Comments by "Xyz Same" (@xyzsame4081) on "TED"
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@joebloggs619 you speak as someone who is not in an unhealthy relationship. Have you ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome ? Consider that she is likely to have children, and your non-judgemential common sense matter of fact statements may make an impact - even if the shows only years later.
(I read a report of a woman who came from a good family - only her mother ran off when she was little. Devoted father, living a very cooperative equal partnership with his 2nd wife. When she was 28 years (maybe the age her mother left or became a child) she "fell in love" with a very traditional guy, whirlwind romance, she got pregnant immediately, they married. In his family the father was dominant and he beat the wife.
And during the engagement phase the young man had smacked her, they had got lost on a holiday in the city and that was too stressful for him. She was so shocked, surprised that it did not register, later he apologized and she let it pass. BIG mistake.
Anyway: she knew that the people in the hospital did not believe her when she came up with the explanation of which accident had caused this and that bruise. She would have been mortified and likely would have denied it when they had called a spade a spade. But in her narrative she wrote that she wished they had called her out - in a matter of fact manner.
Later: her familiy doctor was better trained. She admitted the physical abuse (and much more verbal terror) or the doctor asked for it. The GP did not make a drama of it, but told her it would be better to leave. And she told her to pay attention to the shelters, and telephone numbers of helpful organizations. the docors had posters in the waiting room (brochures are useless, the other waiting patients would see you take it). The the woman learned that number by heart - even though she did not leave - yet.
The strange thing is - she had a loving and caring father, not in the same city, but he no doubt would have come on his white horse to ge her and the 2 children out, had he known. He was not rich, but solid middle class, enough to help her out.
The other thing that stood out: how delusional she was about how she could "protect" the children from harm while they witnessed her husband abusing her and occasionally beating her. (that was his last resort, he managed her with verbal violence and the threat ! of physical abuse, she learned to walk on eggshells).
The difference to Stockhom Syndome: not one very traumatic life threatening event - instead the potential victims were set up often as children and indoctrinated accordingly (although some can find themselve in terrifying situations, that are life and death and have that repeatedly and at young age).
If the speaker had a warm and trusting relationship with family, other female relatives, she likely would have told them, would have had a net to fall back on. That does not mean her family was terrible, just not good enough to support her in situations of higher demand.
Children with _absent parents are also _weaker it must not always be outright abuse: highly stressing careers, illness or death of a parent, a sibling that needs all the energy of the parents, mental illness or "quiet" addiction - children from such families are more likely to end up in dysfunctional relationships. Females more often with "helper's syndrome" and in exploitative or abusive situations. Man try to "cure" the damage often by becoming abusers.. It can be that the child was not neglected in a way that was obvious to the outer world and that the addicted or ill parents were not mean - just not available (and not always it was their "fault").
As for your co-worker: That's a a special kind of family where you learn to value "getting a husband incl. expensive ring" more than your dignity. (and she had invested 5 years into the project to catch him).
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I read a story of U.S. interns (not working with clients or visible to clients) who were ordered to wear high heels to work (plus business attire of course). They noted one person that wore flat shoes (that was a veteran who had an injury and thus was granted that "privilege"). The interns (college graduates likely) made a "petition" to the superiors that they would like to get a pass as well - and they mentioned that one person for whom the rules were loosened. as well - They all got fired.
The comments were quite gleeful - serves the spoilt brats right, some got caught up how they could dare to "demand" the same privilige as the veteran (never mind they didn't know that - well they could have asked before), most agreed "we had to suck it up and they will have to suck it up as well. That'll teach them a lesson".
I live in Europe so here is my perspective: the rule to wear high heels was arbitrary. It had nothing to do with the quality of the product or the customer experience. Asking for presentable, maybe somewhat conservative attire ? Fine Ask them to have clean, more formal shoes, no flip-flops, no open toes, etc. ? Fine. But that rule was applied to folks who were expected to function as adults, to give their intelligence, dedication, curiosity, goodwill, cooperation, loyalty and resourcefulness to the company. And they were not modelling or acting.
