Sure he’s got climate wins, but some of the wins are questionable, like giant hydrogen hubs. Hydrogen sounds great on the surface, but the more you dig into it, the more issues crop up. Some of these hubs will end up producing hydrogen by burning fossil fuels, and that isn’t a win at all. And speaking of not winning, we are producing more oil and natural gas than ever before. That’s why we aren’t excited about his “Climate Wins”, they are offset if not overcome by losses.

Having said that, regarding the Climate, pollution, and everything related, Trump is the worst choice. He’s already promised Carte Blanche to oil execs if they donate to his campaign. (Not in those words of course, simpler, more incoherent ones.)

And it costs municipalities less money than the problems it prevents, so obviously we shouldn’t do this everywhere and raise the standard of living for everybody. Because it wouldn’t be fair, somehow.

But remember, electric motors also require next to no maintenance and can last for many years of runtime. Pros and cons.

Oh, agreed!

Sure, to get them to speak in unison. They did all read from the same script though. It wouldn’t be as viscerally creepy without the editing, but I would say the situation is as bad as the video makes it seem.

I am not medically trained in any way, but I would say sudden noticeable losses in strength and endurance in one arm is a good enough reason to make a doctors appointment. So many issues are easier to deal with when caught early, take care of yourself!

This is misleading, billionaires have been paying effectively lower taxes for many many years. They just had to be more creative about it before now.

Huh, I’ve been using a VPN for under a year, and DDG for just a couple of months, but I haven’t had a captcha from them yet.

If you are using Firefox, switch your default search engine to DuckDuckGo, haven’t gotten a captcha from them once. And right in the search bar you can switch to Google if DDG isn’t doing too well on a particular search, I do end up doing that about 5% of the time.

This is ridiculous. There are practically no goods that would support the cost of hypersonic intercontinental rocket delivery, it would viewed as an unacceptable safety and security risk for any receiving area, and would be ludicrously bad for the environment and climate.

It won’t have started getting closer again before the Milky Way collides with the Adromeda galaxy in 5 Billion years, so it and anything we send on a similar path isn’t coming back.

In general I agree with you for sure, we have way too many. But if there are any worth preserving, I’d say it’s the old ones in Scotland where golf was invented. And at least there they don’t have to be watered constantly.

Thank you, Nougat, for your guidance in these trying times.

That is goddamn infuriating.

I looked up prices in Massachusetts, they are higher than the national average. Looks like 2 main factors:

1 A higher than usual percentage of mini splits vs central air. These will be more efficient and have a lot of comfort benefits, but are considerably pricier then retrofitting a central air system. So if you are retro fitting CA, you could come in under average.

2 MAs impressive $10k+ incentive system for whole home heat pump systems has resulted in HVAC companies raising prices, because of course it has. This is why we can’t have nice things.

In addition to Thejevans points, your cost estimate is very high. That cost would be in line for a geothermal heat pump, which is far more efficient. Air to air heat pumps can be installed for more like $3-10k in most residential homes. And on the higher end that is a big house that is probably saving more than $550 a year.

I am not any kind of expert either, but I have been following this company for a couple of years. If it makes it to market and is at all price competitive i can’t see it not being a big deal. Granted, that is an if, not when, but they seem to be further along than most battery tech you read about.

No rare earth metals or even nickel or copper, has a very flat degradation curve even at charge rates up to 30C (testing stopped at 3k cycles in the coin cell tests), non flammable and non toxic. The only thing you would wish for is better capacity, but it is already better than any mass produced Li ion cell, and it has a theoretical maximum a couple times that of Li ions.

You’re right, battery news IS always breathlessly excited about the next crazy advancement, but they have a lot of things in their favor on this one. They broke ground on a manufacturing plant last year, which is not the case for most battery news stories. And the battery uses no rare earth metals, is non flammable, and performes better by nearly every metric than lithium ion. If they make it to market, I think they will absolutely be revolutionary.

A increasing percentage of new construction gets heat pumps. Some replacement HVAC units make the switch, but there is still a large portion of people who won’t because of misinformation and/or stubbornness.

But, unfortunately, most existing residential systems do not use heat pumps, under 20% in the US I believe.

They are too expensive. But only because auto manufacturers are only making midsized and larger suvs or luxury cars. The average price of an EV has dropped over 50% in China since 2015. That would have been tough for us to match, mostly because of batteries, but we could have made much more progress than we have.

The electric grid isn’t nearly as unprepared as people say. Sure, we need to build out more charging stations, but the grid as a whole far exceeds current needs. In fact, nationwide electrical usage is actually trending down in the US because of efficiency gains. Better building codes, heat pumps, LED lighting, if it uses electricity newer stuff is more efficient. If we had sold 8 times as many EVs in 2023 than we did, electricity usage would have stayed about flat.

https://cleantechnica.com/2024/02/02/the-us-added-1-2-million-evs-to-the-grid-last-year-electricity-use-went-down/