I tried the Apple one for a while but it’s badly shielded and picks up interference a lot. I mean really obvious buzzing sounds if near certain sources of RF. Switched to wired ear buds with a lightning connector and no interference issues. So I’m sad I can’t plug in my high quality headphones or hook up my phone to my mixer when I want without having noise.
Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? My probably wrong understanding was that people were still angry about the inflationary consequences of dealing with the pandemic and didn’t believe it was tapering off, didn’t believe that unemployment was low, didn’t believe that real wages were increasing. How could they have combated that?
As a more general point, 2024 saw many establishment governments switch across the world. My hypothesis is that many people around the world were still craving a pre pandemic lifestyle and world. And that was expressed as anger at the current government regardless of how they handled covid and the aftermath. Others have brought up specific issues but I think there is some connective tissue for people across the world because amount of similar sentiment from different cultures. There is no silver bullet though. Multiple events, policies, and statements factor into a major election win or loss.
Generally speaking, people thought that government spending led to massive inflation, and the republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending.
> republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending
All they have is rhetoric, because their record with respect to actually doing it is not strong. Government deficits increased under every Republican administration in recent memory. They talk the talk, but never walk the walk.
I totally agree that republicans are irresponsible with the deficit. But americans don't seem motivated by the deficit, they seem motivated by inflation.
Inflation and the deficit don't have a 1:1 relationship. For the same dollar of debt, you'll see more inflation from social service spending than you will from tax cuts.
Republicans are responsible for making their constituents happy in some way at least, directly or indirectly. Voters can say they want cutting, Republicans can cut, but when does that translate to better life? There has to also be spending.
So true. You can apply this to limiting federal government. The GOP used to all be about states rights to self government. It’s so reversed that it feels like that’s never been the case.
The GOP was never actually about that. They were only ever about states rights to govern themselves according to conservative Christian principles. They have always opposed states' rights to support social welfare, abortion, gun control, environmental programs, immigration, etc.
Dems have repeatedly ceded that ground and our joke of a "free press" refuses to challenge the notion. So whether it's true or not is ultimately irrelevant. Everyone (including and especially Republican voters) just let's them say it.
And in reality shifted labor markets and supply chain was the issue and the FED in 22 raised interest rates to 'regress labor back to their natural position'.
Never forget: the FED did this more than any republican or democrat and their new stated position is to ensure not the enablement of the population but keeping the labor pool 'in their place.'
This, beyond everything else, changed america the most in recent history.
I don't know that higher interest rates are necessarily anti-labor. Low interest rates result in rapid asset inflation and labor usually owns fewer assets.
The bigger issue is that the US system of voting is set up so that:
1: Most elections predictably go to one party or another.
2: Most representatives are chosen by small minorities who vote in primaries.
The Presidential election is almost always close to 50-50, and due to peculiarities in how it works, is chosen by small regions. Basically, Google "Electoral College." Essentially, most states will always predictably elect a Republican or Democrat, so the election is chosen by states that are hard to predict. (For example, if you live in a state that always votes for the Republican candidate, trying to convince people in your state to vote Democrat won't make a difference because all of your states votes will always go to the Republican.)
Furthermore, because American news is always very critical of current leaders, if a president holds power for 8 years, people will always want change and always vote for the other party. It has little to do with the merits of the current President. People who hate Trump will hate everything he does, even when he does good things. People who hate Biden will hate everything he does, even when he does good things.
> Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently?
For what it's worth, I think a lot of us Americans have realized that we don't understand the partisan dynamics either.
Many of us are very confused about the ongoing support for Trump. There's clearly a huge chasm in mindsets, and personally I've made little headway in forming a plausible mental model that explains it all.
Go tune into reactionary talk radio for a taste. Really listen to what they're saying and just let it wash over you. I'll do this occasionally on long drives by myself when I'm out of range of familiar radio stations.
The problem isn't so much differing values in terms of specific policies, but rather a deep chasm of anti-intellectualism that makes them mistrust anyone but their ingroup partisan preachers. Even if you are coming from a place of mostly agreement about some issue, and appealing to values they purportedly have, the minute you start deviating from anything the preachers have said you've immediately put yourself into the "other" camp where their only conclusion is that you "don't understand" or are even trying to trick them.
Those partisan preachers had at least been owned by US business interests, preaching policies that hurt individuals while helping entrenched corporate interests (eg the decades of shipping industry to China). But at this point it seems they've been bought by foreign interests hence the new trend of supporting the wholly destructive policies of trumpism.