The company on the other hand was really dedicated to make them OBEY. They do not want people who QUESTION arbitrary rules. They most definitely do not want to come people together to ask their employer for something. What comes next ? unions, collective bargaining, people exchanging how much money they make ? Note how the favor they asked for had nothing to do with performance (well maybe better performance because wearing orderly but comfortable shoes on long workdays). And it would not have COST the employer money.
Of course the old employees would have been upset, they HAD submitted to the arbitrary rules, so giving the spoilt brats privileges would not sit well with them.
The next best thing would have been to decline the petition and explain to them, the the only exception was made for the veteran, and not to make too much ado about it.
But no -THEY had to be fired - they had violated the law of OBEDIENCE.
And with such a managment style you cannot have a resourceful, result-oriented, cooperative team and way of getting things done.
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@skonstas4683 ? a reduction by 25 % is nothing for you ? And of course like all technocrats that do not study ecology you forgot to add the carbon IN the SOIL that every tree stores away. Likely more efficiently than other plants (because of cooperation with fungi). Plus the other many benefits of trees:
Fruits, shade, moderating the temperatures and impact of rainfall / draughts. Habitat for wildlife and pollinators, noise and dust reduction, SOIL CREATION, helping to infiltrate rain and later to pump it up from the underground. Flood, mudslide, avalanche protection. Wind shelter. Fuel and construction material. Also for bee keepers.
Trees not only bring up water they also mine minerals from the underground. Both helps the whole vegetation system nearby, not only the tree that invests the energy. During heat spells areas with trees and a lot of vegetation are considerably cooler. Easily by 10 degrees C in the shade and 3 - 5 degrees in the area (we are talking cities !) Trees are the most effective in bringing temperatures down, they evaporate water and act like a cooler.
Trees produce fungal dominated soil, especially if planted in a group (there will be a far reaching web in the soil). The good effects compound if you have a group of trees, but of course a single tree, or row of trees still does some good. Clusters of forests are even better.
They break the wind and can stop deforestation. They are food for animals and humans and are pleasant to look at. They are a factor for tourism (Indian summer, berry and mushrooms collectors, also hunters) and increase the value of real estate in a neighbourhood.
They build and secure the good soil that can store water, funnel it into aquifers and then it is slowly released.
The Amazon creates a more favorable climate in adjacent ecosystems that get more rain than you would expect from their location. They get a windfall. The Amazon creates its own rain, the water evaporates and carries bacteria with it, those become the condensation cores for droplets.
And the ecosystems next to the huge forests also get some of the goodness. Or they used to.
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You forgot to mention that it is aesthetically pleasing, can be good for tourism, stabilizes hills against mudslides and avalanches, produces oxigen, helps with water storage, improves soil (natural soil is a sponge, it can take up downpours and release the moisture over time, that is even more so when the leaves are dropped every fall to form topsoil).
It also provides food. Wild pigs used to feed on the fruits.
Also construction material. Shelter for animals.
As for feeding a crowd - grass land beats forests - that is why steppes have more animals and the huge predators. The grass can be trampled (by animanls) and eaten to the ground - it will recover. The cycles are much, much faster (months versus decades or centuries) and grass may be even better in how much carbon is processed (even though grass land looks less impressive).
In the forests allmost all the bio mass goes into the wood, they grow slowly however, and do not recover (let's say from a storm, wildfire, pests).
So if we are into sequestering carbon - growing hemp (which is more the equivalent of grass) and using that to produce QUALITY insulation for quality buildings (= long term use) would store away a lot of carbon for at least 50 - 100 years. That would buy us time.
Admitted forests of oak, beech, maple look prettier.
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10:00 he shows grass after a rain, and then when it became standing hay during the the dry season and claims the grass dies off (correct) and also that the the soil life and the roots die. That is NOT correct, as long as there is some moisture the critters and microbes survive, the moment they get rain they spring back into action.Incl. the roots.
And the grass does NOT oxydize when it is hot and dry, it needs moisture, to decompose.
It becomes fuel for wildfire. Cattle or other (also smaller !) wildlife will eat it (when they are hungry enough) or there is a good chance it burns down at some point.
Heavy rains might beat the standing hay down so that it starts decomposing and a little green can come up amid the flatter grass, but for rejuvenation it has to be grazed or removed otherwise, but that grazing must not be done by cattle, or large lifestock.
