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> “… without deeper understanding or knowledge.” Ha! Like the common sense to dam migratory river systems to make hydroelectric power. Good idea at the time, a

> “… without deeper understanding or knowledge.” Ha! Like the common sense to dam migratory river systems to make hydroelectric power. Good idea at the time, and who cares about salmon. I have a toaster, and a percolator, and a new fangled “ice” box (formerly chilled by ice, now a maker of ice). S/ My common sense says 1.2B compensation to not do something we otherwise need is bananas as opposed to the common sense—pound salt response. Good thing I’m not in government, yeah. /s

u02sgb 2mo ago
We have a hydroelectric dam near us with a salmon leap next to it. Good visitor attraction too. It'll provide power for decades with little maintenance and not much further in the way of environmental issues now that it's built.
- perpetuallunch 2mo ago
  Dams are subject to silt buildup up, which requires maintenance. They’re so destructive to local ecosystems that environmental groups have blocked any new hydroelectric dams being built in Australia for over 40 years. All modern concrete eventually fails, and dams are notoriously difficult to remove and replace. Fortunately they last long enough that if you paint them pink and plug a torch battery in to them they can remain somebody else’s problem for quite some time.
perpetuallunch 2mo ago
But it’s not $1.2 billion people to do the thing. It’s only $1.2 billion to not do the thing. To do the thing would require paying the original contracted amount. Whatever that might have been. Melbourne, well Victoria the whole state, is looking at a similar scenario for rail tunnels many believe serve little purpose. Around $1.2 billion to stop the work now and pay the early termination penalty. Plus maybe another billion (estimated, who really knows) to bury the tunnel boring machines and remediation work. Or something like $200 billion to complete the work and operate the rail network over some number of probably too many decades. Although this number seems to increase at a regular cadence. A new road tunnel was recently completed and people who use it often report they are the only vehicle in the tunnel. Meanwhile our roads haven’t been maintained in a decade and are literally falling apart. It’s not uncommon to hear reports of multiple cars being recovered after suspension and wheel damage from the same section of poorly maintained road in one day. All of this in a political and economic setting so corrupt the now former state Labor Premier came out and admitted knowledge of a criminal element having infiltrated the union that represents the workers on the projects. She was recently replaced with her deputy. As if that helps. Electricity prices have also increased by something like 150 to 200 percent more than inflation over the past 20 years but mostly the past 6 years (so this decade) because state and federal governments seem to want to insist on ramming Net Zero down our power lines, yet we export around the same amount of gas as Qatar. And we have the worlds largest know uranium deposit and yet we have a ban on nuclear power reactors. Please explain?
- dathinab 2mo ago
  > on ramming Net Zero down our power lines except this is AFIK just plain wrong much more relevant factors seem - spikes in energy need, mainly AI in recent years - extremely badly handling of power grids in a high multitude of ways not related to net zero (like seriously, the German grid is pretty bad compared to an optimal grid. But compared to the nonsense many parts of the US have, it looks like a pristine optimal solution.) - health/environmental protections _not to be confused with climate protection_!! Not wanting your citizens to have massive health issues due to air pollution, acid rains etc. has _nothing_ to do with net zero. People tend to somehow always conflate it. But a lot of the policies the US ended up doing (compared to the ones they say they want to do) where more about that then anything climate related. - inflation statistics being... badly done. Like if most relevant daily use products have price increases noticeable above inflation then your way to measure inflation is the problem. And a lot of the net zero things, tend to actually produce relatively cheap energy, even if you include cost for e.g. some gravity energy store and similar buffers. Just if you don't properly modernize, then you can run into troubles. As part of the US has never been in favor of renewables at all you can guess what happens there wrt. making decisions to which make things work compared to decisions which hinder things and then blame the technology instead of your bad politics.
  - perpetuallunch 2mo ago
    Modern coal fired power plants are much cleaner than those that contributed to acid rain. You seriously believe coal fired power hasn’t evolved in the last 40 years? You’re saying that renewables are cheap but only if you include gravity storage. What gravity storage? The only useful one is pumped hydro, and that works approximately nowhere because of a lack of suitable geography. Australia’s Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro is on track to cost an infinite amount and / or be finished never.
    - dathinab 2mo ago
      > You seriously believe coal fired power hasn’t evolved in the last 40 years? no but even with evolution it still is way worse then literally every other (practical used/usable) alternative e.g. the quality of German brown coal is so bad that there is a saying that burning plastic wast gives you both more and cleaner energy > approximately nowhere you mean no where except everywhere where you have decent sized hills or mountains (and even in flat land under some circumstances) and is already build and in use in Germany in multiple case (and also not just Germany)

u02sgb 2mo ago

We have a hydroelectric dam near us with a salmon leap next to it. Good visitor attraction too. It'll provide power for decades with little maintenance and not much further in the way of environmental issues now that it's built.