The "psychologism" isn't directly from listening to reactionary media, but rather trying to talk to reactionaries about, well, anything. One time I was talking to extended family who were complaining about GPS satellites tracking the location of their phone. This is something I myself also care deeply about, and that I know a thing or two about how it works as well. So I tried to make some points to them that there are some understandable mechanics whereby you can start taking concrete steps to at least reduce the tracking. They showed zero recognition or interest in the idea of being able to do something about it, and actually became more argumentative as if my knowing technical details meant I supported it!
My conclusion is that they only use the vague paranoia and blaming "the government" as a group identity bonding mechanism, and that by deviating from their victimhood narrative I was marking myself as an outsider. Even on a politically adjacent topic where it should have been easier to find common ground. But please do tell me another way that I can possibly interpret that interaction.
Family is usually not the best place to explore the political landscape because: 1. your family is almost certainly layman 2. it’s intertwined with other interpersonal conflict.
About your interaction. Just because someone mentions a thought does mean they are ready to take action to fix it. Their real concern may be “isn’t it disappointing that we live on a society where we can be tracked?” rather than “please give me some tips I can use to mitigate the ability to track me”.
Team dynamics are real but they are certainly not uniquely characteristic of what you’re referring to.
I don't buy your explanation. I said extended family, there isn't really interpersonal conflict. If anything a personal relationship should convey a bit of "this person works with technology and perhaps knows what they're talking about".
I also didn't present it as "you should do this" or worse "it's your fault", as we often see in many ham-fisted HN comments. Rather it was more like hey it is actually possible to defend against this thing we both feel is attacking us. As I said, the problem was they were not interested in the idea that it's possible to avoid surveillance.
I'm obviously still trying to find alternative explanations to alleviate my "confusion". But just because you've thrown out one possible theory does not mean it is inherently correct, right?
No, you seem to be trying to imply some kind of condemnation without actually levying it or having to substantiate the point. I can't respond to a point you aren't making, rather I can only respond to the points you are making.
Right wingers have a whole different set of moral values that strike me (as someone more on the left) as _immoral_ values. Look up moral foundations theory by Jonathan Haidt and others. I’ve found this in one sense useful (so _that’s_ why Republicans react to ${ISSUE} the way that do!) and in another depressing (how do you _deal_ with people who think that doing what they’re told to do by an authority figure is intrinsically a moral virtue?).
A lot of people were sick of the status quo. For better or worse, Trump represented change. Obviously, there are many more factors that contributed, but in my opinion, this is where the momentum was.
tl;dr A US political party is more like a European coalition government than a European political party.
US political parties try to form tents that various subgroups can join under. Usually, some sort of compromise is formed among the various participants. One break down in the Democratic Party tent was over Israel/Gaza, another was over pro-tech/anti-tech. Simultaneously, there were factional wars over redistribution and immigration in both parties. These are two such but perhaps not even the biggest two such things. Inflation and government spending were another. And Biden's competence was also in question.
Every faction is likely convinced their own support is what would have turned the tide because it is somewhat true, except for the property that they're linked. e.g. pro-Gaza positions are also usually anti-tech so depending on how much you aim to get more Gaza supporters you also lose pro-industry people. There are many things like that.
A US politician will therefore try to walk the line of support to get elected. For example, you'll see a substantial change in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's positioning over time. Notably, she is currently actively attempting to reduce housing construction by corporations - a position she has not been historically associated with - because this polls very well among Americans (who, for the most part, believe that building new expensive housing makes all housing cost more).
The biggest international incident, on the tip of all democratic voters' tongues, was Israel's continued genocide in Gaza. For that specific issue, there was virtually no daylight between the Republican and Democratic line.
I would argue that the Democrats could have created a separation between themselves and the other side by saying they would stop selling arms to genocidiers, and thereby secure the crucial anti-genocide vote; anecdotally, many of these folks sat out the election, or wrote in another candidate instead of voting for one of two sides who would let massacres of civilians continue.
I think Kamala should have flipped on the second amendment then gone on all the podcasts and called trump a nerd for being sober and not liking guns.
Or at the very least, try to target anyone that didn't already support her. This last election was the first time I didn't get targeted by the democratic presidential nominee at all. I did not see one positive ad for Kamala the entire election, I still don't really know anything about her. Normally I'm sick of them a month into the campaign. It kind of felt like a snub, as if they were telling me they didn't want my vote. I could imagine someone else using that as the reason to vote for Trump.
That said, I only ever vote 3rd party because I believe they work together to keep each other in power, and that a vote for either is a vote for both.
You only ever vote 3rd party but you wanted them to try to target you? Seems like their targeting tech was actually working in your case.