Actually in many mature (genuine) semi-arid regions the plants have evolved with pressure only from small to medium sized grazer, and when the land is dry (and vulnerable) already, herds in desperate search of fodder (goats or cattle) will damage it.
When that happens occasionally AND there is no ongoing draught, AND the land is flat, so not much runoff / erosion, the vegetation can recover even from that damage. But not when humans make that an agricultural practice.
The folks at the Loess Plateau in the last phase of degredation did plenty of animals but only for a very short time - out of necessity, there was so little growth. It did not restore the vergetation (despite sufficient if not super abundant rain *) it made things worse.
Only the massive government project restored the landscape beautifully and that included NO grazing until the vegetation had recovered and the many trees and bushes had established themselves and were large enough that the goats were not interested anymore and getting a few leaves did not kill the plants.
If land gets always some (but mild) rainfall it can take a lot of abuse and will recover and erosion will not be too bad either.
But what he suggests is INTENSE (if short) grazing, and that can easily be very damaging if the vegetation is vulnerable already. The short duration of the managed grazing is of little value when the lifestock would have moved on 1 day later on its own because then there was nothing left at all.
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The US has only approx. 325 million people and consumes resources on a huge level (the other first world countries als get much more than "their share", but the U.S. are especially wasteful). So they beat China when it comes to consumption even though China has 1,3 billion people and PRODUCES so much (incl. a lot of the stuff that is then consumed in the U.S.)
Overpopulation is a problem because there will be more major famines, maybe epidemics (w/o a Western style medical system to manage them), mass unemployment and human tragedies, and likely also more terrorism and war - but THEY do not use up all the resources or emit the CO2 that causes climate change.
It would be a human tragedy (there were plenty of them in past centuries and millenias) - but it would not change the conditions for life on earth or change the climate.
(Well the pressure on the population in the poor countries on wildlife might not impact climate but biodiversity, so that tigers, rhinos and also less prominent animals and ecosystems vanish).
Of course some of these poor or developing countries have nukes (India, Pakistan, China). So if they come under enormous economic pressure like Europe did in the 1920s and 1930s ...
The energy and meat consumption in the rich and better developing countries cause THESE problems. Bangladesh has an overpopulation problem, but look at their USE of energy and raw materials !!
Poor agricultural societies ALWAYS have a lot of children (search your family history - your grand and grand grand parents). It is a survival of the species thing - we can see that in ever society of which we have records that having A LOT OF CHILDREN was highly valued.
And totally embedded into culture, and supported / demanded by the ruling class and the respective religion.
That is also true for the Abrahamic religions, or for "Christian" countries until the pill !!
There was a lot of backlash against the pill, in Europe in the first years it was not given to any woman, just those who were a) married and b) had already a bunch of kids - at least 4 or c) were in danger when getting pregnant again.
The "authorities" and the churches were usually opposed * to just allow people to control their fertility. And that was in the enlightened, rich, developed countries.
In Turkey families usually have not as many children as for instance Turkish migrants in Germany. The reason: among other things economic reasons, in Germany or Austria there is a child allowance per child (everone gets it no matter the income), it as about 100 - 150 USD per child per month. Well it helps.
So the strong cultural bias towards having a lot of children * is modified and controlled by government policy. Turkey does not give those child allowances, they do not want more growth of the population, it is easier to provice housing and jobs if you do not have an explosion of the population. Of course the self-limitation to 2 or 3 children will only work if the population is doing O.K. and if the country has some provisions for retired persons in place. In Turkey people get a pension and their children will likely survive (medical system).
A poor farmer in India has and had another situation. Only the children will take care of them and for cultural reasons only the male children. And then if they have 6 kids - how many of them will be alive in 20 or 30 years ?
* Parents in such traditional / conservative societies get recognition from their environment for having large families (especially the number of sons), that also applies to more traditional or fundamentalistic Christian families, for instance the Mormons, or the "Quiverful Movement", or the Amish)
Humans are not bound by their instincts. With increasing wealth the number of children drop - in all societies and classes within societies.