perpetuallunch 2mo ago
Dams are subject to silt buildup up, which requires maintenance. They’re so destructive to local ecosystems that environmental groups have blocked any new hydroelectric dams being built in Australia for over 40 years. All modern concrete eventually fails, and dams are notoriously difficult to remove and replace. Fortunately they last long enough that if you paint them pink and plug a torch battery in to them they can remain somebody else’s problem for quite some time.

perpetuallunch 2mo ago

But it’s not $1.2 billion people to do the thing. It’s only $1.2 billion to not do the thing. To do the thing would require paying the original contracted amount. Whatever that might have been. Melbourne, well Victoria the whole state, is looking at a similar scenario for rail tunnels many believe serve little purpose. Around $1.2 billion to stop the work now and pay the early termination penalty. Plus maybe another billion (estimated, who really knows) to bury the tunnel boring machines and remediation work. Or something like $200 billion to complete the work and operate the rail network over some number of probably too many decades. Although this number seems to increase at a regular cadence. A new road tunnel was recently completed and people who use it often report they are the only vehicle in the tunnel. Meanwhile our roads haven’t been maintained in a decade and are literally falling apart. It’s not uncommon to hear reports of multiple cars being recovered after suspension and wheel damage from the same section of poorly maintained road in one day. All of this in a political and economic setting so corrupt the now former state Labor Premier came out and admitted knowledge of a criminal element having infiltrated the union that represents the workers on the projects. She was recently replaced with her deputy. As if that helps. Electricity prices have also increased by something like 150 to 200 percent more than inflation over the past 20 years but mostly the past 6 years (so this decade) because state and federal governments seem to want to insist on ramming Net Zero down our power lines, yet we export around the same amount of gas as Qatar. And we have the worlds largest know uranium deposit and yet we have a ban on nuclear power reactors. Please explain?

dathinab 2mo ago
> on ramming Net Zero down our power lines except this is AFIK just plain wrong much more relevant factors seem - spikes in energy need, mainly AI in recent years - extremely badly handling of power grids in a high multitude of ways not related to net zero (like seriously, the German grid is pretty bad compared to an optimal grid. But compared to the nonsense many parts of the US have, it looks like a pristine optimal solution.) - health/environmental protections _not to be confused with climate protection_!! Not wanting your citizens to have massive health issues due to air pollution, acid rains etc. has _nothing_ to do with net zero. People tend to somehow always conflate it. But a lot of the policies the US ended up doing (compared to the ones they say they want to do) where more about that then anything climate related. - inflation statistics being... badly done. Like if most relevant daily use products have price increases noticeable above inflation then your way to measure inflation is the problem. And a lot of the net zero things, tend to actually produce relatively cheap energy, even if you include cost for e.g. some gravity energy store and similar buffers. Just if you don't properly modernize, then you can run into troubles. As part of the US has never been in favor of renewables at all you can guess what happens there wrt. making decisions to which make things work compared to decisions which hinder things and then blame the technology instead of your bad politics.
- perpetuallunch 2mo ago
  Modern coal fired power plants are much cleaner than those that contributed to acid rain. You seriously believe coal fired power hasn’t evolved in the last 40 years? You’re saying that renewables are cheap but only if you include gravity storage. What gravity storage? The only useful one is pumped hydro, and that works approximately nowhere because of a lack of suitable geography. Australia’s Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro is on track to cost an infinite amount and / or be finished never.
  - dathinab 2mo ago
    > You seriously believe coal fired power hasn’t evolved in the last 40 years? no but even with evolution it still is way worse then literally every other (practical used/usable) alternative e.g. the quality of German brown coal is so bad that there is a saying that burning plastic wast gives you both more and cleaner energy > approximately nowhere you mean no where except everywhere where you have decent sized hills or mountains (and even in flat land under some circumstances) and is already build and in use in Germany in multiple case (and also not just Germany)