EDIT to reply: That category, yes, but within that category it makes sense specifically to exclude your subcategory: the ones who would never vote for either me or my opponent. You are essentially irrelevant to my outcomes and I'd be wasting money and time paying attention to you.
Well. We know that some platforms promoted the gop significantly more that dems. The same companies that now enjoy protection while licking the boots. If you take that into consideration with the fact that she is just not really interesting, I'm not really surprised thet you didn't noticed her.
I did see plenty of anti-trump ads coming from her campaign, but I think that was a huge misstep. Everyone already knew who Trump was and already had an opinion on him that they weren't going to be able to change. They should have used their considerable resources to tell us about her.
If being anti something is your main point, then it's just sad. I'm not even sure if it is needed, if you are candidate against him then logically you are against him. I'm not really sure how liberal parties can compete with strong man politics, promoting. Making straight forward points as a individual is much easier that promoting something as party in todays main channel which are social media.
Trump doesn't pretend to be whatever he is. That is literally what sets him apart.
The Democrats accuse the opponents of being undemocratic while they themself don't have primary and have a candidate selected by their elite. There are plenty of "criminal/fabulist/sex" pests on the other side too.
The best politicians understand the value of being perceived as authentic. Pushing the VP at the last minute and pretending nothing was wrong just felt incredibly stilted and insincere. Politicians like Trump are popular because they "tell it like it is" and not the media trained evasive responses you typically get from politicians.
I would have voted for a partially sentient dung heap over Trump, which at the current rate is probably in the cards as a next GOP candidate.
Absolutely. For more progressive democrat voters already been harbouring bad feelings around the legitimacy of the establishment candidate from previous elections. The two party system already loses a ton of the feeling of choice and participation in Americans. The primary is the escape valve. It is supposed to be when people that care about politics get to argue about policy, direction, etc. Even if you don't agree with the final candidate, you feel like you helped shape the direction of the process. By skipping this, even if there were other circumstances, it feels like a huge turn off for that base of the party.
And then for other democrats, the feeling when you have an unpopular president like Biden was seen at the time is to go anti estabilishment. But Kamala was Bidens VP. She couldnt run an anti estabilishment campaign when she was part of the estabilishment.
If there had been a primary, whoever was the candidate, even if it was Kamala herself, would have been much better positioned for the General Election.
You don't hold a "proper primary" when you have the advantage of incumbency. You run the incumbent (especially against a candidate they've already beaten) or the VP - the two most famous people in the party. All Harris had to do was read the room and she would have won.
Literally every other possible option would have been a nobody with none of the advantages Biden or Harris had and would have only risked splitting the ticket, whereas every Republican was already going vote for Trump. I can't think of a worse way for the Democrats to fail than that... except for the way they actually failed.
And I mean Trump's physical and mental decline is far worse than Biden's ever was and no one seems to care.
> And I mean Trump's physical and mental decline is far worse than Biden's ever was
Incorrect. Trump 2024 was as looney as Trump 2016 and all the years in between, so that doesn't qualify as mental decline. He'd lost some spring in his step but overall was physically in much the same shape as 8 years prior. Meanwhile Biden went from active cyclist to a slow elderly gait. It was plain to see.
> You don't hold a "proper primary" when you have the advantage of incumbency.
Following that traditional playbook in the face of his obvious physical condition, is why we have today's SCOTUS, DOW, Trump Kennedy Center, ...
Both Trump and Biden had their issues, but Trump has lost far more than "some spring in his step," the man is sundowning publicly, barely coherent, and it's obvious some serious medical condition is being covered up by his staff. Anyone seeing him can tell he's far worse off than Biden ever was. "Active cyclist to a slow elderly gait" versus "appeared to have a stroke on camera." Trump literally shat himself in public.
Again, it's baffling that it's only a problem when it's Biden.
>Following that traditional playbook in the face of his obvious physical condition, is why we have today's SCOTUS, DOW, Trump Kennedy Center, ...
Trump's SCOTUS picks happened during is first term. It seems like you're just ranting now.
The fact is Kamala Harris could have won. At the end, the race came down to a fraction of a percent difference between her and Trump. Following the traditional playbook would have worked if only Kamala Harris would have walked away from supporting an active genocide. The lesson of Trump is as much about the right's success as the left's failure. Not of policy, but strategy. The right simply holds the line as the left constantly self-sabotages, giving up real power for the sake of moral victory.
It doesn't help that the "Leftist" party in American politics (at least the only relevant party) is anything but. The success of leftist politics in the US requires a complete restructuring of an inherently fascistic and white supremacist system and culture to break the two party system, campaign finance reform, ending first past the post and the electoral college, and tons of other things. Years-long projects laying out the political and cultural infrastructure. That isn't something you can solve with a panic vote for a third party candidate a couple of months before the election, or by just opting out.