No one forces the Europeans or solid middle class U.S. citizens to have less children. it comes quite naturally. (Immigrants from Mexico are closer to the "poor agricultural society" - so they are having more children. When they can work their way into more wealth, they will have less children too).
The problem - right now - is that these few children in the wealth countries still use up way more resources than the families of 8 in a poor country.
We could alter that. And the developing countries needed to skip our "wasteful" period of industrialization. (1945 - now). This has to do with political will - of course we could develop the technology and adapt our economic system accordingly.
The Race to the Moon was declared a matter of national interest (after the Sputnik shock - before Eisenhower had found the project to be too expensive). There was the will - they money was allocated, the brains were assembled - and a few years later there were results.
or the Manhattan Project. Mastering nuclear fission had become a matter of urgency - so it was mastered - within a few years.
Unfortunately that "can do" attitude and the willingness to "find the money" is only at play when it comes to war, death, destruction. Not for life-affirming and cooperative projects.
The U.S. cannot even adopt a reasonable healthcare system (following the example of European countries which introduced them - or improved basic systems they already had - after 1945. They might have just ended being mortal enemies - but on that point they all agreed).
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@helbrassen4576 There is a sequestration mechanism * when it comes to carbon in soil. It is not the cycle of plants growing and decomposing (where they take in CO2 and then release it). Check out the liquid carbon pathway, Dr. Chrisine Jones. And trees seem to perform best in that regard.
* In the very long run that might be a cycle, but the eath has formed soil over the eons and it did not all go up in the air (the humus). If that was the case the main part of soil = minerals (silt, sand, loan, clay) would be left behind. Some carbon has been sequestered away for very, very long time.
TREES feed the fungi in the earth with sugars dissolved in water, they are called exudates. That is a special power that trees (or bushes with very deep and extesnive root systems) have, likely more than other plants. They produce those exudates (like everything else) with help of solar radiation, CO2, water and a few other elements, mostly nitrogen. The fungi help them with getting minerals up from underground,and with distributing soil moisture deep down.
The fungi eat and process the sugars and produce "waste" - like every being with a metabolism. Their waste are long complex, carbon containing, fairly stable molecules. Which we call humus.
Those molecules might be stable for many hundreds even thousands of years. I mean with industrial farming methods tilling, ploughing, use of chemicals they can be degraded and will react with the oxygen of air: C becomes CO2 and the valuable nitrogen becomes NO2 and is also lost into the air.
But farming methods that try to imitate nature do not destroy those stable molecules.
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1 of 2) SURPRISING social experiment: people are paid to do tasks (like solving cross word puzzles, or sudokos, but also menial labor). The pay is varied. They want to find out how pay influences outcomes, performance or the willingness to accept the job at all. - Now with unattractive manual labor it goes as one would expect: more pay equals better performance and more people willing to do it. - With "white" collar work however, there was hardly any difference between low and medium pay. If the task needs the brainpower and personality of the worker, and if they can enjoy delivering the task (or if it is easy to experience it as fun or meaningful) - the satisfaction of doing the job becomes part of the pay.
More pay does not equal better performance - another way to view it: people already are giving their best even though they are not well paid (you can apply that to social workers, artists, interns, childcare, ....).
Meaning if people can find some enjoyment and sense or challenge (in a good way) in what they are doing for a living, you can exploit them. You will enjoy getting good performance from your employees for meagre pay.
The last test was to pay very much for the "white" collar type tasks. This resulted in the the biggest surprise. If they PAID people TOO MUCH it completely RUINED their PERFORMANCE (and ruined it very reliably).
I think the reason is that the financial gain (and the incentive from it) starts overpowering the joy and pride of getting the job done in a reasonable manner. It becomes only about the money and not to lose the money and the incentive to play the system to get even more money.
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the EU demands plant based fuel to be added to fossil fuel - for that the ancient rainforests are cut down (in Asia and Amazonia). And oilpalm monucultures replace the rainforests (and the people that used to live there). In these countries the oligarchs have it easy to seize the land and to brutally crush any resistance. The palm oil is slightly cheaper than oil grown in the wealthy countries - and the food brands meanwhile belong to only a few multinationals - so even a few cents add up for them. Palm oil can also be used for plant based fuel.
