examples stem from Germany's strong care about privacy, which is rooted in the Nazi regime, showing how data can be used to discriminate people and then the surveillance in East Germany by the Stasi. While there are many aspects to critizise Germany did mostly well to educate the own population about the Nazi crimes (which also kept right wing parties out for a long period compared to other European countries, while that changes currently ...) In addition the West did propaganda against East and Stasi surveillance which told the West society about the dangers of surveillance (while at the same time CIA, NSA etc had quite some power in Germany ...) And then, after reunification, they didn't simply burn down Stasi and forget, but again did a huge program to study the surveillance programs and publishing about it and allowing everybody to request their Stasi file. Thus on the aspect of privacy the society is confronted with the risk. The other aspect about German culture is the pride about "German Engineering" thus thinking though and trying to avoid problems. This brought quite some industry, however in a highly dynamic field, like modern IT based systems it prevents coming up with solutions compared to the Silicon Valley "move fast and break things" attitude. Germany is. More like "move slow, but robust" Those in the early days, Germany was quite well with IT (think Use, Siemens, Nixdorf) but when the core engineering lost relevance and software took over lost ground, so that basically only SAP survived, which is a very German product, again. Also the Nuclear exit, I argue, is partially caused by the cold war: Chernobyl caused notable increase in radiation etc in Germany, where children were forbidden to play outside, hunting mushrooms was forbidden etc. and as being located directly on the iron curtain and as one could directly observe how differently the reporting in West and East Germany was (shared language across the fence ...) it was symbolized.

phicoh 3y ago

The funny thing is that the end result is not that different between Germany and The Netherlands. The Netherlands has only 500 MW of nuclear power, because for historical reasons, The Netherlands didn't bother much with nuclear power to begin with. Germany has a higher percentage for electricity from renewables, because for a long time The Netherlands didn't really bother with that either. (The Netherlands is now at around 40% renewable electricity production, unfortunately that is only 15% of total energy use)