You’re obviously right about SCOTUS. I guess there I was more thinking about the even-longer conservative lock-in with his next appointee.
But I really do disagree on the physical decline though. Put simply, the things people see are: weight, posture, quickness and stability of movement, strength of voice, hair, face (and a few others).
If you compare T16 vs T24, and B16 vs B24, the B delta is much bigger on any of those factors.
Everyone(ish) hits a cliff where they start quickly getting weaker, gaunt, frail, shorter, slower. Where you look at a picture from the year before and think “wow they looked young by comparison just a year ago.” Biden hit that cliff, Trump somehow hasn’t
Trump's posture is terrible. Numerous people have noticed the way he leans, can't stay standing, and the way he walks all suggest signs of fronto-temporal dementia. His movement is unstable. His face droops like he had a stroke. His speech is slurred and confused. His face and hands are covered in weird bruises. He falls asleep in meetings. He wanders off.
Many, many people have noticed Trump's obvious decline. I don't know why you haven't. You're either trolling or you're blind.
Again, I’m obviously not being clear. Yeah, his posture is terrible —- but it was also terrible in 2016. He was doing that weird lumbering walk way back his during the Hillary debate. Ditto his rambling speech.
Are you really saying that Trump in 2024 was an order of magnitude more “elderly” than in 2016? Didn’t look that way to me, at all.
I do agree the falling asleep and bruises are a sign he’s entering final phase. But he’s not fully there yet. In 5 years he’ll have dropped 40 pounds, his cheeks will be sunken in, and he’ll walk at half speed as today, and then he will be in “obvious physical decline”
Side note, just occurred to me: Biden did himself a big disservice by getting facelifts. His face got weird and stretched tight. I think it had the opposite effect of what he wanted, and made him look older still.
Generally speaking, it's better to not assume that everyone with political views opposing yours has them out of racism, or whatever other personal defects you might imagine.
In reality, the nonwhite vote share for Trump went up for almost every group in 2024 vs. 2016. "White fragility" was probably not their top concern.
Much of what people say has always been strange about politics. It doesn't seem to be rooted in fact so much as in wanting to dunk on someone.
I remember when Roe v Wade was being overthrown and people would talk about how this was how "Men try to control Women's bodies" or something like that. The reality around that time was that the gender differences were a few percentage points[0]. Since then a gender gap has widened[1] but notably among Republicans. Voters for the Democratic party barely differ on abortion attitudes based on gender.
i never said everyone with opposing political views has them out of racism, i'm saying it just plays well. Way too many of the white voting share went to the eating cats and dog racism that we saw play out. Cuz it works. That is america.
That’s frankly remarkable given that people say things like “white fragility” openly. I can’t fathom why white people would want to belong to a party that normalizes that.
I'll bite as an independent: I believe that "they" could have reverted to Clinton(Bill) or Obama's moderate stances in regards to border/immigration and gender/identity politics and maintained a sweeping majority.
If the Democrats had disclosed Biden's decline and held a primary this likely would have sorted itself out.
As a Canadian I strongly felt it was GG to the Democrats when they didn’t run a second, competitive, knives-out primary for VP Harris.
For the second time, the party apparatus coalesced around a candidate who was ultimately trounced by someone wrongly considered unelectable.
Even if it was just theatre in the end, having a dramatic primary where the VP won would have made her look stronger and given her a chance to claw back some of the swing voters.
Or could have made her look worse because of the mud slinging between the candidates in the primary debates. You know that any criticism of a candidate by her competitors would have been trumpeted and distorted by Trump.
> what specifically should they have done differently?
Kamala squandered a lot of good will and enthusiasm when she needed it the most. When Biden dropped out there was a lot of real excitement about something different.
It really wouldn't have been hard for her to spend time touting some of the best parts of the Biden admin like Lina Khan. But that sort of messaging was unpopular with the donors.
Putting forward actual policies to make things better would have also helped, even if they were just carbon copies of the biden policies. The way she campaigned there was, frankly, really weak. Giving a tax break to home owners and copying Trump's "No tax on tips" line really did not look good.
It was also pretty apparent that while Walz was doing a pretty good job making Trump and Vance look bad, the Kamala team pulled him in for being too alienating. Kamala distanced herself from her own VP pick and instead decided to campaign with Liz Cheney, a well known republican who's father was good ole war crimes cheney. Neither are particularly popular with either Democrats or Republicans.