The ancient Northern forests (boreal woods) are easy to harvest (flat, huge trees, no one cares because the areas are remote). So Siberia, Finland, Sweden, Canada are plundered (with huge machines that compress the soil to make things worse).
WHY ?
We need (or demand) cheap wood - most of it is not even used for furniture but for cheap composite / or particle boards for cheap throw away furniture.
Our current economic system does not include all of the costs into a price calculation of a product - on the contrary shifting the externals costs to someone else or something else is rewarded and it almost always happens to a degree.
A lot of wood goes into houses as construction material or furniture - now if the quality of the houses was better, they could be made to last much longer - and the environmental impact to cut down a tree (in a weatlhy country, or in the rainforest or the boreal woods) could be spread over the time and over decades.
And if the quality of those boards was slightly better (less or NO formaldehyd emissions !) and more stable (boards for cheap furniture) - it would be worth the while to recycle them, or DIY minded persons would line up whenever someone discards of furniture. That could also be encouraged by local work shops that help to cut them up.
And of course the forests of wealthy countries in the moderate climate zone would be used (they can cope with the constant harvesting) - with machines that do not ruin the soil. The trees grow much faster there, and the population would also react to "assaults" on the ecosystems that go unnoticed in the very remote boreal forests. And of course no one is killed during illegal logging. Plus no more imports, be it from Canada, or Russia or the Asian countries.
it makes a difference if you "take out" a few trees at at time like in traditional logging - or if you cut down everything (it is also not comparable to a wildfire: the currently used harvesters are much worse. That's a groundzero scenario. They REMOVE more biomass, destroy the soil. And a wildfire does not destroy everything although it may look like that. (in the soil there are seeds, roots - vegetation can and will bounce back, grass, shrubbery, and eventually trees).
Alternative: trees are cut down by small farmers that do not use those harvesters at all (the better wood prices would secure some jobs in the rural areas. That means it would be viable to take care of the trees growing on hills and mountains - avalanche and mudslide country. The forests tend to be legally protected in those areas. Trees attacked by beetles or damaged by storms must be removed if the area is accessible at all. Removal - and if possible planting new trees with special material (mats, biochar) would be more economically viable if prices are higher.
And the owners of the area MUST replant and it is not allowed to cut down all at once. The forests stabilize the soil and the hills and good forest earth is also an excellent sponge to take up rain. So downpours will be less likely to lead to floodings and mudslides and the moistures is slowly released over time.
But that makes the raw material more expensive. Now if the boards are suitable for DIY, and the raw material even for simple furniture is good sturdy quality , it can be sold and upcycled instead of being thrown away. Then the higher costs for using the plentyful (but harder to harvest material) would be spread out over more years - the costs do not matter.
Well, that is not how consumerism and throw-away culture works.
In countries like Germany and Austria the forests are growing, they still have a lot of SMALL farms that could well do with some extra income ("making wood" is traditionally winter work), the territory often does not allow for those harvesting machines anyway.
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@Gustav4 Ethiopia has also recovered. People were forced to leave the areas during the draught, and when finally a period of more rain came the herds did not eat all the new growth, because there were no herds (and not much wildlife) left. Again: the solution was NO domesticated grazers (and wildlife likely also did not fare well during the draught). The villagers observe that now the predatory cats come back.
If they would be given the funding to build ponds, irrigation systems, ... and trained to monitor as community how many animals they can afford to let graze, they would become more resilient.
Every herder is tempted to increase the number of goats, it is a short term gain, the size of the herds adds to their status, and even if they are not greedy some of them simply might need it even if realize that if ALL herders do that they undermine the base for their livelyhood long term.
Poverty drives short term decision that are bad long term.
This is a collective problem. Every individual stands to profit (short term) if they have too many animals.
They had that also in a village in India, and solved their problems by working together. Earth works to stop, slow down, soak in and spread the rain, and that improved the situation. They have enough rain (not that much for India they are in the rain shadow of a mountain range), but 6 - 8 months there is no rain, and 2 months or so they have torrential rains with erosion and flooding.
Now the village elders measure the groundwater and if they had a good rain harvest in the last rainy season the villagers can grow the cash crops that bring good money but need more water (like bananas, or sugar cane), else they have to restrict themselves to crops that are less lucrative but also less demanding. ALL have to abide by those rules, since they all get their water from the aquifers (or the stream that is now reliably flowing thanks to the water they get into the ground), and the ponds they collectively created.
But all in the village can have TWO crops per year - as it used to be in the past before they ran into problems with water supply and erosion.
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If cattle eat their natural fodder - grass - it is more expensive to produce meat. (and also dairy products are more expensive). Ask the nations that had rationing on meat (and fat, butter, milk, cheese) as soon as WW2 started. Even in the U.S., the horse whisperer Monthy Roberts remembers that some older horses (which he loved) were driven to the slaughterhouse when the U.S. enterered the war. The devastated boys were told this was necessary to feed the soldiers.
(it is possible that their father got a much better price for the horsemeat and decided not to keep the horses anymore. Or the government gave the incentive so that no fodder would be "wasted" on non-productive animals. The horses had won medals in their prime, and were used for riding for children etc. so they earned their keep before the war).
These days they burn down the rain forest, and the local oligarchs have cash crops with soy beans etc. THAT makes the cheap meat production possible in the wealthy countries.
Our grandparents were not too stupid to raise chicken and pigs properly. It is more expensive if you can only use the resources of your nation and the farmers are supposed to make a living. (instead of exploiting the land of poor people in de facto dictatorships.
Chicken was a sunday meal back in the day.
In Europe it was meat twice a weak even in the 1960s and 1970s. Cheese (from grass fed cattle), cold cuts and sausages were expensive as well, so instead of having a cold dinner they often had a soup and something lighter.
During the week they had other food (pancakes, pies, something with potatoes, or some stew with a sausage or a little meat - but lots of other ingredients to "stretch" the meat).
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@Tenebrousable If a tax is not meant to raise revenue but to trigger a change (meaning it can be revenue neutral) - government can easily protect low income citizens. Even in Finland a lot of people live in more densely populated areas. Or the whole village works in the nearby city. Could the government generously fund car sharing, public transportation. Minibusses, give out taxi vouchers to citizens ??
Australia did something like that - the households were compensated for the carbon tax expenditures (electricity). Consumers that were energy efficient could use a part of the money for other things ;) Companies selling solutions (with less output of CO2) got more attention. - Companies got a nudge (shove) to invest in reducing their CO2 output and their use of electricity. (In Australia a lot of it is produced with coal fired plants).
Lots of doom and gloom scenario ("Whining is the salute of the merchants") - and then they did.
Companies that had been very much against the carbon tax THEN argued to keep it (of course: they wanted their investments to PAY OFF). And there is economy of scale. As long as it is the goodwill of a few a mass production solution or a service do not kick off in a market. When it becomes widespread the offers become better and cheaper. So often it turns out it is not that expensive or that there are added benefits.
(Of course the government also could have given out zero interest loans to help out businesses with the transition - someone should inform them about MMT or QE for The People - if they can get out of bed with Big Finance, that is).
After 1,5 years the doom and gloom scenarios had been debunked but they got a new Prime Minister that is best buddy with the coal industry (which can hardly compete even w/o carbon tax, certainly not the older plants).
Every time the global installed solar panel volume has doubled (their capacity, not area, or invested money) - the prices go down by 20 %. That trend is going on since the 1980s when the first panels powered satellites (price was not the issue then).
It has nothing to do with time at all. Only demand (with government help !!) triggered improvements in price and quality.
So every time incentives are given for consumers and businesses to buy panels - technology and industry make huge leaps forward. The last wave was also triggered by the - clumsy and unsatisfactory - German initiatve (Energy transition).
Contrary to common belief Chancellor Merkels is no friend of green energy (she is a friend of Merkel, then Big Biz and Biz Finance and then the party - and then maybe other businesses and wealthy citizens. In that order.).
She had political reasons (Fukushima) - and you can see it in the way the "transition" is set up that her heart and convictions are not in it.