The Kamala campaign spent a large amount of time trying to win over disaffected trump voters. That was a disaster. No amount of "I'm tough of transnational criminals" would convince a crown that's currently cheering on ICE to cheer on Kamala.
In the end, she did a lot to kill the enthusiasm of the base. She spent just too much of the limited time she had trying to make the case that she is appealing to republicans. Who, of course, all thought she was a super woke radical leftist (she was not).
Gaza was another huge issue that Kamala's campaign ignored and never addressed. A lot of people believe this is why the DNC autopsy hasn't been released as it likely played a large role in the depressed voter turnout for Kamala.
In the end, the problem with her and her campaign is she ran the Hillary Clinton campaign playbook. Far too much time trying to remind people that Trump is bad and far too little time making the case for why she's better.
This isn't all her fault. Biden is a big asshole for running for a second term. There has been leaks that his staff knew full well that he was a train-wreck and that his polling was really bad. I think they thought that the early debate would ultimately prove that he was capable of winning which, as we all know, was one of the biggest train-wrecks of a modern presidential campaign. But also, there's absolutely no chance that Biden didn't know he was dealing with cancer going into 2024. That's not something a President is unaware of. Especially not getting to stage 4. My conspiracy theory was that a major reason he disappeared towards the end of his term is that he was dealing with cancer therapy. It wouldn't shock me to know that he had chemobrain while debating trump.
The specific issue that caused her to lose the election was her support for Israel. It was the largest reason that Biden 2020 voters didn't vote for Harris in 2024, per polls that specifically analyzed the causes of her loss. (not polls that took general moods or ideas)
Had she dropped support for Israel, she would have been president.
And going forward, there will never be a Democratic president that supports Israel's continued existence. The Democratic base is fully against Israel. We're just waiting for the politicians to catch up.
Edit: man some of you REALLY don't want Israel to be blamed for anything. Anyways, here's one poll clearly showing it was her support for Israel that cost her the most votes: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling
> And going forward, there will never be a Democratic president that supports Israel's continued existence. The Democratic base is fully against Israel. We're just waiting for the politicians to catch up.
Why would she lose the general Presidential election based solely on her pro-Israel stance, if Trump also had a pro-Israel stance at that time (and still does)? That explanation doesn't make sense.
It's because it's important to make sure anyone in office that supports Israel loses, EVEN IF their opponent also supports Israel.
The job of the voter is to make sure elected officials are held accountable. Remember, the voter decides based on what was already done, not what they say MIGHT be done in the future.
> Remember, the voter decides based on what was already done, not what they say MIGHT be done in the future.
How does that explain the outcome of Presidential elections that follow term limits? Donald Trump had no meaningful political record prior to the Republican primaries in 2015--and he was pro-Israel in his first term as well.
I remember the pro Palestine groups were threatening to not vote for Kamala if the Dems didn’t push for a cease fire or whatever. All while the other side was Trump.
They didn’t go, “maybe we should do our best to prevent a worse situation“.
Even back then I had a gut feeling something like this would have cost the Dems the election.
People really need to stop saying Trump is worse than Kamala/Biden on Palestine.
Biden and the Democrats erased Palestine. There is nothing anymore that Trump could do about it. He can't resurrect the dead. Everything happened because of Democrats, not Trump.
Voters are very rational. They know that Democrats were the bad guys. It's why they currently have a 17% approval rating.
Let's all focus on removing the rest of the Democrats from power and replace them with true anti-Israel candidates. That's the only hope for a modern society.
What you did is exactly putting words in someone's mouth, and it's the reason your comment was killed. Don't do it again. There are better ways to make your point.
> Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction—in whole or in part—of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, involving killing, causing serious harm, or imposing conditions to destroy them.
No, we had some antique brass bucket thing that I'd invariably have to drag in, accompanied by complaints that I was doing so, because obviously I'd put way too much in, so I didn't have to go out later to get more...
Ireland is richer than it has ever been. Poverty and housing difficulties have nothing to do with reducing emissions.
Ireland partly got rich by being a massive CO2 polluter per capita. Now we are rich it’s only fair we lead in transitioning to renewables. Renewables are cheaper now than most forms of energy production. Grids need investment.
I despair at these short sighted and fairly wrong on the facts views.
Isn't that more about big tech companies using Ireland as a tax dodge, rather than a sign of average people doing well?
For less-well-off people, energy costs in the UK are a huge issue, they're more than twice what they were pre-Covid. Energy bills are second only to housing costs when it comes to the cost of living crisis. Although grocery price inflation/shrinkflation has been pretty shocking too.
Sorry I missed your question.