Now that the transtition kicks off globally Germany is dragging it's feet !! instead of reaping the fruits of the efforts of the national economy. But NOW the Big energy providers have even more objections. And the Germany car industry with their evolutionary dead-end the diesel engine. So now Merkel is asleep at the whell instead of making sure Germany is positioned at the top.
The German car manufacturers NOW massively invest in solar to hydro and solar to gas. Like diesel that is complicated technology - while electric cars are easy to build. So China could compete with them easily.
Well, maybe something good will come of that as well - not so much for use in verhicles but to store away the huge surplus for heating - the surplus that is possible if a lot of collectors are set up in sunny regions (a few % of the Sahara covered by panels could power the world with PV - not only electricity needs, all energy.
That is not practical right now - but it shows HOW MUCH energy the planet receives from the sun. Most of it is reflected immediately back into space or the earth would overheat. So panels are just a way to insert another layer of use before the energy finally leaves the planet.
You can also see it in WHO is made to pays for the switch.
Low income consumers who cannot offset higher energy prices with taking advantage of the subsidized offers for energy saving or producing.
That said: Still something good came out of it.
The German effort triggered enough demand and cost reduction to make panels viable in sunny U.S. states like California and Texas (even w/o subsidies). They have much better conditions, peak demand for cooling aligns with peak production, so less batteries were needed (they also were more costly). The panels harvest more and at the right time.
THEN the increased sales of solar panels in sunny areas triggered - FINALLY - massive spending on battery and storage research (the effort of TESLA helped as well).
It is viable to INVEST in research NOW not only for production but especially for storage. When that is solved (and it is around the corner) other forms of electricity production will not be able to compete (not coal or nuclear - only hydro from at least mediium sized plants or wind if the conditions are good).
If there are now some more improvements with solar panels - let's say 10 % and a break through with batteries - another 10 % there ( a good thing if it wasn't Lithium, solid state sounds promising) - the Australian coal industry can go home.
Solar will blow coal out of the water in sunny Australia soon.
PV also works on cloudy days, as long as there is daylight. If storage is less expensive - well that takes care of peak production and the night, and the rainy days. If panels are cheaper you can just afford to have the over capacities on the roof or the wall.
People also afford to have a car that has 10 times the weight of what is transported (often one driver and a few possession). That is a huge waste of energy and resources.
If need be, the sometimes plentiful suplus energy (when you err on the safe side regarding size of the installation) could heat swimming pools if no other good use is found, just to get rid of the surplus. At least until there are more (quiet, efficient, clean) electric vehicles.
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@truthbetold818 The limiting factor for plants ? Sunlight, temperatures overall / the extremes, length of growing period and too much or too little water. Nutrients, wind or salt play a role as deterrent, but with sun and enough water some hardy pioneers will move in, even with no soil and no nutrients. In come some ground cover pioneers, they and later grasses build soil for 1000 years, and bushes and trees take it from there. IF they have enough RAIN.
CO2 is available all over the planet - unlike space, sunlight, water, nutrients. A plant in the shade or on bad soil is not deprived of CO2, that's the only thing plants can always have.
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@truthbetold818 Now we have added 47 % to that maximum of 800,000 years and most of it was added in the last 70 years. Will that unprecedented FAST increase of CO2 (not only in the last 800,000 years there is NO precedent in the climate history of the planet) disrupt natural cycles ??
Answer: Yes, and they can already measure that: Certain ocean currents slow down and the jet streams that circle the arctic (and the antarctic) in the winter have weakened. The models showed it would happen, but they did not expect it to happen so fast. More like: in 30 or 40 years.
Texas Feb. 2021 was not a freak event, that will happen again, within the next 10 years, likely earlier.
In winter the cold air used to stay put in the Arctic. the jet streams that "fence off" the poles are the stronger the larger the difference of temperatures is between Arctic and equator.
If the Arctic ocean is way too warm that has effects on the air temperature in the Arctic and the fence gets weak, spreads out, meanders and is wobbly overall.
That is what they observe all year round, but normally in winter that temperature difference got more pronounced so the cold air got locked in and we were protected from it.
Now you have freak events where the Arctic is too warm (by 30 degrees Celsius) and the South of the U.S. gets a part of the cold air that used to stay in the Arctic in winter.
And the infrastructure is not at ALL set up for that.
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