While being a tax haven was part of Ireland’s strategy, given we have little natural resources for export or refining for heavy industries, we also have a well educated workforce which spoke English as a first language and were once cheaper than British workers and also, enthusiastically part of the EU. So we built up a service industry and high tech and high value industries like pharmaceutical and IT. We no longer are the (in my view once somewhat shameful) tax haven we were but now are low tax in a much more fair way (probably could be better but all countries are working the system). Opinions differ. But Ireland is genuinely wealthy and productive. We have serious problems with inequality and a stupid housing problem in the bigger cities. Nevertheless, compared to most of the world and compared to the Ireland of my youth it’s a great if imperfect place where you can have a great quality of life.
21% of all energy is now being consumed by data centers with not enough investment in new forms of energy generation.
This is a policy decision by the government. More realistically it is a decision to not proactively do anything and instead rely on market prices to encourage new entrants to the market.
It's not a free market in Europe since there is vast amount of planning regulations involved etc. If you want to see free markets in action, look at the electricity prices in Texas, where ironically renewables are also the dominant source.
https://www.gridstatus.io/live
Texas is an interesting example because they allowed true unregulated rates for residential consumers. Consumers liked getting lower rates until that winter storm a few years ago had bills for some in the $thousands. Then they didn't like the free market so much.
It did suck, but even when we factor that spike into the equation (including the outages), Texans end up paying for less for electricity in aggregate. Texas has also beefed up winter hardening requirements since then.
weird, because wouldnt part of the price for electricity include the network?
Are you telling me that the electricity purchasing is like me purchasing from amazon, but but never charges shipping, or factor it into the products, and then suddenly cant ship because all trucks are used and no money to buy new?
Demand has gone up largely because of data centers. Supply has not increased enough so expensive options are the marginal supplier. Grids costs are also build into tariffs.
A very fair question and the answer is complicated. Production costs and transmission costs are separate. Also demand changes the market rate. And even if renewables are cheaper to produce in a market usually the highest price regardless of source sets the price. This is to incentivise the cheapest production methods to be invested in.
It’s a massive topic and I encourage everyone to go and dive into it. It’s endlessly fascinating and also one of the really positive stories in the world right now which can help balance your emotions in a sometimes depressing world. At least for me it does.
> This is to incentivise the cheapest production methods to be invested in.
It's also just a rule of economics. The price is set at the cost of the most expensive production necessary to meet demand.
So if solar could fulfill 100% of energy demand, price would be the cost of solar, and any other more expensive generation would either lose money, shut down or idle.
But if we shut down or idle those today we wouldn't have enough electricity, so the price rises until the more expensive plants can stay open and demand is met.
Because at the moment wind has been the winner in the Irish climate, especially when you look backwards long enough to account for the time scales over which energy buildouts occur. Renewables have grown to 40% of the overall supply, resulting in the most expensive plants (currently coal plants, and before that peat) closing. Solar is entering the market rapidly though, it grew from like 1% to 4% in the last 3 years. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some gas plants closing in the next few years, given the more expensive options are now already gone
That rule is a rule of free markets. Electricity is not a free market, so it only partially applies. Texas is closer to a free market, and unsurprisingly it is adopting solar faster than most.
It is. But solar produces most around midday and then tapers off toward dawn/dusk, so it might supply 100% of demand at midday but only 10% around sunset.
If you build more solar it'll meet 100% of demand for a larger portion of the day, which is what we're doing.
Base generation is a cost optimization that's been irrelevant ever since peaking plants became cheaper to operate than continuous operation plants. Any grid that can handle peak loads can also handle base loads.
It is not that complicated. When the energy crisis in EU happened a few years ago, it demonstrated clearly that people and industry is willing to pay a years worth of energy bills for a single month to keep lights and machine operating. What this mean is that you could in concept give people free power for 11 months, and then increase electricity prices by 12x for the remaining month, and people would still pay it.
This also demonstrated through most countries in Europe that citizens will vote to have government that fix the energy market. Citizens do not want a free energy market that can raise prices to any degree, and its their tax money that fund grid stability.
This all mean that the cheapest form of producing energy do not result automatically in reduced energy costs for consumers and companies. The product that people pay for is not energy in a pure form, it is energy produced at a given time and given location. Make the energy free but the time and location expensive, and the total cost will still be expensive.
Transmission can help Ireland, but it can also hurt it by linking it to a larger market that can create a even higher demand spikes than exist in the current local grid. If the linked grid has locations which has higher energy costs than Ireland, then Ireland will subsidize those people by linking the markets together. Rules like highest price regardless of source sets the price, and higher amount of transmissions, also tend to result in more companies getting paid to maintain operations and thus more parties getting paid that is not linked to the marginal cost of producing energy.
It's really not. Energy grids are not designed for distributed generation. In my US state, that means billions of infrastructure investment.
The people using carbon to create forcing functions to transition to renewables conveniently forget to mention that. Which sucks, as solar in particular is almost a miracle product, but at this point my delivery charges to get electricity exceed the electricity supply by 10%. 20 years ago, delivery was 30% of supply.
My state, New York, decided it would be smart to turn off the nuclear plant that supplies 20% of NYC electricity, and replace it over a decade with a rube goldberg arrangement of gas, offshore wind, solar, and Canadian imports. The solar is hampered by distribution capacity, gas was slowed down by corruption and is being limited by environmental activists, we elected a president that believes that windmills give you cancer, and of course we are picking fights with Canada now.
If you don't have competent government, that's not the fault of renewables.
This is not snark. With forward-looking rational planning the transition could have started decades ago, and we could have had a low carbon energy economy by 2010 at the latest.
But fossils make so much money they can buy the policy they want, and here we are arguing about national tactics instead of planetary strategy.
In a vast over simplfication, the most expensive producer that gets to supply sets the overall price. So even if you supply 99% from wind and hydro, the 1% of power that comes from gas sets the price for 100% of the electricity in the market.
When gas gets more expensive, electricity from gas gets more expensive. The more you have to rely on gas (because you don‘t have batteries, not enough solar, etc), the more you pay high prices.
There are different ways to address these issues. Demand side load management, batteries, etc.
Solar is priced based on gas prices as a financial incentive to encourage producers to build solar. That’s because profiting from the difference between the cost of production for solar and the cost of production from gas is supposed to be the incentive to build solar.
The gas prices went up massively in 2022 with the war in Ukraine, and even though that subsided before the war in Iran a little, the existing supply companies are not going to give back an increase in the price they’ve gained because their prices dropped.
You would have to normalize against other costs and do a deep dive to really understand. My first question would be whether electricity (commercial and residential) has become relatively more expensive than gas, beer, and other commodities. If it's the same rate then it's more of an overall inflation thing. If electricity really is far and away higher than the rest over time then one would have to look at laws, the grid, demand, and of course supply too.
> You would have to normalize against other costs and do a deep dive to really understand.
The tricky part here is that energy is an input to basically everything. It's a major (through fertiliser) input to food, and then all of transport and stocking of said food which tends to be how energy changes influence downstream inflation. So I think you'd probably need a deeper analysis to tease out these issues.
> Ireland partly got rich by being a massive CO2 polluter per capita. Now we are rich it’s only fair we lead in transitioning to renewables. Renewables are cheaper now than most forms of energy production. Grids need investment.
Sorry, what? While I agree with you about reducing emissions, most of our transition from poor to rich(er) was driven by capital light businesses. To be fair, the pharma companies did come here because we refused to regulate spillovers up to EU standards, but that's less than half of the story.
tl;dr loads of golf courses, english speaking population, smart industrial plannng and tax dodging was really how it happened.
None of those things were possible without the fossil fuel based energy underlying everything. Every single wealthy country used energy from fossil fuels to escape poverty. Some to a greater degree than others but that’s the basic reality. Now we have a way out of fossil fuels and we must take it or things will get even worse than they are already going to get anyway. And I did say it was only part of the story, albeit essential.
> Now we are rich it’s only fair we lead in transitioning to renewables
Unfortunately it's not the people/generation who reaped the rewards from cheap energy and polluting who are now being made to feel the pain of the transition.
> they know windpower and solar are not viable long term
That’s why they are installing it all over their country at the fastest pace of any country by far? That’s why they probably hit peak oil consumption?
The coal thing is complicated in China. They are replacing many old coal stations, local governments are fearful of being caught short in a cold winter which has happened. Rate of coal consumption increases is slowing. Peak coal may have happened last year.
>"China is the world's top electricity producer from renewable energy sources. China's renewable energy capacity is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear power capacity.[1] China installed over 373 GW of renewables in 2024, reaching a total installed renewable capacity of 1,878 GW by the end of the year. The country aims to have 80% of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060, and achieve a combined 1,200 GW of solar and wind capacity by 2030.[1]
>Although China currently has the world's largest installed capacity of hydro, solar and wind power, its energy needs are so large that some fossil fuel sources are still used."
Seems more renewables came online than non-renewables, perhaps your take is outdated?
People keep forgetting in all the China-posting that China is a country of 1.4 billion people, approximately 256 times the size of the Irish population, and therefore it's not really surprising when it tops a "top consumption" or "top production" list of any kind.
(second most populous after India)
Alternatively, if all Ireland was a city in China, it would not be in the list of top 50 cities by population.
While it's not surprising that's in the top, it's surprising by how much. ~1/7th of the world population, but ~55% of coal consumption is pretty unbalanced IMO. Of course, the real reason why is that China is the world's factory so the energy consumption is huge as well.
I think the real takeaway here is that the world depends on the industrial production of China, which is powered by coal. We are all using that coal to buy cheap Chinese manufactured goods, and the sooner we come to terms with this the better. Whether a single country uses coal or not is irrelevant for tackling carbon emissions, if we're all basically exporting our carbon emissions to China.
India is building 41 coal plant, China is building 289. India approved 5 more plants, China approved 405. China is building more coal power than all other countries combined including India.
This thread is crazy. guys just look at numbers first...
With its population and size, China will top production. But their coal plants have been coming up more than every other country combined. It's the percentages, not the absolutes.
Believe it or not, you're both correct! China is closing more (old, inefficient, polluting) coal plants than anybody else, and opening newer ones than anybody else.
> "This argument that we have to self destruct to have the moral highground"
That's not the argument they made.
> "they know windpower and solar are not viable long term"
Thanks for the nonsensical, unsupported, right-wing talking points, throwaway account. Great contribution.
> "Web search how many Chinese coal plants came online in the last six months."
I web searched and found that "China installed a record 315 GW (AC) of new solar capacity in 2025". The entire UK national grid is currently providing 35GW of power from all sources combined. That's 1/9th of the power China deployed in just solar panels just last year. And China deployed 119GW of wind turbines in the same year as well.
And are you sure about your claim? Every time I hear anything about China and Solar the core of it is that solar in China is growing more than anywhere else on the planet ( 40% increase in 2025 and creating ~11% of China's energy already )
And that there is no sign of that trend slowing down anytime soon. And why would it. Solar panels are dirt cheap and they have more than enough space for it.
China is also really strong in the battery space, so they have everything they need to ditch oil/coal eventually
They also are building more coal, gas, and nuclear than anyone else at epic yearly increases.
That they have the internal political means to get large infrastructure projects done is laudible - they can actually build transmission lines that make unreliable energy sources like solar and wind feasible. In the US that is effectively impossible due to the NIMBY legal situation.
That they lead in battery production is going to be pretty interesting to watch. I admit I was skeptical that current battery tech could be scaled up enough to make it financially doable, but China is very close to making me wrong on the topic. If they can be the first to truly seasonal storage that works without hand-waving games like pretending you can "just use another source" when you run out of storage I'll be very impressed.
They seem to understand that you need to back unreliable sources with reliable sources - and have the political means to build a coal plant that will sit idle 95% of the time.
No other country is close - it's parlor tricks at the moment. China seems to understand how energy works, and that you need a reliable grid to run an industrial economy. They are very much being pragmatic in how they are building out everything they possibly can. The West has forgotten this.
They’re building more dirty plants than anyone, but they’re STILL making their mix cleaner at an impressive clip. Over 80% of new electric demand growth was met by renewables in 2024.
> They also are building more coal, gas, and nuclear than anyone else at epic yearly increases.
Are they really? Coal use for power generation stopped growing, so newly built coal plants are replacing older, not adding to them. Nuclear while still being built does not seem to be accelerating anymore.
There's plenty to criticize about China, but as far as energy production goes they are a leader and have demonstrated what can be done when the country is aligned (albeit by force in this case) to provide cheap and clean energy to power their economy.
The US, under the current admin, is literally the opposite of that.
if solar and wind is subsidized by europe or usa, selling solar and wind to them is great. taxpayer money goes east, everybody is happy, meanwhile china is constructing more coal plants than all the other countries combined https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/number-of...
China leads the world in solar energy, by a wide margin. Yes, they have hedged their bets somewhat with coal, but you cannot claim with a straight face that China believes renewable energy is nonviable.
Steelman: in the 2000's and 2010's China did not know if wind power and solar were viable in the long term. They put a lot of money in wind & solar, but also lots of alternatives: nuclear, coal, hydro, geothermal.
By 2020 it was obvious that wind & solar were viable long term, so investments in nuclear et al dried up. But they weren't convinced that batteries were viable long term, so they built a lot of coal peakers for night power.
By 2025 it became obvious that batteries were more viable and cheaper than coal peakers, so they've started to build battery storage at a vast scale.
So steelman is that the OP's viewpoint is ~10 years out of date.
The pro tip is pasting such long ToS into NotebookLM and asking it to list e.g. top 5 surprising clauses (if you ask just about surprising clauses it treats you like an idiot and lists everything)
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